by Lee Child
“OK, that sounds fair.”
Then her cell phone chimed. She answered it and listened and looked around.
“He’s in the plaza,” she said. “He can see us but he doesn’t want to walk right up to us. We have to go to a coffee shop on Second. He’ll follow.”
The coffee shop was one of those mostly brown places that survive on equal parts counter trade, booth trade, and to-go coffee in cardboard cups with Greek decoration on them. Pauling led Reacher to a booth all the way in back and sat so she could watch the door. Reacher slid in next to her. He never sat any other way than with his back to a wall. Long habit, even in a place with plenty of mirrors, which the coffee shop had. They were tinted bronze and made the narrow unit look wide. Made everyone look tan, like they were just back from the beach. Pauling waved to the waitress and mouthed coffee and held up three fingers. The waitress came over and dumped three heavy brown mugs on the table and filled them from a Bunn flask.
Reacher took a sip. Hot, strong, and generic.
He made the Pentagon guy before he was even in through the door. There was no doubt about what he was. Army, but not necessarily a fighting man. Maybe just a bureaucrat. Dull. Not old, not young, corn-colored buzz cut, cheap blue wool suit, white broadcloth button-down shirt, striped tie, good shoes polished to a mirror shine. A different kind of uniform. It was the kind of outfit a captain or a major would wear to his sister-in-law’s second wedding. Maybe this guy had bought it for that very purpose, long before a spell of résumé-building temporary detached duty in New York City appeared in his future.
The guy paused inside the door and looked around. Not looking for us, Reacher thought. Looking for anyone else who knows him. If he sees somebody, he’ll fake a phone call and turn around and leave. Doesn’t want any awkward questions later. He’s not so dumb after all.
Then he thought: Pauling’s not so dumb, either. She knows people who can get in trouble just by being seen with the wrong folks.
But the guy evidently saw nothing to worry about. He walked on back and slid in opposite Pauling and Reacher and after a brief glance at each of their faces he centered his gaze between their heads and kept his eyes on the mirror. Up close Reacher saw that he was wearing a black subdued-order crossed-pistols lapel pin and that he had mild scarring on one side of his face. Maybe grenade or IED shrapnel at maximum range. Maybe he had been a fighting man. Or maybe it was a childhood shotgun accident.
“I don’t have much for you,” the guy said. “Private-enterprise Americans fighting overseas are rightly considered to be very bad news, especially when they go fight in Africa. So this stuff is very compartmentalized and need-to-know and it was before my time, so I simply don’t know very much about it. So all I can give you is what you can probably guess anyway.”
“Where was it?” Reacher asked.
“I’m not even sure of that. Burkina Faso or Mali, I think. One of those small West African places. Frankly there are so many of them in trouble it’s hard to keep track. It was the usual deal. Civil war. A scared government, a bunch of rebels ready to come out of the jungle. An unreliable military. So the government pays through the nose and buys what protection it can on the international market.”
“Does one of those countries speak French?”
“As their official language? Both of them. Why?”
“I saw some of the money. In plastic wrap printed in French. Banque Centrale, Central Bank.”
“How much?”
“More than you or I would earn in two lifetimes.”
“U.S. dollars?”
Reacher nodded. “Lots of them.”
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Did it work this time?”
“No,” the guy said. “The story that did the rounds was that Edward Lane took the money and ran. Can’t blame him for running, I guess. They were hopelessly outnumbered and strategically weak.”
“But not everyone got out.”
The guy nodded. “It seemed that way. But getting information out of those places is like trying to get a radio signal from the dark side of the moon. It’s mostly silence and static. And when it isn’t, it’s faint and garbled. So usually we rely on the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. And eventually we got a solid report that two Americans had been captured. A year later we got names. It was Knight and Hobart. Recon Marines back in the day, mixed records.”
“It surprises me that they stayed alive.”
“The rebels won. They became the new government. They emptied the jails, because the jails were full of their buddies. But a government needs full jails, to keep the population scared. So the old good guys became the new bad guys. Anyone who had worked for the old regime was suddenly in big trouble. And a couple of Americans were like trophies. So they were kept alive. But they suffered very cruelly. The Doctors Without Borders report was horrific. Appalling. Mutilation for sport was a fact of life.”
“Details?”
“I guess there are lots of bad things a man can do with a knife.”
“You didn’t think about a rescue attempt?”
“You’re not listening,” the guy said. “The State Department can’t admit that there are bunches of renegade American mercenaries running wild in Africa. And like I told you, the rebels became the new government. They’re in charge now. We have to be nice to them. Because all those places have got stuff that we want. There’s oil, and diamonds, and uranium. Alcoa needs tin and bauxite and copper. Halliburton wants to get in there and make a buck. Corporations from Texas want to get in there and run those same damn jails.”
“Anything about what happened in the end?”
“It’s sketchy, but you can join the dots. One died in captivity, but the other one got out, according to the Red Cross. Some kind of humanitarian gesture that the Red Cross pushed for, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the coup. They let out a whole bunch. End of story. That’s all the news there is from Africa. One died and one got out, relatively recently. But then, if you do some detective work and jump to the INS, you find a lone individual entering the U.S. from Africa shortly afterward on Red Cross documentation. And then, if you jump to the Veterans Administration, there’s a report of someone just back from Africa getting the kind of remedial outpatient care that might be consistent with tropical diseases and some of the mutilations that DWB reported on.”
Reacher asked, “Which one got out?”
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “All I’ve heard is that one got out and the other didn’t.”
“I need more than that.”
“I told you, the initial event was before my time. I’m not specifically in the loop. All I’ve got is water-cooler stuff.”
“I need his name,” Reacher said. “And I need his address, from the VA.”
“That’s a tall order,” the guy said. “I would have to go way beyond my remit. And I would need a very good reason to do that.”
“Look at me,” Reacher said.
The guy took his eyes off the mirror and glanced at Reacher.
Reacher said, “Ten-sixty-two.”
No reaction.
Reacher said, “So don’t be an asshole. Pony up, OK?”
The guy looked at the mirror again. Nothing in his face.
“I’ll call Ms. Pauling’s cell,” he said. “When, I don’t know. I just can’t say. It could be days. But I’ll get what I can as soon as I can.”
Then he slid out of the booth and walked straight to the door. Opened it and made a right turn and was lost to sight. Lauren Pauling breathed out.
“You pushed him,” she said. “You were a little rude there.”
“But he’s going to help.”
“Why? What was that ten-sixty-two thing?”
“He was wearing a military police lapel pin. The crossed pistols. MP is his day job. Ten-sixty-two is MP radio code for fellow officer in trouble, requests urgent assistance. So he’ll help. He has to. Because if one MP won’t help another, who the hell will?”
“Then that’s a lucky break. Maybe you won’t have to do it all the hard way.”
“Maybe. But he’s going to be slow. He seemed a little timid. Me, I’d have busted straight into somebody’s file cabinet. But he’s going to go through channels and ask nicely.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s getting promoted and you didn’t.”
“A timid guy like that won’t get promoted. He’s probably terminal at major.”
“He’s already a Brigadier General,” Pauling said. “Actually.”
“That guy?” Reacher stared at the door, as if it might have retained an after-image. “He was kind of young, wasn’t he?”
“No, you’re kind of old,” Pauling said. “Everything is comparative. But putting a Brigadier General on it shows how seriously the U.S. is taking this mercenary stuff.”
“It shows how seriously we’re whitewashing it.”
Silence for a moment.
“Mutilation for sport,” Pauling said. “Sounds horrible.”
“Sure does.”
Silence again. The waitress came over and offered refills of coffee. Pauling declined, Reacher accepted. Said, “NYPD found an unexplained body in the river this morning. White male, about forty. Up near the boat basin. Shot once. Lane got a call.”
“Taylor?”
“Almost certainly.”
“So what next?”
“We work with what we’ve got,” Reacher said. “We adopt the theory that Knight or Hobart came home with a grudge.”
“How do we proceed?”
“With hard work,” Reacher said. “I’m not going to hold my breath on getting anything from the Pentagon. However many scars and stars he’s got, that guy’s a bureaucrat at heart.”
“Want to talk it through? I was an investigator once. A good one, too. I thought so anyway. Until, you know, what happened.”
“Talking won’t help. I need to think.”
“So think out loud. What doesn’t fit? What’s out of place? What surprised you in any way at all?”
“The initial takedown. That doesn’t work at all.”
“What else?”
“Everything. What surprises me is that I can’t get anywhere with anything. There’s either something wrong with me, or there’s something wrong with this whole situation.”
“That’s too big,” Pauling said. “Start small. Name one thing that surprised you.”
“Is this what you did? In the FBI? In your brainstorming sessions?”
“Absolutely. Didn’t you?”
“I was an MP. I was lucky to find anyone with a brain to storm.”
“Seriously. Name one thing that surprised you.”
Reacher sipped his coffee. She’s right, he thought. There’s always something out of context even before you know what the context ought to be.
“Just one thing,” Pauling said again. “At random.”
Reacher said, “I got out of the black BMW after Burke had switched the bag into the Jaguar and I was surprised how fast the guy was into the driver’s seat. I figured I would have time to stroll around the corner and set up a position. But he was right there, practically on top of me. A few seconds, maximum. I barely got a glimpse of him.”
“So what does that mean?”
“That he was waiting right there on the street.”
“But he wouldn’t risk that. If he was Knight or Hobart, Burke would have recognized him in a heartbeat.”
“Maybe he was in a doorway.”
“Three times running? He used that same fireplug on three separate occasions. At three different times of day. Late night, early morning, rush hour. And he might be memorable, depending on the mutilation.”
“The guy I saw wasn’t memorable at all. He was just a guy.”
“Whatever, it was still hard to find appropriate cover each time. I’ve done that job. Many times. Including one special night five years ago.”
Reacher said, “Give yourself a break.”
But he was thinking: Appropriate cover.
He remembered bouncing around in the back of the car listening to the nightmare voice. Remembered thinking: It’s right there on the same damn fireplug?
The same damn fireplug.
Appropriate cover.
He put his coffee cup down, gently, slowly, carefully, and then he picked up Pauling’s left hand with his right. Brought it to his lips and kissed it tenderly. Her fingers were cool and slim and fragrant. He liked them.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
“For what?”
“He used a fireplug three times running. Why? Because a fireplug almost always guarantees a stretch of empty curb, that’s why. Because of the parking prohibition. No parking next to a hydrant. Everyone knows that. But he used the same fireplug each time. Why? There are plenty to choose from. There’s at least one on every block. So why that one? Because he liked that one, that’s why. But why did he like that one? What makes a person like one fireplug more than another?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Reacher said. “They’re all the same. They’re mass-produced. They’re identical. What this guy had was a vantage point that he liked. The vantage point came first, and the fireplug was merely the nearest one to it. The one most visible from it. As you so correctly pointed out, he needed cover that was reliable and unobtrusive, late night, early morning, and rush hour. And potentially he might have needed to be there for extended periods. As it happened Gregory was punctual both times, but he could have hit traffic. And who knew where Burke was going to be when he got the call on the car phone? Who knew how long he might take to get down there? So wherever this guy was waiting, he was comfortable doing it.”
“But does this help us?”
“You bet your ass it does. It’s the first definite link in the chain. It was a fixed, identifiable location. We need to get down to Sixth Avenue and figure out where it was. Someone might have seen him there. Someone might even know who he is.”
CHAPTER 29
Reacher and Pauling caught a cab on Second Avenue and it took them all the way south to Houston Street and then west to Sixth. They got out on the southeast corner and glanced back at the empty sky where the Twin Towers used to be and then they turned north together into a warm breeze full of trash and grit.
“So show me the famous fireplug,” Pauling said.
They walked north until they came to it, right there on the right-hand sidewalk in the middle of the block. Fat, short, squat, upright, chipped dull paint, flanked by two protective metal posts four feet apart. The curb next to it was empty. Every other legal parking spot on the block was taken. Pauling stood near the hydrant and pirouetted a slow circle. Looked east, north, west, south.
“Where would a military mind want to be?” she asked.
Reacher recited, “A soldier knows that a satisfactory observation point provides an unobstructed view to the front and adequate security to the flanks and the rear. He knows it provides protection from the elements and concealment of the observers. He knows it offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
“What would the duration be?”
“Say an hour maximum, each time.”
“How did it work, the first two times?”
“He watched Gregory park, and then he followed him down to Spring Street.”
“So he wasn’t waiting inside the derelict building?”
“Not if he was working alone.”
“But he still used the back door.”
“On the second occasion, at least.”
“Why not the front door?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have we definitely decided he was working alone?”
“Only one of them came back alive.”
Pauling turned the same slow circle. “So where was his observation point?”
“West of here,” Reacher said. “He will have wanted a full-on view.”
“Across the st
reet?”
Reacher nodded. “Middle of the block, or not too far north or south of it. Nothing too oblique. Range, maybe up to a hundred feet. Not more.”
“He could have used binoculars. Like Patti Joseph does.”
“He would still need a good angle. Like Patti has. She’s more or less directly across the street.”
“So set some limits.”
“A maximum forty-five-degree arc. That’s twenty-some degrees north to twenty-some degrees south. Maximum radius, about a hundred feet.”
Pauling turned to face the curb square-on. She spread her arms out straight and forty-five degrees apart and held her hands flat and upright like mimed karate chops. Scoped out the view. A forty-five-degree bite out of a circle with a radius of a hundred feet gave her an arc of about seventy-eight feet to look at. More than three standard twenty-foot Greenwich Village storefronts, less than four. A total of five establishments to consider. The center three were possibilities. The one to the north and the one to the south were marginal. Reacher stood directly behind her and looked over her head. Her left hand was pointing at a flower store. Then came his new favorite café. Then came a picture framer. Then a double-fronted wine store, wider than the others. Her right hand was pointing at a vitamin shop.
“A flower store would be no good,” she said. “It offers a wall behind him and a window in front of him but it wouldn’t be open at eleven-forty at night.”
Reacher said nothing.
“The wine store was probably open,” she said. “But it wouldn’t have been at seven in the morning.”
Reacher said, “Can’t hang around in a flower store or a wine store for an hour at a time. Neither one of them offers a reasonable likelihood of undisturbed occupation for the full duration of the operation.”
“Same with all of them, then,” she said. “Except the café. The café would have been open all three times. And you can sit for an hour in a café.”
“The café would have been pretty risky. Three separate lengthy spells, someone would have remembered him. They remembered me after one cup of coffee.”
“Were the sidewalks crowded when you were here?”
“Fairly.”
“So maybe he was just out on the street. Or in a doorway. In the shadows. He might have risked it. He was on the other side from where the cars were parking.”