by Lee Child
But it wasn’t the Beetle. It was the hideous old farm vehicle next to it. I said, ‘What the hell is this thing?’
She said, ‘Some of it’s an old Ford Bronco. The rest of it is metal sheets welded on, as and when the original parts fell off. The brown coloration is equal parts rust and mud. I was advised not to wash the mud off. For corrosion protection and added strength.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘A guy at Fort Benning sold it to me.’
‘For how much?’
‘Twenty-two dollars.’
‘Outstanding.’
‘Climb aboard. It’s open. I never lock it. I mean, why would I?’
The passenger door hinge was more rust than mud, and I had to put some strength into it. I squealed it open just wide enough to slide in sideways, and I saw Casey Nice was doing the exact same thing on her side, like we were limbo dancing towards each other. There were no seat belts. No seats at all, really. Just a green canvas sling fraying its way off a tubular metal frame.
But the engine started, eventually, after a bunch of popping and churning, and then it idled, wet and lumpy. The transmission was slower than the postal service. She rattled the selector into reverse, and all the mechanical parts inside called the roll and counted a quorum and set about deciding what to do. Which required a lengthy debate, apparently, because it was whole seconds before the truck lurched backward. She turned the wheel, which looked like hard work, and then she jammed the selector into a forward gear, and first of all the reversing committee wound up its business and approved its minutes and exited the room, and then the forward crew signed on and got comfortable, and a motion was tabled and seconded and discussed. More whole seconds passed, and then the truck slouched forward, slow and stuttering at first, before picking up its pace and rolling implacably towards the exit gate.
I said, ‘You should have stolen John Kott’s old blue pick-up truck. It would have been a significant upgrade.’
She said, ‘This thing gets me from A to B.’
‘What happens if you’re heading for C or D?’
‘It’s a beautiful evening. And walking is good for you.’
We rolled out through one of Fort Bragg’s many sub-gates, into the real world, or at least a version of it, on a plain North Carolina two-lane road lined on both sides with establishments geared exclusively to the tastes and economic capabilities of military men and women. I saw loan shops and fast-food shacks and used-car dealerships, and no-contract cell phones and dollar stores and video-game exchanges, and bars and lounges of every description. Then a slow mile later such places started thinning out, in favour of vacant lots and piney woods, and a sense of empty vastness ahead.
The truck kept on going. Not fast, and accompanied by the smell of burnt oil, but forward progress was maintained. We turned right, deeper into the emptiness, clearly heading for somewhere Casey Nice knew, and she said, ‘Does it bother you that Kott has been gloating over your failures?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘They’re in the public record.’
‘It would bother me.’
‘Head to head I’m one-zip in front. He should gloat over that.’
‘Thanks to a gust of wind.’
‘I was born lucky.’
‘Plus you stood upwind of the others.’
‘That, too.’
‘Deliberate?’
‘Ingrained. Which is a form of deliberate, I suppose.’ Up ahead I saw lights strung through the trees, and then a clearing in the woods, with a tumbledown shack in the centre, and tables and chairs set out all around it on gravel and dirt. The shack had a chimney, and I could see heat and smoke coming up out of it. I could smell slow-cooked meat.
Casey Nice said, ‘OK?’
I said, ‘My kind of place.’
She began the process of slowing the truck, which involved stamping hard on the brake pedal and then pumping it like crazy. She turned the wheel and bumped into the lot and came to a stop. She switched off and pulled the key. The engine ran on for a whole minute, and then shuddered and died. We squeezed our way out and found a table. The place had no name. And no menu, really. There was a choice of meat, with either Wonder bread or baked beans on the side, and three kinds of canned soda to drink. Polystyrene plates, plastic forks, paper napkins, no credit cards accepted, and a waitress who looked about eleven years old. All good.
We ordered, ribs and bread for her, pork and beans for me, with two Cokes. The sky was clear and the stars were out. The air was crisp, but not cold. The place was about half full. I dug in my pocket and took out the pill bottle. I put it on the table, with the label facing away. I said, ‘You should have this back. Eating lint from your pocket can’t be doing you any good.’
She left it where it was for a moment. Then she dug in her own pocket and came out with her pills cupped in her hand. Seven of them. Fewer than before. She blew dust off them, and picked up the bottle, and popped the lid with her thumb, and shovelled the pills back inside.
I said, ‘Who is Antonio Luna?’
‘A friend of mine,’ she said. ‘I call him Tony Moon.’
‘A co-worker?’
‘Just a guy I know.’
‘Who had an empty bottle just when you needed one?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Or who fakes some symptoms and then gives you the prescriptions he gets, all because you can’t talk to your company doctor?’
She said, ‘Is this any of your business?’
I said, ‘None at all.’
She put the bottle in her pocket.
She said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’
I said, ‘Good to know.’
Then our food arrived, and I forgot all about pills, legit or otherwise. The beans were beans, and the Coke was Coke, but the meat was sensational. Just a no-name clearing in the North Carolina backwoods, but right then there was nowhere I would have rather been. Casey Nice looked like she shared my opinion. She was sucking the meat off her ribs and smiling and licking her lips. All good, until her phone rang.
She wiped her fingers and answered and listened and hung up. She said, ‘We have to go back. Something just happened in London.’
TWENTY-TWO
WHAT HAD HAPPENED in London was that someone had died. Which was not news in itself. London’s population was about eight million, and the UK’s death rate was over nine per thousand per year, so on any given day a couple hundred Londoners would breathe their last. Old age, overdoses, degenerative illnesses, cancers of every kind, car wrecks, fires, accidents, suicides, heart attacks, thromboses, and strokes. All normal.
Getting shot in the head by a high-powered rifle, not so much.
We chugged back to Bragg in the ancient patched-up Bronco, and we found O’Day and Shoemaker and Scarangello waiting for us in the upstairs room. Shoemaker gave us the facts. There was a big-deal Albanian gang leader in London, name of Karel Libor, very rich, very brutal, very successful, running drugs and girls and guns. Like most very rich and very successful big-deal gang leaders, he was also very paranoid. He had a lot of guys looking after him, and would go nowhere unless his destination had been checked and secured. Even the trip from his door to his car was protected. But apparently not from a .50-calibre round fired from a thousand yards away. Mr Libor’s head had exploded and splashed all over the armoured Range Rover he was getting into.
‘Conclusions?’ O’Day asked.
Shoemaker sat back, as if the question wasn’t aimed at him, and Scarangello glanced at Casey Nice, who shrugged and said nothing. I said, ‘Kott and Carson are in London already. They’re hiring local support. But not with money. Apparently the help wanted payment in kind this time. As in, the elimination of a rival.’
O’Day nodded. ‘A rival otherwise very difficult to get to, at street level. But raise your eyes, and London’s skyline is densely developed now. Lots of opportunities at a thousand yards, one imagines. And a thousand yards is nothing to Kott. Practically point-blank range.’
/>
‘Or Carson,’ I said.
‘Or Datsev,’ he said. ‘Carson is only your opinion. We must keep an open mind.’
‘Did anything like this happen in Paris?’
O’Day nodded again. ‘I think it did. Not that we ever put two and two together, because there was no rifle involved. About a week before the attempt on the president, an Algerian gang leader was knifed to death in Montmartre. A very big cheese, as the French might say. And looking back at it now, you’d have to say the Vietnamese were plausible beneficiaries.’
Casey Nice asked, ‘Who benefits in London?’
‘I’m awaiting a definitive report,’ O’Day said. ‘But ballpark estimates put two in the frame. A Serbian outfit in the west of London, and an old-fashioned English gang in the east. Karel Libor was a thorn in both their sides, according to MI5.’
I said, ‘Where exactly is the G8 location?’
‘In the east of London.’
‘Then if local really means local, they’re palling up with the old-fashioned Brits.’
‘For what exactly?’ Scarangello asked.
Shoemaker said, ‘Part of the payment in kind would be considered an old-fashioned tribute, to be allowed to operate there at all. Like a toll or a tax, almost. The rest will be for logistics, places to stay, places to hide, and then on the day itself, sentries and other security close up, and a cordon out at a distance. Like we just saw in Paris.’
‘That makes it harder for us.’
I shook my head.
‘It makes it easier,’ I said. ‘We’re not looking for two guys any more. We’re looking for about fifty-two guys. They say local support, I say breadcrumbs.’
O’Day said, ‘You were right about Kott’s neighbour, by the way. The FBI found most of ten thousand dollars in cash. But not in the back of his closet.’
‘Where, then?’
‘In the washing machine in his front yard.’
‘Smart,’ I said. ‘I should have checked. Who gave it to him?’
‘He won’t say. And waterboarding is out of fashion at the moment.’
‘He’s too scared to say. Which might be significant.’
‘And the French found the bullet that killed Khenkin. From this morning. Badly deformed against the wall of the apartment house, but the chemistry is the same as the fragments you brought back from Arkansas. The same batch, quite possibly.’
I nodded. ‘Which raises questions about travel. He didn’t fly commercial, or you’d have a paper trail. He couldn’t check a fifty-calibre rifle and a box of bullets without someone noticing.’
‘Two possibilities,’ Shoemaker said. ‘A cargo ship out of Mobile or Galveston, or a private plane out of practically anywhere. Customs checks at private fields in Europe are basically nonexistent.’
‘Private plane for sure,’ O’Day said. ‘These people are throwing money around. I mean, ten grand for a toothless hillbilly in Arkansas? That’s way over the odds. The guy would have been happy with a couple hundred, surely. They’re not looking for value. They’re looking for easy solutions, and they have the budget to make them happen.’
Casey Nice asked, ‘How did they get to London today?’
Scarangello said, ‘Train, probably. Through the tunnel. There’s a passport check in Paris, but apart from that it’s fast and easy, city centre to city centre.’
‘How did they transport their rifles?’
‘Golf bags, maybe. Or ski bags. Lots of people carry weird luggage.’
‘How did they know who to hook up with in London, in terms of local support?’
‘Prior research, I assume. Prior negotiation, perhaps.’
‘We’ll know more in the morning,’ O’Day said. ‘Take the rest of the evening off, and we’ll reconvene at breakfast tomorrow.’
I went down the stairs and headed out the red door, but once again I heard the click of good shoes and the swish of dark nylons behind me. I turned around and found Joan Scarangello coming after me. She was looking at me with some kind of bleak emotion in her eyes. She said, ‘We need to talk.’
I said, ‘About what?’
‘You.’
‘What about me?’
‘I don’t want to talk out here.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Your quarters. They feel unoccupied. Like neutral space.’
So we walked over together and I opened up and we sat like we had before, with me on the sofa and her in a chair, with our angles adjusted, so that we were looking at each other face to face. She asked, ‘Did you enjoy your dinner?’
‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘You?’
‘I spent it arguing with generals O’Day and Shoemaker.’
‘About the quality of the food?’
‘No, about your role in London.’
‘What about it?’
‘London won’t be the same as Paris. The Brits are different. They’ll be running their own show. They’ll accept advice and information, but they won’t let us actually do anything. Not on their turf. And we have to respect that. They’re important to us in many ways.’
‘So?’
‘My position is you should go as an acknowledged asset.’
‘But O’Day argued against that, because then I wouldn’t be able to do anything.’
Scarangello nodded. ‘He wants you there as a private citizen. Not acknowledged by us. Which means if you get caught choking some random senior on the sidewalk, there will be absolutely nothing we can do to help you.’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘General O’Day is talking about things that are blatantly illegal. Your being there in the first place will be blatantly illegal. A very dim view is taken of unacknowledged assets inside an ally’s jurisdiction. If you screw up, you’ll be a common criminal, nothing more. Worse than that, in fact. The embassy checks up on common criminals, but no one will check up on you. They’ll run a mile in the opposite direction. Because we’ll tell them to.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ I said again.
She said, ‘I read into the John Kott file.’
I said, ‘And?’
‘You did a very nice job with the interrogation.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You gave him the rope and he hung himself. He was arrogant, and he couldn’t bear to be challenged.’
I nodded. ‘That was about the gist of it.’
She said, ‘I think you’re just as bad as he was.’
I said nothing.
She said, ‘This is where you tell me you never cut anyone’s throat.’
‘I would if I could.’
‘I think it’s too big a risk to send you to London in any capacity.’
‘Then don’t.’
‘Meaning you’ll get yourself there anyway?’
‘Free country.’
‘I could take your passport back.’
‘It’s right here in my pocket. Come and get it.’
‘I could cancel it in the computer. You’d be arrested at the airport.’
‘Your decision,’ I said. ‘No skin off my nose. Kott will come home sooner or later. I’ll get him then. Amid all the paralysis, and the crashing markets, and the recession, and the people starving, and the wars starting, and the whole world falling apart. None of which will bother me in the least. I can look after myself. And I don’t have a real big portfolio.’
She said nothing.
I said, ‘You need the best help you can get. Anything else would be negligent. I seem to remember those words from somewhere.’
‘And you’re the best help?’
‘That remains to be seen. Either someone will get the job done, or not. That someone might be me, or not. The future’s not ours to see. But my track record is reasonable, and I don’t see how I could hurt.’
‘You could hurt by getting arrested inside the first five minutes. Then we’ve got a diplomatic incident on top of a security emergency. I’m not sure I can trust you.’
‘Then com
e with me,’ I said. ‘You could sign off on my every move. We could confer, shoulder to shoulder. Not seven feet apart.’
She nodded. ‘That’s the compromise I agreed with O’Day.’
‘Really?’
‘Not me,’ she said. ‘Casey Nice will go with you. Unacknowledged. She’s not on their radar. She’s far too junior. And right now she’s not CIA, anyway. She’s State Department.’
‘Rules of engagement?’
‘You do exactly what she tells you.’
Scarangello left after that, leaving the scent of soap and warm skin in the air, and I waited a minute and then headed out too, back to the red door. I went up the stairs to Shoemaker’s office, and found him at his desk. I said, ‘Scarangello told me about your dinner conversation.’
He said, ‘Happy?’
‘Yeah, I’m turning cartwheels.’
‘Look on the bright side. You’ll need updates and intelligence. We’ll give them to Nice, she’ll give them to you. You’d be in the dark without her.’
‘Has she operated overseas before?’
‘No.’
‘Has she operated anywhere before?’
‘Not as such.’
‘Do you think this is a good idea?’
‘It’s a necessary compromise. It gets you there. You don’t have to listen to what she says.’
‘But I have to take care of her.’
‘She knows what she signed up for. And she’s tougher than she looks.’
‘You said that before.’
‘Was I wrong?’
I thought about her pal Tony Moon, and I said nothing.
Shoemaker said, ‘Walk away if you want to, Reacher. You don’t owe me shit. The statute of limitations ran out years ago. It was O’Day’s idea to take that route. A psychological insight, he called it. He said it was the only thing likely to work.’
‘Was he wrong?’
‘Walk away if you want,’ he said again. ‘There are hundreds of people working on this. And the Brits are taking it very seriously. I mean, they already were. It’s a G8 meeting. If you’re in the security business, then that’s your Superbowl right there. So they’re on it. So you won’t be missed. You’re one guy. What difference could you make?’