by Lee Child
“One at a time?”
“No, we should call the newspapers.”
“Would they believe us?”
“If we were convincing.”
“Would they print the story?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Who knows what goes on with newspapers now? Maybe they would check with the government about a thing like this. Maybe the government would tell them to sit on it.”
“What about freedom of the press?”
Lee said, “Yes, I remember that.”
“So who the hell will help us?”
“Sansom,” I said. “Sansom will help us. He’s got the biggest investment here.”
“Sansom is the government. He had his own guy trailing Susan.”
“Because he has a lot to lose. We can use that.” I took Leonid’s phone out of my pocket and dropped it on the bed next to Theresa Lee. “Text Docherty in the morning. Get the number for the Cannon House Office Building in D.C. Call Sansom’s office and demand to speak with him personally. Tell him you’re a police officer in New York and that you’re with me. Tell him we know his guy was on the train. Then tell him we know the DSM wasn’t for the VAL rifle. Tell him we know there’s more.”
Chapter 49
Theresa Lee picked up the phone and held it for a moment like it was a rare and precious jewel. Then she put it on the night stand and asked, “What makes you think there’s more?”
I said, “Overall there has to be more. Sansom won four medals, not just one. He was a regular go-to guy. He must have done all kinds of things.”
“Like what?”
“Whatever needed doing. For whoever needed it done. Not just the army. Delta guys were loaned out, from time to time. To the CIA, on occasion.”
“To do what?”
“Covert interventions. Coups. Assassinations.”
“Marshal Tito died in 1980. In Yugoslavia. You think Sansom did that?”
“No, I think Tito got sick. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a backup plan, in case he stayed healthy.”
“Brezhnev died in 1982. In Russia. Then Andropov, pretty soon after that. Then Chernenko, real quick. It was like an epidemic.”
“What are you? A historian?”
“Amateur. But whatever, all that led to Gorbachev, and progress. You think that was us? You think that was Sansom?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“But whatever, none of that kind of stuff relates to March of 1983 in Afghanistan.”
“But think about it. Stumbling into a Soviet sniper team in the dark was a totally random chance. Would they have sent a go-to ace like Sansom walking around in the hills, hoping for the best? A hundred times out of a hundred-and-one he would have come up empty. That’s a massive risk for very little reward. That’s no kind of mission planning. A mission needs an achievable objective.”
“A lot of them fail.”
“Of course they do. But they all start out with a realistic target. More realistic than blundering around in a thousand square miles of empty mountains hoping for a random face-to-face encounter. So there must have been something else going on.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“There’s more,” I said. “And it’s not so vague. People have been talking to me for days. And I’ve been listening. Some of what I heard doesn’t make much sense. Those federal guys snarled me up at the Watergate in D.C. I asked them what was going on. Their reaction was weird. It was like the sky was about to fall. It was way out of proportion for some technical trespass twenty-five years ago.”
“Geopolitics isn’t simple.”
“I agree. And I’m the first to admit I’m no kind of an expert. But even so it seemed way over the top.”
“That’s still vague.”
“I spoke to Sansom in D.C. At his office. He seemed sour about the whole thing. Gloomy, and kind of troubled.”
“It’s election season.”
“But grabbing up the rifle was kind of cool, wasn’t it? Nothing to be ashamed of. It was all about what the army used to call dash and daring. So his reaction was wrong.”
“Still vague.”
“He knew the sniper’s name. Grigori Hoth. From his dog tags. I figured he had the tags as souvenirs. He said, no, those tags were locked up with the after-action reports and everything else. It was like a slip of the tongue. And everything else? What did that mean?”
Lee said nothing.
I said, “We talked about the fate of the sniper and the spotter. Sansom said he had no silenced weapons. Which was like another slip of the tongue. Delta would never set up for clandestine nighttime incursions without silenced weapons. They’re particular about stuff like that. Which suggests to me that the whole VAL episode was an accidental byproduct of something else entirely. I thought the rifle was the story. But this thing is like an iceberg. Most of it is still hidden.”
Lee said nothing.
I said, “Then we talked about the geopolitics. He saw a danger, for sure. He’s worried about Russia, or the Russian Federation, or whatever it is they call themselves now. He thinks they’re unstable. He said things could blow up big, if the Korengal part of the story gets out. You hear that? The Korengal part of the story? It was like a third slip of the tongue. It was effectively a direct admission that there’s more. Direct from the horse’s mouth.”
Lee didn’t answer. Jacob Mark asked, “What kind of more?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s information-intensive. Right from the start Lila Hoth was looking for a USB memory. And the feds assume there’s one out there somewhere. They said their task is to recover the real memory stick. Real, because they took a look at the one I bought and assumed it was a decoy. They said, it’s empty and it’s too small anyway. Hear that? Too small? Which means there are some big files in play. Lots of information.”
“But Susan didn’t have anything with her.”
“True. But everybody assumes she did.”
“What kind of information?”
“I have no idea. Except that Springfield talked to me here in New York. Sansom’s security guy, at the Sheraton. In a quiet corridor. He was very uptight. He was warning me off. He chose a specific metaphor. He said, you can’t afford to turn over the wrong rock.”
“So?”
“What happens when you turn over a rock?”
“Things crawl out.”
“Exactly. Present tense. Things crawl out. This is not about things just lying there, that died twenty-five years ago. This is about things that are squirming and wriggling right now. This is about things that are alive today.”
I saw Theresa Lee thinking it through. She glanced at the phone on the night table. Her eyes narrowed. I guessed she was rehearsing the morning call to Sansom. She said, “He’s kind of careless, isn’t he? He made three slips of the tongue.”
I said, “He was a Delta officer the best part of seventeen years.”
“And?”
“You don’t last seventeen days if you’re careless.”
“So?”
“He seems very engaged to me. He’s aware of everything to do with his campaign. How he looks, what he says, how he travels. Every last little implication.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think he’s careless.”
“He made three slips of the tongue.”
“Did he? I’m not so sure. I wonder if he was setting a trap instead. He read my record. I was a good MP, and pretty close to his generation. I think maybe he was looking for help, any old place he could get it.”
“You think he was recruiting you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I think maybe he was dropping a couple of breadcrumbs, and waiting to see if I would follow them.”
“Because?”
“Because he wants the lid back on, and he’s not sure who can do it for him.”
“He doesn’t trust the DoD guys?”
“Would you?”
“That’s not
my world. Would you trust them?”
“About as far as I can spit.”
“Doesn’t he trust Springfield?”
“With his life. But Springfield is just one guy. And Sansom has a big problem. So maybe he figures if some other guy is in, he might as well stay in. The more the merrier.”
“So he’s bound to help us.”
“Not bound,” I said. “His jurisdiction is strictly limited. But he might be inclined. Which is why I want you to call him.”
“Why don’t you call him?”
“Because I’m not going to be here at start of business tomorrow.”
“You’re not?”
“I’ll meet you at ten, in Madison Square Park. A couple of blocks south of here. Be careful getting there.”
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Where?”
“To look for Lila Hoth.”
“You won’t find her.”
“Probably not. But she’s got a crew. Maybe they’ll find me. I’m sure they’re out looking for me. And they’ve got my picture.”
“You’re going to use yourself as bait?”
“Whatever works.”
“I’m sure the cops are out looking for you too. And the Defense Department, and the FBI. Maybe people we’ve never even heard of.”
“Busy night all around.”
“Take care, OK?”
“Always.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Now.”
Chapter 50
New York City. One o’clock in the morning. The best place and the worst place in the world to be hunted. The streets were still warm. Traffic was light. Whole ten-second intervals went by with no cars on Madison. There were still people around. Some of them were asleep, in doorways or on benches. Some of them were walking, either purposefully or aimlessly. I took the aimless route. I chose 30th Street and crossed to Park, and then Lex. I was never trained in the art of staying invisible. They picked smaller guys for that. The normal-sized people. They took one look at me and gave up on the whole proposition. They assumed that a guy my size would always be too easy to make. But I get by. I taught myself a few techniques. Some of them are counterintuitive. Night is better than day, because places are lonelier. When places are lonelier, I stand out less, not more. Because when people look for me, they look for a big guy. And size is easier to judge when there are handy comparisons all around. Put me in a crowd of fifty civilians, and I stand out, literally head and shoulders above the rest. On my own, people are less sure. No benchmarks. People are bad at judging height in isolation. We know that from experiments with eyewitness testimony. Stage an incident, ask for first impressions, and the same guy can be described as anywhere between five-eight and six-four. People see, but they don’t look.
Except for people trained to look.
I paid a lot of attention to cars. No way to find an individual in New York City except by cruising the streets. The place is just too big for any alternative method. The NYPD’s blue and white cruisers were easy to spot. Their light bars made a distinctive silhouette even far in the distance. Every time I saw one coming I paused in the nearest doorway and laid myself down. Just another homeless guy. Unconvincing in winter, because I didn’t have a mound of old blankets over me. But the weather was still hot. The real homeless people were still in T-shirts.
Unmarked cop cars were harder to make. Their front-end silhouettes were the same as everything else’s, which was the point. But domestic politics and law enforcement budgets restrict choice to a specific handful of makes and models. And most individual vehicles are characteristically neglected. They’re dirty, they sag, they wallow.
Except for unmarked federal cars. Same makes, same models, but often new and clean and waxed and polished. Easy enough to spot, but not easy to distinguish from certain car service rides. Limousine companies use some of the same makes and models. Crown Vics, and their Mercury equivalents. And livery drivers keep their cars clean. I spent some time horizontal in doorways only to see T&LC plates flash past. Taxi and Limousine Commission. Which frustrated me, until I remembered Theresa Lee’s comment about the NYPD’s counterterrorism squad cruising around in fake cabs. After that I erred on the side of caution.
I figured Lila Hoth’s crew would have rentals. Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, or whoever else was new on the scene. Again, a fairly specific handful of makes and models, mostly domestic pieces-of-shit, but new and clean and well maintained. I saw plenty of vehicles that fit the bill, and plenty that didn’t. I took all reasonable precautions to stay out of law enforcement’s way, and I made all reasonable efforts to let Lila Hoth’s people see me. The late hour helped. It simplified things. It categorized the population. Innocent bystanders were mostly home in bed.
I walked for half an hour, but nothing happened.
Until one-thirty in the morning.
Until I looped around to 22nd and Broadway.
Chapter 51
By chance I saw the girl with the rat terrier again. She was walking south on Broadway, heading for 22nd. The little guy was peeing on some posts and ignoring others. I passed them by and the dog noticed me and barked. I turned around to reassure it that I was no kind of a major danger and I saw in the corner of my eye a black Crown Vic come through the 23rd Street light. Clean, shiny, the spike of needle antennas on the trunk lid shown up by the headlights of a car thirty yards behind it.
It slowed to a walk.
Broadway is double-wide on that block. Six lanes, all headed south, divided after the light by a short pedestrian refuge in the middle. I was on the left-hand sidewalk. Next to me, an apartment house. Beyond that, retail stores. On my right, six lanes away, the Flatiron Building. Beyond that, retail stores.
Dead ahead, a subway entrance.
The girl with the dog turned left behind me and entered the apartment building. I saw a doorman behind a desk. The Crown Vic stopped in the second of the six lanes. The car behind it pulled past and the wash of its headlights showed me two guys silhouetted in the Crown Vic’s front seats. They were sitting still. Maybe checking a photograph, maybe calling in for instructions, maybe calling for backup.
I sat down on a low brick wall that ran around a planted area in front of the apartment house. The subway entrance was ten feet away.
The Crown Vic stayed where it was.
Far south of me the Broadway sidewalk was wide. Adjacent to the retail operations it was cast from concrete. The half next to the curb was a long subway grate. The subway entrance ten feet from me was a narrow staircase. The south end of the 23rd Street station. The N and the R and the W trains. The uptown platform.
I made a bet with myself that it was a HEET entrance. A high entry-exit turnstile. Not a money wager. Something far more important. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I waited.
The guys in the car sat still.
At one-thirty in the morning the subway was well into its nighttime hours. Twenty-minute gaps between trains. I heard no rumbling or roaring from below. There was no rush of air. The trash on the distant sidewalk grates lay still.
The Crown Vic turned its front wheels. I heard the hiss of its power steering pump and the squelch of its tires on the road. It turned sharply across four lanes and straightened through a tight S and stopped on the curb alongside me.
The two guys stayed inside.
I waited.
It was a federal car, for sure. A pool car. Standard LX specification, not the Police Interceptor model. Black paint, plastic wheel covers. The sidewalk wasn’t busy, but it wasn’t deserted, either. People were hurrying home alone, or strolling slower in couples. There were clubs on the cross streets to the south. I could tell, because small random knots of dazed people appeared from time to time and craned out into the traffic lanes, looking for cruising cabs.
The guys in the car moved. One tilted right and one tilted left, the way two people do in a car when they are both groping for the interior door handle
s at the same time.
I watched the subway grates in the sidewalk, forty yards south of me.
Nothing doing. Still air. No moving trash.
The two guys got out of their car. They were both in dark suits. Their jackets were creased low down in back, from driving. The passenger came around and stood with the driver in the gutter close to the Crown Vic’s hood. They were level with me, maybe twenty feet away across the width of the sidewalk. They had their shields already clipped on their breast pockets. FBI, I guessed, although I wasn’t close enough to be sure. All those civilian shields look the same to me. The passenger called, “Federal agents.” As if he needed to.
I didn’t respond.
They stayed in the gutter. Didn’t step up on the curb. A subliminal defense mechanism, I guessed. The curb was like a tiny rampart. It offered no real protection, but once they breached it they would have to commit. They would have to act, and they weren’t sure how that would go.
The subway grates stayed still and silent.
The passenger called, “Jack Reacher?”
I didn’t answer. When all else fails, play dumb.
The driver called, “Stay right where you are.”
My shoes were made of rubber, and much less tight and firm than I am used to. But even so I felt the first faint pre-echo of subway rumble through them. A train, either starting downtown from 28th Street, or heading uptown from 14th. A fifty-fifty chance. A downtown train was no good to me. I was on the wrong side of Broadway. An uptown train was what I wanted.
I watched the distant sidewalk grates.
The trash lay still.
The passenger called, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I put one hand in my pocket. Partly to locate my Metrocard, and partly to see what would happen next. I knew that Quantico training placed great emphasis on public safety. Agents are instructed to draw their weapons only in situations of dire emergency. Many never draw their weapons at all, all the way from graduation to retirement, not even once. There were innocent people all around. An apartment house lobby directly behind me. The field of fire was high and wide and handsome, and full of collateral tragedies just waiting to happen. Passersby, traffic, babies asleep in low-floor bedrooms.