by Lee Child
Sorenson sat down on the bed. She said, “Me? It started out OK. In fact it started out just fine. I drove back to Delfuenso’s place and got my phone and got back in my own car and called my SAC. I told him I had managed to overpower you and hand you over to the Kansas City boys. My SAC was very impressed. And he was very pleased. But I couldn’t quite let it go. I asked a few too many questions. He didn’t like that so much. I could tell. Then at one point he changed completely. He wasn’t pleased anymore. Not pleased at all. I could hear it in his voice.”
“At what point?”
“I checked the glove box when I locked up Goodman’s car. Purely out of habit. I didn’t want any unsecured weapons left in it, and who knows what a country sheriff keeps in his glove box? But as it happened there was nothing in there except a notebook and a pen. So I looked through the notebook, naturally. Turns out Sheriff Goodman was a very thorough guy. He’d been doing his research overnight, and he’d been making notes about Karen Delfuenso. I guess he figured the more the merrier, when it came to information. I guess he thought it would help, if we didn’t get her back fast, although I can’t see how it would.”
“And?”
“There was something in there that struck me as odd, so I asked my SAC about it. Except I didn’t actually ask about it. I just mentioned it, really. But whichever, that was when he went all weird on me.”
“What something was odd?”
“I took Delfuenso to be a long-term resident. Maybe not necessarily a fourth generation farm girl or anything, but I got the impression she’d been there a good long time. Certainly I figured Lucy would have been born and raised there.”
“But she wasn’t?”
“They’ve only been there seven months. The neighbor on the other side said they moved there after a divorce. So it seems to have been a much more recent divorce than I thought.”
“Are we even sure she was married in the first place?” Reacher said.
“There’s a kid.”
“That doesn’t imply marriage.”
“Why wouldn’t she have been married?”
“She copes on her own,” Reacher said. “She copes really well. Like she’s always been obliged to. And she’s smart. Looking after some guy would drive her crazy.”
“Smart women shouldn’t get married?”
“Are you married?”
She didn’t answer that. She said, “I don’t care if it was a wedding with a thousand guests on a beach in Hawaii or a one-night stand in a motel in New Jersey. The point isn’t that she was a single mom. The point is she’s a single mom who moved to town just seven months ago.”
Reacher said, “The Kansas City boys told me this operation is seven months old.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why would they lie?”
“No, I mean Delfuenso can’t be connected. How could she be? It has to be a coincidence. It has to be. Because we’ve already got one coincidence.”
Reacher said, “So now we have two coincidences?”
“Which is one too many.”
“What’s the first coincidence?”
Sorenson said, “You remember Alan King’s brother?”
“Peter King? The fister?”
“Apparently my night guy put a search on him. Just to be helpful. Right after he got off the phone with Mother Sill, the first time. DMVs, the postal service, the banks, the credit card companies. The cell phone companies, if we can get away with it, which is usually always. And the results came back this evening.”
“And what were they?”
“It looks like Peter King left Denver and moved to Kansas City.”
“When?”
“Seven months ago.”
Chapter 59
Reacher moved in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair and said, “Alan King told me his brother wasn’t speaking to him.”
Sorenson said, “Did Alan King live in Kansas City?”
“I think so.”
“Maybe he didn’t. And even if he did, maybe they never met. Kansas City is a big enough place.”
“I know,” Reacher said. “Metro area population is a million and a half.”
“Is it?”
“Area code is 816.”
“OK.”
Reacher said, “So now we have three coincidences. Seven months ago Delfuenso moved to the back of beyond in Nebraska, and simultaneously Peter King moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where his brother might or might not have been living, and where his brother might or might not have been even speaking to him, and simultaneously your central region counterterrorism people, who are based in Kansas City, Missouri, decided to start up a complex undercover operation that seems to be centered on a spot very close to Delfuenso’s new quarters in the back of beyond in Nebraska.”
“We can’t have three coincidences. That’s too many.”
“I would agree,” Reacher said. “Theoretically. But we don’t have three coincidences. We have two proven links.”
“Proven how?”
Reacher leaned forward in his chair and put his palm on the bed. He pressed down and tested the mattress for softness and yield.
He said, “First, Peter King was definitely Alan King’s brother. And Alan King was definitely a bad guy. Because an undercover FBI agent found it necessary to shoot him in the heart and burn him up in a fire. Which is a pretty basic definition for being a bad guy, wouldn’t you say?”
“And second?”
Reacher said, “Your SAC had you brought here because you found out about Delfuenso’s move seven months ago. And this place is for people who stumble on evidence of undercover operations. Therefore Delfuenso’s move was part of an undercover operation.”
“What part?”
Reacher said, “Let’s go ask her.”
Reacher stopped short of Delfuenso’s door, and Sorenson stepped up and knocked softly. There was a long minute’s delay, and then there was the rattle of a chain. The door opened a crack on dim light inside and Delfuenso’s voice whispered, “Who is it?”
Reacher figured she was whispering because her kid had just gone to sleep.
Sorenson said, “Karen Delfuenso?”
Delfuenso whispered, “Yes?”
Sorenson said, “I’m Julia Sorenson from the FBI field office in Omaha. I was working on getting you back last night.”
And then Delfuenso shushed her, quite impatiently, like Reacher knew she would. Because her ten-year-old had just gotten to sleep. Delfuenso came out and bustled Sorenson away from the door, like Reacher knew she would, over to a place more than ten feet away, where it was safe to make a noise.
“I’m sorry,” Sorenson said. “I didn’t mean to be a nuisance. I just wanted to introduce myself. I just wanted to see you were OK.”
“I’m fine,” Delfuenso said, and more than ten feet behind her Reacher slipped into the room.
He had been in the room once before, so he was safely familiar with its layout, even in the dark, and it was dark. There was no light anywhere except an orange neon bulb inside a light switch in the bathroom. Its faint glow showed Lucy asleep in the bed farther from the door. She was on her side, fetal, rolled into the blankets. The sheet was up to her chin. Her hair was spilled on the pillow, black on white. Reacher found Delfuenso’s bag on the other bed. Nearer the door, nearer the armchairs. He had seen her lift it off the chair and dump it on the bed. It had looked heavy. And the mattresses were soft and yielding. Not like trampolines. Not like drum skins. But even so the bag had bounced. Like she still had her bottle of water in it.
He stepped slow and quiet on the carpet and carried the bag to the bathroom. He spread a folded bath towel on the vanity counter, one-handed, patting it into place directly under the dim glow from the light switch. He emptied the bag on the towel. A precaution against noise, which worked to some extent, but not completely. There was no loud clattering, but there were plenty of sharp thumps.
He waited. And listened. Lucy slept on, breathing low a
nd quiet.
He raked through the things on the towel. There was all kinds of stuff. Makeup, a hairbrush, two plastic combs. A slim glass bottle of scent. Two packs of gum, both half gone. A wallet, containing three dollars and no credit cards and a seven-month-old Nebraska driver’s license. It was made out to Delfuenso at the address Reacher had visited. She was forty-one years old. There was an emery board for her fingernails, and a steakhouse toothpick still in its paper wrapper, and seventy-one cents in loose coins, and a ballpoint pen, and a house key on a chain with a crystal pendant.
He saw the pack of aspirins. There was no bottle of water. There was nothing large and heavy except a bible. A hardcover King James version, smaller than an encyclopedia, bigger than a novel. Fairly thick. Dark red cardboard on the front, dark red cardboard on the back. Gold printing on the spine, gold printing on the front. Holy Bible. It looked like it didn’t get much use. It looked like it hadn’t been opened very often.
In fact it was impossible to open. The pages were all crinkled and gummed together, by some kind of yellowish fluid, dried long ago. A spillage, possibly. Inside the bag. Pineapple juice, maybe, or orange. Or grapefruit. Something like that. Something sugary. A small carton with a straw, or a drinking cup for the kid, dumped in there and overturned.
So why keep the bible? Was there a taboo against trashing damaged bibles and replacing them? Reacher didn’t know. He was no kind of a theologian.
It was very heavy, for a book.
He used his nails and tried to separate the front cover from the first endpaper page. Not possible. It was gummed solid. Evenly, and uniformly. Reacher pictured the spilled juice, pulsing out around the hole for the straw or through the spout of the cup, flooding the bag, soaking the good book evenly and uniformly.
Not possible.
Spilled juice would leave a random stain, probably large, but it wouldn’t cover the whole book equally. Some part of it would be untouched. What got wet would swell, and the rest would stay the same. Reacher had seen books in that condition. Frozen pipes, bloodstains. Damage was never uniform.
He used one of Delfuenso’s combs and forced it end-on between the pages. He slid it up and down and levered it back and forth until he had made two fingertip-sized recesses in the pulp. Then he put the book spine-down on the vanity counter and bent over and hooked his nails in the recesses and jerked left and right.
Paper tore and the book fell open.
Everything from Exodus to Jude had been hollowed out with a razor. A custom-shaped cavity had been created. Very neat work. The cavity was roughly rectangular, maybe seven inches by six, maybe two inches deep. Not much of the paper had been left at the top and the bottom and the sides of the book. Hence the glue. Walls had been built, thin but solid. The whole thing was like a jewelry box with its lid stuck shut.
But it contained no jewelry.
The cavity was shaped and sized and contoured specifically for its current contents, which were a Glock 19 automatic pistol, and an Apple cellular telephone with matching charger, and a slim ID wallet.
The Glock 19 was a compact version of the familiar Glock 17. Four-inch barrel, smaller and lighter all around. Often considered a better fit for a woman’s hand.
Always considered easier to conceal.
It was loaded with eighteen nine-millimeter Parabellums, seventeen in the magazine and one in the chamber, ready to go. No manual safety on a Glock. Point and shoot.
The phone was switched off. Just a blank screen on the front, and a shiny black casing on the back, with a silver apple, partly bitten. Reacher had no idea how to turn the phone on. There would be a button somewhere, or a combination of buttons, to be pressed in sequence or held down for a certain small number of seconds. The charger was a neat white cube, very small, with blades for an outlet, and a long white wire tipped with a complex rectangular plug.
The ID wallet was made of fine black leather. Reacher flipped it open. It was like a tiny book in itself. The left-hand page was a colored engraving of a shield. Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. The right-hand page was a photo ID. Delfuenso’s face was on it. A little pale from the flash, a little green from fluorescent tubes overhead. But it was her. The picture was overlapped with an official seal. Department of Justice again. Holographic. The words Federal Bureau of Investigation ran side to side across the whole width of the card.
Special Agent Karen Delfuenso.
Reacher repacked the cavity and squeezed the covers down over the damage he had caused. He carried the book in his hand, slow and quiet past the sleeping girl, out through the door, toward the two women still huddled ten feet away. Sorenson was talking inanely, just burning time, and Delfuenso was looking a little exasperated and impatient with her. They both heard the scuff of Reacher’s boots on the concrete. They both turned toward him.
Reacher raised the bible and said, “Let us pray.”
Chapter 60
They left Lucy sleeping alone. Delfuenso thought it was safe enough. The whole place was secure, and she said the kid wasn’t the type who woke up in the night scared or disoriented. They went to Sorenson’s room, which was number nine. Closer than Reacher’s. Sorenson hadn’t been in it yet. She hadn’t gotten that far. She had been on her way to open it up when Reacher had called out to her in the dark.
She unlocked her door with her key and all three of them stepped inside. Reacher saw an identical version of his own billet. Two armchairs, a queen bed, two neat piles of clothing, but the feminine selection, the same as Delfuenso was wearing. No doubt the bathroom was equally provisioned with lotions and potions and towels.
Delfuenso sat down in an armchair and Reacher handed her the bible. She cradled it in her lap, with both hands on it, like it was a purse and she was afraid of bag snatchers. Sorenson sat on the bed. Her room, her entitlement. Reacher took the second armchair.
He said, “Obviously I have a million questions.”
Delfuenso said, “You’ve put us all in a very difficult situation. You should have left my bag alone. What you did was almost certainly illegal.”
Reacher said, “Grow up.”
Sorenson looked at Delfuenso and asked, “Didn’t they search you here? Or on the way here?”
Delfuenso said, “No, they didn’t.”
“Me neither,” Reacher said. “Not even a little bit.”
“Then that’s a serious deficiency,” Sorenson said. “Wouldn’t you agree? I thought Kansas City was supposed to be good at this stuff.”
Delfuenso shrugged. “I was playing the part of the random helpless victim, so I’m not surprised they gave me a pass. They should have searched Reacher, though. His position was never very clear.”
“Kansas City doesn’t know who you are?” Reacher asked.
“Of course they don’t,” Delfuenso said. “Or I wouldn’t be here in their damn prison camp, would I?”
“So who are you?”
“That’s not something I’m willing to discuss.”
“Did King and McQueen come in south from the Interstate? To the old pumping station?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because it’s the key fact here.”
“No, they came north out of Kansas.”
“How?”
“They were driven. By an accomplice.”
“Had they been there before? To that crossroads?”
“Has anyone?”
“So they never saw Sin City. They didn’t know anything about it. They didn’t know they could jack a car there. But still, that’s where they went. Why?”
Delfuenso didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “Because you were McQueen’s emergency contact. That’s why. In case things went wrong. But you weren’t put there by Kansas City. Because Kansas City doesn’t know who you are. So who put you there?”
Delfuenso didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “Someone else put you there, obviously. Someone higher up the food chain, clearly, to be going over Kansas City’
s head in secret. I’m guessing the Hoover Building. Some big cheese in a suit, all burdened down with worries.”
Delfuenso said nothing.
Reacher said, “Which begs the question, what exactly was the nature of those worries?”
Delfuenso said, “Were you really a military cop?”
Reacher didn’t answer.
Sorenson said, “Yes, he was. I’ve seen his file. He was decorated six times. Silver Star, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Soldier’s Medal, Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.”
“We all got medals,” Reacher said. “Don’t read too much into it.”
Delfuenso said, “There’s a problem with Kansas City.”
Reacher said, “What kind of a problem?”
“Poor performance.”
“How poor?”
“They’re getting people killed.”
Delfuenso ran it down for them. She spoke for ten minutes straight. The central region was always busy. There were valuable targets within its jurisdiction. Important civilian infrastructure, and military establishments, including factory sites. There was always terrorist chatter, too, both domestic and foreign, on the internet, some of which was aimed at that infrastructure and those establishments and factories. Most of which was fantasy dreaming or empty boasts or idle wouldn’t-that-be-cool speculation. But some of it was real. Enough of it to worry about, anyway.
So the Kansas City boys went proactive, and got into a sequence of four undercover penetrations. They got agents inside four separate targets. The operations were textbook smooth at the beginning. Then they fell apart. None of them produced intelligence. Two of them produced dead undercover agents.
But still. Notwithstanding. The central region was always busy. The internet chatter never let up. Then one day there was a new voice. It talked about liquid measure of some kind. Gallons, hundreds of gallons, thousands of gallons. With a regular emphasis on Nebraska’s water table. No one knew what any of it meant. No one could decipher any specific intent. But the chatter intensified daily. Thousands of gallons, hundreds of thousands, millions of gallons, and eventually tens of millions.