Free The Victor Project by Bradford L. Blaine Page A

now her imagination and her favorite author had to wait.
         Returning the book to its place on the shelf, she marched out the door and picked up the pace as she drew further from the door.  She wanted desperately to purchase the novel, but carrying or wearing an item that would make a subject easily identifiable was forbidden.  As she approached a bakery, she decided to use it as the place to confirm her suspicions.  First she would walk passed the entrance to the bakery and after one block would quickly double back.  There was no way a tail would do the exact same double-back, it was too risky.
         At the end of the block, she had crossed the intersection and allowed herself to go another twenty feet before spinning around with a gesture that suggested she forgot something.  As she completed her about-face she saw the bookstore man again.  He played it cool and passed her close enough that she could smell his cologne.  Within a few steps of him passing, the cross-light turned green and Val darted through the intersection, continuing a brisk pace all the way to the bakery.
         Now looking back at the event, she was proud of the way she handled the threat.  From the perspective outside the bakery, her double-back seemed to have forced him to give up.  He most likely knew he had been made.  Val took a deep breath after swallowing a bite of the pastry to adjust her nerves.  Now she had to make sure that he wasn’t part of some team.  The double-back was just one trick that William had taught her.  She needed another trick just to make sure she was free.  Over time each of the PERF members had also developed their own extra gimmicks to throw a tail, such as taking a taxi one block, exiting it and getting into another in the opposite direction or asking a stranger a question and hoping the tail would follow them.  There were many she had learned and all were effective.  Her favorites were walking down an alley or driving in the wrong direction on a one-way road.
         Over the course of traveling the next few blocks, Val kept a constant visual for familiar vehicles or faces.  But as she neared her meeting place, it now seemed evident that the bookstore man was working alone, if he really was a tail.  Slowly she bent down to tie her shoe in the doorway of the building where she was to meet her contact.  The tying the shoe trick allowed her to glance left and right quickly to see if anyone had frozen in their tracks.  This morning’s sidewalk traffic continued as usual.
         On this occasion, she was to enter the building and head straight for the stairwell, making her way to parking level P4 and entering the passenger side of a green B4G, which was to be parked exactly seventeen spaces down on the right.
         Val decided before she got to the building that she would keep the story of being tailed to herself.  Besides, she wasn’t really sure it was a tail, it could have just been her imagination.  That’s probably what William would say to her anyway if she brought it up.  Even if he did believe her, there’s nothing they could do about it now.  The only outcome of telling him would be that he would become upset and proceed into a lecture.  
         Her contact today was simply known as William, at least that’s what his code name was.  She had always just called him William and nothing more.  He was Mars vice president, so to speak, but from the gentle way he carried himself you would never guess.  The William she knew had a quiet demeanor and gave the impression that he commanded no one, much less all of the PERF underground for the seven zones. 
         Mars was the true leader of the PERFs, the unknown faceless leader.  Of all of the PERF members she had worked with, not one had ever seen his face, or at least none of them would admit to it.  He communicated only through computers, phone calls and messages and never to anyone directly.  People in the