“That’s you, Sandy,” said Walsh, nodding at the blonde woman across the coffee table from him.
She grabbed one of the diet sodas. “Running or walking?”
“Does anyone else look like they run regularly?” said Walsh, getting a laugh from everyone.
“I should get paid more for staying in shape,” she said. “They have to be thinking about retiring us after this one. I mean, look at us. How did we get this old?”
“Back to the plan. The apartment will be occupied primarily by Sandy, with one of us joining her when Gray is home. We’ll work out a rotation for that. Since Sandy will be our primary ground surveillance point around Gray’s apartment complex, we have to assume he’ll take notice of her. So Sandy will not rotate into the trail cars or any surveillance duty outside of the restaurants or coffee shops within walking distance or reasonable driving distance from the apartment,” said Rudd.
“I hate being stuck in place,” she said.
“Sorry. There’s a trail system adjacent to his apartment, and he’s a runner, according to initial surveillance. He’ll use it, and we can’t afford to ignore the possibility he might make contact with Berg or whoever on familiar ground,” said Rudd.
“What if he drives to a different trail or park to run?” said Walsh. “Places like that make ideal handoff or dead-drop points.”
“We can put her in a logical place for runners. We just have to be judicious about it,” said Rudd. “We can’t have her show up everywhere he runs in the city. Hopefully, he runs near his apartment most of the time. He’ll get used to seeing her.”
Sandy Jones had a skeptical look on her face, which Rudd suddenly realized was shared by everyone.
“What?”
“We can’t cover him all the time,” said Walsh. “At best, we’re looking at what, fifty percent coverage?”
“Maybe less,” said Gentry. “Someone could slip into his apartment during the day and leave something. We’d never know. If he runs a solid surveillance-detection route, we don’t have enough assets to track him.”
“If he runs a remotely competent SDR, we’ll lose him, and don’t even get me started on his apartment. No listening devices or cameras authorized?” said Ward. “This almost feels like pointless busywork.”
“What are you talking about? We’ll be using tracking devices,” said Rudd. “CONTROL made it clear that aside from Sandy, they want us to keep our distance. He’s a trained countersurveillance expert. Former FBI intelligence investigator. This guy spies on spies for a living.”
“We all read that in the data packet,” said Walsh. “But his SDR might involve the Metro, an Uber, a public bus, changing vehicles. If he’s as good as his file suggests, we don’t stand a chance of following him without making it really obvious.”
“And he probably sweeps his vehicle for bugs,” said Gentry. “I agree with Leo. CONTROL can’t seriously think we’ll be able to keep good enough track of him. I bet they’re prepositioning us for a hit. They probably have an entirely different team—a specialist group—looking for Berg or other contacts of interest. If Berg or someone else shows up, they’ll call us off our pointless surveillance and ready us for action. Why else would they change Berg’s status?”
Rudd considered Rick’s theory for a moment. It didn’t actually sound that far-fetched, given the reality of their next-to-impossible assignment. Jolene had said as much before everyone had showed up, and he’d agreed. CONTROL was asking the B-team, more like the C-team, to do a job meant for the A-team. Looking at it from Rick’s perspective made a lot of sense.
“We’d already be familiar with his daily routine. His favorite restaurants, coffee shops, shopping stops. His habits,” said Rudd. “Taking him out would be a simple job for this over-the-hill crew.”
“Why not just tell us all of that up front?” asked Sandy. “If it’s even true.”
“Probably because they see some value in our surveillance and want us focusing on one job at a time,” said Rudd. “It won’t be a perfect surveillance job—”
“Not even close,” said Gentry.
“They know that. They have to know that,” said Rudd. “By putting us on the job, no matter how futile it turns out to be, they gain more surveillance coverage than they had before—without eating into their limited pool of specialists. This job would be near impossible for even the best in the business, especially given Gray’s background. I think they’re parking us on Gray in case they decide to eliminate him. If we happen to stumble on a clue to the whereabouts of his mother’s suspected hideaway or catch him meeting up with Karl Berg, all the better.”