“You got it,” said the man, much friendlier, coming up with the three hot dogs.
“My name’s Rory. Rory Gardner. What’s yours?” For a moment, Rory thought the man was going to snap at him, but instead he smiled a nice smile and replied, “Ben. My name’s Ben.”
Ben stuffed the hot dogs into buns, added the condiments, and handed them over.
“Thank you so much,” said Hope, handing him a $20 bill as Emma and Rory tucked in. “Please forgive my son. He’s just curious, is all.”
Ben smiled again. “First time in New York, huh?” he said. “Have a nice day.” And then he was gone.
“People sure are weird here,” said Emma. Rory made a face at Emma as they walked and ate, just like real New Yorkers. Hope was glad to see them laughing and kidding…and then she remembered the hurt and the void at the center of her heart. She took a bite out of her hot dog and looked up at the sky. The noise had distracted her: not just one helicopter now, but two, three, more, circling in the clear blue sky.
A taxi slowed to turn the corner. It was available. “Come on, kids,” shouted Hope, signaling to the cab. Astoundingly, it rolled to a stop. “Who’s up for a movie?” Gleefully, they all piled into the backseat.”
“Times Square, please,” said Hope. The driver hit the pedal, sending them tumbling back into the seat cushion. This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
New Orleans
Maryam noticed the car behind them before Devlin did. “Seven o’clock,” she said. They were driving up Canal Street, past the ghost of Ignatius J. Reilly and the clock.
“Bogies?”
“What is bogies?”
Sometimes he felt older than he actually was. Why would she know what “bogies” were?
“Bad guys. Like Bogey, before he became a good guy.”
“Right—who is Bogey?”
Devlin took a deep breath. “He was a bad guy before he became a good guy.”
She moved the car ahead faster, but not too much faster. Maryam was an expert. She knew that too sudden a movement would indicate they had something to hide, or, worse, something to flee from.
She swerved around a low-riding Chevy and a Prius, then cut in front of both of them as she took a hard right on St. Charles Avenue. The Howard Avenue roundabout was coming up fast.
“Where are you—”
“Shut up,” she said. “And hang on.” She floored it.
The car behind them picked up speed. Whoever was tailing them was inexpert and obvious. But he was a good driver.
They shot under the Pontchartrain Expressway. The Garden District was dead ahead, served by the famous St. Charles Avenue streetcar, which trundled down the middle of the boulevard from Canal Street to the terminus, thirteen miles away. “Slow down,” said Devlin. Maryam obeyed instantly, knowing he would have a reason.
Devlin used the darkness of the underpass to flip over into the backseat, where his briefcase was. There were weapons in it, but he didn’t need a weapon at the moment. A special hand-held would do just fine.
Most drivers didn’t realize it, but today’s cars were basically computers attached to a drive train, and topped with a home entertainment center. The days of “driving” a car were long gone; the computer drove it and you just steered it. There was no need anymore to shoot out tires of a pursuing vehicle, or run it off the road; all you had to do was knock out its computer and a $50,000 Mercedes became just another expensive piece of immobile junk. And the jalopy behind them was no Mercedes.
Devlin punched the make and model of the car into his PDA. It was a little something of his own devising, which he had developed in his spare time in his office at Fort Meade. At close enough range, it could access a car’s onboard computer and get a complete readout of the vehicle, including its VIN; via a satellite uplink, Devlin could then take control of the car, jam it, disable it, or even wreck it if he so chose. All he had to do, once the readout was complete, was push a button.
Sam Raclette was enjoying the ride. It wasn’t every day that he got a call from a big-shot network correspondent to “follow that car,” but today was his lucky day, in more ways than one. For one thing, he had just happened to be hanging around RAND when the call came in, hoping to squeeze off a shot or two of somebody famous, but idling in the parking lot having coffee, all he saw was some dumpy guy get into a car. Then Ms. Stanley stuck her head out as if she was looking for him, so naturally his curiosity was aroused and he decided to grab a couple of pictures of the Principessa when she saw him and started to chew his ass out until she had a better idea.
“Follow that car,” she said, just like in the movies, and slipped him a couple of hundred fresh simoleons. Well, as it turned out the damn car didn’t go anywhere except into the parking garage, but he never saw the dumpy guy get out and when the car next to it pulled out, he decided what the hell, especially after he got a load of the babe behind the wheel.
And now here he was, chasing a woman into the Garden District and enjoying it. He’d catch up to her soon enough, somewhere at a light on St. Charles, and try to calm her fears. All he wanted to do was talk to her, ask her a couple of questions, maybe get her number. He heard cops did that sort of shit all the time, pulled over a hot chick just for the heck of it, pretend she was doing 50 in a 35-mph zone, check out her license and registration, let her off with a friendly warning and then give her a call a couple of days later.
There she was, just ahead. The damn tinted windows made it hard to see through the back windshield, which was really pissing him off. He was going to have to get closer, but she kept pulling away from him.
Suddenly, the car in front of him slowed. Maybe she was getting tired of the game. Maybe she’d caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror and liked what she saw. He was known to have that effect on women, if he did say so himself. NOLA was a pretty easy town to get laid in, especially if you didn’t mind big girls, but Sam liked a challenge, and who didn’t?
Something caught his eye, something he hadn’t noticed before. There was somebody else in the car with her: a man. A man who had just climbed into the backseat. Damn! Suddenly his whole fantasy of scoring with the hot chick didn’t seem so plausible anymore. Now it was back to business, try to flag them down and—
What if the guy in the car was the dumpy guy? Then he’d really be on to something. There was an underpass below the Pontchartrain Expressway just ahead. If he sped up now he might be able to catch them in the darkness.
He gunned it.
Something was wrong. The readout on the car came through okay, but that was part of the problem. It was an ordinary, off-the-lot Taurus from a few years back, nothing at all special. If the guy following them was really on to them, he would have been driving something up to the challenge. If he really suspected something or if he were sent by somebody who did, he would be driving a lot differently. If it really was an enemy and not a random dope, they wouldn’t even have spotted him until it was almost too late. Something was definitely wrong.
It can’t
