the blue van at the loading dock.
A door opened at the dock. Someone pushed out a freight dolly. Stacked on the dolly were five cream-colored cartons sealed with red tape.
Mendonza had his camera out, shooting with the telephoto lens. He said, “Call Ray. Dark blue Toyota van, driver and passenger, coming his way.”
“No,” Stickney said. “Let that one go.”
“Let it go? Stick, they’re putting the cartons in the van.”
He looked over at Stickney and saw him bent low at the waist. Stickney was hiding behind the front dash.
“Ray’ll be burned if he follows the van,” Stickney said. “Guy that just got out of the red Honda, standing on the sidewalk—I think he’s running cover for the shipment. Tell Ray to follow him. He’ll go where the shipment goes.”
Mendonza saw him now: a stocky Filipino standing at the entrance of the terminal.
“Close-cropped hair, late forties, white shirt worn untucked?”
“That’s him,” Stickney said.
The man was appraising the situation, alert. For a moment he looked straight at the car where Mendonza was sitting, checking him out, before he clocked over somewhere else.
Mendonza had put the camera in his lap. He raised it now and fired off several frames, getting a couple of good shots as the man stood beneath a light at the entrance.
Stickney was still bent down, trying to stay out of sight.
Mendonza said, “I think you’re right. Good read, Stick. How did you know?”
“I met him this morning,” Stickney said.
Most of the time, Totoy Ribera left his drones to handle the daily cargo run from the airport, and most of the time the Russians were fine with that. Not tonight, though. Tonight Andropov had insisted that Totoy go along for the pickup.
The Russians were nervous, Totoy thought. It was because of the unknown Americans poking around, even though they hadn’t actually done anything more than ask a few questions.
At first Totoy thought that the Russians were overreacting. This was the first little bump in the road since this deal first came together seven months earlier, and it didn’t seem like much of a threat.
But Totoy was aware that he had one big disadvantage: he didn’t know what the Russians were hiding at the other end of the seaplane ride from Manila. The Russians knew, though, and Totoy told himself that if they were uneasy, maybe he should be too.
So when Andropov told him to accompany the pickup crew to the airport and back, Totoy didn’t argue. And he didn’t just go along for the ride, either. He took a separate car so he could shadow the pickup on the return trip. While the van was loaded, he parked the red Honda at the terminal concourse. He got out and scanned the scene, looking for some disturbance, some subtle hint of jeopardy.
He noticed the car in a front row of the parking lot. One occupant, a driver, sitting in the dark. Totoy couldn’t make out details, but he saw that it was a man. A big man.
Toto thought about the description from the Optimo office manager in Tacloban. A big Fil-Am. Very very big.
Totoy considered whether he ought to go over to the car, check out the big guy.
To Totoy’s left, at the loading dock, his boys were pushing the last of the cartons into the van, shutting the door. They were getting ready to leave. Totoy knew that crossing the road and checking out the car in the parking lot would take at least two or three minutes, maybe more. He could order the boys in the van to wait, but he didn’t like the idea. He wanted that shipment on the move.
But there was an easier way to check: just watch the car, see how the driver reacted when the van left the terminal. If the car remained behind, then Totoy could assume that the big driver was harmless. But if the car pulled out of the lot and followed the van, then Totoy would know that the Americans had somehow discovered the nightly delivery, and that the big Fil-Am was trying to track the shipment to its destination.
That can be dealt with, Totoy thought.
The van was moving, wheeling away from the loading dock. It passed Totoy and continued down the terminal road to the exit.
The car with the big man inside didn’t move.
Totoy waited. He counted out half a minute, and still the car didn’t move. By now the van was at the exit, turning into the city streets. Totoy climbed into the Honda and pulled out from the