The Singularity Race by Mark de Castrique

purchased two prepaid cell phones from a discount electronics store. He wasn’t particularly enthused about having to keep up with another device, but his son-in-law had stressed the need for a communications avenue that would be just between them.
    With caution bordering on paranoia, Woodson had insisted Mullins pay cash to avoid a credit card transaction and then program each number into the other phone’s memory. Woodson didn’t want to risk another visit to Mullins’ apartment so he instructed his father-in-law in how to use a prearranged drop. Mullins had been impressed at the planning Woodson had done prior to showing up at his apartment, and he wondered if his daughter had married James Bond.
    At eleven-thirty, Mullins strolled into the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library on Connecticut Avenue in northwest Washington with one of the new phones in his suit coat pocket.
    He nodded a greeting to the first staff person he saw and said he was just browsing before meeting a friend for lunch. In the reference section, he found the book Woodson had selected. Literary Market Place . The volume contained lists of literary agents, publishers, trade associations, and other industry information. It had to be nearly five inches thick and a foot high. Clearly, it was deeper than the book beside it, a guide for marketing poetry.
    Mullins slid the smaller book out, flipped through the pages a few moments, and used his body to block anyone from seeing him push the small phone into the vacant slot. Then Mullins re-shelved the book so that its spine came flush with the larger volume beside it. The phone was perfectly concealed.
    He glanced at his watch. Eleven-forty. Woodson would arrive at noon. Now success depended upon no unpublished poets showing up within the next twenty minutes and screwing up the whole deal. That would be poetic injustice, Mullins thought.
    He walked a few blocks off Connecticut Avenue into a residential neighborhood where he’d found on-street parking. Instead of immediately leaving for his apartment in Shirlington, he sat in the Prius and waited. If his son-in-law didn’t call by five after twelve, he’d return to the library and retrieve the phone. The odds that out of the thousands of books housed in that branch the one on publishing poetry would be pulled from the shelf today were slim. But, a possibility was still a possibility. In the Secret Service, his mission had been to reduce all possibilities to zero.
    Noon. The burner phone lay dormant on the seat beside him. Five minutes passed. Mullins grew restless. If Woodson was anything, he was punctual.
    At ten after, he picked up the second phone and left the car. If someone at the library seemed puzzled by his return, he’d say he’d forgotten his reading glasses. He carried a pair in his shirt pocket and could brandish them as evidence.
    In less than half a block, the new phone vibrated.
    â€œYes?” Mullins answered.
    â€œSorry,” Woodson whispered. “MacArthur was on my other cell. I couldn’t get him off.”
    â€œSomething break?”
    â€œWe got a hit in Montreal. Facial recognition of the man you shot. He flew into Canada a week before. A French national traveling under the name of Jean-Louis Marlette. Probably a fake identity, but at least we have a link.”
    â€œDo they know where his flight originated?”
    â€œYeah. Mozambique.”
    â€œJesus. That’s going around your elbow to get to your foot.”
    â€œYeah, but he might live there. These mercenaries can really be anywhere. All they need is a satellite phone and they’re in business. The other two that we nailed with prints lived in Thailand and Belize. MacArthur’s tracking whatever money connections—banks, wire transfers, credit cards—he can. At least we’ve got a chance to turn over the rocks they hid under.”
    â€œA common paymaster,” Mullins said.
    â€œThat’s the hope. If