Stone Barrington 06-11

looks new.”
    Across the room a man wearing headphones shouted, “B’s getting a phone call!” He flipped a switch, and, over a speaker, they could all hear the phone ringing.
    There was a click, and a woman’s voice said, “Hello?”
    From the other end of the connection came not a voice, but a whistle. The whistler performed a few bars of “Rule Brittania,” then hung up. The woman hung up, too.

    “That’s a signal,” Plumber said. “Everybody alert; she’s going to move now.”
    On the split screen they watched Morgan back his Morris Minor out of his driveway and head off down the street, his car still marked with an A.
    “Oh, shit,” Plumber said, pointing at the other side of the screen. B was coming out of the garage, too, but not in her car; she was pushing a bicycle. On the back, a large pair of saddlebags could be seen. “We can’t put a tracker mark on her bicycle—not enough area showing to the satellite. This is going to be dicey.”
    “Don’t you lose that bicycle,” Carpenter warned.
    “I’ll do my best,” the tech said, “but with the marked car, the tracking would have been automatic. With the bike, I’m going to have to do it manually, and it’s the toughest computer game you ever saw.”
    “Cabot is very smart,” Carpenter said. “But we knew that; we should have suspected something like this. Where’s Morgan going?”
    “I’ll put him on the other screen,” the tech said. “It’ll be easier to track B if we devote a whole screen to her.” He tapped in a command, and the second screen came to life.
    “He’s leaving the village,” Plumber said. “We’ve got fewer houses, now. He’s headed west, toward the Plain. Wait a minute, he’s turning into some woods. Shit, we won’t be able to see him under trees.”
    Then the Morris Minor emerged from the trees and stopped. Morgan got out of the car, opened the rear doors, and began unloading.
    “What’s he doing?” Carpenter asked.
    “Equipment of some sort,” Plumber replied.
    “It’s an easel,” Stone said. “Look, he’s setting it up.”
    “He’s going to paint?” Plumber asked.

    “Looks like it,” Carpenter replied.
    Morgan set up a camp stool, opened what looked like a toolbox, and placed a canvas on the easel.
    “He’s going to paint the sunset,” Plumber said.
    “I’ve got trouble here,” the tech said suddenly, pointing to the screen before him. “Carroll is approaching a roundabout, and so are some other bikes.” They watched as B moved into the roundabout, merging with half a dozen other bicycles. Then they began exiting.
    “Which one is she?” Carpenter demanded.
    “You got me,” the tech replied. “There are two roads off the roundabout, and we’ve got two bikes on one and four on the other. We can’t track them all.”
    “It’s B, Carroll,” Carpenter said. “Use both views to track the cyclists, until we can identify her. Morgan’s going to be there awhile; we’ll let him be. It’s Carroll, I know it.”
    Stone watched as both screens began displaying cyclists on country roads. His last view of Morgan was of the man painting away.

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    THEY SPLIT INTO TWO GROUPS, EACH watching the cyclists. “There,” Stone said. “The saddlebags; there’s only one bike with large saddlebags.”
    “You’re right,” Carpenter said. “And none of the other bikes has saddlebags at all. That’s Carroll!”
    Then the bicycle with the large saddlebags split off from the other three and turned onto a dirt lane.
    “Okay,” Carpenter said to the tech, “follow her, ignore the others, and let’s get Morgan back on the other screen.”
    The tech got the bicycle in his sights. “It’s going to be easier now, since she’s on that little lane.”
    “Show me Morgan,” Carpenter said.
    The tech tapped more keys, and the image popped back onto the second screen.
    “Where is he?” Carpenter asked.
    “Let me pan around,” the tech replied.
    “It’s the same spot,” Stone said, “but Morgan’s car isn’t there; he’s gone.”
    “Find that car,” Carpenter said, “and be quick about it.”
    “It’s not so easy,” the tech said. “It’s one thing to track the A car when you’ve got him in your sights, but finding him in a landscape is going to be nearly impossible.”

    “I don’t care, do it!”
    Stone watched the lone cyclist as she pedaled down the little lane. “Anybody got a map of the area?” he asked.
    “Here,” Plumber replied, spreading a