by Lee Child
“So the paper would be difficult to copy?” I said.
“Virtually impossible,” he said. “In a way, it’s so difficult to copy that even the official government supplier can’t copy it. They have tremendous difficulty just keeping it consistent, batch to batch, and they’re by far the most sophisticated papermaker in the entire world.”
I ran it all through in my head. Press, plates, ink and paper.
“So the paper supply is really the key to all this?” I said.
Kelstein nodded ruefully.
“That was our conclusion,” he said. “We agreed the paper supply was crucial, and we agreed we had no idea how they were managing it. That’s why I can’t really help you. I couldn’t help Joe, and I can’t help you. I’m terribly sorry.”
I looked at him.
“They’ve got a warehouse full of something,” I said. “Could that be paper?”
He snorted in derision. Snapped his great head around toward me.
“Don’t you listen?” he said. “Currency stock is unobtainable. Completely unobtainable. You couldn’t get forty sheets of currency stock, never mind forty million sheets. The whole thing is a total mystery. Joe and Walter and I racked our brains for a year and we came up with nothing.”
“I think Bartholomew came up with something,” I said.
Kelstein nodded sadly. He levered himself slowly out of his chair and stepped to his desk. Pressed the replay button on his telephone answering machine. The room was filled with an electronic beep, then with the sound of a dead man’s voice.
“Kelstein?” the voice said. “Bartholomew here. It’s Thursday night, late. I’m going to call you in the morning and I’m going to tell you the answer. I knew I’d beat you to it. Goodnight, old man.”
The voice had excitement in it. Kelstein stood there and gazed into space as if Bartholomew’s spirit was hanging there in the still air. He looked upset. I couldn’t tell if that was because his old colleague was dead, or because his old colleague had beaten him to the answer.
“Poor Walter,” he said. “I knew him fifty-six years.”
I sat quietly for a spell. Then I stood up as well.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said.
Kelstein put his head on one side and looked at me sharply.
“Do you really think you will?” he said. “When Joe couldn’t?”
I shrugged at the old guy.
“Maybe Joe did,” I said. “We don’t know what he’d figured out before they got him. Anyway, right now I’m going back to Georgia. Carry on the search.”
Kelstein nodded and sighed. He looked stressed.
“Good luck, Mr. Reacher,” he said. “I hope you finish your brother’s business. Perhaps you will. He spoke of you often. He liked you, you know.”
“He spoke of me?” I said.
“Often,” the old guy said again. “He was very fond of you. He was sorry your job kept you so far away.”
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I felt unbearably guilty. Years would pass, I wouldn’t think about him. But he was thinking about me?
“He was older, but you looked after him,” he said. “That’s what Joe told me. He said you were very fierce. Very tough. I guess if Joe wanted anybody to take care of the Kliners, he’d have nominated you.”
I nodded.
“I’m out of here,” I said.
I shook his frail hand and left him with the cops in the security office.
I WAS TRYING TO FIGURE WHERE KLINER WAS GETTING HIS perfect paper, and I was trying to figure if I could get the six o’clock flight back to Atlanta if I hurried, and I was trying to ignore what Kelstein had told me about Joe speaking fondly of me. The streets were clogged and I was busy thinking about it all and scanning for an empty cab, which was why I didn’t notice two Hispanic guys strolling up to me. But what I did notice was the gun the leading guy showed me. It was a small automatic held in a small hand, concealed under one of those khaki raincoats city people carry on their arms in September.
He showed me the weapon and his partner signaled to a car waiting twenty yards away at the curb. The car lurched forward and the partner stood ready to open a door like the top-hatted guys do outside the expensive apartment houses up there. I was looking at the gun and looking at the car, making choices.
“Get into the car,” the guy with the gun said softly. “Or I’ll shoot you.”
I stood there and all that was passing through my mind was that I might miss my flight. I was trying to remember when the next non-stop left. Seven o’clock, I thought.
“In the car,” the guy said again.
I was pretty sure he wouldn’t fire the gun on the street. It was a small gun, but there was no silencer on it. It would make a hell of a noise, and it was a crowded street. The other guy’s hands were empty. He maybe had a gun in his pocket. There was just the driver in the car. Probably a gun on the seat beside him. I was unarmed. My jacket with the blackjack and the knife and the Desert Eagle was eight hundred miles away in Atlanta. Choices.
I chose not to get into the car. I just stood there in the street, gambling with my life that the guy wouldn’t shoot in public. He stood there, holding the raincoat out toward me. The car stopped next to us. His partner stood on the other side of me. They were small guys. The both of them wouldn’t have made one of me. The car waited, idling at the curb. Nobody moved. We were just frozen there like some kind of a display in a store window. Like new fashions for the fall, old army fatigues put with Burberry raincoats.
It gave the two guys a big problem. In a situation like that, there’s a split-second opportunity to carry out your threat. If you say you’re going to shoot, you’ve got to shoot. If you don’t, you’re a spent force. Your bluff is called. If you don’t shoot, you’re nothing. And the guy didn’t shoot. He just stood there, twisted up with indecision. People swirled around us on the busy sidewalk. Cars were blasting their horns at the guy stopped at the curb.
They were smart guys. Smart enough not to shoot me on a busy New York street. Smart enough to know I’d called their bluff. Smart enough to never again make a threat they weren’t going to keep. But not smart enough to walk away. They just stood there.
So I swayed backward, as if I was going to take a step away. The gun under the raincoat prodded forward at me. I tracked the movement and grabbed the little guy’s wrist with my left hand. Pulled the gun around behind me and hugged the guy close with my right arm around his shoulders. We looked like we were dancing the waltz together or we were lovers at a train station. Then I fell forward and crushed him against the car. All the time I was squeezing his wrist as hard as I could, with my nails dug in. Left-handed, but it was hurting him. My weight leaning up on him was giving him a struggle to breathe.
His partner still had his hand on the car door. His glance was darting back and forth. Then his other hand was going for his pocket. So I jackknifed my weight back and rolled around my guy’s gun hand and threw him against the car. And then I ran like hell. In five strides I was lost in the crowd. I dodged and barged my way through the mass of people. Ducked in and out of doorways and ran through shrieking and honking traffic across the streets. The two guys stayed with me for a spell, but the traffic eventually stopped them. They weren’t taking the risks I was taking.
I GOT A CAB EIGHT BLOCKS AWAY FROM WHERE I HAD started and made the six o’clock non-stop, La Guardia to Atlanta. Going back it took longer, for some reason. I was sitting there for two and a half hours. I thought about Joe all the way through the airspace above Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. Above the Carolinas and into Georgia, I thought about Roscoe. I wanted her back. I missed her like crazy.
We came down through storm clouds ten miles thick. The Atlanta evening gloom was turned to pitch black by the clouds. Looked like an enormous weather system was rolling in from somewhere. When we got off the plane, the air in the little tunnel was thick and heavy, and smelled of storm as well as kerosene.
I picked up the Bentley key from the informatio
n counter in the arrivals hall. It was in an envelope with a parking claim. I walked out to find the car. Felt a warm wind blowing out of the north. The storm was going to be a big one. I could feel the voltage building up for the lightning. I found the car in the short-term lot. The rear windows were all tinted black. The guy hadn’t gotten around to doing the front side glass or the windshield. It made the car look like something royalty might use, with a chauffeur driving them. My jacket was laid out in the trunk. I put it on and felt the reassuring weight of the weaponry in the pockets again. I got in the driver’s seat and nosed out of the lot and headed south down the highway in the dark. It was nine o’clock, Friday evening. Maybe thirty-six hours before they could start shipping the stockpile out on Sunday.
IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK WHEN I GOT BACK TO MARGRAVE. Thirty-five hours to go. I had spent the hour thinking about some stuff we had learned back in Staff College. We’d studied military philosophies, mostly written by those old Krauts who loved all that stuff. I hadn’t paid much attention, but I remember some big thing which said sooner or later, you’ve got to engage the enemy’s main force. You don’t win the war unless you do that. Sooner or later, you seek out their main force, and you take it on, and you destroy it.
I knew their main force had started with ten people. Hubble had told me that. Then there were nine, after they ditched Morrison. I knew about the two Kliners, Teale, and Baker. That left me five more names to find. I smiled to myself. Pulled off the county road into Eno’s gravel lot. Parked up on the far end of the row and got out. Stretched and yawned in the night air. The storm was holding off, but it was going to break. The air was still thick and heavy. I could still feel the voltage in the clouds. I could still feel the warm wind on my back. I got into the back of the car. Stretched out on the leather bench and went to sleep. I wanted to get an hour, hour and a half.
I started dreaming about John Lee Hooker. In the old days, before he got famous again. He had an old steel-strung guitar, played it sitting on a little stool. The stool was placed on a square of wooden board. He used to press old beer bottle caps into the soles of his shoes to make them noisy. Like homemade tap shoes. He’d sit on his stool and play that guitar with his bold, choppy style. All the while pounding on the wooden board with his noisy shoes. I was dreaming of him pounding out the rhythm with his shoes on that old board.
But it wasn’t John Lee’s shoes making the noise. It was somebody knocking on the Bentley’s windshield. I snapped awake and struggled up. Sergeant Baker was looking in at me. The big chrome clock on the dash showed ten thirty. I’d slept a half hour. That was all I was going to get.
First thing I did was to change my plan. A much better one had fallen right into my lap. The old Krauts would have approved. Tactical flexibility was big with them. Second thing I did was to put my hand in my pocket and snick the safety off the Desert Eagle. Then I got out of the opposite door and looked along the car roof at Baker. He was using his friendly grin, gold tooth and all.
“How you doing?” he said. “Sleeping in a public place, around here you could get arrested for vagrancy.”
I grinned a friendly grin right back at him.
“Highway safety,” I said. “They tell you don’t drive if you’re tired. Pull off and take a nap, right?”
“Come on in and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said. “You want to wake up, Eno’s coffee should do it for you.”
I locked the car. Kept my hand in my pocket. We crunched over the gravel and into the diner. Slid into the end booth. The woman with the glasses brought us coffee. We hadn’t asked. She just seemed to know.
“So how you doing?” Baker said. “Feeling bad about your brother?”
I shrugged at him. Drank my coffee left-handed. My right hand was wrapped around the Desert Eagle in my pocket.
“We weren’t close,” I said.
Baker nodded.
“Roscoe still helping the Bureau out?” he said.
“Guess so,” I said.
“And where’s old Finlay tonight?” he asked.
“Jacksonville,” I said. “He had to go to Florida, check something out.”
“Jacksonville?” he said. “What does he need to check out in Jacksonville?”
I shrugged again. Sipped my coffee.
“Search me,” I said. “He doesn’t tell me anything. I’m not on the payroll. I’m just an errand boy. Now he’s got me running up to Hubble’s place to fetch him something.”
“Hubble’s place?” Baker said. “What you got to fetch from there?”
“Some old papers,” I said. “Anything I can find, I guess.”
“Then what?” he said. “You going to Florida too?”
I shook my head. Sipped more coffee.
“Finlay told me to stick them in the mail,” I said. “Some Washington address. I’m going to sleep up at Hubble’s place and mail them in the morning.”
Baker nodded slowly. Then he flashed his friendly grin again. But it was forced. We finished up our coffee. Baker dropped a couple of bucks on the table and we slid out and left. He got into his patrol car. Waved at me as he drove off. I let him go ahead and strolled over the gravel to the Bentley. I rolled south to the end of the dark little town and made the right turn up Beckman Drive.
26
I HAD TO BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT WHERE I PUT THE BENTLEY. I wanted it to look like it was just casually dumped. But it had to be left so nobody could get past it. I inched it back and forth for a while. Left it at the top of Hubble’s driveway with the wheels turned away. It looked like I’d driven up in a hurry and just slewed to a stop.
I wanted the house to look like I was in there. Nothing is more obvious than an empty building. That quiet, abandoned look is a giveaway. There’s a stillness. No human vibrations. So I opened the front door with the key from the big bunch Charlie had given me. Walked through and turned on some random lights. In the den, I switched the television set on and left it at a low murmur. Same thing with the radio in the kitchen. Pulled a few drapes. Went back outside. It looked pretty good. Looked like there might be someone in there.
Then the first stop was the coat closet off the main hallway. I was looking for gloves. Not easy to find in the Sunbelt. Not much call for them. But Hubble had some. Two pairs, lying neatly on a shelf. One was a pair of ski gloves. Lime green and lilac. Not much good to me. I wanted something dark. The other pair was what I wanted. Dressy things in thin black leather. Banker’s gloves. Very soft. Like a second skin.
The ski gloves made me look for a hat. If the Hubbles had taken trips up to Colorado, they’d have had all the gear. I found a box of hats. There was a kind of watch cap in there, some sort of a synthetic fiber. The bottom part rolled down to make earflaps. The hat was printed up in a dark green pattern. It would do.
Next stop was the master bedroom. I found Charlie’s vanity table. It was bigger than some of the rooms I’d lived in. She had a mass of cosmetics. All kinds of things. I took a tube of waterproof mascara into the bathroom. Smeared it all over my face. Then I fastened the jacket, put on the hat, put on the gloves. I walked back into the bedroom and checked the result in the full-length mirrors on the closet doors. Not bad. Just about right for night work.
I went back outside. Locked up the front door again. I could feel the huge storm clouds clamping down overhead. It was very dark. I stood by the front door and checked myself over. Put the pistol in the inside jacket pocket. Moved the zip down and checked the draw. Came out OK. Loaded, cocked. Safety on. Spare shells in the outside top right pocket. Switchblade in the left side pocket. Blackjack in the right side pocket. Shoes tightly laced.
I walked down the driveway, away from the house, past the parked Bentley, twelve or fifteen yards. Pushed through the greenery and settled in a spot where I could just about see up and down the drive. I sat on the cold earth and got ready to wait. In an ambush situation, waiting is what wins the battle. If the other guy is wary, he’ll come early or late. When he figures you won’t be expecting him
. So however early he might make it, you’ve got to be ready earlier. However late he might leave it, you’ve got to wait it out. You wait in a kind of trance. You need infinite patience. No use fretting or worrying. You just wait. Doing nothing, thinking nothing, burning no energy. Then you burst into action. After an hour, five hours, a day, a week. Waiting is a skill like anything else.
IT WAS A QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT WHEN I SETTLED IN FOR the wait. I could feel the storm boiling up overhead. The air was like soup. It was pitch dark. About midnight, the storm broke. Heavy drops the size of quarters spattered the leaves around me. They built into a deluge within seconds. It was like sitting in a shower stall. Awesome thunderclaps crashed about. They ripped and banged and the lightning blazed in sheets. The garden around me was lit up like day for seconds at a time. I sat under the lashing rain and waited. Ten minutes. Fifteen.
They came for me at twenty minutes past midnight. The rain was still bad and the thunder was still crashing and rolling. I didn’t hear their truck until it was well up the driveway. I heard it crunching over the gravel about forty feet away. It was a dark green panel truck. Gold lettering. Kliner Foundation. Like the one I’d seen near Roscoe’s place on Tuesday morning. It crunched past me, about six feet away. Wide tires on the gravel. That’s what Finlay had seen up at the Morrison place. Marks in the gravel made by wide tires.
The truck stopped a few yards beyond me. It pulled up sharp just behind the Bentley. Couldn’t get past. Just where I wanted it. I heard the engine stop and the parking brake ratchet on.
First guy out was the driver. He was wearing a white nylon bodysuit. It had a hood pulled tight around his face. Over his face was a surgical mask. He was wearing thin rubber gloves. On his feet, rubber overshoes. He vaulted out of the driver’s seat and walked around to the rear doors. I knew that walk. I knew that tall, heavy build. I knew those long powerful arms. It was the Kliner kid. The Kliner kid himself had come to kill me.