Rain Fall

25

I TOOK MY time getting back to Tatsu. There were a few things I needed to settle first.

Harry, for one. He had hacked the Keisatsucho files the same day I ambushed Holtzer at Yokosuka, so he knew I’d been arrested and “detained.” Several days later, he told me, all references to me had been deleted from their files.

“When I saw those files had been deleted,” he said, “I thought they had disappeared you. I figured you were dead.”

“That’s what people are supposed to believe,” I said.

“Why?”

“They want my help with certain matters.”

“That’s why they let you go?”

“Nothing for nothing, Harry. You know that.” I told him about Midori.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” he said.

He had most of the pieces, I knew. But what would be the use of either of us acknowledging any of that?

“What are you going to do now?” he asked me.

“I haven’t figured all that out yet.”

“If you ever need a good hacker, you know where to find me.”

“I don’t know, Harry. You had a lot of trouble with that music lattice reduction or whatever the hell it was. The Keisatsucho cracked it no problem.”

“Hey, those guys have access to supercomputers at Japanese universities!” he sputtered, before noticing my grin. Then: “Very funny.”

“I’ll be in touch,” I told him. “I’m just going to take a little vacation first.”

I FLEW OUT to Washington, D.C., where Tatsu said they had shipped Holtzer. Processing his “retirement” would take a few days, even weeks, and in the meantime he’d be in the Langley area.

I thought I’d be able to find him by calling all the hotels listed in the suburban Virginia Yellow Pages. I worked my way outward from Langley in concentric circles, but there was no guest named William Holtzer at any of them. Probably he had checked in somewhere under an assumed name, using cash and no credit cards, afraid I might be coming after him.

What about a car, though? I started phoning the 800 numbers of the major rent-a-car companies. It was William Holtzer calling, wanting to extend his service contract. Avis didn’t have a record of a William Holtzer. Hertz did. The clerk was kind enough to tell me the license plate number of the car, which I told him I needed for some supplementary insurance I wanted to get through my credit card company. I was ready for him to ask why I didn’t just get the information from the key chain or the car itself, but he never did. After that, all I had to do was search a DMV database to learn that Holtzer was driving a white Ford Taurus.

Back to concentric circles. That night I drove through the parking lots of the major hotels closest to Langley, slowing to examine the license plate of every white Ford Taurus I passed.

At about two o’clock that morning I found Holtzer’s car in the parking garage of the Ritz Carlton, Tyson’s Corner. After confirming the license plate, I drove over to the nearby Marriott, where I took the license plates from a parked car. At the edge of the deserted parking lot of the Tyson’s Corner Galleria, I switched the plates over to the rental van I was driving. The new plates and the light disguise I was wearing would be enough to beat any unforeseen witnesses or security cameras.

I drove back to the Ritz. The spaces adjacent to the Taurus were taken, but there was an empty spot behind it to one side. It was better not to park alongside him anyway. If you’re savvy about the ways of my world, or even just sensitive to where and how you’re likely to be mugged, you’ll get nervous if you see a van parked right next to your car—especially a model with darkened rear windows, like mine. I pulled in, nose forward so the van’s sliding door would be facing Holtzer.

I checked my equipment. A 250,000-volt “Thunder Blaster” guaranteed to cause disorientation upon contact and unconsciousness in less than five seconds. A medium-sized pink rubber “Super Ball,” available for eighty-nine cents at pretty much any drugstore. A portable defibrillation kit like the ones some airlines are beginning to keep on their commercial jets, small enough to tote around in an ordinary briefcase and considerably more expensive than the Super Ball.

Shocking someone out of a ventricular fibrillation is tricky business. Three hundred and sixty joules is a massive dose of electricity. If a shock like that is applied at the top of the heart’s T wave—that is, between beats—you’ll induce a lethal arrhythmia. Modern defibrillators, therefore, have sensors that automatically detect the QRS complex of the heartbeat, which is the only instant at which the shock can safely be applied.

Of course, the same software that is designed to avoid the T wave can be reconfigured to initiate it.

I reclined the electronic seat a few degrees and relaxed. It was a safe bet that Holtzer would be heading over to the CIA’s campus sometime in the morning, so I expected to have to wait only a few more hours.

At six-thirty, about a half hour before it would get light outside, I walked over to the far end of the garage and urinated into some potted hedges. I limbered up for a few minutes, then headed back to the van, where I enjoyed a breakfast of cold coffee and Chicken McNuggets, left over from the previous evening. The culinary joys of surveillance.

Holtzer showed an hour later. I watched him emerge from the elevator and head toward me. He was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie. Standard Beltway attire, practically Agency issue.

His mind was elsewhere. I could see it in his expression, his posture, the way he failed to check the likely hot spots in the garage, especially around his car. Shame on him, being so careless in a potential crime zone like a parking garage.

I slipped on a pair of black cowhide gloves. A click of the switch on the Thunder Blaster produced a sharp arc of blue sparks and an electric crackle. I was ready to go.