the gulls and people as a gentle wind blew in from the bay.
Camacho and Dreyfus watched him through one-way glass mounted in the side of a Potomac Power van parked on a yellow line near the frigate pier. From the outside of the van the glass appeared to be a sign unless one inspected it from close range. A man wearing jeans and a tool belt had rigged yellow ropes around the vehicle as soon as it came to a stop to ensure that no one got that close.
The distance from the van to where Judy sat was a little over a hundred yards. Camacho aimed a small television camera mounted on a pedestal while Dreyfus snapped photos with a 35mm camera with a telephoto lens. Beside them an agent wearing earphones huddled over a cassette recorder- A parabolic microphone on top of the van was slaved to the video camera, but right now the audio was a background murmur, like the background noise of a baseball radio broadcast.
“He isn’t saying anything,” Camacho muttered to reassure the audio technician.
“I’ll bet he goes inside,” Dreyfus said.
“More than likely. Too chilly to sit outside for long.”
“He’s looked at his watch twice.”
Camacho turned the pedestal camera over to the second techni- cian and helped himself to coffee from a thermos. “Appreciate you guys coming out this morning.”
“Sure.”
As he sipped his coffee, Camacho glanced at his watch. 11:47. The meet was probably scheduled for twelve o’clock. Albright? If not, then who?
“Have we got the camera and audio units inside?”
“Yes, sir. The guys are already in the food court.”
Camacho took another large swig of coffee, then tapped the man at the camera on the shoulder- He moved aside. The camera had a powerful zoom. Camacho could see the expression on Judy’s face. He looked like a tourist until you studied his face — alert, ready, in absolute control.
The agent backed off a tad on the zoom and scanned the camera. The crowd was large, lots of families and young couples. With the earpiece in his left ear he picked up snatches of conversation as the camera moved along. Feeling a bit like a voyeur, he aimed the camera at a stream of people coming from the dark interior of the huge, green-glass building into the light. A stringy youth in a black Harley shirt held hands with a vacant-eyed girl with large, unre- strained breasts and a slack jaw. Adenoids? “… that AIDS is bad shit. Had a hell of a time shaking it last time.”
A tight-faced gray-haired woman spoke to her male companion in a polished whine: “… too far to walk. My feet hurt and it’s been just a terrible, .” Camacho moved on, sampling the faces and polyglot sounds.
“I’m not hooked, I tell you. I just like the rush. ,” In her mid-thirties, she wore a one-piece designer outfit and a wind-blown coiffure and was speaking to a man in gray slacks and camel- colored cardigan who was chewing on his lower lip. Not wishing to hear more, Luis Camacho swung the camera away.
“He’s moving,” Dreyfus said. “Toward the door. He’s looking at someone. Do you see him?”
Camacho searched for the door to the mall and saw only backs. He waited. The light was fading noticeably now as a dark cloud choked off the sunlight. In a few seconds Smoke Judy entered his range of vision from the left and joined the crowd streaming into the interior gloom. Camacho released the camera and rubbed his eyes.
Dreyfus was on the radio, talking to the watchers inside. “Here he comes,” one of them said, and launched into a running com- mentary on Judy’s direction of travel for the benefit of his com- rades stationed throughout the building.
“I’m going inside,” Camacho said. Judy had never met him, so that wasn’t a concern. Depending on who it was, Judy’s contact might recognize him, but even so he wanted to see — see now, with his own eyes — the person Smoke Judy did not want to be seen with. He would try to stay out of sight. Just in case.
A spatter of drops came in at an angle, driven by the strong breeze, as Luis Camacho walked across the head of the quay. A solid curtain of rain over the water moved rapidly this way. The crowd around two jugglers on unicycles dissolved as people began to run. The FBI agent reached the double doors and hurried through just as the deluge struck. A crowd was gathering by the exit, looking out and chattering nervously, but audible above the babble was the drumming of the rain on the glass windows of the building.
Camacho put the earpiece on his radio in place and rearranged his cap. The radio itself was in an interior jacket pocket- The mi- crophone was pinned inside his lapel: he merely had to key the transmit switch and talk.
A voice on the radio reported that Judy was upstairs, on the second floor, wandering from booth to booth. That meant the per- son he had come to meet was still unknown, still moving through the crowd looking for watchers. Camacho stood near the door and looked at faces, an ocean of faces of all ages and colors and sizes. Could one of them be? No chance.
X was too careful, too circumspect. This wasn’t his kind of risk. He didn’t need men like Smoke Judy for his treason. Or did he?
“He’s in line at the taco joint”
Camacho was tempted to move. Not yet! Not yet!
“There’s a man behind the subject, Caucasian male about fifty- five, five feet nine or so, about a hundred ninety pounds, wearing dark slacks. Hush Puppies and a faded blue windbreaker. No hat. Balding.”
Camacho shifted his weight and examined the people on the stairs. Families. Youngsters. Five black teenage boys with red ball caps and scarves. No one was looking at him.
“Guy in the windbreaker said something to the subject.”
“Get pictures.” That was Dreyfus in the van.
“Camera’s rolling.” The lawyers at Justice loved these portable video cameras with automatic focus and light-level adjustment. Jurors raised in the television age thought prosecutors should have a movie of every ten- dollar back-alley deal. At last technology had delivered. The government’s shysters could show each greedy, grubby, loving little moment in living color on the courtroom Zenith — and play it over and over again until even the stupidest juror was firmly convinced — while the defendants writhed and the defense shysters planned their appeals.
“Subject paying for his grub.”
Camacho swiveled his eyes again, looking at no one in particu- lar, seeing everyone-
“Windbreaker paying, just dropped a coin. Kid retrieving it for him. He’s nervous, looking around… Now he’s following sub- ject… They’re gonna share a table. That’s our man. That’s him!”
He moved for the stairs, climbing slowly, listening to the run- ning commentary from the observer. Pausing with his eyes just at the level of the second-story floor, Camacho scanned to his left, toward the taco stand. The observer said they were near there at a two-person table. He climbed carefully, watching, peering through moving legs and around bodies. He glimpsed Judy’s face. Another step. He was at the top of the stairs. He moved left, keeping a fat woman between himself and Judy. Against the far wall he saw a man from the power company up on a step ladder, bending over a toolbox on the ladder’s little platform. The video camera was in the toolbox. Judy’s face was panning again, examining the crowd-
Camacho turned his back. A pretzel stand was right in front of him. He pointed one out to the girl and asked for a soft drink. As she thumbed the dispenser he checked the mirror on the back wall. There was Judy again. And there was the man across from him.
Luis Camacho studied the face in the mirror. Fleshy, clean- shaven, pale.
He paid the girl and turned to his right, back toward the stairs, as he sipped the drink through a straw. Descending the stairs he kept his eyes glued on the back of the teenager in front of him in a conscious effort to avoid any possibility of eye contact with a ner- vous Smoke Judy. He threw the pretzel and nearly full cup in a trash hamper by the main door and pushed on through, out into the rain.
The wind threatened to blow his cap off. He held it with his hand as the wind whipped his trouser legs.
“So?” said Dreyfus as Camacho wiped the water off his face with a handkerchief when he had gained the shelter of the van.
Luis Camacho shrugged. “They’ll probably bus their own table. Put their trash in a receptacle. Have one of the guys take the whole bag.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Uh-huh.”
