Cleaning the Gold

by Karin Slaughter

  Fortunately for Will, there were other ways to legally collect a suspect’s DNA.

  “Baldani,” Reacher said.

  Will looked up the hallway for the major, but the douchebag was still outside taking a smoke break with the rest of the cleaning team.

  Reacher was apparently taking his own break. The man hadn’t spoken a word for over two hours, but now he pulled down his white surgical mask. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over what had to be a fifty-inch chest.

  Will pulled down his own mask. “What about Baldani?”

  Reacher said, “I wonder if you guys know more about him than we do.”

  Will had no idea what he was talking about.

  He said, “You first.”

  Reacher said, “We know the major runs a loan shark network all over town. He breaks little girls’ legs. That’s why I was sent here. You?”

  Will didn’t volunteer a justification for his own presence. “Lukather is in on it.”

  The statement was obvious, because they had both seen the colonel take the envelope, but instead of pointing this out, Reacher peeled off his busted gloves and shoved them into his back pocket.

  Will thought about the cotton absorbing the sweat on Reacher’s hands. The nasty toothbrush with all of that glorious DNA living inside the bristles. If Reacher discarded any of these items—threw them in the trash, left them on a park bench, abandoned them at the gates of the fort, then legally Will could pick them up and test them for DNA.

  Reacher said, “Two envelopes. One full of cash.”

  Will played along. “Baldani wanted Lukather to take the envelopes from him out in the open. Public place, plenty of security cameras and eyewitnesses.”

  “Insurance policy,” Reacher said. “Mutually assured destruction.”

  Will felt a cramp in his neck. He wasn’t used to having to look up to have a conversation. And the way Reacher pulled out his cotton gloves and started to force them back onto his thick fingers said he had also figured out that Will was not much use to him.

  Which was bad.

  Will quickly ran through his options. The toothbrush was still in Reacher’s back pocket, an area where lingering would be discouraged. Reacher hadn’t replaced his gloves for new ones, and judging by the grime, cleanliness wasn’t a priority. The surgical mask wasn’t going anywhere. Reacher wasn’t drinking from a bottle of water. He didn’t smoke or chew gum or spit. There were no cuts on his skin, but he probably bled hydraulic fluid anyway. If Will was going to collect a discarded DNA sample without Reacher’s knowledge or consent, he would have to keep close and wait for him to make a mistake.

  Will said, “We should probably get a look at that USB drive.”

  Reacher didn’t call out the we, but he stopped with the gloves, waiting for the rest.

  “I don’t want to go all Operation Grand Slam here, but Lukather is in charge of all the gold inside this building.” He waited, but Reacher didn’t take the bait. “Baldani’s a blunt object. Lukather is the one swinging him around. Let’s say this is bigger than loan-sharking and leg-breaking. That USB drive could—”

  Reacher leaned down and gripped one of the bars in his fist. The metal flashed brilliant, casting his face in yellow. He stood up. He showed Will the bar like there weren’t eleventy billion more where that came from. He said, “I saw a James Bond movie with a car made of gold. The weight makes me wonder how it got out of the parking lot.”

  He was talking about Auric Goldfinger’s Rolls-Royce. Teenage Will had studied the car more closely than any Playboy, and for far longer stretches of time. “It was a Phantom III ’37. The last V12 until the Silver Seraph. Coil-spring chassis, semi-elliptical spring in the rear. The brakes would have to be beefed up, but he had the resources.”

  “I was told ten miles per gallon at top speed. Let’s say you get eight touring the countryside. Not counting the extra torque required to haul the gold.”

  “And the umbrella.” Will saw his point. “The tank holds, what—25 gallons?”

  “I was told 39.5.”

  Will worked out a few statistics of his own. “Damn.”

  Reacher said, “One of us is going to have to hit Baldani.”

  Will felt his eyebrows touch his hairline.

  “Then, the other steps in to break it up.”

  Will couldn’t wait to hear the rest of the plan.

  Reacher explained, “Baldani’s going to run to the colonel. The colonel will want to talk to the perpetrator and the witness. She’ll separate us. One in her office, the other in a different room, to make sure our stories square.”

  “And?”

  Reacher stacked the gold inside the vault. “The USB drive will be somewhere in her office. She can only talk to one of us at a time. Whoever lands in her office needs to look for it. Preferably steal it, but I’m okay with just looking at what’s on the drive to make sure she’s not planning to make the nation’s gold supply radioactive for the next fifty-seven years.”

  “Fifty-eight, to be exact.” Will saw a gaping hole in the plan. “She’ll kick us both off the base. If we don’t end up in the brig.”

  “A brig is on a ship. We’d be confined to the stockade, Captain Wolfe.” Reacher didn’t dwell on Will’s mistake. “Lukather told me she’s out of here next month, taking full retirement. She’s one, maybe two days away from breaking her last record for cleaning the gold. We’re her best workers. She wants to go out on a high note. Trust me, she’ll give us a stern warning, then put us back to work. This is the Army. What’s best for the officer is what happens.”

  Will thought about it. “What’s our squared story?”

  Reacher shrugged. “Baldani’s an asshole.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Reacher said, “I’ll give him a tap. Just enough to make him bleed.”

  Will knew there had to be an easier way to get into the colonel’s office, but there was a part of Reacher’s plan that really appealed to him. “I’ll hit Baldani.”

  “It should be me.”

  “No, really, I’ll do it.” Will felt a ripple of anticipation along the back of his punching-hand. “We need to stun him, not turn his jaw into a Hula-Hoop around his neck.”

  Reacher didn’t argue the point, which reminded Will of the great capacity for violence that raged inside of Jack Reacher. He was an ex-cop who had shot another cop twice in the head. Once a man crossed that line, it was easier to cross the next one, then the next. Jack Reacher had probably spent the last twenty-two years stomping over every line that got in his way.

  “Hey, shitbrains.” Baldani announced his return by clomping his boots down the hallway like a tiny horse. “Shut your cock holsters and get back to work.”

  Will waited for him to get close, then punched him in the face.

  Lukather paced behind her desk, her mouth set in an angry, straight line. “You want to tell me what the hell happened between you and Baldani?”

  Will looked down at his hands. He wasn’t trying to show contrition. He was trying to hide his shock. One punch had knocked Baldani out cold, but Will’s knuckles looked pristine. There wasn’t even a red mark. Did the guy have teeth?

  “Soldier?”

  Will forced himself to look up.

  “You longing for some solitary company?”

  Will took her words for a threat. Brig or stockade, his entire mission would be blown if he ended up behind bars. “I apologize for my actions, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn straight it won’t.” She undid the top button to her jacket. He could see a river of sweat rolling down her neck. “When I said you were trouble, I didn’t mean this kind.”

  She had more to say, a lot more, but Will tuned her out, thinking about the USB drive. Judging by the shape of the lump in the envelope, it was about the size of his thumb, which was probably why they called it a thumb drive. There were two USB slots on the back of Lukather’s computer. Will assumed the system was locked with a password, so look
ing at the contents of the drive wasn’t going to happen. Not that he’d given much weight to that possibility. The most unbelievable scene in any action movie was the part where Tom Cruise jammed the thumb drive into the slot and it slid in on the first try.

  “Wolfe.” Lukather drummed her fingers on her desk, drawing back his attention. “Can you explain to me in simple English why you hit Baldani?”

  Will stuck to the plan. “He’s an asshole.”

  “He was an asshole when you were in here the first time and you didn’t pop him.” She leaned over her desk, clearly frustrated. “Dave said he was walking down the hall, minding his own business, and you came at him out of nowhere.”

  Will recalled the last argument he’d had with his girlfriend. “I’ve heard it said that for a smart man, I can do some pretty stupid things.”

  “For the love of—” She looked up at the ceiling as if the brown water stain could offer an explanation. Obviously, she didn’t get an answer. Or at least not the answer she was looking for. “Stay here.”

  Will heard the door slam behind him. Heavy footsteps in the hall. Another door was opened, then slammed. She was checking his story with Reacher, just as Reacher had predicted.

  Was he right about the USB drive, too?

  Will stood from the chair, then went onto the tips of his toes, using his head to pop up one of the panels in the drop ceiling. The flashlight on his phone showed rat droppings, the p-trap for the shower above, and some PEX supply lines that were leaking because some idiot had used push fittings to connect it to galvanized pipe.

  That explained why the wood panels on the walls were buckling.

  He tilted down his head and let the panel drop into place. He considered his other options. The filing cabinets were locked. There were no pictures on the walls. All he found behind the clock was clock innards. Lukather’s desk was the only other place to search. He started with the drawers, where boxes of extra pens and staples were aligned with military precision. He opened each one but found only pens and staples. The ball of rubber bands was filled with rubber bands. The box of tampons was a box of tampons. The family-sized bag of Skittles was filled with Skittles.

  He moved on to the piles of folders on her desk, carefully thumbing through the pages, trying to keep the edges squared up as he looked for the envelope with its tell-tale USB lump. He felt underneath the seat of her chair. Then he checked the two other chairs. He rifled the pen cup and paperclip box and found pens and paperclips.

  Not even lint.

  Will ate some Skittles as he listened at the door. Reacher was taking a hell of a lot longer than Will to relay his version of events. Or maybe Lukather was going back at Baldani. Or maybe she was waiting for the MPs to show up and drag Will to the stockade, because Reacher was a bad guy, but he was also a smart guy, and he had basically talked Will into punching a major in the United States Army.

  Will returned to the desk. He tried to put himself in Lukather’s shoes. When that didn’t work, he opened the drawers again, but this time, he ran his hand along the bottoms.

  Bingo.

  Will’s fingers caught on the edge of an envelope taped to the underside of the file drawer. He got on his knees. He used the flashlight on his phone to look under the drawer. The white envelope was held in place with duct tape. He could tell from the shape that he’d found the wrong one. Lukather had stashed the cash under her desk. At least ten grand, all crisp hundreds, not the crumpled tens and twenties of desperate people, which meant that the loan-sharking money had been cleaned.

  Where was the thumb drive?

  “—dropped me in a pile of shit.” Lukather was out in the hall. The doorknob turned, but the door did not open. “Does that seem like a me problem or a you problem, Corporal?”

  There was a stuttered response before someone took off running down the hall.

  Will was sitting down as she entered the room.

  Lukather gave him the once-over, certain that something was amiss but unable to say what. Her head went back into the hall. “Reacher, in here.”

  Reacher looked pained at the thought of entering the cramped room. He was forced to tuck his chin into his chest. He waited for Lukather to sit, then crammed his monstrous form into the plastic chair beside Will. He still had to hunker down under the low ceiling. Hand him a newspaper and he’d look like the Incredible Hulk taking a shit.

  Lukather rocked back in her chair. She had unbuttoned her jacket the rest of the way and was full-on sweating now. “Dave, get your ass in here.”

  The door was already open, but Baldani slammed it back against the wall. Will did a double-take. The guy looked like a cannibal had thrown up on his face.

  Lukather said, “All right, boys. Time to make nice.”

  Baldani balked. “What the fuck?”

  “I’m the fuck, Major.” Lukather told Will, “I’m not going to waste my breath telling you to apologize, but I expect you to keep your hands to yourself going forward. Understood?”

  Will nodded, because he knew if he opened his mouth, he’d break out into a grin. Here was one of the many pitfalls of going undercover with the bad guys: Will was enjoying this too much. Lukather wasn’t the only woman who was going to be jerking a knot in his ass if this went sideways. Will had a real boss back in Georgia who had stuck out her neck to get Jack Wolfe inside of Fort Knox.

  He silently reprimanded himself: Stop the bullshit. Get the DNA sample. Match it to Reacher. Arrest the cop killer.

  Will cleared his throat. “Understood.”

  “Fuck you, Fobbit.” Baldani wasn’t going to let this go. “Colonel, you know this ain’t right.”

  “I know that I must do what’s right for the depository.” Lukather tried to make him see reason. “Dave, there’s a chance we can finish tomorrow if we keep these boys moving. Without them, we’ll be cleaning another two days, possibly more. I need this job wrapped up pronto. You and I have both got better things to do.”

  “Shit.” Baldani’s lip was so swollen that he had started to lisp. “Screw breaking the record. We’ve got another two weeks to finish up, and we don’t need trouble right now. Especially not now.”

  She shot him a look of warning. “Careful.”

  “Colonel.” Baldani’s eyes ponged between Reacher and Will. He was doing a really bad job of not talking about what he shouldn’t be talking about. “We don’t need trouble. Are you sure about this?”

  “As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.” She rocked back in the chair again. Her jacket had bunched up. Will saw the corner of a white envelope peeking out of the inside breast pocket.

  The USB drive.

  “Playtime is over, gentlemen.” Lukather’s clipped tone said there was no room for discussion. “Dave, make sure my POV is filled with gas. Reacher, Wolfe, you’ll be in the vaults until your shift ends. From the vault, you will go directly to your hotel rooms, where you’ll be confined to quarters until twenty minutes prior to the start of your shift tomorrow morning, at which point you will both report to the hotel lobby where you will be escorted back to the vault to continue your work. Once that work is completed, God willing by tomorrow night, neither one of your asses will ever step foot on my base again. Is that clear?”

  No one answered.

  She straightened her jacket. The envelope disappeared. “I need a ‘Yes, ma’am’ from every dick-swinger in this room.”

  Their combined response was a harmony of resignation and contempt. “Yes, ma’am.”

  4

  Trent and Reacher went back to the vault. They got back to work. Clink, clink. A fast rhythm. Her best workers.

  Will said, “The USB drive was still in the envelope. The envelope was in her inside jacket pocket. I saw the corner. I couldn’t get near it without being accused of assault.”

  “What was on it?” Reacher said.

  “I don’t know. I just told you, I couldn’t get near it.”

  “Speculate,” Reacher said. “Purely as a mental exe
rcise. Pretend you’re a police officer. Make yourself think like a detective.”

  “Data.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To do with the loans, or separate?”

  “Separate,” Will said. “If it was an electronic copy of the accounts, it would have been in the same envelope as the percentage cut.”

  “Excellent,” Reacher said. “You’re pretty good at this. You should think about taking it up for a living.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what kind of separate thing could it be?”

  “Something secret, I guess.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To sell, I suppose. She’s clearly corrupt. She told you she’s planning to retire. Maybe she wants a nest egg.”

  “What kind of secret?”

  Will said, “Well, at Fort Knox, I guess there’s an obvious answer.”

  “Except Baldani supplies the thumb drive. How could he? Lukather must know more about the security here. She’s the CO. This is the Army. I guarantee Lukather knows a level Baldani doesn’t. So the USB isn’t Fort Knox security. It’s some other secret, that Baldani supplies from below. Which might narrow it down a bit.”

  They worked on for a minute. Clink, clink.

  Reacher said, “Where will she sell it?”

  Will said, “What’s a POV?”

  “A privately-owned vehicle.”

  “Then somewhere far away. She told Baldani to gas it up.”

  “When will she sell it?”

  “I think as soon as she can. She kept it in her inside jacket pocket. Which feels very guarded, in an intimate way, but also temporary. Like it’s precious, but it won’t be in there for long.”

  They worked another minute. Clink, clink.

  Reacher said, “We’ll finish this job tomorrow.”

  “That’s why she let us stay. You were right.”