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looks like my old man.” He shot a few pictures of the security guys.
    “All right,” I said, “my guess is that Petrov is here for the day, maybe the night.”
    Tess seemed resigned to the possibility that we’d be on surveillance until dawn, though she did ask, “Can we call for a relief team?”
    “I need the overtime.” I also informed her, “These guys sometimes play a shell game, so if another vehicle exits the estate then we need to get the locals to pull it over and see if Petrov is in it.” Ireminded her, “Petrov is the target. Not the Mercedes and not the driver.”
    “How about Igor and Fradkov?” asked Ms. Faraday. “What if they leave without Petrov?”
    “Then you can take the minivan and follow them if you’d like.”
    “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
    “I thought you had a game to see and a husband to meet.”
    “This is getting interesting.”
    I reminded everyone, “The Russians are a major power, and they’re not our official enemy, so we need to avoid causing an incident.” Meaning, no punching anyone in the balls. But a “Fuck you” is okay.
    Tess suggested, “Why don’t you call a supervisor for instructions?”
    “I make the decisions in the field based on my estimation of the situation.”
    “Okay. Have you decided who goes for lunch?”
    “No one. I’m going to shoot a few seagulls. You want one?”
    She seemed tired of my wit and informed us, “I know a few delis in town that deliver.”
    Best news I’ve had all day.
    So we gave Tess our lunch orders and she got on her cell phone and found a deli in Southampton that would deliver to two vehicles parked on Gin Lane. She hung up and informed us, “Half an hour.”
    I hoped lunch arrived before the Mercedes reappeared.
    This job gave you a lot of agita, but also a lot of freedom, like a traveling salesman. If your numbers were good, no one in the home office asked what you did all day.
    But if you screwed up, as a contract agent, you went right into free fall and there was no one there to catch you. No union, no civil service job-for-life. And that was okay with me.
    Meanwhile, my target was behind closed gates, which doesn’t mean I lost him—but I couldn’t see him. This was a bit worrisome, but it happens, and eventually the guy has to reappear. All I need to do is see him reappear. If, however, the target slips out the back door, we’ve got a problem. And Petrov had about ten miles of beach to disappear on and a whole ocean for his back door.
    I thought about requesting aviation or one of our watercraft that we use for this kind of surveillance. But that could be overkill. Petrov was a person of prime interest, but, unlike some of our Muslim targets, he didn’t warrant the whole nine yards. At least that was the thinking at 26 Fed and beyond.
    And in this case, things were probably just as they appeared, meaning Colonel Petrov was a houseguest of Georgi Tamorov, and maybe they were having a party and Petrov was looking forward to seeing boobies in the hot tub and having a few vodkas. No big deal.
    All we had to do was make sure we didn’t miss him when he left. Eventually, he’d head back to the city. Another day in the life of Vasily Petrov and John Corey.
    Unless today was different.

CHAPTER SIX
    W e stood on the quiet road, our backs to the minivan, drinking bottled water and getting some rays. Most of the summer mansions were empty after Labor Day, but the caretakers or occupants are understandably paranoid, and if anyone saw us they might call the cops. Or we might call the cops. We’d worked with the local and State Police on a few occasions relating to the Tamorov house and other matters of national security, and in fact a few of these local and State Police personnel had been trained by the Anti-Terrorist Task Force and were our local PD contacts.
    The world had changed and shrunk, and no place was beyond the reach of the bad guys, and bad things could happen anywhere. Even here, among the