Марк Грини - One Minute Out

I want to tail or capture dirty cops, and I don’t know if these two are bad guys or just two dudes on the job for what they assume to be legit reasons.

The men do not follow the girl, but I see one of them speak into a mobile phone, and I imagine he’s notified someone else ahead of Talyssa so that person can pick up the surveillance.

I normally wouldn’t walk right past two guys who are either opposition assholes or else doing the bidding of opposition assholes, but I don’t have time to take this slow, because for all I know they’ve radioed ahead to a snatch team, and their aim is to roll up my agent before she even arrives at her room.

That would be ballsy on their part; it’s only nine p.m., the sky has cleared, and there’s still some light out, and the narrow passages of the Old Town are full of shoppers and diners and tourists. But they could try it, and I can’t let them succeed if they do.

I slip past the two men; they are still watching Talyssa as she disappears in a crowd up a passage leading to a long and high stairwell to the south in the direction of her hotel.

The men take no notice of me at all.

A minute later I’m heading up the stairs behind the Europol analyst, and I see a second pair of men, so identical to the first it’s almost laughable. These two are also static, and as she passes their position, I see one of them reach for his phone, then begin speaking into it.

I’d lay money on the fact that there is at least one more set of goons up closer to her flat, and this guy in front of me is in comms with them now.

Again, I can’t be certain their job isn’t to pick up the Romanian criminal analyst, but I can’t imagine why, if they were ready to detain her now, they would let her walk past four cops not far from the exits of the pedestrian and walled-in Old Town, only to be detained by more guys hundreds of stair steps higher and farther away from the exits.

It would serve no purpose, I tell myself, and then I rethink things and pick up my pace even more, because the third group could potentially be hitters. Assassins. And if this is the case, they’d have every reason to kill Talyssa Corbu far from the heavy pedestrian traffic of Stradun.

I continue up the stairs, and I check in with the girl.

“You doing okay?”

Softly she answers; I can hear the labor of her climbing the stairs in her voice. “You should know how I’m doing. You said you would be watching me.”

“I am watching you. No, don’t turn around, just trust me.”

“Trust again,” she mumbles. Then, “I don’t see anyone following me or paying me any attention. I’ve been stealing glances in windows and such.”

I roll my eyes as I move in her direction. “Leave that part to me, please. Just walk.”

“Trust you, you mean.” There is a mocking tone in her voice.

I consider telling her about the surveillance I saw, but I don’t want to scare her. Instead I just say, “Don’t go straight to your flat. Make your next right, follow that alley for a couple of minutes, give me time to get ahead of you and look at the area up there.”

“You think they are waiting for me there?” she asks, a little nervously.

The answer is an almost definite yes, but I say, “Let me find out first.”

EIGHTEEN

I head straight for the address Talyssa gave the police captain, and when I get there a couple minutes later, I see a tiny children’s playground, no larger than half a basketball court, across the narrow cobblestone passage from Talyssa’s building.

Three grown men sit in the playground. One of the three is on his phone, standing by the gate in the park, twenty feet away from the other two. He’s lean and wiry, but with the same almost military-style short hair worn by the two other pairs of men I saw a few minutes back. And it’s apparent to me now that the opposition is pretty sure Talyssa is acting alone, outside the bounds of her duties for Europol, because the other two tough-looking goofballs maintaining this watch are sitting on opposite ends of a children’s seesaw in the middle of the little playground. One of them has his back to the building where Talyssa’s flat is located, but the other is facing it directly, and they’re idly chatting in Serbo-Croat as if they don’t have a care in the world.

For a second I wonder if these three might not be involved in all this, so relaxed is their posture here, but then as I walk past I see the dude on the phone look up, check me out, then turn to flash his eyes quickly on the stone steps up to the building across the passageway.

It’s obvious to me that he’s here on a job, and the job involves looking for people and monitoring a location.

He’s oppo, they all are . . . no question about it.

I sit down on a bench on the cobblestones one hundred feet away from them, and I check the cameras I have stationed all around.

Seeing no one else who appears threatening, I speak softly so that only Talyssa can hear me. “You cool?”

“I’m fine, Harry. What is the situation up there?”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious you did a good job selling your story back at the police station. There are some men here waiting around for you, but I don’t think they’ve come to pick you up. They’re just here to see if you are going where you said you were going.”

Nervously she asks, “What . . . what do you want me to do?”

“Come up to your building, don’t pay any attention to the three guys in the playground, and go up to your room.”

“But . . . but what if you’re wrong? What if they just shoot me?”

“Nobody’s shooting anybody.” I amend this. “Unless it’s me shooting them.”

She whispers more softly now, as if to herself, but I can hear her. “Oh my God.”

“Trust me,” I say, probably for the tenth time. “It will be fine.”

I spend the next couple of minutes pretending to look at my phone, until finally Corbu walks past me. She sneaks a glance my way but I glance down, willing her to just play cool. She strolls along next to the low stone wall of the playground, ignoring the men there, all three of whom I’m now watching carefully. Their eyes are on her, but they do a pretty good job of looking disinterested. Cops, for sure. I am guessing they’re all probably detectives.

Like the men in the more touristy part of the Old Town, I don’t know if these guys really are part of the pipeline, or if they’ve just been sent here as lookouts by the brass on the take from the traffickers. I’d hate to have to shoot them without more knowledge of their intentions, but my right hand is inches from the Glock on my hip and I am certain I can have it out and on target faster than any of these big goobers can get their hands on the grips of their weapons.

Talyssa disappears up the steps into the stone courtyard of her building, heading towards a staircase at the back that will take her up to her room. I look back down at my phone and soon hear the three men talking softly. Stealing a quick glance, I see the guy who’d been on his phone walking away, leaving the two men on the seesaw.

In my earpiece I hear Talyssa. “Did everything go okay?”

“Yes. I count a total of seven men tailing you.”

“Seven?” There is a fresh shock in her voice.

“Yeah, but they are just watchers. These aren’t the troublemakers.”

“The troublemakers . . . they are coming later?”

“They’re probably coming later, yeah.” I hope this to be the case, but I don’t say that to the scared woman in her room. Instead I say, “Just stay where you are, keep your bag nearby. I’m going to get on the roof of your building so I’ll be able to cover all the stairwells they can climb when they come for you.”