by Lee Child
‘On what?’
‘Another phone I took from Leonid, He and a pal found me. It didn’t work out exactly how I wanted, but I made some limited contact.’
‘She confessed?’
‘More or less.’
‘So where is she now?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I’m guessing somewhere east of Fifth, south of 59th.’
‘Why?’
‘She used the Four Seasons as a front. Why travel?’
Lee said, ‘There was a burned-out rental car in Queens. The 17th thinks the four guys used it to get out of Manhattan. Then they ditched it and used that elevated train thing to get to the airport.’
I nodded again. ‘Lila said the car they used no longer exists.’
‘But here’s the thing,’ Lee said. ‘The four guys didn’t head back to London or Ukraine or Russia. They were routed through Tajikistan.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘Those new places confuse me.’
‘Tajikistan is right next to Afghanistan. They share a border. Also with Pakistan.’
‘You can fly direct to Pakistan.’
‘Correct. Therefore either those guys were from Tajikistan, or from Afghanistan itself. Tajikistan is where you go to get into Afghanistan without being too obvious about it. You cross the border in a pick-up truck. Roads are bad, but Kabul is not too far away.’
‘OK.’
‘And here’s the other thing. Homeland Security has a protocol. Some kind of computer algorithm. They can trace groups of people through similar itineraries and linked bookings. Turns it those four guys entered the country three months ago from Tajikistan, along with some other folks, including two women with passports from Turkmenistan. One was sixty, and the other was twenty-six. They came through immigration together and claimed to be mother and daughter. And Homeland Security is prepared to swear their passports were genuine.’
‘So the Hoths were not Ukrainian. Everything they told us was a lie.’
* * *
We all chewed on that for twenty long seconds, in silence. I went through all the stuff Lila had told us and deleted it, item by item.
Like pulling files from a drawer, and leafing through them, and then pitching them in the trash.
I said, ‘We saw their passports at the Four Seasons. They looked Ukrainian to me.’
Lee said, ‘They were phony. Or they would have used them at immigration.’
I said, ‘Lila had blue eyes.’ Lee said, ‘I noticed.’
‘Where exactly is Turkmenistan?’
‘Also next to Afghanistan. A longer border. Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, clockwise from the Gulf.’
‘Easier when it was all the Soviet Union.’
‘Unless you lived there.’
‘Are Turkmenistan and Afghanistan ethnically similar?’
‘Probably. All those borders are completely arbitrary. They’re accidents of history. What matters are the tribal divisions. Lines on a map have got nothing to do with it.’
‘Are you an expert?’
‘The NYPD knows more about that region than the CIA. We have to. We’ve got people over there. We’ve got better intelligence than anyone.’
‘Could a person from Afghanistan get a passport from Turkmenistan?’
‘By relocating?’
‘By asking for help and getting it.’
‘From an ethnic sympathizer?’
I nodded. ‘Maybe under the counter.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Some Afghan people have bright blue eyes. Especially the women. Some weird genetic strand in the population.’
‘You think the Hoths are from Afghanistan?’
‘They knew a hell of a lot about the conflict with the Soviets. A little dressed up, but they got most of the details right.’
‘Maybe they read books.’
‘No, they got the feelings right. And the atmosphere. Like the ancient greatcoats. Details like that are not widely available. That’s insider information. In public the Red Army made out it was superbly equipped, for obvious reasons. Our propaganda said the same thing about them, for equally obvious reasons. But it wasn’t true. The Red Army was falling apart. A lot of what the Hoths said sounded like first-hand information to me.’
‘So?’
‘Maybe Svetlana really did fight there. But on the other side.’
Lee paused a beat. ‘You think the Hoths are Afghan tribeswomen?’
‘If Svetlana fought there, but not for the Soviets, then they must be.’
Lee paused again. ‘In which case Svetlana was telling the whole story from the other side. Everything was inverted. Including the atrocities.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She didn’t suffer them. She committed them.’
* * *
We all went quiet again, another twenty seconds. I kept my eyes moving all around the park. Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive. But nothing jumped out at me. Nothing untoward was happening. People were coming and going, people were taking dogs to the run, a line was forming at a hamburger stand. Early, but every hour of the day or night is lunch time for someone. It depends on when the day starts. Lee was going through her notes. Jacob Mark was staring at the ground, but his gaze was focused somewhere far below the surface. Finally he leaned forward and turned his head and looked at me. I thought: Here it comes. The big question. The bump in the road.
He asked, ‘When Lila Hoth called you, did she mention Peter?’
I nodded. ‘She picked him up in the bar.’
‘Why spend four hours doing that?’
‘Tradecraft. And for fun and finesse. Because she could.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘She said he’s here in the city.’
‘Is he OK?’
‘She wouldn’t tell me.’
‘Do you think he’s OK?’ I didn’t answer.
He said, ‘Talk to me, Reacher.’ I said, ‘No.’
‘No you won’t talk to me?’
‘No, I don’t think he’s OK.’
‘But he might be.’
‘I could be wrong.’
‘What did she tell you?’
‘I said I wasn’t scared of her, and she said that’s what Peter Molina had said, too. I asked if he was OK, and she said I should come over and find out for myself.’
‘So he could be OK.’
‘It’s possible. But I think you should be realistic.’
‘About what? Why would two Afghan tribeswomen want to mess with Peter?’
‘To get to Susan, of course.’
‘For what? The Pentagon is supposed to be helping Afghanistan.’
I said, ‘If Svetlana was a fighting tribeswoman, then she was one of the mujahideen. And when the Russians went home, the mujahideen did not go back to tending their goats. They moved right along. Some of them became the Taliban, and the rest of them became al-Qaeda.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
Jacob Mark said, ‘I have to go to the cops about Peter.’
He got halfway off the bench before I leaned across Theresa Lee and put my hand on his arm.
‘Think hard,’ I said.
‘What’s to think about? My nephew is a kidnapping victim. He’s a hostage. The woman confessed.’
‘Think about what the cops will do. They’ll call the feds immediately. The feds will lock you up again and put Peter on the back burner, because they’ve got bigger fish to fry.’
‘I have to try.’
‘Peter’s dead, Jake. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to face it.’
‘There’s still a chance.’
‘Then the fastest way to find him is to find Lila. And we can do that better than those feds.’
‘You think?’
‘Look at their track record. They missed her once, and they let us break out of jail. I wouldn’t send them to look for a book in the library.’
>
‘How the hell do we find her on our own?’
I looked at Theresa Lee. ‘Did you speak to Sansom?’
She shrugged, like she had good news and bad. She said, ‘I spoke to him briefly. He said he might want to come up here personally. He said he would call me back to coordinate the where and the when. I said he couldn’t do that, because I was keeping the phone switched off. So he said he would call Docherty’s cell instead, and I should call Docherty and pick up the message. So I did, and Docherty didn’t answer. So I tried the precinct switchboard. The dispatcher said Docherty was unavailable.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I think it means he just got arrested.’
Which changed everything. I understood that even before Lee got around to spelling it out. She handed me her folded notes. I took them, like receiving the baton in a relay race. I was to go onward, as fast as I could. She was spilling off the track, her race finished. She said, ‘You understand, right? I have to turn myself in now. He’s my partner. I can’t let him face this madness alone.’
I said, ‘You thought he would ditch you in a heartbeat.’
‘But he didn’t. And I have my own standards, anyway.’
‘It won’t do any good.’
‘Maybe not. But I won’t turn my back on my partner.’
‘You’re just taking yourself off the board. You can’t help any one from a jail cell. Outside is always better than inside.’
‘It’s different for you. You can be gone tomorrow. I can’t. I live here.’
‘What about Sansom? I need a time and a place.’
‘I don’t have that information. And you should take care with Sansom, anyway. He sounded weird on the phone. I couldn’t tell whether he was real mad or real worried. It’s hard to say whose side he’s going to be on, when and if he gets here.’
Then she gave me Leonid’s first cell phone, and the emergency charger. She put her hand on my arm and squeezed, just briefly, just a little. An all-purpose substitute for a hug and a good-luck gesture. And right alter that our temporary three way partnership fell apart completely. Jacob Mark was on his feet even before Lee had started to get up. He said, ‘I owe it to Peter. OK, they might put me back in a cell, but at least they’ll be out looking for him.’
‘We could look for him,’ I said.
‘We have no resources.’
I looked at them both and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’
They were sure about it. They walked away from me, out of the park, to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, where they stood and craned their necks, looking for a police car, the same way people stand when they are trying to hail a cab. I sat alone for a minute, and then I got up and walked the other way.
Next stop, somewhere east of Fifth and south of 59th.
FIFTY-NINE
Madison Square Park nestles against the south end of Madison Avenue, right where it starts at 23rd Street. Madison Avenue runs straight for 115 blocks, to the Madison Avenue Bridge, which leads to the Bronx. You can get to Yankee Stadium that way, although other routes are better. I planned on covering maybe a third of its length, to 59th Street, which was a little north and west of where Lila Hoth had said she wasn’t, on Third and 56th.
It was as good a place to start as any.
I took the bus, which was a slow, lumbering vehicle, which made it a counterintuitive choice for a wild-eyed fugitive, which made it perfect cover for me. Traffic was heavy and we passed plenty of cops, some on foot, some in cars. I looked out the window at them. None of them looked back in at me. A man on a bus is close to invisible.
I stopped being invisible when I got out at 59th Street. Prime retail territory, therefore prime tourist territory, therefore reassuring pairs of policemen on every corner. I took a cross street over to Fifth and found a line of vendors at the base of Central Park and bought a black T-shirt with New York City written on it, and a pair of counterfeit sunglasses, and a black baseball cap with a red apple on it. I changed shirts in a restroom in a hotel lobby and came back to Madison looking a little different. It was four hours since any on-duty cop had spoken to his watch commander. And people forget a lot in four hours. I figured that tall and khaki shirt would be all that anyone remembered. Nothing I could do about my height, but the new black upper body might let me slide by. Plus the writing on the shirt, and the shades, and the hat, all of which made me look like a regular out-of-town idiot.
Which I was, basically. I had no real clue as to what I was doing. Finding any concealed hideout is difficult. Finding one in a densely populated big city is close to impossible. I was just quartering random blocks, following a geographic hunch what could have been completely wrong to start with, trying to find reasons to narrow it further. The Four Seasons Hotel. Not adjacent, but comfortably proximate. Which meant what? A two-minute drive? A five-minute walk? In which direction? Not south, I thought. Not across 57th Street, which is a major cross-town thoroughfare. Two-way, six lanes. Always busy. In the micro-geography of Manhattan, 57th Street was like the Mississippi River. An obstacle. A boundary. Much more inviting to slip away to the north, to the quieter, darker blocks beyond.
I watched the traffic and thought: not a two-minute drive. Driving implied a lack of control, a lack of flexibility, and delays, and one-way streets and avenues, and parking difficulties, and potentially memorable vehicles waiting in loading zones, and licence plates that could be traced and checked.
Walking was better than driving, in the city, whoever you were.
I took 58th Street, and walked to the hotel’s back entrance. It was just as splendid as the front entrance. There was brass and stone and there were flags flying and porters in uniform and doormen in top hats. There was a long line of limousines waiting at the kerb. Lincolns, Mercedes, Maybachs, Rolls-Royces. Well over a million dollars’ worth of automotive product, all crammed into about eighty feet. There was a loading dock, with a grey roll-up door, closed.
I stood next to a bell boy, with my back to the hotel door. Where would I go? Across the street was nothing but a solid line of high buildings. Mostly apartment houses, with the ground floors leased to prestige clients. Directly opposite was an art gallery. I squeezed between two chrome bumpers and crossed the street and glanced at some of the paintings in the window. Then I turned and looked back from the far sidewalk.
To the left of the hotel, on the side nearer Park Avenue, there was nothing very interesting.
Then I looked to the right, along the block as it approached Madison, and I got a new idea.
The hotel itself was recent construction on an insane budget. Neighbouring buildings were all quiet and prosperous and solid, some of them old, some of them new. But at the western end of the block there were three old piles in a row. Narrow, singlefront, five-storey brick, weathered, peeling, spalling, stained, somewhat decrepit. Dirty windows, sagging lintels, flat roofs, weeds along the cornices, old iron fire escapes zigzagging down the top four floors. The three buildings looked like three rotten teeth in a bright smile. One had an old out-of-business restaurant for a ground-floor tenant. One had a hardware store. The third had an enterprise abandoned so long ago I couldn’t tell what it had been. Each had a narrow door set unobtrusively alongside its commercial operation. Two of the doors had multiple bell pushes, signifying apartments. The door next to the old restaurant had a single bell push, signifying a sole occupier for the upper four floors.
Lila Hoth was not a Ukrainian billionaire from London. That had been a lie. So whoever she really was, she had a budget. A generous budget, certainly, to allow for suites in the Four Seasons as and when necessary. But presumably not an infinite budget. And town houses in Manhattan run to twenty or more million dollars to buy, minimum. And multiple tens of thousands of dollars a month to rent.
Privacy could be achieved much more cheaply in tumbledown mixed-use buildings like the three I was looking at. And maybe there would be other advantages, too. No doormen nearby, fewer prying eyes. Plus maybe a presumption that an
operation like a restaurant or a hardware store would get deliveries at all hours of the night and day. Maybe all kinds of random comings and goings could happen without attracting much notice at all.
I moved down the street and stood on the kerb opposite the three old piles and stared up at them. People pushed past me in continuous stream on the sidewalk. I stepped into the gutter, to get out of the way. There were two cops on the far corner of Madison and 57th. Fifty yards away, on a diagonal. They were not looking my way. I looked back at the buildings and reviewed my assumptions in my head. The 6 train at 59th and Lexington was close by. The Four Seasons was close by. Third Avenue and 56th Street was not close by. That’s not close to me. Anonymity was guaranteed. Cost was limited. Five for five. Perfect. So I figured maybe I was looking for a place just like one of the three right in front of me, located somewhere within a fan-shaped five-minute radius east or west of the hotel’s back door. Not north, or Susan Mark would have parked in midtown and aimed to get out of the subway at 68th Street. Not south, because of 57th Street’s psychological barrier. Not somewhere else entirely, because they had used the Four Seasons as a front. Somewhere else entirely, they would have used a different hotel. New York City does not lack for impressive establishments.
Impeccable logic. Maybe too impeccable. Confining, certainly. Because if I stuck with the assumption that Susan Mark would have gotten out at 59th Street and aimed to approach from the north, and that 57th Street was a conceptual barrier to the south, then 58th Street was the whole ballgame, right there. And crosstown blocks in Manhattan take about five minutes to walk. Therefore a five-minute radius left or right out of the hotel’s back door would end on either the exact block I was currently loitering on, or the next one to the east, between Park and Lex. And tumbledown mixed-use properties are rare on blocks like those. Big money chased them away long ago. It was entirely possible I was looking at the only three left standing in the whole of the zip code.
Therefore it was entirely possible I was looking at Lila Hoth’s hideout.
Entirely possible, but most unlikely. I believe in luck as much as the next guy, but I’m not insane.