Page 48 of The Shadow Friends

“Well, what’s not in short supply is your friends. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’ll start by finding out who this man is.” She looked at the screen. “And what he has to do with Ingrid.”

Chapter 19

Saturday

“And you have no idea who this man is?” said Declan.

It was just past 7 a.m., and the four of them were now gathered around Lloyd’s desktop computer. On the screen was the photo of the nameless man standing at the Amsterdam bus stop. Maggie had spent so much time staring at his face earlier this morning that it was now burned into her memory, and would probably show up in her dreams. Or her nightmares.

“Interpol has no matches on this face,” said Lloyd.

“What about Dutch intelligence?”

“I reached out to my old contacts there. AIVD can’t ID the man either. Whoever he is, he’s somehow managed to stay off everyone’s radar. Which in itself is something of a feat. You’d think, with biometrics being scraped from every ID and CCTV, his face would have shown up somewhere. And the fact it hasn’t . . .”

“He’s a ghost,” said Maggie. “It’s not easy to stay invisible. No name, no ID. For some reason, this man means something to Ingrid.”

“Lloyd?” said Ben.

Lloyd shook his head. “I keep telling you, I have no idea who he is.”

“Well, what can we deduce about him?” said Maggie. “Beyond the fact he looks perfectly ordinary.”

Lloyd zoomed in on the briefcase. “No monogram. No ring on his left hand. And the suit, it looks like it’s off the rack. Anonymous gray.”

“He doesn’t seem aware that he’s being photographed,” said Declan. “And judging by the angle of this shot, I’d say it was taken from across the street.”

“A stakeout?” said Ben.

“Someone who was waiting for this shot. Who knew where to find his subject.”

“That sounds like law enforcement or Dutch intelligence.”

“But if they know who he is,” said Declan, “then his biometrics would be in their facial recognition database. No, as Maggie said earlier, he’s a ghost. Quietly living and working under the radar. But what is this man to Ingrid?”

Lloyd stood up. “I have to pack.”

“Wait. Lloyd!” said Maggie. She followed him out of the study and caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs. “We need to think about this.”

“What’s there to think about? My wife has taken off into the wild, and I have to find her.”

“You don’t know where she’s gone.”

“I know where to start looking.”

“Based on one photograph?”

“The man in that photograph seems to be key to all this. I need to find out who he is and what he means to Ingrid.”

“Lloyd, Maggie’s right,” said Ben. He and Declan had emerged from the study as well. “Before you go running off half cocked, we need to talk this over.”

“I’m done with talking! It’s all I ever do, all I ever did. While you four were out in the field, right in the thick of things, I was stuck at a desk in Langley, chained to my computer. I sat through meetings and more meetings, making predictions about what could happen in some country I’d never set foot in. Well, it’s time for me to leave my desk and find my wife.” He turned and climbed the steps to his bedroom, leaving Maggie, Declan, and Ben at the bottom of the stairs.

“I can’t really blame him,” said Declan.

Ben shook his head. “He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He’s never worked in operations. Like he said, he spent his whole career at a desk. We don’t know what kind of trouble Ingrid’s in, or what he’ll be up against. It’s like letting a two-year-old wander onto the highway.”

“He’s not helpless,” said Maggie. “And he won’t be out there alone.”