Chapter 77: Undercover
"So our job tonight is to play waiters," Simon said, smoothing the front of his server's jacket. "While Chuck and Sarah do the actual mission."
"We're support," Casey said, from beside him. He said it with the tone of a man who had strong opinions about the role and had decided not to voice them. "The Bartowskis are the principals tonight. We're ambient."
"Got it."
"Waiter." A sharp snap of fingers from a nearby table.
Simon put on his professional expression and walked over.
The restaurant was the kind of place that charged for atmosphere as much as food — dim lighting, good linens, a wine list that required its own dedicated menu. Chuck and Sarah were at a corner table with the target and his wife, running the social cover of a double date with the practiced ease of two people who had done significantly harder things than dinner conversation.
The target was Mike Ratner — aerospace engineer, mid-forties, the specific kind of ordinary that intelligence agencies learned to look past because ordinary was often where the interesting things hid. Current intelligence suggested he'd passed classified materials on a next-generation fighter project to a foreign buyer. Tonight's job was to identify the contact.
Simon worked the floor. He took orders, delivered plates, refilled water glasses, and kept one eye on Chuck's table with the peripheral attention he'd developed for exactly this kind of divided focus.
Several female guests pressed folded napkins into his jacket pocket between courses. He recognized the format — handwritten numbers, occasionally names. He pocketed them without comment and kept working.
Casey, on the other side of the floor, observed this with the expression of a man developing a philosophical position on the unfairness of the universe.
"Don't say anything," Simon said, passing him near the service station.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Casey said.
"Your face was."
"My face says nothing."
"Your face," Simon said pleasantly, "is saying quite a bit."
Casey made the sound that ended conversations.
Ratner left the table forty minutes into the meal — the particular excuse of the restroom that actually means something different when the person delivering it checks the room before standing.
"Casey," Simon said quietly into his earpiece. "Target's moving. Follow?"
"Confirm and report. Don't engage."
Simon set down a water pitcher, caught the floor manager's attention for approximately the wrong half-second, and slipped through the service corridor into the restaurant's back hallway. He found the restroom entrance thirty feet ahead and caught the door before it swung fully closed.
Ratner was at the sink. Simon went to the nearest stall, latched it, and watched through the gap.
Thirty seconds later, two men came through the door.
The taller of them locked the door behind him. The other moved to Ratner with a weapon already visible, speaking in a low, accented voice — Russian, Simon noted, and the Intersect supplied context that confirmed it: this man was connected to an organized crime network that occasionally sold its services to foreign intelligence buyers.
"Casey," Simon murmured. "Two hostiles. Weapons visible. Ratner's being pressured."
"On my way. Thirty seconds."
"Chuck's also moving," a different voice said — Chuck, apparently having seen the same table departure Simon had.
"This is not a good moment for Chuck," Simon said.
"I'm aware," Casey said.
The situation outside the stall was moving faster than thirty seconds would accommodate. Ratner was being walked toward the wall, the weapon pressed more visibly into his side, one of the men checking the stall doors from the outside moving in Simon's direction.
The door to Simon's stall opened.
Simon was already braced on the inside.
"No, no, no," Simon said, producing the expression of a man caught in a genuinely embarrassing situation. "I'm just using the restroom. This is a very nice restaurant."
The man looked at him, looked at his colleague, and made the calculation that a server in a restaurant restroom was a complication rather than a threat. He pushed Ratner into the stall beside Simon's and turned back.
"Is he one of yours?" he said to Ratner.
Simon moved.
He got his hand on the nearest man's collar and pulled — bringing him off-balance and forward simultaneously, and drove his forehead into the bridge of the man's nose. The impact was efficient, the pain response immediate, the weapon that had been in the man's hand hitting the tile floor while he processed what had just happened to his face.
Simon hit him once more while the processing was still going on. The man sat down and stayed there.
The second man had the better reaction time — he was already turning, already raising his weapon. Simon went low, sliding across the tile to the man's feet, and swept both legs out simultaneously. The man came down hard, landed badly, and Simon applied pressure to the knee joint in a way that made the man's options very clear very fast.
He stopped moving.
Simon stood, straightened his jacket, and washed his hands at the sink.
"OMG." Chuck was in the doorway, looking at the two men on the floor. "What happened?"
Casey appeared behind him and looked at the same scene. After a moment, he gave Simon a single nod.
"We need to move these two," Casey said. "Before someone comes in."
"Agreed," Simon said, drying his hands.
They carried the men out through the kitchen service entrance in two trips, folded them into the back of the surveillance van that Casey had staged in the adjacent alley, and returned to the restaurant before anyone noticed a gap in the service.
Simon refilled a water glass. Casey disappeared toward the perimeter.
Chuck came out of the men's room and stood in the corridor looking at Simon.
"What do I do?" he said.
"Go back to your table," Simon said. "The date is still happening."
"Right," Chuck said. "Right, yes."
Ratner and his wife were walked out separately at the end of the evening — Ratner by Casey, after a quiet conversation in the parking lot that left Ratner looking as though he'd reconsidered his recent career choices. His wife was given a cab number and a firm recommendation to use it.
The remaining transport to the base took an hour.
By the time Simon saw the sun beginning to lighten the eastern sky over Los Angeles, he had been awake for approximately twenty-two hours, had served dinner to sixty people, detained two Russian organized crime operatives in a restaurant restroom, conducted a six-hour mobile surveillance operation, and drunk enough coffee to sand down the edges of the tiredness without quite resolving it.
The mission, as far as it went, was complete.
"I'm done for tonight," Simon said, when they arrived back at the base. "The interrogation's yours."
Casey looked at the holding room where Ratner was waiting, then at Simon. "I was going to demonstrate some technique."
"I've seen your technique," Simon said. "It's effective. Use it." He looked at Ratner through the window — the man was sitting with his hands on the table, looking at nothing, running the math on his situation. "Honestly, Chuck walking in there with a serious expression would probably be enough to get him talking."
"No offense intended," he added, in Chuck's direction.
"Some taken," Chuck said.
"And you—" Simon looked at Casey. "If you walk in there looking the way you look right now, the man's going to start talking before you sit down."
"Is that meant to be a compliment?" Casey said.
"It's an accurate observation," Simon said. He picked up his jacket. "Get some sleep afterward. Both of you."
He walked out into the early morning.
The city was quiet. The kind of quiet that only happened for a few hours and was worth noticing when it arrived.
He drove home, showered, and slept until noon.
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