by Lee Child
There was no width to turn the truck around, and we didn’t want to back all the way down, so we drove on up to the house again and U-turned on the gravel patch, and came back facing the right way. We saw nothing and no one on the track, and the two-lane road was empty. We told the navigation device to take us back to the airport, and it set about doing so. The same fifty miles, in reverse.
I said, ‘I apologize.’
She said, ‘For what?’
‘I made a category error. I took you to be a State Department person loaned out to the CIA for exposure and experience. And therefore maybe a little out of your depth. But it’s the other way around, isn’t it? You’re a CIA agent loaned out to the State Department. For exposure and experience. Of passports and visas and all kinds of forms. Therefore not out of your depth at all.’
‘What gave me away?’
‘A couple of things. The infantry hand signal. You knew that.’
She nodded. ‘Lots of time at Fort Benning.’
‘And you were all business.’
‘Didn’t Shoemaker tell you I’m tougher than I look?’
‘I thought he was trying to justify a crazy risk.’
‘And by the way, the State Department does way more than passports and visas. It does all kinds of things. Including it supervises operations like these.’
‘How? This operation is O’Day and two CIA people. You and Scarangello. The State Department isn’t involved.’
‘I’m the State Department. Like you said. Temporarily. And theoretically.’
‘Are you keeping your temporary and theoretical boss in the loop?’
‘Not completely.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because this is too important for the State Department. If it’s the Brit or the Russian or the Israeli, then sure, we’ll let State take the victory lap, but until we know that for certain, this remains a closely held project.’
‘Is that what you call it now?’
‘Top secret was already taken.’
‘It’s headline news. How top secret can it be?’
‘Tomorrow it will be yesterday’s news. The French are going to make an arrest. That should calm things down.’
‘Who are they going to arrest?’
‘Some patsy or other. They’ll find some guy willing to play a wild-eyed terrorist for three weeks. In exchange for favours elsewhere. I imagine they’re casting the role right now. Which will give us time and space to work.’
‘It’s fourteen hundred yards,’ I said. ‘That’s what matters. Not which one is shooting. They need a perimeter. Call it at least a mile.’
‘Or they could hide in holes in the ground. Which they might have to, sooner or later. But until then we prefer a proactive approach. We need John Kott in custody. Certainly we don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t get his guy.’
‘How are the others doing?’
‘You heard what O’Day said this morning. They have names and photographs and histories.’
‘Is that all?’
‘They’ve got what we’ve got. It’s a level playing field so far.’
We drove on, and eventually returned the truck and hiked over to a wire gate in a wire fence, and then a golf cart picked us up and drove us to our plane. Two hours later we were back at Pope, where we found out the playing field wasn’t level any more.
TWELVE
THE PLAYING FIELD wasn’t level anymore because the Israelis had found their guy. Mr Rozan had been located. He had been on vacation. The Red Sea. The watchers had missed his departure. But now he was back. His movements had been traced and all kinds of bar staff and restaurant workers had confirmed his story. It was watertight. He had not been in Paris. He was not a possibility. He was off the list.
‘Which makes our task slightly more urgent,’ O’Day said. He liked afternoon conferences too. We were all in the same upstairs room again, with the pushed-together tables. O’Day, Shoemaker, and Scarangello, all in position, with me and Casey Nice as late arrivals, jet whine still whistling in our ears. We told them what we had found in Arkansas, and we gave them the dust and the grit, in an evidence bag, not the pill bottle. Shoemaker was disappointed there had been no just-in-case surveillance. He had wanted the bait ploy to work. And then O’Day said he figured Kott’s obsession with me was understandable.
I said, ‘I’d like to know how he got my file.’
He said, ‘A friend in the bureaucracy, presumably. It’s a routine file in routine storage in Missouri.’
‘He has no friends in the bureaucracy. He didn’t even have friends in his unit. None of them would lie for him.’
‘Then he bought the file.’
‘With what? He was just out of Leavenworth. And then he went out in his back yard and fired about a thousand fifty-calibre rounds, which can be five bucks a pop. Even in Arkansas. Where did he get that kind of money?’
‘We’ll look into it.’
‘How? You’re not equipped. Enough with the national security bullshit. This is a police inquiry now. He had a fourteen-hundredyard practice range and a fourteen-hundred-yard money shot. Is that a coincidence? Or was that apartment balcony in Paris selected long ago? Did he train for it specifically? In which case this could be a conspiracy already dating back most of a year. We need data. As in, for a start, who owns that apartment in Paris?’
‘Are you volunteering to be our policeman?’
‘I thought I was bait.’
‘You could be both.’
‘I never volunteer for anything. Soldier’s basic rule.’
‘Maybe you should. You won’t rest easy. Not after seeing what you saw.’
‘There could be a dozen people in the world still real mad at me. Why would I care? None of them is ever going to find me.’
‘We found you.’
‘That’s different. You think I would answer an ad from Kott?’
‘You’d leave him out there?’
Socratic.
I said, ‘I’m not his parole officer.’
He said, ‘You’re in pretty good shape for your age, Reacher. No doubt because your chosen lifestyle gives you plenty of opportunity for exercise. Walking, mostly, I suppose. Which is the best kind of exercise, they tell me. But my guess is it’s not really a chore. It’s part of the appeal, isn’t it? Open roads, sunny days, far horizons. Or the city, with noises and lights, and hustle and bustle, and a freak show everywhere you look. You like walking. You enjoy the freedom.’
I said, ‘What’s your point?’
‘It’s not the same with a sniper out there.’
Joan Scarangello looked straight at me, daring me to disagree.
O’Day said, ‘Especially with a sniper so batshit crazy he does yoga for fifteen years and then draws a picture on his bedroom wall.’
I said nothing.
He said, ‘What type of police inquiries would you make?’
‘He left his truck at home. Therefore he was picked up. Not by a car service, because he has no phone and there’s no cell signal. It was prearranged. As was everything, obviously, which means people have been up and down that driveway for months. Someone must have seen something.’
‘The neighbour didn’t.’
‘So he says now. He’s been paid off. And coached.’
‘You think?’
I nodded. ‘He had to admit knowing his neighbour. Too weird not to, for Arkansas. But he was told to clam up about the comings and goings. As soon as I asked about foreigners hanging around, he changed the subject. He insulted the Marine Corps and started leering at Ms Nice.’
O’Day turned to Casey Nice and said, ‘Is that what happened?’
She said, ‘I dealt with it.’
‘What did he say about the Marines?’
‘Showboating glory hunters.’
‘Was he a navy man?’
‘Air force.’
O’Day nodded sagely and turned back to me. He said, ‘Conclusion?’
I said, ‘The neighbour’s
got a bag of cash in the back of his closet.’
‘Untraceable.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But he knows who gave it to him. And more of the same cash is in some ammo dealer’s register. Who will remember selling a thousand fifty-calibre rounds. That’s a big order.’
‘Could be he went to many different dealers.’
‘Exactly. And it could be many different folks made the buys, to keep it clean. And the more guys, the more flights in and out of Little Rock and Texarkana, and the more car rentals, and the more gas bought at the local stations, and maybe speeding tickets and parking tickets and video in cop car dashboards, and the more breakfasts and lunches and dinners bought in the local restaurants, and the more nights spent in the local motels. All these things should be checked out. As well as what the neighbour knows.’
O’Day worked his mouth, opening it and closing it like he was rehearsing different answers, but in the end all he said was, ‘OK.’
I said, ‘I can’t go do it. I have no status. No one would talk to me.’
‘The FBI will do it.’
‘I thought this thing was top secret. Or closely held.’
‘Divide and conquer,’ O’Day said. ‘They can all have a small piece of it. As long as no one has enough to see the whole.’
‘Then I recommend they start yesterday.’
‘Tomorrow’s the best I can do.’ He made a note on a piece of paper. He said, ‘The Russians are getting nowhere. Comrade Datsev has disappeared completely. The British think their boy Carson is travelling on a passport recently and fraudulently acquired. So they’re looking at people with brand-new passports who travelled to Paris during the relevant time frame. Trains, planes, automobiles and boats. They have nearly a thousand names.’
‘Where was Carson last seen?’
‘At home, a month ago. A routine drive-by, by Special Branch.’
‘What about Datsev?’
‘Similar, in Moscow. About a month ago. The difference is neither one has been traced to a fourteen-hundred-yard practice range. I have a bad feeling this one is down to us.’
‘Carson or Datsev could have trained overseas. They wouldn’t need as long as Kott. He had catching up to do. Maybe they all got together somewhere. Maybe there was an audition before the audition. Maybe there was a three-way competition, winner gets the job.’
O’Day said, ‘Maybe a lot of things.’
I said, ‘Do we have photographs?’
He opened a red file folder and took out four head shots, all colour. He slipped one out of the pile and discarded it. A curly-haired guy, with a tan and a guileless smile. Rozan, presumably, the Israeli, no longer a suspect. He skimmed the remaining three across the table, in my direction. First up was a shavenheaded guy of about fifty, with a face as blank as a two-by-four, and dark eyes that tilted slightly at the outer corners. Mongolian blood in there somewhere.
‘Fyodor Datsev,’ O’Day said. ‘Fifty-two years old. Born in Siberia.’
Then came a guy who might have started out pale, but who had gotten lined and darkened by sun and wind. Short brown hair, a watchful gaze, a busted nose, and a half-smile that was either ironic or threatening, depending on how you chose to look at it.
‘William Carson,’ O’Day said. ‘Born in London, forty-eight years old.’
Last up was John Kott. Some people got bigger with age, bloated and doughy, like Shoemaker for instance, but Kott had gotten smaller, wirier, boiled down to muscle and sinew. His Czech cheekbones were prominent, and his mouth was a tight line. Only his eyes had gotten bigger. They blazed out at me.
O’Day said, ‘That’s his prison release picture. The most recent we have.’
An unsavoury trio. I butted the photographs into a stack and slid them back.
I said, ‘How are the Brits doing with their moat?’
Scarangello said, ‘They’re not going to enforce a mile perimeter. You know how densely populated Great Britain is. It would be like emptying Manhattan. It’s not going to happen.’
‘So what next?’
O’Day said, ‘You go to Paris.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘As bait or a cop?’
‘Both. But mostly we need eyeballs on the crime scene. In case something was missed.’
‘Why would they show me anything? I’m nobody.’
‘Your name will get you in anywhere. I called ahead. Anything they’d show me, they’ll show you. Such is the power of O’Day. Especially now.’
I said nothing.
Shoemaker said, ‘You speak French, am I right?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
‘And English.’
‘A little.’
‘Russian?’
‘Why?’
‘The Brits and the Russians are sending people too. You’re bound to meet. Get what you can from them, but don’t give anything away.’
‘Maybe they’ve been given the same instructions.’
O’Day said, ‘We need a CIA presence,’ and Casey Nice sat forward in her chair.
Joan Scarangello said, ‘I’ll go.’
THIRTEEN
THEY GAVE US the same plane, but a fresh crew. Two new guys in the cockpit, and a new flight attendant, this one a woman, all of them in air force fatigues. I got on board straight out of the shower, in my new clothes from Arkansas, and Scarangello followed me five minutes later, showered too, in another black skirt suit. She had a small wheeled suitcase with her, and a purse. It was going to be an overnight flight, seven hours in the air plus six time zones, which would get us in at nine in the morning, French time. My usual armchair had been laid flat and butted up against the armchair opposite, which had also been laid flat, to make a couch. The same thing had been done to the pair of chairs on the other side of the cabin. There were pillows and sheets and blankets. Two long thin beds, separated by a narrow aisle. Which worked for me. Scarangello didn’t look so sure. She was a woman of a certain age and a certain type. I think she might have appreciated a little more privacy.
But first we had to sit on regular chairs, at a table, for takeoff, and then we stayed there, because the flight attendant told us there were meals to be eaten. Which didn’t match the surroundings. They were not the culinary equivalents of butterscotch leather and walnut veneer. They were not army issue, either. Or air force. They were burgers, in cardboard clamshell boxes, reheated in the on-board microwave, unrecognizable and off-brand, presumably bought from a shack near Pope’s main gate. Maybe right next to the Dunkin’ Donuts.
I ate mine, and then half of Scarangello’s, after she left it. Then she started working out how to get herself into bed without embarrassment. I saw her eyes darting all around, checking angles, looking at the lighting, figuring out where I would be and what I might see.
I said, ‘I’ll go first.’
The bathroom was through the galley, all the way in back, ahead of the luggage hold, where they had stashed her bag. I used the head and brushed my teeth, and walked back to the bedroom area, and chose the bed on the starboard side. I took off my shoes and socks, because I sleep better that way, and I lay down on top of the blanket, and I rolled on my side and faced the wall.
Scarangello took the hint. I heard her go, all stiff swishing from wool and nylon, and then later I heard her pad back, softer, probably in cotton, and I heard her get in bed and arrange the sheets. She made a little sound, somewhere halfway between a sleepy murmur and a cough, which I took to be an announcement, like OK, thanks, I’m all set now, so I rolled on my back and looked up at the bulkhead above me.
She said, ‘Do you always sleep outside the covers?’
I said, ‘When it’s warm.’
‘Do you always sleep in your clothes?’
‘No choice, in a situation like this.’
‘Because you have no pyjamas. No home, no bags, no possessions. We had a briefing about you.’
I said, ‘Casey Nice told me that.’ I rolled back towards the wall a little, adjusting my
position for comfort, and something dug into my hip. Something in my pocket. Not my toothbrush, which was in my other pocket. I lifted up and checked.
The pill bottle. I cupped it in my palm, and looked at the label, in the dim light, purely out of interest. I guess I was expecting allergy medicine, perhaps carried in anticipation of spring pollens in the woods of Arkansas, or else painkillers, perhaps carried after dental work or a muscle strain. But the label said Zoloft, which I was pretty sure was for neither allergies nor pain. I was pretty sure Zoloft was for stress. Or for anxiety. Or for depression or panic attacks, or PTSD, or OCD. Heavy duty, and prescription only.
But it wasn’t Casey Nice’s prescription. The name on the label wasn’t hers. It was a man’s name: Antonio Luna.
Scarangello said, ‘What did you think of our Ms Nice?’
I put the bottle back in my pocket.
I said, ‘Nice by name, nice by nature.’
‘Too nice?’
‘You worried about that?’
‘Potentially.’
‘She did fine in Arkansas. The neighbour didn’t get to her.’
‘How would she have done if you hadn’t been there?’
‘The same, probably. Different dynamic, similar result.’
‘That’s good to know.’
‘Is she your protégée?’
Scarangello said, ‘I never met her before. And I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen her. But she was who we had at State, so she fit the bill.’
I said, ‘These world leader guys risk getting shot all the time. It’s the cost of doing business. And protection is better than ever now. I don’t understand the big panic.’
‘Our briefing indicated you’re a competent mathematician.’
‘Then your briefing was incorrect. High-school arithmetic was as far as I got.’
‘Area of a circle with a fourteen-hundred-yard radius?’
I smiled in the dark. Pi times the radius squared. I said, ‘Very nearly two square miles.’
‘Average population density in major Western city centres?’