by Child, Lee
‘Like a nerve centre.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So all the phone says is, report to the nerve centre.’
‘Obviously they know where it is.’
‘The guys I spoke to didn’t,’ Reacher said. ‘I asked them, and I believed them. It’s classified information. Which means the crews they just hauled off their regular duties were senior people. In the know.’
‘Makes sense,’ Vantresca said. ‘The pick of the litter. Only the best for Situation B.’
‘Told you so,’ Hogan said. ‘The only route is straight through the top levels.’
Barton said, ‘Crazy.’
Vantresca and Abby started work on the Albanian messages, using the same system as before, side by side at the kitchen table. Vantresca was less familiar with the language, but the texts themselves were more formal and grammatical than their Ukrainian counterparts, so altogether the work went faster. And there was much less to do. All the relevant stuff came during the last few hours. Some of it was familiar. Reacher was once again taken to be a provocateur paid by outside forces. Some of it was new. The white Toyota had been seen driving in. Reacher and Abby had been seen getting out together, after parking way out in the wastelands. A small, slender woman with short dark hair, and a big ugly man with short fair hair. Be on the lookout.
‘Technically I think it means plain-featured,’ Abby said. ‘Or handsome in a rugged kind of way. Not ugly as such.’
Reacher said, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’
‘These might,’ Vantresca said. He was at the end of the video. The last Albanian text. He said, ‘They’re actively looking for you. They’re giving an estimate of your current position. They’re guessing you’re somewhere inside a particular twelve-block rectangle.’
‘And are we?’
‘Not far from its exact geographic centre.’
‘That’s not good,’ Reacher said. ‘They seem to have plenty of information.’
‘They have a lot of local knowledge. They have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and a lot of eyes behind a lot of windows, and a lot of cars on a lot of streets.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been studying up on them.’
‘Like I said, I hear things. Everyone has a story. Because everyone comes up against them, sooner or later. Whatever you’re into, it’s the cost of doing business, east of Center Street. People get used to it. Ultimately they see it as reasonable. Ten per cent, like the church used to take, back in the olden days. Like taxes. Nothing to be done about it. That part becomes quite civilized. As long as you pay. Which everyone does, by the way. These are scary people.’
‘Sounds like personal experience.’
‘A couple of months ago I helped a journalist from Washington D.C. with her local arrangements. I have a private security licence. My number is listed in all the national directories. I don’t know what her story was going to be about. She wouldn’t tell me. Organized crime, I supposed, because that was what she seemed to be interested in. The Albanians and the Ukrainians both. More the Ukrainians, to be honest. That was my impression. But somehow she said the wrong thing east of Center and her first encounter was with the Albanians. They had a face to face discussion. A handful of them, and just her, on her own, in the back room of a restaurant. She came out and had me drive her straight to the airport. Not even her hotel first. She didn’t want to stop and get her stuff. She was terrified. Deep down scared. She was acting like an automaton. She took the first flight out and never came back. If they could make that happen just by talking to her, you better believe they can make a whole bunch of people keep their eyes peeled for a pair of strangers. Sheer intimidation. That’s how they get their information.’
‘That’s not good either,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t want to bring bad luck to this household.’
Neither Barton nor Hogan had a comment, one way or the other.
‘We can’t use hotels,’ Abby said.
‘Maybe we can,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe we should. It might be a way of accelerating the process.’
‘You’re not ready,’ Hogan said.
Barton said, ‘Stay the night. You’re already here. The neighbours don’t have X-ray vision. We have a lunchtime gig tomorrow. If you need to get going, you can ride along in the van. No one will see.’
‘Where is the gig?’
‘At a lounge west of Center. Closer to Trulenko than you are now.’
‘Does the lounge have a guy on the door?’
‘Always. Probably best to get out around the corner.’
‘Or not, if we wanted to accelerate the process.’
‘We have to work there, man. It’s a good gig for us. Do us a favour and accelerate the process someplace else. If you need to. Which I hope you don’t. Because it’s crazy.’
‘Deal,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll ride with you tomorrow. Thank you very much. And for your hospitality tonight.’
Vantresca left ten minutes later. Barton locked the doors. Hogan put headphones on and lit a blunt the size of Reacher’s thumb. Reacher and Abby went upstairs, to the room with the tipped-up guitar amplifier for a nightstand. Three blocks away a brand new text message failed to reach the Albanian phone in the abandoned metal mailbox. A minute later the same thing happened with the Ukrainian phone.
TWENTY-NINE
Dino’s right-hand man had the given name Shkumbin, which was a beautiful river deep in the heart of his beautiful homeland. But it was not an easy name to use in English. At first most people said it Scum Bin, some of them tauntingly, but those only once. When they could speak again, after months of dental procedures, they seemed very willing to try very hard with the sound of his name’s initial syllable. Although that could have been less than perfect reconstructive work. But eventually Shkumbin got tired of hurting his knuckles, and he took his dead brother’s name, partly as a convenience, and partly as a tribute. Not his elder dead brother’s name, which had been Fatbardh, which meant may he be the fortunate one, which was another beautiful name, but again, hard to use in English. Instead Shkumbin now went by his younger dead brother’s name, which was Jetmir, one who will live a good life, another warm sentiment, and this time easy to say in English, and memorable, quite flashy and futuristic, even if really a traditional blessing, and even if a bit communist-sounding, like a Red Army test pilot in a Soviet comic book, or a hero cosmonaut on a propaganda billboard. Not that Americans seemed to care about that stuff any more. Ancient history.
Jetmir got to the conference room in back of the lumber yard office and found the rest of the inner council already assembled. Apart from Dino himself, of course. Dino had not been informed. Not yet. It was their second meeting without him. A big step. One meeting might be explained away. To explain two was exponentially harder.
To explain three would be impossible.
Jetmir said, ‘The missing phone came back on line for almost twenty minutes. It sent nothing and received nothing. Then it went dark again. Like they’re hiding out deep in a basement or something, or an underground cellar, but then they came up to the street, just for a short time, maybe to walk to the corner store and back.’
‘Did we get a location?’ someone asked.
‘We got a pretty good triangulation, but it’s a densely populated area. Every corner has a store. But it’s right where we thought they would be. Close to the centre of the shape we marked out.’
‘How close?’
‘I say we forget the twelve blocks we figured before. We can squeeze it down to the middle four. Maybe the middle six, to be certain.’
‘In a basement?’
‘Or somewhere there’s no signal.’
‘Maybe they took the battery out. And then put it back in.’
‘To do what? I told you, they didn’t make or receive a call.’
‘OK, a basement.’
‘Or a building with a thick iron frame. Somewhere like that. Keep an open mind. Tell everyone to squeeze in tight.
Really flood the area. Look for lights behind drapes. Look for cars and pedestrians. Knock on doors and ask questions if necessary.’
At that same moment Jetmir’s opposite number on the other side of Center Street was also in a meeting, also of his inner council, in the room in back of the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bond operation. But in his case his boss was present. Gregory was right there, as always, at the head of the table, presiding. He had called the meeting himself, right after he heard about one of his downtown guys getting stuck up by Aaron Shevick.
He said, ‘This latest incident feels completely different to me. There was no attempt at deception. He wasn’t expecting us to blame the Albanians for it. It was completely blatant, face to face. Apparently he has been instructed to abandon his earlier tactics. In favour of a new phase. I think a mistake. They have revealed more about themselves than they will discover about us.’
‘The phone,’ his right-hand man said.
‘Precisely,’ Gregory said. ‘Taking the gun was to be expected. Anyone would. But why the instruction to take the phone?’
‘It’s a necessary component of their new strategy. They’re going to attempt to inflict electronic damage. To weaken us further. They’re going to try to get inside our operating system through our phones.’
‘Who in the whole wide world would have the skills and the experience and the sheer confidence and the deluded arrogance to even hope to succeed with that?’
‘Only the Russians,’ his right-hand man said.
‘Precisely,’ Gregory said again. ‘Their new tactic has revealed their identity. Now we know. The Russians are moving in on us.’
‘Not good.’
‘I wonder if they took an Albanian phone, too.’
‘Probably. The Russians don’t like sharing territory. I’m sure they plan to replace us both. This is going to be very tough. There are a lot of them.’
There was silence for a long moment.
Then Gregory asked, ‘Can we beat them?’
His right-hand man said, ‘They won’t get inside our operating system.’
‘Not what I asked.’
‘Well, whatever we bring to the fight, they bring twice the men, twice the money, and twice the material.’
‘These are desperate times,’ Gregory said.
‘Truly.’
‘They call for desperate measures.’
‘Like what?’
‘If the Russians are going to bring twice as much as we can, then we need to rebalance the scale. Simple as that. Just temporarily. Just for the time being. Until the present crisis has passed.’
‘How?’
‘We need to form a short-term defensive alliance.’
‘Who with?’
‘Our friends east of Center.’
‘With the Albanians?’
‘They’re in the same boat.’
‘Would they do it?’
‘Against the Russians, they’re going to need it just as much as we do. If we join forces, we might just match them. If we don’t, we can’t. United we stand, divided we fall.’
Silence again.
‘It’s a big step to take,’ someone said.
‘I agree,’ Gregory said. ‘Even weird and crazy. But necessary.’
No one spoke after that.
‘OK,’ Gregory said. ‘I’ll go talk to Dino again, first thing in the morning.’
Reacher woke up in the grey gloom of night, with the clock in his head showing ten minutes to four. He had heard a sound. A car, on the street, outside and below the round window. The bite and grind of brakes, the compression of springs, the stress of tyres. A car, slowing to a stop.
He waited. Abby slept on beside him, warm, and soft, and comfortable. The old house creaked and ticked. There was a stripe of light under the door out to the hallway. The bulb over the stairs was still on. Maybe another fixture too, in a downstairs room. The kitchen or the parlour. Maybe Barton or Hogan was still up. Or both of them, shooting the shit. Ten to four in the morning. Musicians’ hours.
Out on the street the car’s engine idled quietly. The faint thrash of belts, the whirr of a fan, the rustle of pistons slapping up and down, uselessly. Then a faint muted thump from under the hood, and a sensation of new permanence.
The transmission had been shoved forward into park.
The engine turned off.
Silence again.
A door opened.
A leather sole clapped down on the sidewalk. A seat spring clicked as weight was lifted off. A second shoe joined the first. Someone stood up straight, with a tiny huff of effort.
The door closed.
Reacher slid out of bed. He found his pants. He found his shirt. He found his socks. He laced his shoes. He slipped his jacket on. Reassuring weight in the pockets.
One floor below there was a loud knock at the street door. A booming, wooden sound. Ten to four in the morning. Reacher listened. Heard nothing. In fact less than nothing. Certainly less than before. Like a hole in the air. It was the negative sound of two guys previously shooting the shit, now dumbstruck and craning around and thinking what the hell? Barton and Hogan, still up. Musicians’ hours.
Reacher waited. Deal with it, he thought. Don’t make me come downstairs. He heard one of them get to his feet. A sideways shuffle. Looking out the window, probably, through a crack in the drapes, sideways, obliquely.
He heard a low voice say, ‘Albanian.’
It was Hogan’s voice.
Barton’s voice whispered back, ‘How many?’
‘Just one.’
‘What does he want?’
‘I was out sick the day they taught predicting the future.’
‘What should we do?’
The knock came again, boom, boom, boom, heavy and wooden.
Reacher waited. Behind him Abby stirred and said, ‘What’s happening?’
‘There’s an Albanian footsoldier at the door. Almost certainly looking for us.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Eight minutes to four.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘Barton and Hogan are downstairs. They haven’t gone to bed yet. Hopefully they can deal with it.’
‘I should put some clothes on.’
‘Sad, but true.’
She dressed like he had, fast, pants, shirt, shoes. Then they waited. The knock came for a third time. Bang, boom, bang. The kind of knock you didn’t ignore. They heard Hogan offer to get it. They heard Barton accept. They heard Hogan’s footsteps across the hallway floor, solid, determined, implacable. The U.S. Marine. The drummer. Reacher wasn’t sure which counted for more.
They heard the door open.
They heard Hogan say, ‘What?’
Then a new voice. Quieter, because it was outside the structure, not inside, and because of its pitch, which was instantly two things in one, both conversational and mocking. Friendly, but not really.
The voice said, ‘Everything OK in there?’
Hogan said, ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘I saw the light inside,’ the voice said. ‘I was worried you had been woken up in the night by a misfortune or a calamity.’
It was talking low, but even so it was a big voice, full of physical power, from a big chest and a thick neck, and also full of command and arrogance and entitlement. The guy was accustomed to getting his own way. He had the kind of voice that never said please and never heard no.
Deal with it, Reacher thought. Don’t make me come downstairs.
Hogan said, ‘We’re good in here. Nothing to worry about. No misfortunes. No calamities.’
‘You sure? You know we like to help out when we can.’
‘No help required,’ Hogan said. ‘The light was on because not everyone sleeps at the same time. Not a hard concept to grasp.’
‘Hey, I know all about that,’ the Albanian guy said. ‘Here I am, working all night long, keeping the neighbourhood safe. Actually, you could help me with that, if
you like.’
Hogan didn’t answer.
The guy said, ‘Don’t you want to help me with that?’
Still no reply.
‘What goes around comes around,’ the guy said. ‘It’s that kind of thing. You help us now, we’ll help you, down the road. Could be important. Could be just what you need. Could solve a big problem. On the other hand, if you get in our way now, we could make things tough for you later. In the future, I mean. All kinds of different ways. For instance, what do you do for a living?’
‘What help?’ Hogan said.
‘We’re looking for a man and a woman. He’s older, she’s younger. She’s petite and dark-haired, he’s big and ugly.’
Deal with it, Reacher thought. Don’t make me come downstairs.
‘Why are you looking for them?’ Hogan asked.
The guy at the door said, ‘We think they’re in terrible danger. We need to warn them. For their own sake. We’re trying to help. It’s what we do.’
‘We haven’t seen them.’
‘You sure?’
‘Hundred per cent.’
‘One more thing you could do,’ the guy said.
‘What?’
‘Call us if you see them. Would you do that for us?’
No answer from Hogan.
‘It’s not much to ask,’ the guy said. ‘Either you feel like helping us out with a ten-second phone call, or you don’t, I guess. Either way is fine. It’s a free country. We’ll make a note and move right along.’
‘OK,’ Hogan said. ‘We’ll call.’
‘Thanks. Any time, night or day. Don’t delay.’
‘OK,’ Hogan said again.
‘One last thing.’
‘What?’
‘Another way you could help me out.’
‘How?’
‘Obviously I’m going to report this address as what we call in our business a place of zero concern. Targets clearly not there, just regular folks going about their regular business, and so on and so forth.’