David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

The grim-faced man in the taxi's back seat leaned forward rigidly, straining to keep the taxi ten cars ahead of him in sight. He was thirty-eight, of medium height and weight, with brown hair and unremarkable features, so average that no one ever remembered him. He wore a conservative, moderately priced, nondescript suit, a cotton-polyester-blend white shirt, a subdued striped tie. His briefcase looked no different from thousands of others.

'Which airline?' the taxi driver asked.

The passenger hesitated, watching the taxi he was following.

'Hey, friend, I said, which airline?'

'Just a moment. I'm checking my tickets.'

'Don't you think you should have done that a little sooner?'

Ahead, the taxi the passenger studied turned right off the busy ramp, rounded a curve, and sped past a crowded parking lot. A sign said, TRUMP SHUTTLE, DELTA, NORTHWESTERN, PAN AM SHUTTLE.

'Turn right,' the passenger said.

'You waited long enough to tell me. Which airline?' the driver repeated.

'I'm still checking my tickets.'

'Hey, if you miss your flight, pal, don't blame me.'

The passenger squinted forward, noticing that the taxi he followed steered around the parking lot, passed the signs for Pam Am, Delta, and Northwestern, and approached a large new building on which a huge red sign announced TRUMP SHUTTLE.

'Up here will do,' the passenger said.

'Well, finally.'

When the driver stopped behind a limousine in front of the terminal, the passenger had already checked the taxi's meter. He added the cost of the bridge toll and a twenty percent tip, shoved several bills toward the driver, grabbed his briefcase, and hurried out his door.

'Hey, buddy, you want a receipt?'

But the passenger was gone. As he walked toward a set of automatically opening doors in the Shuttle complex, he glanced unobtrusively to his left, seeing the woman he was following get out of her taxi, pay the driver, and carry her underseat suitcase toward another set of doors.

They entered the terminal simultaneously, moving parallel to each other, separated by a throng of arriving travelers. The brown-haired, nondescript man paused next to a group of similarly ordinary-looking businessmen and pretended to inspect his ticket while he watched the woman hurry toward a line at a counter.

The line moved quickly – Trump guaranteed promptness. Nonetheless the woman looked impatient. When she got her turn, she urgently presented a credit card, signed a voucher, grabbed a folder that presumably contained a ticket, and rushed past the counter toward where the attractive female clerk pointed.

Excellent, the chameleon thought. He veered through the crowd, following his quarry. She'd already passed through the security station by the time he arrived there. Strictly speaking, no one without a ticket was allowed beyond this point. No problem, though. The chameleon always carried a bogus ticket with him, and in his considerable experience, few security personnel actually bothered to check that ticket.

He set his briefcase on the conveyor belt that led into the X-ray machine. A uniformed attendant nodded for him to proceed through the metal detector. The chameleon, by habit, carried no metal, not even coins or a belt buckle when he was working. His watch was made of plastic. The metal detector remained silent as he stepped through and picked up his briefcase on the other side of the X-ray machine. The briefcase, of course, contained nothing that would arouse suspicion. Only innocent boring documents. Certainly no weapons. His expertise was surveillance, after all. The chameleon had no need of weapons, although on a very few occasions, emergencies had forced him to defend himself, his average height and weight deceptive, his martial-arts skills impressive.

He increased his speed, climbing a moving escalator, just another of many harried businessmen in a rush to get on a plane.

Ahead, on the spacious upper level, his quarry walked faster. Again, no problem. The chameleon didn't want to catch up to her but only keep her in sight. He glanced at his watch. Five minutes to six. Peering ahead, he saw his quarry present her boarding pass to an attendant and disappear quickly through an open door toward the tunnel to her plane.

The chameleon waited until the door to the tunnel was closed, then proceeded toward a window, and watched the plane pull away from the boarding platform. But he still wasn't satisfied. Experience had taught him that he had to wait until the plane left the ground.

Five minutes later, the chameleon had to give Trump credit. As advertised, the shuttle left on time. Turning, he walked toward a counter near the passenger door. On a board behind the counter, he noted the plane's destination.

'Excuse me,' he asked the attendant. 'What time will that flight arrive?' Hearing the answer, he smiled. Thank you.'

He had only one more thing to do. At a bank of phones, he used a credit card to contact a long-distance number. 'Peter, it's Robert.'

Both names were fake, on the slim chance that this phone would be monitored or that someone on a neighboring phone would overhear. Never take chances.

'I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but our friend had trouble making connections. I know how much you want to meet her. She's on a Trump shuttle to Washington National Airport. She'll arrive at seven-oh-seven. Can you…? That's what I thought. Peter, you're a pal. I know she'll be glad to see you.'

His work done, the chameleon hung up the phone. Clutching his briefcase, he retraced his steps through the concourse. But on second thought, his work was not yet done. Not at all. It never ended. Never .

Not that he objected. His duty was too important. It occupied… indeed it possessed… his mind and his soul.

First, as soon as he returned to Manhattan, he would quickly arrange to have a tap put on the woman's phone. That hadn't seemed necessary until today, until her visit to the apartment on East Eighty-Second Street made it obvious that the woman continued to be obsessed with the death of her friend. If her phone had been tapped earlier, yesterday while she'd been at the morgue, for example, the chameleon might have learned that she'd made arrangements to fly to Washington, and his task of following her would have been less complicated. That oversight in his surveillance of her would now be corrected. Her trip to Washington might have nothing to do with the death of the man called Joseph Martin, but the chameleon couldn't depend on 'might have'. He needed to know everything that she knew.

Next, he would check with the members of his team to learn if they'd been successful in tracking down the man who'd tried to intercept the pictures that the woman had left to be developed at the photo shop near her apartment building. The chameleon had been one of three people who'd entered the store while the man was arguing with the clerk. As a consequence, the chameleon had gotten a good look at the man when he stormed from the shop, enough to give a thorough description to the members of his team. In particular, what had interested the chameleon – intensely so – were the man's gray eyes.

Finally, while the chameleon waited for his contacts in Washington to warn him when the woman would be returning to Manhattan, he would occupy his time by following someone else. The detective, Lieutenant Craig, was showing unusual interest in this matter. After all, the investigation now should belong to Homicide, not Missing Persons. Perhaps the lieutenant's real interest was in the woman. The chameleon didn't know. Yet. But he would know. Soon. Everything about the detective. Because anyone as persistent as Lieutenant Craig had become might learn things that were very, very useful.