Barry Eisler - Requiem for an Assassin

While I waited, listening to a woman named Alisa Clancy on a radio show called Morning Cup of Jazz, I wondered who Jannick really was. A guy with an aptitude for technology? And where did his ambition come from? Did he miss his home in the Netherlands, or was this place, with its yoga-supple people and clean and prosperous streets, his home now?

One thing I didn’t ask, though nor could I deny it, was whether he had a family. Of course he did. The house was too big, and too suburban, for anyone to live in it alone. And his car, a Volvo S80, had kids written all over it. But the less I knew about all that, the better. It’s one thing to recognize something intellectually. It’s quite another to see it-no, watch it-with your own eyes. The last time I’d gotten too close to the family of a target, in Manila, I’d frozen and damn near died. In unguarded moments, I still thought of the little boy whose father I’d taken. I wasn’t going to go through that again.

I waited. No one disturbed me. I had to leave the engine off because if the car were running it might have attracted attention. The interior got cold, but the parka helped. The Venti cup proved handy.

At just past seven-thirty, someone on a bicycle came down Christopher and made a left onto OPM. He was wearing a white helmet and a fluorescent-yellow windbreaker, something designed both for warmth and to be visible to cars. I eased down in the seat a bit and watched through the windshield, thinking it was someone out for his morning exercise. But as he got closer, I realized Christ, that might be him. I’d been so fixated on the Volvo I was waiting for that it took me a moment to adjust. He passed me, not even giving the Mercedes a second look. I was going only on a bunch of out-of-date photos, but the shape of the face, the glasses…I was pretty sure it was Jannick.

Shit, the bike changed everything. Was this just exercise, or was it his commute? If the latter, I didn’t know what route he might take, and I couldn’t tail him effectively in a car even if I did.

I thought for a moment. Follow him down OPM? I didn’t like the idea. The road was really nothing but an old jug handle to Page Mill. It wasn’t closed to cars, but there was no reason a car would use it. Following him directly would be too conspicuous.

I fired up the Mercedes and cut left on Page Mill, paralleling OPM. I pushed it up to fifty, wanting to go faster but holding back because of the risk of a cop. Up ahead was a turnoff on Deer Creek Road; the light was red and I had to wait for it. Come on, come on, I thought. I wanted to get ahead of him before he came out on Page Mill so I could get another look.

The light changed and I shot forward. I got to the other end of the jug handle just in time to see the bicyclist pull out onto a bike lane on the other side of Page Mill. A hundred yards ahead was another intersection and another traffic light. Good, I thought. We’ll both have to stop and I’ll get another look.

I was half right. While I was stopped at the light, the bicyclist made a left onto the bike path on Junípero Serra. Shit.

It was a painfully long light. When the left turn signal finally changed to green, I cut into the turning lane and made a left onto Junípero Serra. A minute later, I’d caught up to him. I glanced over as I passed, but again I couldn’t be totally sure.

I pulled ahead of him, wondering whether he was going to the Stanford campus. But instead, he made a right. Damn. I did a U-turn and backtracked to where he’d turned off, a road called Stanford Avenue. I made a left and drove forward but didn’t see him. There were a number of smaller, residential streets snaking off on both sides. Unless I got lucky, for the moment I had probably lost him.

I thought for a moment. Maybe he was on his way to work. He avoided Page Mill because it was a busy road and farther north it had no bike lane. He was taking a more roundabout route, both for safety and for the exercise.

It felt right. I got back onto Junípero Serra, then Page Mill, and went straight to his office. There were a few cars in the parking lot now-enough to find concealment, not so many that I had to worry about too many people seeing and possibly remembering the Mercedes. I pulled in next to a Lexus SUV, putting it between me and the parking lot entrance, cut the engine, and waited.

Ten minutes later, the bicyclist pulled into the parking lot and rode straight to Jannick’s building. Bingo.

I watched him carry the bike inside, then I drove down to the shopping center at the other end of East Bayshore. Now was the time for a call. From a pay phone, I dialed his office. One ring, two, then a voice: “Jan Jannick.”

“Ah, sorry…wrong number,” I mumbled, and hung up. I wiped down the pay phone and went back to the car.

I drove slowly back in the direction of his house, thinking. The office was no good. The house would be difficult at best. But he was on a bike… That would create opportunities I hadn’t considered before.

I thought about what I knew. Two locations, home and work, neither of them suitable. An unknown route in between. I considered buying a bicycle so I could follow him more closely and see what opportunities developed, but it felt too improvised, too uncertain. What I needed was a choke point. A place I could anticipate him, a place I could prepare and control.

I thought about OPM again. In a car you wouldn’t bother; it would just be a slower alternative to the four lanes of Page Mill right next to it. But on a bike it would represent a shortcut. And not just theoretically: Jannick had used it this morning. There was at least a decent chance he would use it again on the way home.

I went back to OPM. I’d been on it earlier, of course, but I wanted to look again, this time through the prism of newly acquired information about how Jannick commuted to work.

I liked what I saw. The road consisted of two narrow lanes, and was obviously in disuse. Grass on either side had grown onto the shoulder, and scattered leaves that would ordinarily be swept aside by passing automobile traffic covered much of the surface. The trees crowding both sides had been pruned back to prevent dead branches from falling into the road, and the branches were now piled up here and there in large deadfalls. On the east side were trees and scrub that grew denser as the road curved away from Page Mill, until after about a half-mile the big artery was impossible to see and even the sounds of its automobile traffic had faded almost entirely. On the west side, there was a chain-link fence with signs warning, STANFORD UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC RESERVE, NO TRESPASSING. Beyond the chain-link fence, a series of empty, rolling hills, apparently the property upon which Stanford didn’t want passersby to intrude.

Where the road connected with Page Mill, cars could go right, but were prohibited from turning left at rush hour-yet another reason a driver would be unlikely to bother coming this way. But the west side of the road tapered smoothly off into a bike trail that ran along Page Mill and then curved left onto Junípero Serra. Jannick’s route. I looked up, and as if to prove my point, two women on bicycles came down the Page Mill bike path and rode past me. I nodded to myself. The place felt right. Now I just had to find a way to make it work.

I walked back in the direction I’d come from, dead leaves crunching beneath my feet. There was a construction site between OPM and Page Mill, accessible by a short bridge. I walked over and saw that the bridge ran over a creek that curved away under OPM and into the Stanford lands beyond. I walked down the embankment and looked back, and damned if I wasn’t invisible from the road. Very nice indeed.

Under the bridge, there was a concrete wall marred with graffiti. The paint looked old, though, and in some places was only a few inches above the water line. I gathered this place was used by kids in the summer, when the nights would be warmer, the water lower or nonexistent, the area more inviting for a shared joint and adolescent fumblings or a bit of juvenile vandalism.