by Lee Child
“Who are you?”
“I was an MP once. I was your boss’s boss’s boss. And my brother did a spell in military intelligence. I met some of his people. Some sly minds there, sergeant. There was an old guy called O’Day. A buck gets ten this scheme is one of his. Think about it. Hundreds of people, a secret website, all kinds of planning and scheming. It’s an energy sink. Like a sponge. It keeps them where we can see them.”
No answer.
“Let it go, sergeant,” Reacher said again. “Play your part, which is to look sinister next to your Humvees. No one’s going to thank you if you screw up your lines. These things are very carefully orchestrated.”
Then Reacher stepped back and shut up, and let Cain’s career caution do his work for him. After a minute Cain gave the word and all four of them formed up and jogged back the way they had come. Reacher followed five minutes behind them, but he took the precaution of looping the last hundred yards through the brush, and coming out on a parallel street. Two minutes later he was back at the welcome board, waiting for a ride out of town.
It started on a freezing Christmas Eve night in New York City, in a bar on Bleecker Street, in the West Village. Jack Reacher walked by, huddled in his coat collar, and he heard the thump of interesting rhythms inside. He pushed through the door into warmth and noise, and found a saxophone player and two sidemen up on a stage about the height of an orange box. But more important he found a blonde woman alone at a table for two. She was following the music. Turned out she was from Holland. She was about thirty, and over six feet tall. They talked when the band took a break. She spoke English very well.
She was a cabin attendant for KLM, which was the Royal Dutch Airlines. She said she couldn’t chat for long. In fact she had to leave in twenty minutes exactly. The crew bus was coming by. She was working the night flight to Amsterdam.
They talked some more, and after twenty minutes exactly she asked him to come with her. To Amsterdam. No charge. She had a coupon. Like a staff benefit. It was Christmas Eve. There would be empty seats.
Reacher said yes. He had no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Christmas Day in Amsterdam would be fine. He had his passport in one pocket and his folding toothbrush in another, and his ATM card and a wad of cash in a third. All he needed. As ever, he was ready to go.
They got to the airport and she was called into an emergency pre-flight briefing, and that was about the last he ever saw of her.
—
The problem was a snowstorm. It was due to roll over the United Kingdom, and then hit the coast of Europe. Including Amsterdam. But not yet. The plane could probably beat it home. But it didn’t. The storm sped up unexpectedly. It blanketed Britain and headed onward, while high over the Atlantic the airplane passed its point of no return. The computers said it was due into Schiphol exactly when the weather front would be at its worst. It would have to divert. It would have to stop short, on a runway already snowed-upon and already cleared. Best offer was a place called Stansted, in England, in the county of Essex. Reacher saw his new friend hustle by in the distance, and another attendant told him the plan. She said his friend was sorry, but she would have to stay with the plane. He was on his own for Christmas.
—
Reacher was through the Stansted airport before six o’clock in the morning. Christmas Day. It was well before dawn and still dark as night. There was one cab on the rank. The driver wore a turban. Reacher asked him what lay round about. The guy said a town called Harlow in one direction, and a town called Chelmsford in another, and Cambridge about twice as far away to the north.
“Cambridge,” Reacher said. He had been there on U.S. Army business. Back in the day. It had a university. And airbases nearby. Which he might need. His KLM coupon was one-way only. England was a fine country, but he couldn’t stay in one place forever.
“Roads are very bad, sir,” the driver said. “We won’t make it to Cambridge.”
“How much snow?”
“Two feet in places.”
“You got here this morning,” Reacher said. “Let’s try for Cambridge.”
They set off, and did pretty well for the first twenty miles. All the way to the middle of nowhere. Then their luck ran out. The wind had smoothed the snow over roads and walls, into glittering crusted shapes that bore no relation to what lay beneath.
The driver said, “I’m turning back.”
It was still dark. All around was snow. In the far distance was a light. A house, maybe, an upper-floor window, a bulb left on all night. Maybe two miles away. All on its own. A country residence.
Reacher said, “You can let me out here.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I don’t like to turn back. I prefer to keep moving forward. As a matter of principle.”
“No cars will come. You’ll be stuck here all day. You’ll freeze to death.”
“I could walk. There’s a house in the distance. Maybe a stately home. I could knock on the kitchen door. Maybe they have a tradition. I could get Christmas dinner below stairs. A cup of coffee, at least.”
“Are you serious?”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
So eventually the taxi drove away, leaving Reacher all alone in the landscape. He stood in the dark for a moment, and then he set out walking, knee-deep through the drifts, some crusty, some powder, which exploded around him as he blundered through. There was a wind blowing, laced with eddies of snow. He found a road surface under his feet, and stuck with it, and saw it was going to lead him to the corner of a high estate wall, built of stone and powdered with snow. The road led along it for about half a mile, to what looked like a pair of fancy iron gates between tall stone pillars topped with carved statues of lions. Or mythical beasts. In the pre-dawn gloom it was hard to tell.
He slogged onward, one plunging stride at a time, and he made it to the gates, which were standing open, knee-deep in snow. There was a long driveway ahead, buried in untouched white, running between avenues of bare trees straight to the house. A hundred yards or more. No tracks, no footprints. Reacher was going to be the first visitor of the day.
The gates had wrought iron words welded in as part of the design. On the left-hand gate was Trout, and on the right was Hall. The name of the house. There were more lights showing in the front windows. Regular yellow bulbs upstairs, and twinkling reds and greens below. Christmas decorations, lit up all night.
Reacher set off down the driveway, stepping high, a yard at a time, clumsily. At the bottom of every step he felt frozen gravel underfoot. He was hungry. He hoped the cook was in a good mood. Which was never guaranteed. He had seen TV shows from Britain about country houses. Sometimes the cooks reacted badly to unexpected circumstances.
He made it to the house. It was a big old pile made of stone. The kitchen door was presumably around the back, through more deep snow. Whereas the front door was right there, and it had an iron bell-pull handle.
Reacher pulled the handle. He heard a faint sonorous bong inside, and then hurrying feet, and the door was flung open. A woman looked out. She was maybe fifty. She looked rich. She was wearing a formal dress. Black velvet. She looked like she had been up all night. She looked like a difficult person.
She said, “Thank goodness. Are you the doctor or the policeman?”
Reacher said, “Neither.”
“Then who are you?”
“My taxi turned back because of the snow. I was hoping to get a cup of coffee.”
“Taxi to where?”
“Cambridge.”
“Impossible.”
“Apparently. Merry Christmas, anyway.”
The woman stared at him. The moment of decision. He was not an ideal houseguest, at first glance. He was a huge guy, all bone and muscle, not particularly good looking, and not very well dressed.
The woman said, “Did you see the doctor or the policeman out there anywhere?”
He said, “I didn’t see anyone. Do you have a pr
oblem?”
“I suppose you better come in.”
She backed away into the gloom inside, and Reacher followed her, to a hallway the size of a basketball court. There was a Christmas tree at least ten feet tall, and a staircase at least ten feet wide.
The woman said, “Are you sure you’re not a policeman?”
“I was once,” Reacher said. “In the army. But not anymore.”
“Our army?”
“The U.S. Army.”
“I should introduce you to the colonel. My husband.”
“Why do you need a policeman? And a doctor?”
“Because someone stole my diamond pendant and my stepdaughter is upstairs having a baby.”
“On her own?”
“It’s the Christmas holiday. The staff left yesterday. Before the snow. There’s no one here.”
“Apart from you and the colonel.”
“I don’t know anything about babies. I never had any. I’m only her stepmother. I telephoned for her doctor almost four hours ago. And the police at the same time. I thought you must be at least one of them.”
A man came down the wide stairs, holding the rail, shuffling with fatigue. He was dressed in evening wear, apart from maroon suede slippers. He came all the way down, and stood up straight, and said, “Who are you, sir?”
Reacher gave his name, and told his brief story, stranded in the snow, a lighted window in a distant house, the hopes of a cup of coffee. The man introduced himself with the rank of colonel. Reacher said in the circumstances he couldn’t presume to trespass on their hospitality, and would leave at once.
The woman said, “Mr. Reacher was a policeman in the army.”
The colonel said, “Our army?”
“Uncle Sam’s,” Reacher said. “Half a dozen different MP units.”
“I wish you’d been a medic instead.”
“Is there a problem?”
“It’s her first baby, and it came on fast. I imagine her doctor is having a problem getting here.”
“Does her doctor know her well?”
“Has done for years.”
“So he’ll make an effort.”
“She. Her doctor is a woman. She’ll make an effort.”
“Therefore she could be stuck somewhere,” Reacher said. “She might have tried the last couple miles on foot, like I did. It’s about the only way.”
“She’ll freeze to death. What should we do?”
Reacher glanced at the window. He said, “We should wait fifteen minutes. For a little more daylight. Then scan from the upstairs windows. With binoculars, if you have them. We need to look for incoming tracks that stop dead, way out there.”
The colonel said, “You must have been given medical training to some degree. Our MPs seem to get plenty.”
“Ours didn’t include childbirth,” Reacher said. “I bet yours didn’t, either.”
The lady of the house said, “I can’t go in there. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
—
Fifteen minutes later the snow was lit up gray, and all kinds of natural detail was visible for miles around. They started in the colonel’s own bedroom, at a window facing west. They saw nothing. No abandoned car, no wandering footsteps getting weaker, and then stopping.
They set up facing north, at a window in the upstairs hallway, and saw the same nothing all over again. The wind in the night had polished the drifts to a shine, and nothing was broken.
South was the same story. A blank sheet. No footprints.
East was a different story. The only good view out was from what was about to become the delivery room. Or the maternity ward. Or whatever else you wanted to call it. Hopefully not the ICU. The colonel wouldn’t go in. He said it would be unseemly. His wife had already made her position clear.
So Reacher knocked politely, and heard a gasped come in, so he did, keeping his eyes front, explaining as he went, raising the field glasses, seeing his own tracks from earlier, curving in from the right, starting way out, coming close to the wall, and in through the gate.
But also seeing a second incoming track. From the opposite direction. Starting level with his own, but way on the left, and then homing in with the same smooth curve, but suddenly stopping. Stopping dead, some way short of the wall.
A voice from the bed said, “Have you found her?”
He said, “I think so.”
“Look at me.”
He did. She was a flushed brunette, squirming with discomfort, the sheet pulled up to her chin.
She said, “Go and rescue her, please. Bring her to me. I can’t do this alone.”
“I’m sure your stepmother would come if you really wanted her to.”
“Not her. This is her fault. I saw her wearing the diamond. That was my mother’s pendant. I freaked out and went into labor. Now I need help.”
Reacher nodded and stepped back to the hallway. The others followed him downstairs. He said, “Get hot water ready, and blankets. The doctor could have been out there a long time.”
Then he set out. Back along the driveway, using his previous footholds in reverse, straining from one to the next. Then peeling away from the gates, the other direction, in a symmetrical curve, scanning ahead to a lower horizon, battling the wind, plunging through undisturbed snow, at first seeing nothing, then seeing a shadow, and the shadow becoming a hole, and beyond it staggering footsteps leading backward to where she had started.
Two sets of footsteps, in fact.
A big hole.
Reacher floundered on. Saw two people lying in the snow. A woman in a parka, and a cop in a bulky yellow police jacket. Both were shivering and both had their eyes closed. Reacher rolled the cop aside and hauled the doctor into a sitting position. Her eyes blinked open. Beside her the cop sat up. Reacher asked him, “How long have you been out here?”
The guy checked his watch and said, “Me, about two hours. I found her car abandoned and followed her tracks in the snow. I didn’t get any further than she did.” His words were all broken up by shivering. They came out in spurts of steam.
The woman was very cold.
Reacher asked the cop, “How close is your vehicle?”
“Further than the house.”
“Only one choice then. I’ll carry her, and you carry her bag.”
“Why is she even here? I thought a diamond was missing. Is someone injured?”
“The daughter of the house is having a baby, all by herself. And the diamond isn’t missing. But we’ll worry about that later.”
“Who are you?”
“I was passing by. I thought they might give me a cup of coffee. Or even Christmas dinner.”
“Why would they?”
“I thought it might be a tradition.”
“What did they say?”
“They were preoccupied.”
Reacher lifted the woman into his arms. He stood up and turned around and set off back the way he had come. The cop floundered behind, shorter than Reacher, unable to use his pre-made footholds, and therefore slower. Reacher hustled hard, trying to generate surplus body heat, pressing the doctor close, trying to transfer it to her. She was coming around slowly. Reacher pounded onward. Then she woke up the rest of the way fast, and she started struggling in panic.
“We’re on our way,” Reacher panted. “She’s holding out for you.”
“What time is it?”
“About three hours later than you figured it would be.”
“Who are you?”
“Long story. Starts with a Dutchwoman. But that part’s not important now.”
“Have the contractions started?”
“Little ones, maybe. But no screaming or yelling yet. But she’s all alone.”
“The stepmother has a phobia. I think she had a bad experience of her own.”
“She said she never had kids.”
“People like that usually don’t.”
Reacher turned in at the gate, and staggered for balance, and set off down the driveway, galumph
ing from one old footprint to the next, the policeman huffing and puffing twenty steps back. They made it to the door, which opened immediately, into a flurry of hot towels and warmed blankets. Eventually the doctor passed herself fit and hurried up the stairs. The house seemed to breathe out and relax. The colonel took up a position in the upstairs hallway, pacing back and forth in a traditional style, an about-to-be grandfather just as nervous as he must have been a generation before, as an about-to-be father.
The about-to-be step-grandmother got herself halfway up the stairs, holding the rail all the way, and then she stopped, unable to go further. But she kept on gazing upward. Just waiting.
The cop joined Reacher in the back corner of the downstairs hallway, and said, “Now tell me about the diamond.”
Reacher said, “It was described as a pendant. It was the first wife’s, not the second. As rich as these folks are, it must have been big enough and heavy enough to notice if it’s not there anymore. So she didn’t lose it when they went out to dinner, which they did, because they’re in party clothes, and the cook left yesterday, before the snow. The daughter didn’t go with them tonight, but she saw them when they got back, because there was a big hoo-hah about her mother’s diamond, during which the stepmother no doubt took it off. Then later it’s missing, and because it was a big hoo-hah she doesn’t specifically remember taking it off, so she projects backward and thinks it was lost at the dinner party or a coat-check boy stole it.”
“So where is it?”
“The daughter picked it up. Her mother’s diamond. Partly a defensive instinct, but mostly because she was about to have a baby all alone, and she wanted the comfort of clutching something of her mother’s. Like a good-luck charm. They wasted your time. You’ll find it in her hand or under her pillow.”
“Her baby’s being born on Christmas Day.”
“So are a third of a million others. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“You should go look in the kitchen. The cook will have prepared in advance. They won’t be eating today. Too nervous. You could get your Christmas dinner after all.”
And Reacher did, alone in Trout Hall’s basement kitchens, while above him the others waited. Then he left, and he never found out who was born there that day.