The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  “Privately, then,” Delfuenso said. “Strictly between us.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  “You owe me,” Delfuenso said.

  “Then I get a ride to the cloverleaf?”

  “Deal.”

  “It’s the law of unintended consequences,” Reacher said.

  “In what way?”

  “It’s a bank,” Reacher said.

  “Wadiah is a banking organization,” Reacher said. “The United States has done a pretty good job of shutting down terrorist banking, all over the world. The bad guys can’t move money anywhere, and they can’t keep money anywhere. So they had to invent an alternative. A parallel system. I guess a bunch of entrepreneurs spotted an opening. Some Americans, some Syrians. Wadiah is the Arabic word for safekeeping. It also means a type of Islamic bank account. As in, you put money in it, and they keep that money safe for you.”

  “There’s money in that building?” Delfuenso said. “Where?”

  “There’s no money in any bank. Not in yours, not in mine. Not really, apart from a few bucks in a drawer. Most money is purely theoretical. It’s all in computers, backed by trust and confidence. Sometimes they have gold in a vault downstairs, to make themselves look serious. You know, to suggest capital reserves, like in the Fed in New York, or Fort Knox.”

  “The nuclear waste?” Delfuenso said. “It’s a capital reserve? Their version of the gold in Fort Knox? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Exactly,” Reacher said. “It sits there and backs their currency. Which they invented. They don’t deal in dollars or pounds or euros or yen. Remember the on-line chatter? They were talking about gallons. That’s what they call their currency unit. They buy and sell in gallons. This bomb costs a hundred gallons, that bomb costs five hundred gallons. Wadiah keeps track of the deals. They take deposits, they process payments, they shuffle balances from one account to another, they make a profit from their fees. Like any bank. Except they don’t use computers, because we can hack computers. It’s all on paper. Which is why McQueen wouldn’t let me burn the place down. Because you guys need names and addresses. It’s like a regular terrorist encyclopedia in there.”

  Delfuenso looked at McQueen. She said, “Is he right?”

  McQueen said, “Apart from one minor point.”

  “Which is?”

  “Those tanks are empty. They’re completely harmless. They were built but never used. They’re surplus. That’s why they’re in there. Surplus equipment in a surplus building.”

  “Did Wadiah know they were empty?”

  “Sure,” McQueen said. “Not that they ever admitted it to their clients.”

  Delfuenso smiled, just briefly.

  “I’m living the dream,” she said. “I just shot a couple of crooked bankers.”

  Delfuenso started the car again and rolled slowly south. Reacher sprawled in the back. Delfuenso and McQueen talked in the front, professionally, one agent to another, assessing the operation, evaluating the result. They ran through all the details, from the inside perspective, and from the outside. She told him about Sorenson. They agreed her fate was the only item in the debit column. Other than that they agreed the outcome was more than satisfactory. Spectacular, even. A major score. A treasure trove of information, and a complex system dismantled. Then McQueen told her the only remaining loose end was the identity of the big boss. Not Peter King, as previously thought. Delfuenso blinked and stopped the car on a lonely curb in the middle of nowhere.

  She said, “I got some news from Quantico. When I called them about Whiteman. We heard from the State Department again. But not from their PR people this time. I think this one is genuine.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They have no staffer named Lester L. Lester, Jr. Never did. They never heard of him.”

  “CIA?”

  “Likewise. Never heard of him. And we can believe them. Because right now all their cards are on the table. They’re depending on us to keep quiet about the guy in the old pumping station.”

  “Who was he?”

  “He had worked in Pakistan and all over the Middle East. Except he wasn’t running agents. They were running him. He had gone native. He was Wadiah’s mole inside Langley.”

  Delfuenso moved off the curb and started south again.

  McQueen said, “Why did he attack us?”

  “He attacked you personally. He had your name. Kansas City’s security is poor, and the CIA watches what we do. They knew we had a mole inside Wadiah. Their mole reported back. The big boss told him to deal with you. So he lured you to a remote location for a meaningless meeting. Simple as that.”

  “You did well,” Reacher said, from the back seat. “Fast reactions. The smart money would have been on the other guy.”

  McQueen said, “Thank you.”

  “The forehead thing was a bit retro, though.”

  “It was the way it came out. That’s all. I bent his arm and grabbed the knife, and the blade ended up pretty high, so I thought, why the hell not? Just for old times’ sake.”

  They came off Route 65 where it turned east, onto the small rural road, ready to cut the corner back to the Interstate exit. They passed the Civil War battlefield site, where Americans had fired cannons at Americans for nine long hours. McQueen turned in his seat and looked at Reacher and said, “One last thing.”

  Reacher said, “What?”

  “Tell me how you talk for a minute without using the letter A.”

  Delfuenso said, “You were asleep.”

  McQueen said, “I haven’t slept for seven months.”

  Reacher said, “Easy. Just start counting. One, two, three, four, five, six. And so on. You don’t hit a letter A until you get to a hundred and one. You can even do it real fast and still get nowhere near ninety-nine inside a minute.”

  Delfuenso eased to a stop next to a ragged grassy shoulder. No one spoke. No doubt the FBI had appropriate banter for the occasion. The army sure did. But private jokes are private. So they all sat quiet for a minute. Then Reacher got out and walked away, without looking back, past the first ramp west toward Independence and Kansas City, and onward over the bridge to the eastbound ramp. He put one foot on the shoulder and one in the traffic lane, and he stuck out his thumb, and he smiled and tried to look friendly.

  For Jane,

  standing by the major oak

  No one knows suspense like

  #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child.

  And there’s no bigger name in suspense

  than Jack Reacher.

  If you enjoyed A Wanted Man,

  please keep reading for the

  Jack Reacher short story

  “Deep Down”

  Deep Down

  Reacher’s designated handler told him it wasn’t going to be easy. There were going to be difficulties. Numerous and various. A real challenge. The guy had no kind of a bedside manner. Normally handlers started with the good news.

  Maybe there isn’t any, Reacher thought.

  The handler was an Intelligence colonel named Cornelius Christopher, but that was the only thing wrong with him. He looked like a decent guy. Despite the fancy name he seemed to have turned out fairly plain and pragmatic. Reacher would have liked him, except he had never met him before. Going undercover with a handler you never met before led to inefficiency. Or worse.

  Christopher asked, “How much did they tell you yesterday?”

  Reacher said, “I was in Frankfurt yesterday. Which is in Germany. No one told me anything. Except to get on a plane to Dulles, and then report to this office.”

  “I see,” Christopher said.

  “What should they have told me?”

  “You really know nothing about this?”

  “Some local trouble with staff officers.”

  “So they did tell you something.”

  “No one told me anything. But I’m an investigator. I do this stuff for a living. And some things are fairly obvious. I’m a relatively new
guy who has so far been posted almost exclusively overseas. Therefore I’m almost certainly unknown to the kind of staff officer who doesn’t get out much.”

  “Out of where?”

  “The Beltway, for instance. Call it a two-mile radius from this very office. Maybe they also have a fishing cottage on a lake somewhere. But that’s not the kind of place I’m likely to have been.”

  “You’re not very happy, are you?”

  “I’ve had more promising days.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “When does this thing start?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Well, that’s my problem, right there. I’ve got a handler I never met before and a situation I know nothing about.”

  “Scared?”

  “It’s bad workmanship. It’s shoddy and confused. It shows no pride. Because you guys are always the same. There’s a clue in the title, remember?”

  “What title?”

  “Your title. Military Intelligence. Ideally both of those words should mean something to you. But surely at least one of them does. One at a time, if you wish. On alternate days, if you want.”

  “Feel free to give me your honest opinion.”

  Reacher said, “So what do I need to know?”

  And at that same minute a car backed out of a driveway, in a distant location, slowly, a front-wheel-drive car, with a yelp as the tires turned. Not the shriek of speed. The opposite. A suburban sound, rubber on a tended blacktop driveway, like the smell of the sprinkler on the summer air.

  Then the car paused and the driver selected a forward gear and the car rolled south, gently over the speed bumps that the driver himself had argued should be put in, for the safety of the children.

  Then the car turned a little west, toward the highway, ready to join the mighty flow toward the capital.

  Colonel Cornelius Christopher sat forward and made a space on his desk, paired hands coming together back to back, and then sweeping apart, pushing clutter aside. The move was emphatic. But purely metaphorical. There was nothing on the desk. No clutter. A good man-manager, Reacher thought. He let me have my say, and now we’re moving right along.

  Christopher said, “There’s no danger. It’s going to be all talking.”

  Reacher said, “Talking about what?”

  “You were right, it’s about staff officers. There are four of them. One of them is bad. They’re all political liaison people. To the House and the Senate. They practically live there. You know the type. Going places, fast track, better not to get in their way.”

  “Specifically?”

  “The army is asking for a new sniper rifle. We’re giving evidence to some new pre-committee. Begging, basically. Our legislative overseers. In fact, not even really. They sent senior staffers instead. We’re not even talking to elected officials.”

  “Now you don’t sound very happy.”

  “I’m not here to be happy. The liaison officers are sitting in on these hearings, obviously. And one of them is leaking. Design criteria, load, range, size, shape, weight, and budget.”

  “Leaking to who?”

  “A likely bidder located overseas, we assume. A foreign manufacturer, in other words. Someone that wants the business. Someone that likes a rigged game.”

  “Is the business worth it? How many sniper rifles do we buy? And how much do we pay for them?”

  “It’s the implied endorsement. They can sell copies for five grand each to the freak market. The price of a decent used car. As many as they want. Like selling crack.”

  “Who else is at these hearings?”

  “There’s our four liaison and the four staffers we’re pitching to, plus our procurement guy and the Marine procurement guy, plus a Ranger sniper and a Marine sniper for color commentary.”

  “The Marines are involved?”

  “In a minority way. They didn’t bring their own liaison, for instance. But it’s definitely a joint project. No other way of doing a thing like this.”

  “So why wouldn’t it be the Marines leaking? Their procurement guy or their sniper? Why assume it’s our guys?”

  “The leaks are via a fax machine inside the Capitol Building. Which is where our liaison guys have their offices.”

  “How certain are you of that?”

  “Completely.”

  “Could be the staffers. They’re in the Capitol Building, presumably.”

  “Different phone network. Our legislative overseers are on some new super-duper thing. Our offices are still steam-powered.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “So it’s one of our guys.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Christopher said.

  “Motive?”

  “Money,” Christopher said. “Got to be. I can’t see anyone forming a deep ideological attachment to a European firearms manufacturer. Can you? And money is always a factor for officers like these. They’re mixing with corporate lawyers and lobbyists all the time. Easy to feel like the poor relation.”

  “Can’t we just watch their fax machine?”

  “Not inside the Capitol Building. Our legislative overseers don’t like surveillance. Too many unintended consequences.”

  “Are they sending to an overseas fax number?”

  “No, it’s a local number. But these guys hire local people. As agents and lobbyists.”

  “So my job is what?”

  “To find out which one of our guys is the bad apple. By talking to them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the committee, at first. The Ranger sniper has been recalled. Personal reasons. You’re going to take his place.”

  “As what?”

  “Another Ranger sniper.”

  “With a real Marine sniper in the room? I’ll be asked for opinions. He’ll nail me in a second.”

  “So be Delta Force, not Rangers. Be mysterious. Don’t say anything. Be all weird and silent. Grow a beard.”

  “Before this afternoon?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ve seen your file. You know which end of a rifle is which. We have confidence in you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s one other thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “Our liaison guys are not guys. They’re women.”

  “All of them?”

  “All four.”

  “Does that make a difference?”

  “I sincerely hope so. Some of the talking is going to have to be social. That’s easier with women. You can do it one on one. Men always want to drink in groups.”

  “So I’m here to take women to bars, and ask them what they want to drink, and by the way are they leaking military secrets overseas? Is that the idea?”

  “You’ll have to be more subtle than that. But yes, it’s a kind of interrogation. That’s all. Which you’re supposed to be good at. You’re supposed to do this stuff for a living.”

  “In which case why not arrest them all and interrogate them properly?”

  “Because three of the four are innocent. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and so on. Their careers would be hurt.”

  “That never stopped you before.”

  “We never had fast track people before. Not like this. Going places. We wouldn’t cripple them all. One of them would survive, and she’d get her revenge.”

  Reacher said, “I’m just trying to establish the rules of engagement.”

  “Anything that wouldn’t get thrown out of court for blatant illegality.”

  “Blatant?”

  “Flashing red with a siren. That kind of blatant.”

  “That bad?”

  “We can’t tolerate this kind of thing. Not with a foreign manufacturer. We have politicians to please, and they have donors to protect. American donors.”

  “Who like a rigged game.”

  “There’s two different kinds of rigged. Our kind, and their kind.”

  “Understood,” Reacher said.

  “There’s no danger,” Christopher said again. “It’s all jus
t talking.”

  “So what are the difficulties? What’s not going to be easy?”

  “That’s complicated,” Christopher said.

  The front-wheel-drive car joined the traffic stream on the highway. It became just one of thousands, all heading the same way, all fast and focused and linear and metallic, like giant rounds fired from giant chain gun barrels somewhere far behind them. Which was a mental image the driver liked very much. He was a bullet, implacable and relentless, singular in his purpose. He was heading for his target. His aim was true.

  Across the barrier no one was heading in the other direction. The morning flow was all one way, high speed and crowded, toward the distant city.

  Christopher did the thing with his hands again, clearing metaphorical clutter off his desk, and out of the conversation. Ready for a new topic. The difficulties. He said, “It’s a speed issue. We have to be quick. And at the same time we have to keep things normal for the Marine Corps. We can’t let them suspect we have a leak. So we can’t stop talking, or they’ll guess. But we can’t let much more stuff go overseas. So you can’t waste time.”

  Reacher said, “What, this is going to be like speed dating?”

  “You’re new in town, so why wouldn’t you?”

  “I would,” Reacher said. “Believe me. It would be like a dream come true. But it takes two to tango. And I’m a realistic guy. On a good day I could get a woman to look at me. Maybe. But four women all at once is not very likely.”

  Christopher nodded.

  “That’s the complication,” he said. “That’s the difficulty we were worrying about. Plus, these women are scary. West Pointers, off-the-charts IQs. Fast track. Going places. You can imagine.”

  “I don’t have to imagine. I was at West Point.”

  “We know. We checked. You didn’t overlap with any of them.”

  “Are any of them married?”

  “No, fortunately. Fast track women don’t get married. Not until the time is right.”