by Lee Child
took one and she took three? I don’t think so. You should have moved the bodies a bit. The pattern was too clear. I think the splinter of glass was down to Ms Nice alone. I’ll give you yesterday’s caved-in throat, though. So I’d say it’s a one-all draw at the moment. A tie, as you would call it.’
‘What do you want?’ I said, for the third time.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There are no wires for NHI cases.’
Casey Nice said, ‘Which are what?’
‘No humans involved. We’re not very interested. But they are. That’s the problem. That’s the downside. Now you’ve got two gangs after you.’
‘How interested is not very?’
‘On our part? We’ll take notes, but we won’t actually do anything with them.’
‘Paper records?’
‘Inevitable, I’m afraid.’
‘In which case we weren’t there.’
He said, ‘Where?’
I said, ‘Anywhere.’
‘Technology says otherwise. We watch where you go, you know. And GPS is a wonderful thing. How else could I find you, just now for instance, parked miles from the scene of the crime, in a stolen car no less, and all at a moment’s notice?’
I said, ‘Our phones are encrypted.’
He just smiled and said, ‘Oh, please.’
‘Please what?’
‘Think about why you people put up with us. As in, why us and not Germany now? What do we bring to the table?’
‘GCHQ,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Our version of the NSA. Our listening post. But so much better than the NSA, it’s embarrassing. You need us. That’s why you put up with us.’
‘You’re eavesdropping.’
‘No, we’re facilitating,’ he said. ‘We’re gathering things up and passing things along. Occasionally we might test for intelligibility. On a purely technical level.’
‘Surely CIA transmissions are unbreakable.’
‘The CIA certainly thinks so.’
‘You’ve broken their code?’
‘I think we sold them their code. Not directly, of course. I’m sure it was a complicated sting.’
‘I’m sure you’re not supposed to do that kind of thing.’
‘And I’m sure it was all a long time ago.’
‘So did we do a public service? With the Serbians?’
‘You hurt them. But you didn’t kill them. Like cutting an arm off an octopus. Not that we’re ungrateful, you understand. Seven arms are easier to fight than eight. If only marginally.’
‘You want more.’
‘They’re both coming after you. Which presents opportunities, perhaps. In my opinion a few more casualties would not be frowned upon, in certain circles.’
‘With you riding along?’
‘Purely as an observer. Some of these people are British citizens. And as Ms Nice pointed out, there are rules.’
‘Are you going to give us help?’
‘Do you need any?’
‘We asked for a list of locations.’
Bennett nodded. ‘We saw that transmission.’
‘We haven’t had an answer.’
‘Locations are difficult. More than ever now, because we have to figure in Karel Libor’s portfolio, and the Serbians’ too, as of this morning. Because if the Serbians really are cooperating with Romford, then logic says they might have put Kott in one place and Carson in another, far from each other. Safer that way. And logic also suggests they’d be using remote addresses. And the land around London is pretty flat. Rolling, at best. Not the kind of terrain for approaching distant isolated farmhouses suspected of containing either one or two of the four best freelance snipers in the world.’
I said, ‘I would still like the list.’
‘OK, we’ll release it today. You’ll get it just as soon as it bounces off O’Day.’
‘But you’re betting on remote farmhouses? Well separated?’
‘Not necessarily. There are different possibilities.’
‘Such as what?’
‘They have safe houses, and there are plenty of houses they rent out, and therefore plenty of tenants just delighted to get out of town for a week or two. And there are plenty of people who owe them money, who would love to earn a rebate by feeding a stranger three times a day, and giving him a bed for the night, and then saying nothing at all about it.’
‘But you think far from prying eyes would be better?’
‘At first sight much better. But ultimately it’s a trade-off, isn’t it? They have to assume we have a plan for shutting down access to the centre of town. Like a post nine-eleven thing. I’m sure every big city does. And they wouldn’t want to get caught on the outside of a thing like that. Not when they’ve got a big rifle to bring through the cordon. So all in all I think they’ll move in sooner rather than later. They might already be here.’
‘We saw a few hundred viable locations overlooking Wallace Court.’
‘Which we’re searching very carefully. But what if they’re in viable locations we didn’t see?’
‘Do you have a plan for shutting London down?’
‘Of course we do.’
‘Then why aren’t you using it?’
‘Because we remain optimistic.’
‘Which is a politician talking.’
‘The aim is to wrap this up quickly.’
‘Which also sounds like a politician talking.’
‘Politicians sign our paycheques.’
‘So what kind of help will you give us?’
‘We’ll show you where Little Joey lives. Nothing happens without him. You can watch the comings and the goings, and you can see if you can figure things out.’
‘Are you saying you can’t?’
‘The movements we have so far observed have so far shown no coherent pattern.’
‘Then maybe Little Joey isn’t the guy.’
‘Charlie White is far too old and far too grand to be running around, and Tommy Miller and Billy Thompson are only ten years younger, and they’re nothing more than bureaucrats now, anyway. Which is what gangs are all about these days. Tax strategies, and legal investments, and things like that. Little Joey Green is the only one who actually does anything. Trust me on that. If they’re rotating the guards in and out, or sending food and women, then it’s all coming through Little Joey’s driveway.’
‘Except you haven’t observed it.’
‘Not as yet.’
‘How long have we got, before the politicians panic?’
‘Not long.’
‘Do they have a Plan B?’
‘It would help me if we didn’t get that far.’
‘So now we’re helping you?’
‘We’re both helping each other. That’s how it’s supposed to work, isn’t it?’
‘Do you listen to the hot line between Downing Street and the Oval Office?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Personal interest.’
‘By tradition we leave that one alone.’
‘Good to know.’
He said, ‘Let’s go and find you a new hotel. You should have some down time. I’ll text you when we’re ready to go out to Little Joey’s place.’
I said, ‘You have our phone numbers?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Silly question,’ I said.
Bennett swapped places with Nice and drove us south, to the Bayswater Road, which was the northern limit of Hyde Park, and then east to Marble Arch, and then south again on Park Lane, into Mayfair, which was rich enough to be neutral territory. No gangs there, at least of any type I would recognize. We drove past the Grosvenor House Hotel, and the Dorchester, and we pulled in at the Hilton. Bennett said, ‘They won’t look for you here. With the money you’ve taken, they’ll figure you went somewhere fancier. Somewhere with a bigger name, like Brown’s or Claridge’s, or the Ritz, or the Savoy.’
I said, ‘How do you know about the money we’ve taken?’
; ‘It was in Ms Nice’s report to O’Day.’
‘Which you happened to test for intelligibility.’
‘The choice of test sample is a random procedure. Purely a lottery. Driven by engineering. Something to do with the mean time between failures.’
‘We should throw our phones away.’
Casey Nice said, ‘We can’t.’
Bennett said, ‘I agree. You can’t. You need to check in with O’Day on a regular basis. That’s the deal he made with Scarangello. If you go to radio silence now, then the deal is off, and you’re disowned by all concerned, in which case you better be out of the country within an hour, or you’re going to be hunted down like common fugitives.’
‘You know about Scarangello too?’
‘Try to remember, anything that ends up in the state of Maryland goes through the county of Gloucestershire first. And in reverse.’
‘You must be listening to the whole world.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘So who’s bankrolling this thing? Have you figured that out yet?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘And you’re the A team, right? With the big brains? So much better than the rubes at Fort Meade?’
‘Normally we do pretty well.’
‘But not this time, apparently. So now you want to dump it all on us. You want us to keep on communicating with O’Day, so you can listen in while we take all the risks.’
‘We didn’t rule the world by being nice.’
‘The Welsh ruled the world?’
‘The British ruled the world. And the Welsh are British. Just as much as the Scots. Just as much as the English, even.’
I didn’t answer. Nice passed me the ammunition boxes, and I put them in the environmental shopping bag, and we got out of the car, and we walked into the hotel lobby.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE HILTON WAS more than adequate for our needs. A generic name, but they had maxed out the fanciness in honour of the Park Lane location. And the prices. And the snootiness. They started out a little dubious about our lack of luggage. All we had was the bag of bullets. And they started out equally sniffy about taking cash, but then they saw our many thick rolls of bills, and instantly upgraded us in their minds from budget tourists to eccentric oligarchs. Not Russians, probably, because of our accents, so Texans, maybe, but in either case they became extremely polite. The bell boys were especially disappointed we had no other bags to carry. They were smelling fifty-pound tips.
Our rooms were on different floors, but we headed together to Nice’s first, for a safety check, and because I felt she should have a box of ammunition with her. A lone last stand in a hotel room was highly unlikely, but highly unlikely things can happen, in which case a hundred and sixteen would be a much more interesting number than plain old sixteen straight.
Her room was empty and unthreatening. It had the same basic architecture as a thousand motel rooms I had seen, but it was prettied up to a far higher standard, including literally, in that it was twenty floors from the ground with a view of the park. I put her box of a hundred Parabellums on her nightstand, and glanced around one more time, and headed back towards the door.
She said, ‘I’ve still got two left. I feel good now.’
I said, ‘Tell me about when Bennett got in the car.’
‘That’s what he did. He just got in the car. I saw him on the opposite sidewalk, dialling his phone, and then listening, like people do, and at that point he was just some guy, but then my phone started ringing, so I answered, and it was him. He crossed the street and got in right behind me. He told me General O’Day had given him my number, and that General Shoemaker had confirmed it, and that we should move off the kerb and drive around the block because we were in a no-parking zone and there was a traffic cop behind us.’
‘So you moved off?’
‘He was clearly legitimate. I thought to know the names of both generals showed he was on our side.’
‘What do you think now?’
‘Not entirely legitimate, but still on our side.’
I nodded. ‘That’s what I thought, too. Did you believe the things he said?’
‘I think there were some exaggerations. Unless he was being suicidally candid about a programme that must still be deeply classified. On the British side, certainly. Who would react, surely, if their biggest secrets were being talked about in the open.’
‘Some guys can be suicidally candid. They grow to hate the bullshit. There’s no reaction because it doesn’t really matter anyway. People like that are not security risks. Having everything out there is the exact same thing as having nothing out there. The Brits are hacking our signals. The Brits are not hacking our signals. Both things are up there under the spotlight. Which doesn’t help us know which one is true.’
‘So are they hacking our signals?’
‘Think about the things he didn’t exaggerate.’
‘Which were what?’
‘He came right out and said they were getting nowhere with the activity at Little Joey’s house, and nowhere with tracking down the paymasters on-line.’
‘So?’
‘Poor performance.’
‘No one bats a thousand.’
‘But the Brits are very good at this. They invented most of it. I’m not buying the big gap between them and the NSA, but they’re at least equal. We have to admit that. Maybe a little better. They’re a subtle people, deep down. In the best sense of the word. Good card players, generally. And they’re tough, when they need to be. Ultimately they always do what it takes. But they’re getting nowhere.’
‘It’s a tough case.’
‘Tough enough that neither the NSA or GCHQ can get a foot in the door?’
‘I guess.’
‘So how likely is it a rookie analyst and a retired military cop are going to provide the vital breakthrough? What are we going to see that they haven’t seen?’
‘There might be something.’
‘There’s nothing. Because Bennett is now thinking the same way O’Day was thinking. A few days late. Bennett was in Paris. He knows Kott was aiming at me. Now he knows Kott is in London. He thinks he can shake something loose by pushing us out there, front and centre. As targets. It’s a Hail Mary pass. And it’s all about him. He doesn’t care what happens to us. He’s watching for the muzzle flash. That’s all he wants. Before the politicians panic.’
‘I’m sure you planned to be front and centre all along.’
‘Not as a target.’
‘Does it matter what someone else calls you?’
‘Exactly. We have to do it anyway. We don’t get a choice. Same with the phones. We have to update O’Day. Bennett gets what he wants, both ways.’
‘Only because we get what we want, too. First, in fact. So it doesn’t really matter.’
‘It makes a total of two governments thinking of us as nothing but bait. Which is one government too many. We’re depending on them in a lot of ways. What they feed us depends on what they think of us. Subconsciously, I mean. They can develop a bias. We have to be ready to recognize it.’