Legends

Following the signs leading to the underground, Martin quickly spotted the two men who were following him, one about fifteen paces behind, the other ten paces behind the first. What gave them away was their habit of concentrating on the windows of the boutiques every time he turned in their direction. As Martin reached the escalator down to the train level, the first man peeled away, the second closed the gap and a third hove into view behind him. The resources they were devoting to keep track of Lincoln Dittmann made Martin feel important; it had been a long time since anyone thought he was interesting enough to lay on a staggered tail. As always in situations like this, Martin was more preoccupied with the agents he didn’t see than the ones he was meant to spot. He took the Piccadilly line to Piccadilly Circus and the escalator to the street, then leaned against the side of a kiosk to give his game leg a rest. After awhile he strolled toward Tottenham Court Road, stopping at a chemist shop to buy toothpaste and shaving cream, eventually at a pub with a neon sign sizzling over the door that brought back memories of the Beirut waterfront and Dante’s Alawite prostitute named Djamillah. He settled onto a stool at the dimly-lit end of the bar and sipped at his half pint of lager until half of it was down the hatch. Opening his valise, he slipped the packet of false identity papers into the white silk bandanna, then mopped his brow with it and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit jacket. Hefting his small valise onto the bar, folding his Burberry across it, he asked the bartender to keep an eye on his things while he used the loo in the back. Martin didn’t even bother checking the tails, two outside in the street, one at a corner table in the front of the pub; they were all young, and young meant green, so they would fall for the oldest trick on the books: They would keep their eyes glued to the half consumed glass of lager and the valise with the raincoat on it, and wait for him to return. Depending on their relationship with the Supervisor, Perishables, they might or might not report that Martin had gone missing when he failed to come back.

Martin remembered this particular men’s lavatory from a stint in London a lifetime ago. He’d been on his way to the Soviet Union and stopped off for a briefing from MI6’s East European desk. What cover had he been using then? It must have been the original Martin Odum legend because Dittmann and Pippen came later, or so it seemed to him. In a remote corner of a lobe of his brain he had filed away one of those tradecraft details that field hands collected as if they were rare stamps: This particular lavatory had a fire door that was locked, but could be opened in an emergency by breaking a glass and removing the key hanging on a hook behind it. To Martin’s way of thinking, this clearly qualified as an emergency. He found the glass and retrieved the key and opened the fire door. Moments later he found himself in a narrow passage that gave onto a side street and, as luck would have it, a taxi stand.

“Paddington,” he told the driver.

He changed taxis twice more and only gave his real destination to the final driver. “Golders Green,” he said, settling into the backseat and enjoying his fleeting triumph over the warm bodies from five.

“Any particular place on Golders Green?” the driver asked over the intercom.

“You can let me off near the clock at the top. I’ll walk from there.”

“Right you are, gov’nor. You American, are you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s the accent, gov’nor. I know American when I hear it.”

“Actually I’m Polish,” Martin had said, “but I’ve lived in America and it rubbed off.”

The driver had tittered into the microphone. “I can tell someone what’s pulling me leg, gov’nor. If you’re Polish, that makes me an Eskimo.”