Adrian Magson - Tracers

‘LH4736 landed at 13.15 hours,’ Karen explained. ‘This is the Arrivals exit. I’ve prepared what we have in chronological order. It’s probably the best place to start because eventually everyone funnels through this door. Unless your man did have help, which God forbid, he’d have to pass this point.’ She looked to see if they understood, and they both nodded. ‘OK, from here, he could go anywhere in this or the other terminals. If you spot him, just shout, then we’ll switch to other cameras to follow his progress. If we don’t spot him, we’ll go back and check everywhere up to the Arrivals exit.’

The screen showed a trickle of arriving passengers coming into view through a gap in the wall. Some carried hand luggage, while others were struggling with trolleys or bags on wheels. It was a commonplace scene yet, from this perspective, oddly compelling. Like ants.

‘Christ,’ Rik breathed. ‘It’s like watching Big Brother .’

Karen chuckled. ‘It’s a bit more interesting than that.’

The minutes passed, the arrivals growing and receding tide-like as each planeload moved through the Arrivals chain. It would have helped if they could have identified which flight they were seeing, but there was no way the screen could pick out such details, nor if some of the figures passing through the exit had arrived on a much earlier flight and had been delayed along the way.

At the lower edge of the screen was the ever-present crowd of meeters and greeters. Some held scraps of cardboard showing the names of arriving passengers, while others betrayed the anxious foot-hopping of family and friends awaiting someone who had probably got logjammed at Immigration.

Harry or Rik occasionally asked Karen to freeze or go back over the recording, convinced they had spotted a familiar face. Each time, closer inspection showed they were mistaken. As each possible target was dismissed and the line of passengers disappeared from view, they felt the clutch of disappointment beginning to grow stronger.

A flash of movement made Harry lean forward. It was on the lowest edge of the screen and showed two men bumping into one another. One was a new arrival, the other a uniformed airport worker. A brief flurry ensued, with both figures executing the step-sideways, zigzag dance of convergence, before moving on with nods and muttered apologies. Harry began to look away, subconsciously dismissing it, then froze as something about the traveller made him look again.

‘Wait.’ He jabbed a finger at the screen. ‘Back a few clicks.’

Karen did so and played it again. This time they all leaned forward, willing to exchange hours of searching for something, no matter how small. When the airport worker walked off screen and the other turned briefly towards the camera, Harry snapped his fingers in triumph.

‘Houston,’ he hissed softly. ‘We have contact.’

A hundred yards away, Dog was watching the building with stony patience. He had no idea what function Transit Support Services performed, or how many people were inside. No doubt Jennings would have a way of finding out.

After following the two former MI5 men down from Paddington, he’d run a check of the surrounding area. At one point in the journey, he thought he’d detected a presence nearby. After years in the field, he’d developed an inbuilt radar sensitive to possible threat which he’d learned never to ignore. But whatever it was had remained invisible, and he’d slowly relaxed, aware that night-time and moving traffic often combined to play tricks on the mind.

Thirty minutes into his vigil, he’d finally found the twin needs of exercise and refreshment something he could no longer ignore. But before making a move, he needed a delaying tactic in case the two men left before he returned. Blending into the shadows and keeping well back from the glare of the overhead lights, he’d made a careful circuit of the building on foot first, checking for other exits. There were a few lights on, but with the reflective sheeting covering the windows, there was no way of telling what was going on inside.

He’d located the security guard almost immediately, latching on to the smell of cigarette smoke drifting from a rear door. Satisfied that the man was busy for a few minutes, he’d slipped into the front car park and bent down briefly by the side of Ferris’s car. As he walked away, he could hear the soft hiss as one of the front tyres deflated from a puncture in the sidewall.

When he’d returned later with a drink and sandwich from a nearby corner shop, the car was still there.

Harry waited nervously as Karen froze the picture and then re-ran it so they could see the man again in slow motion. ‘It looks like him,’ he said. ‘Let it run.’

The replay showed the man walking away across the bottom of the screen, easing through the crowd. He wore heavy glasses and was holding a dark coat, slung over his right shoulder, with a dark sports bag in his other hand. For a split second his face was clearly in view.

Rik nodded in agreement. ‘It’s him. Check his right hand, holding the coat.’ The hand clearly showed a bandage, bearing out the briefing reference to his injury.

‘And the face,’ Harry added. ‘Right cheekbone.’

‘Is that a bruise?’ Karen froze the screen again and zoomed in, but the clarity was lacking. ‘Sorry — the light’s not good just there.’

‘Birthmark. Either way, it’s a match.’

He let Karen run the recording a little longer, but he knew they had found their man. All they had to do now was track him through the terminal and see where he went.

‘Easy,’ said Karen, suddenly galvanized by the discovery. She ran her eyes over a schematic layout of the terminal and hummed quietly to herself. ‘This chart shows me the camera location and number,’ she explained, bringing up a new set of recordings. ‘Unless he dodges back and forth, which would be pointless, because he’d never leave the building, he has to go past one of them sooner or later. It’s just a question of finding which one, then passing on to the next in line.’

‘Are you sure you have time for this?’ Harry glanced at his watch. They had been there nearly two hours. He didn’t want to outstay their welcome, but without Karen’s help, they wouldn’t stand a chance of following Silverman’s course through the terminal.

She smiled excitedly. ‘Are you kidding? I haven’t had this much fun in weeks. Usually it’s humourless plods in suits doing their own searching and keeping us at arm’s length. I never to get to do this stuff unless they fuck up the machine.’ She glanced at them. ‘Sorry.’ She checked the chart and selected another recording. ‘I think I know where he’d have gone next. Let me run it and see. If I tell you where the makings are, I don’t suppose one of you boys would care to make some coffee, would you?’ She smiled disarmingly at Rik, who stood up and stretched.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

Thirty minutes later, coffee cups discarded, they were watching the flickering images of the inside of Terminal Two. After Silverman’s little dance earlier, they hadn’t been able to pick him up again. It was eye-watering work, with nobody daring to blink in case they missed something. Time after time they told Karen to stop the film, but each one proved to be a mistake. There were momentary distractions, too, in the unfolding story of the stick figures bustling about before them; brief meetings, mild collisions and near misses; the body language of the stressed, portrayed by waving arms, covered mouths and bursts of frantic activity; the tumble of luggage from a careering trolley, followed by the scrabble to regain possessions and dignity in the face of the unrelenting advance of another flush of travellers bearing down like a tidal wave.