Brothers In Arms (21 page)

“There is that,” Hans said. “They rarely leave the boat together without the child.”

“It would serve to temper the confrontation,” Charley said. “We can talk around it with the child there.”

“I don’t like it,” Dale said.

“The only other option is to approach them when they’re on the boat, and I think that’s too dangerous,” Charley said. “We want to confront them in a public space, give them room to move . . . and give us room to retreat while we’re covered by Hans’s people.”

Dale gnawed at one cheek and stared at the monitor. The telephoto lens caught the couple and their child going into the local grocery.

“Have you seen them going out together without the child, using a sitter or anything like that?” he asked Hans.

“They don’t use sitters,” Hans said. “They do go out individually, to meet with friends, but it is rare. Their days are mostly about their child. The other day Isabelle went out and met with a friend and had lunch with him.”

“Do we know who he is?” Dale asked.

“No,” Hans said. “We have good footage of him, but his face isn’t in our database as a known operator. It seemed innocent. Marie has gone out and had coffee with people in the neighborhood as has Isabelle. They are well liked, and while they keep to themselves, they are still social and civil to their neighbors.”

“There’s a possibility,” Charley said. “We could just go up to the boat while they’re there, and invite them to coffee.”

“That’s not going to work,” Dale said.

“I think you will have to meet them on the street,” Hans said.

Dale drummed his fingers repeatedly on the tabletop that held the monitors and laptop computers.

“What is it, dude?” Charley said.

“I don’t like having a child in the mix,” Dale said.

Charley nodded. “Nobody does. But the Twins aren’t going to get hostile if they have their kid there. They won’t do anything to endanger their child. They’ll listen. There’s a lesson in there for them. A hard one, but it’s one they’re up to. Remember, they’re pros, not just women and mothers with a child. Remember Minneapolis? Keep that in mind.”

“I’ve got it in mind,” Dale said. “I just don’t like having the kid in there. But I don’t see any way around it.”

“So let’s work it out,” Charley said. “Let’s do this thing.”

Warm afternoon sunlight poured through the porthole windows and splashed across the bed where Marie and Isabelle lay tangled together. Comfortable as dozing cats, they stared up at the ceiling fan that ticked slowly, sending a cooling breeze over their sweaty skin.

“It’s fine, isn’t it?” Marie said. “This life we’ve made.”

“Yes,” Isabelle said.

From across the hall came the sound of stirring, and then the loud sound of small feet on the decking outside their door, followed by a tentative tap.

“Mamas, Mamas? Can I come in?” their daughter Ilse called.

“Of course, my sweet,” Isabelle said. “Thank you for knocking.”

The door opened and Ilse came in, barefoot and dressed in a jumper rumpled by her nap. She flew to the bed and wormed her way between the two naked women, nuzzling first one, then the other. Marie and Isabelle stretched out their arms and hugged their child, then snuggled her between the two of them.

“So what shall we do today?” Marie said. “Lay in bed all day and listen to the water? That is Ilse’s favorite thing, I think.”

“No, Mama,” Ilse said. “Ilse’s favorite thing is a peach ice!”

“Peach ice? That sounds good,” Isabelle said. “What do you
think, Mama Marie? Would an ice be good on this warm afternoon?”

“I would prefer a mango ice,” Marie said. “Would you like to try one, Ilse?”

“No, Mama!” Ilse said, laughing. “I would like a peach ice.”

“Then ice it is,” Isabelle said. “Let’s get dressed and go get some.”

The two women dressed and then dressed their child for the street. They went upstairs to the main deck of the barge, and holding hands, the three of them crossed the gangway that connected the barge to the small dock that led up to the street. Swinging Ilse, laughing with joy between them, two of the most dangerous assassins in the world walked their daughter to the ice cream store.

“Here’s your chance,” Hans said. “They are out and moving and they are talking about going to the gelateria two blocks up. They go there often in the afternoon with Ilse.”

Charley and Dale looked at each other. Charley spoke first.

“It’s your call, Dale. Go for it now or not?”

Dale looked at the monitor and pressed his elbow against his side where a Glock 19 was tucked inside his pants.

“I call it now,” he said. “Let’s do this thing.”

The two men inserted like a hunter killer team. The streetwalkers of the surveillance team formed a very loose cordon around the Twins and their child; they made the boundary of the moving target. Then Charley and Dale inserted within that boundary and followed a block behind the Twins. There were streetwalkers in front of, alongside, and behind the Twins, a full-force show with every operator Hans had out to keep the dancing cordon invisible to the Twins, who weren’t looking for surveillance but concentrated instead on delighting their child.

Charley felt the familiar pang of adrenaline as he spotted the two women ahead. They stopped for a moment outside the Italian
ice cream shop, then went inside. He and Dale slowed their pace, took their time on the approach. They walked slowly past the ice cream shop and saw the two women and their child inside ordering their cones. Charley and Dale paused in front of a tobacco shop and watched the front of the gelateria. The Twins came out, their daughter between them, all three occupied with their cones. They stood outside the shop for a moment, and then began to stroll back toward their houseboat.

“Okay,” Dale said. “We follow, and we’ll take them after they cross the street on the block where their boat is.”

“Roger that,” Charley said. “After they cross the street it is.”

Isabelle saw the surveillance first. When she came out, she saw a man and a woman on the other side of the canal and recognized them from before, when they had been walking. They were lingering outside a clothing store that was closed for inventory, looking in the window. To the casual looker, there was nothing amiss. But it seemed to Isabelle that they were looking too intently at nothing, and the paned glass of the store provided an excellent reflecting surface to watch the front of the gelato shop while keeping their backs to it.

But the tip off was when the couple began to walk back toward the barge with them. Then a single man in a jogging suit came walking up quickly behind them, passing them, and when he did, the couple slowed, and then turned off on a side street. The woman looked back over her shoulder and then quickly forward and continued on, tucking her hands into her companion’s arm.

It looked like a surveillance handoff. All of Isabelle’s situational awareness antenna went up. She and Marie had not survived many long years in the field without having a finely tuned sense of what was going on around them, and they built on the woman’s intuitive sense with the foundations of situational awareness and training. She looked casually around her. There were two athletic men a half block behind them, walking in tandem but not speaking to each other. Closer on the same side, a woman strolled along, looking in shop windows but not
lingering, moving at the same pace as Isabelle and Marie. In front of them, another couple, walking hand-in-hand, stopped to look in shop windows, but only those at such an angle that they could see the sidewalk behind them.

They were in the box.

Isabelle fought down the sudden stab of fear in her belly, and quickly thought through her options. If they were the subject of a surveillance, and it appeared that they were, there wouldn’t be any violence without more indicators. It was important not to let the surveillance team know they’d been made, or else the countermeasures they’d take would make the surveillance harder to spot the next time around.

If there was a next time.

And then there was the question of who? Who would be mounting such a large-scale surveillance operation against them? Comeback from a past operation? That was most likely. She thought immediately of the young Arab and the controller she had yet to meet. Anger came out of her fear and she fed it with images of what she would do to the Arab if it turned out to be the case. She scanned the area ahead to the houseboat. There was a bench they often stopped at in their afternoon strolls, where the two women could sit with Ilse between them and watch the passersby, their backs to the water.

That would be a good vantage spot.

“You notice how Isabelle is looking around?” Charley said.

“Yeah. You think she made us?” Dale said.

“I don’t know. Hans’s people on the other side of the canal made a clumsy handoff just now, and I think Isabelle might have spotted it.”

“Damn it.”

“She’s playing it cool if she did. Check her out. She’s doing a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan and disguising every move,” Charley said with admiration. “This woman is a total pro.”

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Dale said.

“I’m betting she stops short of the houseboat and looks for signs of the team settling in around her. That’ll be her cue. She won’t let on that she’s seen anything, but look at her shoulders: she’s getting pissed.”