Vicious Circle

I went cautiously to the corner and looked out. There were enough people walking past in both directions so that unless anyone was looking for me to emerge at exactly that point they’d take a while to notice me. So I had the luxury of being able to look up and down the length of the street without having to watch my back at the same time.

Nobody lurking around the doorway of the shop I’d gone into. Nobody browsing the windows of the shops to either side of it. I looked across to the other side of the street, bearing in mind that if this guy was any good he’d have chosen a place where a casual glance wouldn’t pick him out.

A casual glance didn’t, but on the second sweep, bingo, there he was. Just opposite the shop I’d gone into, there was a stand selling roasted nuts—the kind of thing that American tourists get their picture taken with, mistaking it for part of London’s rich cultural heritage because it involves both bland food and a cheeky, cheerful Cockney. The man in the black coat had positioned himself close to the back of the stand where he’d be hidden from two sides, and from the other two would most likely look like someone patiently waiting to have his nuts roasted. He was a quarter onto me, so I was mostly seeing the back of his neck and I still couldn’t tell whether I’d ever met him before.

Just then, as I was staring at him and willing him to turn around, my phone started to squirm in my pocket like a living thing. There was no noise: I’d set it on vibrate a while ago when for some reason silence had been an issue, and now I kept losing my way in the menus when I tried to turn it back. But noise or no, it came out of nowhere and it made me start. And it was as though that minute movement alerted my stalker even though his eyes were elsewhere. His head jerked up and around, abruptly, triangulating on some cue that beat the hell out of me, and then his body swiveled, too, so that he was facing in my exact direction.

It was eerie and unsettling. So was the face, now that I got a good look at it, because it was Zucker.

Son of a bitch. These guys were tailing me around London with insolent ease. I could understand it if I were wearing a sandwich board like the deranged vegetarian who used to hang out at Oxford Circus (LESS LUST THROUGH LESS PROTEIN) but inconspicuous is my middle name and I pride myself on the hair-trigger accuracy of my professional radar. Did they have the office staked out? Or the Collective? Where had I picked them up, and how had they gotten this close to me twice—or three times, counting the Oriflamme—without me spotting them?

It was a conundrum for a quieter moment. Right now, Zucker was staring directly at me across the width of the street, and even with the surging throng turning this into a game of peep-o there was no way he hadn’t seen me. I turned my back on him and fled.

When you’re playing follow-the-leader in what the military would call a broken ground situation, the leader has all the advantages so long as he keeps his nerve. Weaving in and out of the crowd with my head down, I kept moving fast until I reached another alley, then broke free and sprinted the full length of it, coming out in Brunswick Gardens. The crowds were thicker here if anything, because there was a street market on and the road had been closed to traffic. Tinny music from someone’s wooferless boombox scraped along the air along with scents of almond essence and vanilla pods. The stalls, selling mainly antiques and collectables but also T-shirts, sweets, spices, and bootleg DVDs, crowded the curbs on either side and gave passers-by a lose-lose choice between the narrow, obstacle-strewn pavement and the heaving, shop-or-drop chaos in the center of the road.

Perfect.

I threaded my way between two stalls, crossed the street, and continued on the other side. Then fifty yards farther on I crossed back, legs bent at the knee to keep my head down, squeezing myself skillfully through the mob wherever a gap presented itself, and carried on down to the corner, where Kensington Church Street picks up again after the dogleg. Here I inserted myself back into the more orderly crowd of antique-hunters. Okay, I’d gotten turned around 180 degrees, and I’d have to go home by a different route, but I reckoned that no one on God’s earth could have kept me in sight through that maneuver.