that were taking place, and last time when Carlson and her team had closed in on the leaders, he had somehow melted into the shadows and disappeared. Jake couldn’t help wondering if he might learn something useful by following the man to see where he was headed.
Varennikov moved easily through the crowd, almost as if he could anticipate how those around him would move and easily made small corrections in his own movements to slip between the passersby leaving little disturbance to mark his passage. Jake moved across the street, and followed along at the same pace, allowing himself to fall back somewhat to make himself more one of the crowd.
Varennikov was a trained operative, and would know how to spot a tail. Jake was certain he was watching for someone, and therefore wondered if he should be doing this. He didn’t want to alert the man that someone had an interest in him. Jake had tailed a number of people over the years, but his technique, which was foolproof, was something he couldn’t employ tonight. Normally he followed without worry until something gave him away. Then he simply back-tracked, positioned his earlier self at a new location slightly ahead of where he’d been discovered the previous time, and waited for his suspect to come to him. Then he repeated the process. By the time the tail was complete, Jake could simply be waiting somewhere in the crowd where the person he was interested in ended up, effectively not having ‘followed’ the suspect at all, and therefore not subject to being spotted.
That wouldn’t work tonight, and Jake was getting nervous. He was risking too much. If Varennikov decided someone was interested in him, he might change something important in the coming days. Jake stopped moving with the crowd and came to a stop next to a bakery shop. He turned to head back the way he’d come, when he momentarily spotted a face he recognized. Don Graper. One of those on his short list to watch. The crowd surged on the far side of the street and the face disappeared, and when the group that had blocked Jake’s view cleared, the face was gone.
Jake realized that he’d been so focused on Varennikov that he’d not paid any attention to the possibility of someone following him. Carefully, he scanned the far side of the street, and then saw the back of someone headed the opposite direction. He couldn’t be certain, but that might be the man he’d seen. Quickly, Jake set off after the departing figure, stepping into the street and working his way through the slow moving cars.
The departing figure would disappear, and then reappear as he moved opposite to the bulk of the pedestrians. Twice he looked back. Jake couldn’t tell if he’d been spotted and couldn’t get a reasonable look at the man’s face to confirm his suspicions.
Jake fought the surge, and twice he thought he’d lost the man. Then, at an intersection, Jake realized he couldn’t see the figure ahead. Fearful he might have lost him, Jake patiently scanned the crowd. Then he looked down the side street. The crowd was thinner here and the street much darker. Taking a chance, Jake headed down the side street, knowing the man couldn’t have cut across the street to go the other way without having been seen, but not certain he hadn’t continued the direction they had been headed.
For a long time he didn’t see anything, then he spotted a figure moving carefully through the shadows. Jake increased his pace, but somehow the fleeing figure had spotted him. The man he was chasing increased his own pace, coming to another busy main street and turning back the direction they had come, but on a parallel block. By the time Jake made the turn, the other was well ahead. When Jake sprinted after the receding figure, the other happened to glance back, and seeing Jake coming after him, he took a chance, charging out into the busy street, nearly being struck as he dodged between the cars and crossed to the other side. Jake looked at the traffic, the sounds of the horns still ringing in his ears. With the bright lights he couldn’t see where the man had gone, and he decided he wasn’t going to risk making a similar run into traffic. He knew what he had seen, and he thought he might now know who it was that had an interest in him.