Silent Assassin(24)

There was something that President Reagan used to say about Cold War politics, a saying that was itself, appropriately enough, a translation from the Russian: trust, but verify. He was definitely not a trusting person—isolation and self-sufficiency were his natural defaults. But in the world of espionage, you had no choice but to trust certain people if you didn’t want to get dead real fast. Trust, but verify was, Dan Morgan came to realize, a rule to live by in a world where you had no choice but to put your life in others’ hands. The work he had been assigned to with the Zeta Division so far was unimpeachable, all without a doubt for the greater security of Americans and the world—although in the usual morally fuzzy manner of Black Ops. Apart from their secrecy, he had seen no reason to mistrust Bloch or to think the people she answered to were not the good guys.

But Morgan sure as hell intended to verify.

Zeta Division, he had figured, was just one piece in what must be a vast puzzle. If he was to catch any kind of glimpse of the entire picture and where exactly he fit in, tailing Diana Bloch was the only way.

He had started by observing her. She was careful and methodical in all things she did. Morgan, having studied acting and nonverbal cues in his training, knew what to look for. Her outfit, hair, and makeup were always impeccable. Everything she said was spoken calmly and evenly, often with a practiced feel to it. Keys and personal electronics were within her line of sight at all times. Every time she walked in or out the door, she would scan herself with a handheld bug detector.

She was also, he had quickly noticed, well trained in evasion and misdirection. The first time he had lain in wait for her, she had woven through the crowd near the Common and slipped away. The time after that, he had seen her get into a subway train at the nearby Downtown Crossing Station, and had gotten in after her, in the next car. Somehow, he had completely lost track of her in the train, and arrived at the terminus to watch the twenty or so passengers who had stayed on disembark. Bloch had not been among them.

With everything she did, Bloch was meticulous and patient. She checked herself for tracking devices every time she went outdoors, he had noticed early on, and so thoroughly that he hadn’t even tried getting one past her. She never drove anywhere herself, at least not at the outset—he did not rule out the possibility that she might be parked somewhere far away.

Morgan put away the Newsweek and, under the scowl of the shopkeeper, picked up a copy of a hunting magazine. He had barely started pretending to look through it when he saw Diana Bloch emerge from the building. He waited to see which way she would go. To his surprise, she held out her hand and hailed a taxi. He marked the make and model—Toyota Corolla, the older boxy kind, white with a yellow stripe all along the side. He waited for it to pull out, and scanned the street for other cabs—they were abundant enough along this stretch. Upon spotting one that was approaching, he walked out, hearing the shopkeeper grumbling behind him about freeloading browsers who don’t purchase anything, and hailed it.

The taxi pulled over and Morgan got in. He held out a hundred-dollar bill. “You see that taxi up ahead? The Toyota?”

“Two blocks down?”

“That’s the one. I want you to keep within two blocks of that car. I’m paying you now, because I might have to get off suddenly. Keep the change—for your discretion and driving as normally as you can.”

The driver, a fat black man in his twenties, accepted it cheerfully. “No one ever told me to ‘follow that taxi’ before. What are you, some kind of spy or something?”

Morgan looked at him pointedly.

“Nah, let me guess: you could tell me but you’d have to kill me.” He laughed uproariously.

“Just keep an eye on that taxi.”

They drove slowly down Charles Street, and then took a right on Beacon at the Common. Traffic was always a little heavier here, but the driver stayed a comfortable distance of just over a block from Bloch’s cab. A truck briefly obscured their line of sight, and they lost the cab for a few seconds as it turned onto Massachusetts Avenue, but managed to catch up at Harvard Bridge. Bloch’s cab continued on Mass Ave after crossing the Charles River into Cambridge. They hung back, following with a clear line of sight for just under one mile.

As they reached Central Square, the taxi activated its blinkers and pulled over near the entrance to the T station.

“Keep going,” Morgan said. “We’re going to pass them, slowly.”

But no one got out of the cab. Instead, a woman holding two heavy-looking shopping bags opened the door and got in.

“Stop the car!” Morgan said, and the driver pulled over just behind Bloch’s cab. Morgan got out and dashed over just in time to see the woman close the passenger door. The cab set off, with Diana Bloch nowhere to be seen. She had somehow slipped away without his noticing her.