Chapter 35 Section VIII

During an intermission, Decker forces himself to chat with Beth, then walks her back to her seat.There was no sign that she sensed his nervousness.When the second act of "Tosca" began, he was relieved for a while, not to worry about spoiling Beth's evening.He began to concentrate on thinking about what happened. In one way, he thought, his angry reaction to the disastrous operation in Rome was still of great concern to the CIA.They had to find out if he had betrayed them in some way to vent his personal rage, if he had betrayed information about covert activities.One thing that proves that no one has paid to buy information from him is that he works very hard as a real estate agent and that he does not spend more than he earns.

Well, Decker thought, I'm not afraid of censorship.But they should have done it earlier, and they could have easily remotely monitored my real estate business, my stock and bond transactions, and the amount of money I had in the bank.Why are they still monitoring me so closely after more than a year?For God's sake, and in an opera house. In the dark, Decker looked at the stage's elaborate 1800's Italian set.He was completely lost in thought and hardly heard Puccini's eloquent music.Unable to restrain his impulse, he turned his face and looked at the dim sum shop on the left side of the middle seat.That's where he saw the man watching him the last time.

The muscles in his back tensed suddenly.The man stood there again.This time Decker couldn't have misunderstood the man's purpose, because he didn't watch the opera at all, but stared in Decker's direction.Obviously, this person didn't expect that he had been discovered, and he thought that he could not be seen by others because he was hiding in the dark.He didn't realize that the lights on the stage were shining in his direction. What Decker saw next sent his nervous system on edge.The appearance of another person startled him, it was not a ghost, but it might be a ghost, absolutely unexpected, absolutely impossible!The other person came out from the darkness, stood beside the first person, and discussed something with him.Decker said to himself, I must be blind, this is probably an illusion caused by the distance.The man was in his early thirties, with short flaxen hair, a little on the fat side, muscular shoulders, and a thick, wide chin, but that alone didn't mean much.Many people look like this.Decker had met quite a few ex-college football players—

The flaxen-haired man gestures vigorously with his right hand, as if emphasizing what he is saying to another person.Decker's stomach tightened, and he was now convinced that his suspicions were correct.The flaxen-haired man on the bottom floor was none other than the man who killed 23 Americans in Rome, the same man who caused Decker to resign from the CIA.The agent in charge of monitoring Decker was Brian McKittrick. "I'm sorry," Decker said to Beth, "I have to go to the bathroom." He squeezed behind the man and woman sitting next to him, out of the row of seats, down the stairs, through the back door out.

Once on the empty platform, he immediately started running.At the same time, he carefully observed the moonlit field below, but even if there was a surveillance team hiding there, he didn't see it.Now is not the time to be cautious.In desperation, Decker ran down the stairs in two steps at a time, heading for the dim pastry shop on the left side of the opera house, in the direction he had just seen McKittrick disappear. The anger that had been in Rome once again ran through him.He was going to grab McKittrick and slam him against the wall to make him explain what was going on.Sad music echoed in the deep desert night as he ran along the outside of the opera house.Hopefully, Decker thought, the music would drown out the screeching of his own footsteps as he hurried up the concrete steps.Suddenly, he became cautious.He slowed down cautiously, leaning closer to the wall.He tiptoed around the bathroom and looked into the shadows where he had last seen McKittrick near the bakery.

There is no one there anymore.How could he not have met them, he thought?Had they been running along the outside of the opera house, I would have run into them head-on.Unless they had seats in the amphitheater, he said to himself, or they heard me coming and hid.Where are you hiding?In some bathroom?Behind the dim sum shop?Behind the wall that separates this place from the desert outside? Although the music in the amphitheater was getting louder, he could still hear a movement, coming from behind the dwarf pines outside the wall in the night.Could it be that McKittrick and the others were watching me from beyond the walls?For the first time Decker felt the danger.He bent down and hid himself under the low wall.

He thought about jumping over the wall and following the sound, but then realized that the sound of his footsteps would remind McKittrick that he was after him.In this way, he will naturally fall into a tactical disadvantage in the darker place outside the wall.Another option is to run back down the sidewalk outside the amphitheater and wait ahead for McKittrick and his gang to emerge from the desert.Maybe, though, they'll just go to the parking lot and drive back to town.Perhaps what he heard was nothing more than a wild dog pawing the ground.Maybe, damn it, instead of asking myself that question, I should find someone who can answer my question.