told herself she should run a short SDR. Normally she didn’t bother; the Iranians were unaware of Shrike and its operation against them, but with the killing of Ennis the day before and the disappearance of Zakharova, she knew she had to up her personal security. Twenty or thirty minutes of random movements would alert her to anyone on her tail, she decided, so she got to it immediately.
* * *
• • •
Court Gentry watched her leave the café, and he fell in behind her, remaining careful not to underestimate her skill based solely on the fact that she’d fucked up on choosing a coffee shop.
And he was glad for this. He began to notice her taking stock of her surroundings as she moved, checking behind her a couple of times. It looked to be more of an automatic function ingrained in her, and less of a specific worry, but Court knew he could get caught just the same if he wasn’t careful.
But Court was the Gray Man; he walked along unnoticed, stayed behind small clusters of pedestrians, moved diagonally to remain behind a bus stop advertisement when she reached a corner, always keeping something between himself and his target except for brief moments of time. He even crossed the street and moved one block laterally to her to avoid a choke point he’d seen ahead.
After a five-minute stroll she climbed aboard a streetcar and Court hopped on behind her, losing sight of her in the process, but checking at subsequent stops to see if she got off.
She made it three stops, switched trains, and started back in the opposite direction.
She ran an SDR for thirty minutes or so; it was competent, demonstrating to Court that she had, in fact, been trained, though she seemed to be a little overconfident in her abilities, or at least in the paucity of threats to her operation.
When she stepped off the streetcar on Fritz-Reuter-Allee in the gritty Neukölln neighborhood, she glanced behind her briefly, checking to see if anyone of interest got off to trail her. Court waited for her to do this, to satisfy herself she was in the clear, and then he jumped out of the last car just as the doors shut. Dittenhofer was a good seventy yards away by now, but he kept his stroll casual and his head moving, left and right, making sure he had both her in sight and himself in her blind spot in case she turned around.
It took another ten minutes, but the German woman finally arrived at her destination. She climbed into the back of a small moving truck on Gielower Strasse. Long rows of identical three-story apartment buildings were arrayed out in all directions on the block. Court presumed she was here, perhaps with technical staff, surveilling someone in one of the apartments.
He reached into his backpack, pulled out a device, and turned it on. While he did this he walked along the sidewalk, closer and closer to the moving truck.
His face displayed the countenance of a man lost in deep thought; he just strolled by like he passed this way every day at this time, and he showed no interest in anything or anyone around him.
Court had become an expert on planting bugs or tracking devices in plain view. He stepped off the sidewalk behind the moving truck and then, shortly before he came around the side where he could be picked up in the rearview mirror, he bent over without breaking stride and affixed the magnetic GPS tracker just under and inside the rear bumper.
Court continued on into and across the little street, then headed down a pedestrian walkway between two rows of apartment buildings.
He was clear in seconds, and minutes later he sat in a nearby café and ordered a coffee.
He didn’t have a line of sight on his target, but he had positioned himself between her physical location and the closest streetcar stop and the closest U-Bahn station. With the tracker on her vehicle, he had her covered regardless of whether she left via the truck or on public transportation.
He’d like to have an eye on her right now, but in truth, he wasn’t interested in monitoring her surveillance. No, he wanted to take her, to interrogate her. He considered just busting into the van, holding a gun on any cohorts she had there, and pulling her away, but realistically he knew he wouldn’t make it far. He didn’t have a vehicle with him at the moment. His