Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “So what are they bringing down here?” he said.

  “We need to figure that out,” I said. “But we know it adds up to about a ton a week. And we know it fits into air conditioner boxes.”

  “We do?” Finlay said.

  “That’s what changed last year,” I said. “Before last September, they were smuggling it out of the country. That’s what Sherman Stoller was doing. The air conditioner runs weren’t a decoy operation. They were the actual operation itself. They were exporting something boxed up in air conditioner cartons. Sherman Stoller was driving them down to Florida every day to meet a boat. That’s why he got so up-tight when he was flagged down for speeding. That’s why the fancy lawyer came running over. Not because he was on his way to load up. Because he was on his way to unload. He had the Jacksonville police sniffing around a full load for fifty-five minutes.”

  “But a full load of what?” Finlay said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The cops didn’t think to look. They saw a load of sealed-up air conditioner cartons, brand-new, serial numbers and everything, and they just assumed it was kosher. The air conditioner cartons were damn good cover. Very plausible product to be hauling south. Nobody would be suspicious of brand-new air conditioners heading south, right?”

  “But they stopped a year ago?” he said.

  “Correct,” I said. “They knew the Coast Guard thing was coming, so they got as much out as they could ahead of time. Remember the double runs in Gray’s notes? Then they stopped altogether, a year ago. Because they felt just as vulnerable smuggling outward past the Coast Guard as we figured they’d feel smuggling inward.”

  Finlay nodded. Looked displeased with himself.

  “We missed that,” he said.

  “We missed a lot of things,” I said. “They fired Sherman Stoller because they didn’t need him anymore. They decided just to sit on the stuff and wait for the Coast Guard thing to stop. That’s why they’re vulnerable right now. That’s why they’re panicking, Finlay. It’s not the last remains of a stockpile they’ve got in there until Sunday. It’s the whole damn thing.”

  FINLAY STOOD GUARD AT THE FFICE DOOR. I SAT AT THE rosewood desk and called Columbia University in New York. The number reached the modern history department. The early part of the call was very easy. I got a helpful woman in their administrative office. I asked if they had a professor with the initials K.K. Straightaway she identified a guy called Kelvin Kelstein. Been there many years. Sounded like he was a very eminent type of a guy. Then the call got very difficult. I asked if he would come to the phone. The woman said no he wouldn’t. He was very busy and could not be disturbed again.

  “Again?” I said. “Who’s been disturbing him already?”

  “Two detectives from Atlanta, Georgia,” she said.

  “When was this?” I asked her.

  “This morning,” she said. “They came in here asking for him and they wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Can you describe these two men to me?” I asked her.

  There was a pause as she tried to remember.

  “They were Hispanic,” she said. “I don’t recall any details. The one who did the talking was very neat, very polite. Unremarkable, really, I’m afraid.”

  “Have they met with him yet?” I asked her.

  “They made a one o’clock appointment,” she said. “They’re taking him to lunch somewhere, I believe.”

  I held the phone tighter.

  “OK,” I said. “This is very important. Did they ask for him by name? Or by the initials K.K.? Like I just did?”

  “They asked exactly the same question you did,” she said. “They asked if we had any faculty with those initials.”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Listen very carefully. I want you to go see Professor Kelstein. Right now. Interrupt him, whatever he’s doing. Tell him this is life or death. Tell him those Atlanta detectives are bogus. They were at Princeton last night and they murdered Professor Walter Bartholomew.”

  “Are you kidding?” the woman said. Almost a scream.

  “This is for real,” I said. “My name is Jack Reacher. I believe Kelstein had been in touch with my brother, Joe Reacher, from the Treasury Department. Tell him my brother was murdered also.”

  The woman paused again. Swallowed. Then she came back, calm.

  “What should I tell Professor Kelstein to do?” she said.

  “Two things,” I said. “First, he must not, repeat, must not meet with the two Hispanic men from Atlanta. At any time. Got that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “Second, he must go right now to the campus security office. Right now, OK? He must wait there for me. I’ll be there in about three hours. Kelstein must sit in the security office and wait for me with a guard right next to him until I get there. Can you make absolutely sure he does that?”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “Tell him to call Princeton from the security office,” I said. “Tell him to ask after Bartholomew. That should convince him.”

  “Yes,” the woman said again. “I’ll make sure he does what you say.”

  “And give my name to your security desk,” I said. “I don’t want any problem getting in when I arrive. Professor Kelstein can ID me. Tell him I look like my brother.”

  I hung up. Shouted across the room to Finlay.

  “They’ve got Joe’s list,” I said. “They’ve got two guys up in New York. One of them is the same guy who got Joe’s briefcase. Neat, polite guy. They’ve got the list.”

  “But how?” he said. “The list wasn’t in the briefcase.”

  A clang of fear hit me. I knew how. It was staring me in the face.

  “Baker,” I said. “Baker’s inside the scam. He made an extra Xerox copy. You sent him to copy Joe’s list. He made two copies and gave one to Teale.”

  “Christ,” Finlay said. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “There were other indications,” I said. “Teale’s pulled a bluff. We figured everybody in the department was clean. But he was just keeping them hidden. So now we don’t know who the hell is involved and who the hell isn’t. We’ve got to get out of here, right now. Let’s go.”

  We ran out of the office. Through the squad room. Out through the big plate-glass doors and into Finlay’s car.

  “Where to?” he said.

  “Atlanta,” I told him. “The airport. I’ve got to get to New York.”

  He started up and headed out north along the county road.

  “Baker was in it from the start,” I said. “It was staring me in the face.”

  I WENT THROUGH IT WITH HIM AS HE DROVE. STEP BY STEP. Last Friday I had been alone in the small white interview room at the station house with Baker. I had held out my wrists to him. He’d removed my handcuffs. He’d taken the cuffs off a guy he was supposed to believe was a murderer. A murderer who had pulped his victim’s body. He was willing to put himself alone in a room with such a guy. Then later I had called him over and made him escort me to the bathroom. He had been sloppy and careless. I’d had opportunities to disarm him and escape. I’d taken it as a sign he’d listened to me answering Finlay’s questions and slowly become convinced I was innocent.

  But he’d always known I was innocent. He knew exactly who was innocent and exactly who wasn’t. That’s why he had been so casual. He knew I was just a convenient fall guy. He knew I was just an innocent passerby. Who worries about taking the cuffs off an innocent passerby? Who takes a whole lot of precautions escorting an innocent passerby to the bathroom?

  And he had brought Hubble in for questioning. I’d noticed his body language. He was all twisted up with conflict. I had figured he was feeling awkward because Hubble was Stevenson’s buddy and his relative by marriage. But it wasn’t that. He was all twisted up because he was caught in a trap. He knew bringing Hubble in was a disaster. But he couldn’t disobey Finlay without alerting him. He was trapped. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t
.

  And there had been a deliberate attempt to conceal Joe’s identity. Baker had deliberately screwed up the prints thing with the computer so that Joe would remain unidentified. He knew Joe was a government investigator. He knew Joe’s prints would be in the Washington database. So he tried to make damn sure they didn’t get matched. But he had blown his cover by announcing the null result far too early. It was inexperience. He’d always left the technical work to Roscoe. So he didn’t know the system. But I hadn’t put two and two together. I had been too overwhelmed when the second attempt with the prints had brought back my brother’s name.

  Since then, he had been poking and prying, hovering around on the edge of our hidden investigation. He had wanted in and he had been a willing helper. Finlay had used him on lookout duty. And all the time he was running to Teale with the snippets he was getting from us.

  Finlay was blasting north at a hell of a speed. He flung the Chevy around the cloverleaf and mashed the pedal. The big car hurtled forward up the highway.

  “Could we try the Coast Guard?” he said. “Get them to stand by Sunday for when they start shipping out? Some kind of an extra patrol?”

  “You’re joking,” I said. “The political flak the president’s taken over that, he’s not going to reverse himself the very first day, just because you ask him to.”

  “So what do we do?” he said.

  “Call Princeton back,” I told him. “Get hold of that research assistant again. He may be able to piece together what Bartholomew figured out last night. Hole up somewhere safe and get busy.”

  He laughed.

  “Where the hell’s safe now?” he said.

  I told him to use the Alabama motel we’d used Monday. It was in the middle of nowhere and it was as safe as he needed to get. I told him I’d find him there when I got back. Asked him to bring the Bentley to the airport and to leave the key and the parking claim at the arrivals information desk. He repeated all the arrangements back to me to confirm he was solid. He was doing more than ninety miles an hour, but he was turning his head to look at me every time he spoke.

  “Watch the road, Finlay,” I said. “No good to anybody if you kill us in a damn car.”

  He grinned and faced forward. Jammed his foot down harder. The big police Chevy eased up over a hundred. Then he turned again and looked straight into my eyes for about three hundred yards.

  “Coward,” he said.

  25

  NO EASY WAY TO GET THROUGH THE AIRPORT SECURITY hoops with a sap and a knife and a big metal gun, so I left my camouflage jacket in Finlay’s car and told him to transfer it to the Bentley. He ducked into departures with me and put the best part of seven hundred bucks on his credit card for my round trip ticket on Delta to New York. Then he took off to find the Alabama motel and I went through to the gate for the plane to La Guardia.

  I was airborne for a shade over two hours and in a cab for thirty-five minutes. Arrived in Manhattan just after four-thirty. I’d been there in May and it looked pretty much the same in September. The summer heat was over and the city was back to work. The cab took me over the Triborough Bridge and headed west on 116th. Slid around Morningside Park and dropped me at Columbia University’s main entrance. I went in and found my way to the campus security office. Knocked on the glass.

  A campus policeman checked a clipboard and let me in. Led me through to a room in back and pointed to Professor Kelvin Kelstein. I saw a very old guy, tiny, wizened with age, sporting a huge shock of white hair. He looked exactly like that cleaner I’d seen on the third floor at Warburton, except he was white.

  “The two Hispanic guys been back?” I asked the college cop.

  He shook his head.

  “Haven’t seen them,” he said. “The old guy’s office told them that the lunch date was canceled. Maybe they went away.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Meanwhile, you’re going to have to watch over this guy for a spell. Give it until Sunday.”

  “Why?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Not sure, exactly,” I said. “I’m hoping the old guy can tell me.”

  The guard walked us back to Kelstein’s own office and left us there. It was a small and untidy room crammed full to the ceiling with books and thick journals. Kelstein sat in an old armchair and gestured me to sit opposite him in another.

  “What exactly happened to Bartholomew?” he asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “Jersey police say he got stabbed during a mugging outside his home.”

  “But you remain skeptical?” Kelstein asked.

  “My brother made a list of contacts,” I said. “You’re the only one of them still alive.”

  “Your brother was Mr. Joe Reacher?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “He was murdered last Thursday,” I said. “I’m trying to find out why.”

  Kelstein inclined his head and peered out of a grimy window.

  “I’m sure you know why,” he said. “He was an investigator. Clearly he was killed in the course of an investigation. What you need to know is what he was investigating.”

  “Can you tell me what that was?” I said.

  The old professor shook his head.

  “Only in the most general terms,” he said. “I can’t help you with specifics.”

  “Didn’t he discuss specifics with you?” I said.

  “He used me as a sounding board,” he said. “We were speculating together. I enjoyed it tremendously. Your brother Joe was a stimulating companion. He had a keen mind and a very attractive precision in the manner in which he expressed himself. It was a pleasure to work with him.”

  “But you didn’t discuss specifics?” I said again.

  Kelstein cupped his hands like a man holding an empty vessel.

  “We discussed everything,” he said. “But we came to no conclusions.”

  “OK,” I said. “Can we start at the beginning? The discussion was about counterfeit currency, right?”

  Kelstein tilted his great head to one side. Looked amused.

  “Obviously,” he said. “What else would Mr. Joe Reacher and I find to discuss?”

  “Why you?” I asked him bluntly.

  The old professor smiled a modest smile which faded into a frown. Then he came up with an ironic grin.

  “Because I am the biggest counterfeiter in history,” he said. “I was going to say I was one of the two biggest in history, but after the events of last night at Princeton, sadly now I alone remain.”

  “You and Bartholomew?” I said. “You were counterfeiters?”

  The old guy smiled again.

  “Not by choice,” he said. “During the Second World War, young men like Walter and me ended up with strange occupations. He and I were considered more useful in an intelligence role than in combat. We were drafted into the SIS, which as you know was the very earliest incarnation of the CIA. Other people were responsible for attacking the enemy with guns and bombs. We were handed the job of attacking the enemy with economics. We derived a scheme for shattering the Nazi economy with an assault on the value of its paper currency. Our project manufactured hundreds of billions of counterfeit reichsmarks. Spare bombers littered Germany with them. They came down out of the sky like confetti.”

  “Did it work?” I asked him.

  “Yes and no,” he said. “Certainly, their economy was shattered. Their currency was worthless very quickly. But of course, much of their production used slave labor. Slaves aren’t interested one way or the other whether the content of somebody else’s wage packet is worth anything. And of course, alternative currencies were found. Chocolate, cigarettes, anything. Altogether, it was only a partial success. But it left Walter and me two of history’s greatest forgers. That is, if you use sheer volume as a measure. I can’t claim any great talent for the inky end of the process.”

  “So Joe was picking your brains?” I asked him.

  “Walter and I became obsessed,” Kelstein said. “We studied the history of mone
y forging. It started the day after paper money was first introduced. It’s never gone away. We became experts. We carried on the interest after the war. We developed a loose relationship with the government. Finally, some years ago, a Senate subcommittee commissioned a report from us. With all due modesty, I can claim that it became the Treasury’s anticounterfeiting bible. Your brother was familiar with it, of course. That’s why he was talking to Walter and me.”

  “But what was he talking to you about?” I said.

  “Joe was a new broom,” Kelstein said. “He was brought in to solve problems. He was a very talented man indeed. His job was to eradicate counterfeiting. Now, that’s an impossible job. Walter and I told him that. But he nearly succeeded. He thought hard, and he applied strokes of appealing simplicity. He just about halted all illicit printing within the United States.”

  I sat in his crowded office and listened to the old guy. Kelstein had known Joe better than I had. He had shared Joe’s hopes and plans. Celebrated his successes. Sympathized over his setbacks. They had talked at length, animatedly, sparking off each other. The last time I had spoken to Joe face to face was very briefly after our mother’s funeral. I hadn’t asked him what he was doing. I’d just seen him as my older brother. Just seen him as Joe. I hadn’t seen the reality of his life as a senior agent, with hundreds of people under him, trusted by the White House to solve big problems, capable of impressing a smart old bird like Kelstein. I sat there in the armchair and felt bad. I’d lost something I never knew I’d had.

  “His systems were brilliant,” Kelstein said. “His analysis was acute. He targeted ink and paper. In the end, it all boils down to ink and paper, doesn’t it? If anybody bought the sort of ink or paper that could be used to forge a banknote, Joe’s people knew within hours. He swept people up within days. Inside the States, he reduced counterfeiting activity by ninety percent. And he tracked the remaining ten percent so vigorously he got almost all of them before they’d even distributed the fakes. He impressed me greatly.”