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fight, and from what he’d heard of Rain, the man wasn’t stupid enough ever to allow a fight to be fair.
    “He’s there,” the man called Beckley said. “Training, just like last night.”
    Larison nodded. “Maybe we should switch off now,” he said in his low, raspy voice. “Two nights in a row, he’s probably spotted you. Treven and I can take the point.”
    “He didn’t spot us,” Krichmond said. “We were in the stands, he barely even glanced our way.”
    Beckley grunted in agreement. “Look, if the guy were that surveillance conscious, he wouldn’t be showing up at the same location at the same time every night in the first place. He didn’t see us.”
    Larison took a sip of coffee. “He any good? The judo, I mean.”
    Krichmond shrugged. “I don’t know. Seemed like he had his hands full with the kid he was training with.”
    Larison took another sip of coffee and paused as though thinking. “You know, it probably doesn’t really matter that much whether he saw you or not. We know he’s here, we can just brace him on his way out.”
    “Yeah, we could,” Krichmond said, his tone indicating the man found the idea hopelessly unambitious. “But what kind of leverage do we have then? We found him at the Kodokan. Tomorrow he could just go and train somewhere else. Or give up training, period. We want him to feel pressured, isn’t that what Hort said? So let’s show him we know where he lives. Brace him there, make him feel we’re into his life in a big way. That’s how you get people to play ball—by getting them
by
the balls.”
    Treven couldn’t disagree with the man’s assessment overall. He was surprised Larison didn’t see it that way, too. But Larison must have realized his oversight, because he said, “That makes sense. But come on, he must have seen you. Treven and I should take the point.”
    “Look,” Beckley said, his tone indicating the tail-end of patience, “he didn’t see us. Krichmond and I will take the point.” He gestured to one of the buttons on his damp navy shirt. “You’ll see everything we see, through this. If he spots us, and I doubt he will, we’ll switch off like we planned. Okay?”
    The button was actually the lens of a high definition pocket video camera that shot color in daylight and infrared-enhanced black and white at night. Each of them was similarly outfitted, and each unit transmitted wirelessly to the others on the network. A separate unit, about the size of a pack of playing cards, could be held in the hand to display what the other units were transmitting. It was nothing fancy, just a stripped-down and slightly modified version of the Eagle Eyes monitoring system that was increasingly popular with various government agencies, but it enabled a small surveillance team to spread out beyond what traditional line of sight would allow, and also enabled each team member to know the position of all the others without excessive reliance on cell phones or other verbal communication.
    Larison raised his hands in a
you win
gesture. “All right. You two cover the entrance of the Kodokan. Treven and I will wait here and fan out behind you when you start following him.”
    Beckley smiled—a little snidely, Treven thought. And it did seem like Larison, maybe in a weak attempt to save face, was pretending to issue orders that had in fact just been issued to him.
    Beckley and Krichmond went out. Larison turned and watched through the window as they walked away.
    Treven said, “You think he’s going to come out again at the same time? Hort said he was so surveillance conscious.”
    Larison took a sip of coffee. “Why do you think Hort sent those Blackwater bozos along with us?”
    It was a little annoying that Larison hadn’t just answered the question. Treven paused, then said, “He doesn’t trust us, obviously.”
    “That’s right. They’re working for him, not with us. Remember that.”
    Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton was Treven’s commander in