Patriot games - Tom Clancy [222]
It was Beatrix, he saw. Cooley grabbed his coat.
"Will you be back later?"
"I'm not sure. I'll call you." He went right out the door, leaving his clerk with a very curious look.
It had taken ten minutes to locate James Owens, who was in his car south of London. The Commander gave immediate orders to shadow Cooley and to arrest him if it appeared that he was attempting to leave the country. Two men were already watching the man's car and were ready to trail him. Two more were sent to the arcade, but the detectives arrived just as he walked out, and were on the wrong side of the street. One hopped out of the car and followed, expecting him to turn onto Berkeley Street toward his travel agent. Instead, Cooley ducked into the tube station. The detective was caught off guard and raced down the entrance on his side of the street. The crowd of morning commuters made spotting his short target virtually impossible. In under a minute, the officer was sure that his quarry had caught a train that he had been unable to get close to. Cooley had escaped.
The detective ran back to the street and put out a radio call to alert the police at Heathrow airport, where this underground line ended-Cooley always flew, unless he drove his own car-and to get cars to all the underground stations on the Piccadilly Line. There simply wasn't enough time.
Cooley got off at the next station, as his training had taught him, and took a cab to Waterloo Station. There he made a telephone call.
"Five-five-two-nine," the voice answered.
"Oh, excuse me, I was trying to get six-six-three-zero. Sorry." There followed two seconds of hesitation on the other side of the connection.
"Oh That's quite all right," the voice assured him in a tone that was anything but all right.
Cooley replaced the phone and walked to a train. It was everything he could do not to look over his shoulder.
"This is Geoffrey Watkins," he said as he lifted the phone.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," the voice said. "I was trying to get Mr. Titus. Is this six-two-nine-one?" All contacts are broken until further notice, the number told him. Not known if you are in danger. Will advise if possible.
"No, this is six-two-one-nine," he answered. Understood. Watkins hung the phone up and booked out his window. His stomach felt as though a ball of refrigerated lead had materialized there. He swallowed twice, then reached for his tea. For the rest of the morning, it was hard to concentrate on the Foreign Office white paper he was reading. He needed two stiff drinks with lunch to settle himself down.
By noon, Cooley was in Dover, aboard a cross- channel ferry. He was fully alert now, and sat in a corner seat on the upper deck, looking over the newspaper in his hands to see if anyone was watching him. He'd almost bearded the hovercraft to Calais, but decided against it at the last moment. He had enough cash for the Dover-Dunkerque ferry, but not the more expensive hovercraft, and he didn't want to leave a paper trail behind. It was only two and a quarter hours in any case. Once in France, he could catch a train to Paris, then start flying. He started to feel secure for the first time in hours, but was able to suppress it easily enough. Cooley had never known this sort of fear before, and it left a considerable aftertaste. The quiet hatred that had festered for years now ate at him like an acid. They had made him run. They had spied on him! Because of all his training, all the precautions that he'd followed assiduously, and all the professional skill that he'd employed, Cooley