Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

He spotted the Subject the moment she came in. She had changed her clothes-as he had himself, in a sprint through his hotel-to a pale coffee-cream skirt and russet blouse under a hip-length waterproof jacket. ("Study the Subject's clothing to anticipate how it could be changed quickly: a reversible coat, a hat that could be stuffed into a handbag or pocket.") The jacket could be reversible, a different pattern on the inside, but there was no hat and the bag she carried was tiny, by Agnes'sstandards.

If she saw him, he didn't see that she saw him. And from the way the staff greeted her, she was obviously a regular there; she had to chat to several before taking aglass of wine to a booth towards the front, out of Maxim's sight. So probably she had spotted him.

But he was still covering the door and to move his seat apparently just for the sake of moving would seem suspicious-and it occurred to him that Washington DC would be full of people who knew the surveillance trade, that tonight a lot of people would be running genuine surveillances. Perhaps in here.

The lively Georgetown faces suddenly looked like masks.

There was one lone man at the back of the bar, forty-fivish, reading a newspaper-but a real surveillance should be done by at least three people, the A-B-C method, although not all would come into a bar, perhaps only one… He shook himself out of a spiral of suspicion and isolation. ("It is normal to feel self-conscious and conspicuous on your first few times in the field; do not let this distract you from the Subject.") And the Subject was moving.

He took his glass back to the bar, glancing at his wrist-watch as a reason for not buying another, said good-night and ambled towards the street. At the door, Agnes suddenly turned round and came back.

Maxim was sure his amble had become a rigid march, but he kept going. ("If forced to come face to face with the Subject, avoid catching the Subject's eye.") He went on out.

When Agnes had retrieved the paperback book she had 'forgotten* in her booth and reached the street, Maxim was standing a few yards away, studying the map in a pocket guide of Washington. She waited for a gap in the traffic and scurried across the road. Maxim began strolling on the original side, perhaps fifteen metres back.

He was surprised at how light and lively MStreet still was in the middle of the evening. Not just bars and restaurants-and there were plenty of those-but most of the shops were still open: you could still buy a winter outfit, birthday card, book or a pressure cooker, and lots of people were doing so. The crowd gave him cover, but gave it to Agnes, too.

She was varying her pace, moving briskly, then strolling ("Find an average pace between the Subject's twoextremes")and carrying her light-coloured jacket over her arm. The slope down to Rock Creek began to steepen and the shops thinned out as they moved away from the centre. Agnes dived into one of the last, a pharmacist's with tall free-standing shelves.

Maxim kept going. ("Follow the Subject into a big department store, but never into a small shop.") In daylight, he could have used a shop window as a mirror to watch the pharmacist's across the road, but lit windows were no use, and who stands staring into dark ones? When he reached an angle where he could watch the shop-front without being seen from inside it, he stopped and consulted his guide book again.

Time passed, in very low gear. Georgetown conversation swirled around him: "I'm telling you, that was a great party, really great…"

"I'm talking about the 700 series…"

"I'll take you to some place quieter…"

Maxim noted that he should start any remark in Georgetown with the pronoun T. Meanwhile, people went in and out of the pharmacy, but only two women of conceivably Agnes's age: one very tall and striding in a long ethnic-of-somewhere skirt, the other short and waddling, flat-heeled, long blonde hair, dark jacket and beret and a huge shoulder bag.

Compelled to move at last, he crossed over and glanced casually into the pharmacist's as he passed. No Subject in view. He studied a restaurant menu a few doors along, feeling confused, and angry at his confusion.

("If the Subject appears to have been lost by accident, continue in the direction the Subject was proceeding.") But this Subject hadn't lost him by accident: she had brushed him off within minutes, in less than a quarter-mile of straight well-lit street. He was going to be a star turn out West, by himself.

Then he knew where she was-or would be, moments after he committed himself in one direction: behind him. By trade she was a hunter.

His one hope was to head for the small area of streets and alleys he had explored around the bar-restaurant before going inside ("… reconnoitre the Subject'sarea…"). His own trade included the quick memorising of landscape and cityscape, and at one corner there was an L-shaped alley that cut off the building on the corner itself, giving an alternative route to making a left turn on the streets.

He lengthened rather than quickened his pace-difficult to detect from behind-stepped into the alley and sprinted as hard as he could. It was hardly wider than a car, and somebody had parked a van halfway along. He brushed past it and ran stooping round the corner of the L, where the only light was fixed high up on a wall. He kept running up to the cross-street, turned right back towards M, slowing but glancing at his watch to excuse a half-jog- Right again on M, completing the four sides of a small square, and right into the first leg of the alley again. It would be too much to hope to sneak up on Agnes peering around the corner under the alley light, but-but a man was doing just that.

Ducking to put the van between them, Maxim ran crouching, his soft-soled shoes making the barest patter on the rough but, thank God, dry paving. As he slipped past the van, the man disappeared round the corner.

Maxim caught him three strides up the second alley.

The man heard or sensed him at the last moment and turned with his hands coming up to a fighting stance, but Maxim feinted through them and hit him low in the stomach. The man collapsed against the wall and slid down it, making gurgling noises. Up ahead, cars and people moved undisturbed on the bright street at the top of the alley; Maxim had time to search the man's pockets-and then suddenly he hadn't.

A clatter of steps and another man swung under the alley light, pistol in hand and coming to the aim. Maxim ducked behind the first man, who was hauling back his breath in short gasps. For a moment there was deadlock, then Maxim remembered his dark sunglasses case and took it out, aiming like a gun. The second man ducked back around the corner and Maxim backed off, crouching and aiming, until he was within a few metres of the cross-street.

He was twenty fast metres along it when a cockney voice said: " 'Ullo, sailor, watcher doin' ternight?"

It was the waddling blonde in the beret from the pharmacist's, and under that, Agnes. He grabbed her arm and started towards the lights of the corner. "Did you know there were two blokes behind us?"

"No, I…" She shut up and matched his pace. Nobody came out of the alley. They crossed MStreet and kept going, and in a doorway she snatched off the wig and beret and rammed them into the shoulder bag that had been expanded from the purse she had been carrying before. "Damn, and I was being so clever fooling you, I never looked behind. What happened?"

"I thumped one of them, then another turned up with a gun. I left."

"Did you kill him?"

"Of course not."

"Sorry, I never know with you."

"At least we know they've caught up with me."

"The Bravoes? It could be, doesn't have to be. Your chums in the Treasury, the Secret Service, they could be behind you. They were interested in whether you were going to start investigating anything over here… let's cross." She hustled him to the far side of the street.