by Lee Child
Abby got her laptop and worked with him side by side, tackling individual words with on-line dictionaries, or searching the single-letter abbreviations, or the acronyms, on language blogs, and word-nerd sites. She made notes on scraps of paper. A couple of things fell into place, but even so the work was slow. Never had so much come from so little. She had made the video as fast as she dared, five, ten, twenty seconds, scrolling at speed, pumping on and on. Now that vivid blur was giving up thousands and thousands of words, each one a challenge and a puzzle, most of them with two or three plausible solutions.
Reacher let them work. He hung out in the front parlor, with Barton and Hogan, in the spaces between the drums and the speaker cabinets. One cabinet was gray and about the size of a refrigerator. It had eight dirty circles on its grill. Reacher sat on the floor and leaned his back against it and it didn’t move at all. Barton hauled his battered Fender up into his lap, and played it unplugged, barely audible, with up and down runs of soft buzzy notes.
Hogan said, “Do you think we would have won? Do you think Vantresca would have wound up using his languages?”
“On balance I think we would have prevailed,” Reacher said. “As a technical matter I think we would have shut them down before they shut us down. Hard to call it winning, given the mess it would have made. But whatever, the tip of the spear would have been vaporized long ago. I’m afraid your friend wasted his time in school.”
Barton played a descending arpeggio, some kind of diminished minor chord, and ended with a bang on the open bottom string. Plugged in, it would have demolished the house. Unplugged, the string rattled and clattered against the frets, and gave out no fundamental at all. Barton looked at Reacher and said, “Now you’re the tip of the spear.”
“I’m not looking to start a war,” Reacher said. “All I want is the Shevicks’ money. If I can get it some kind of easy way, I absolutely will, believe me. I don’t feel the need to meet any of them face to face on the field of battle. In fact I would be happier not to.”
“You won’t get the option. They must have Trulenko buttoned up pretty tight. Layers and layers. I’ve seen them do it, when a name comes to one of their clubs. They have a man on the corner, and a man on the door, and a man on the next door along, plus a couple of extra guys just roaming around.”
“What do you remember about Trulenko?”
“He was a nerd, like all those guys. I remember thinking it shouldn’t turn out that way. I was cool in high school. Now the nerds are billionaires and I’m scraping a living. I guess I should have learned software, not music.”
“If he was working, what would he be doing?”
“Is he working?”
“Someone used that word.”
“Then computers, I’m sure. That’s what he was good at. He was one of the top boys. His app was something to do with doctors, but basically all that stuff is computer software, isn’t it?”
Abby stuck her head in the door.
“We figured it out,” she said. “We’re ready to go with the Ukrainian. They mention Trulenko twice.”
Chapter 28
Vantresca reset the video so it would play from the beginning, but before he ran it he said, “Overall there’s some weird shit going down. Apart from anything else they’re in an uproar because they’re losing people. Two guys got in a wreck up at the Ford dealer. Then two bagmen got taken off a block in the gourmet quarter. Then two more guys got taken out of a massage parlor. Then two more guys went missing outside of Abby’s house. Total of eight so far.”
“It’s carnage out there,” Reacher said.
“What’s interesting is they blamed the Albanians for the first six. But the language changed for the last two. Now they’re blaming you. They think you’re on some secret New York or Chicago payroll, covertly employed to stir things up down here. There’s an all-points bulletin out on you. Under the name of Shevick. Which in the end could prove to be a bigger problem.”
Vantresca clicked Abby’s phone and started the video. At first he let it spool at the same speed she had recorded it. On the screen the shadow of her fingertip was visible on the right side of the image, scooting up, up, up. Then Vantresca paused and restarted and paused again, until he found the bubble he wanted. It contained a photograph above the text. Aaron and Maria Shevick, and Abigail Gibson, in the hallway of the Shevicks’ home, looking startled and a little uneasy. Reacher remembered the sound he heard from behind the kitchen door. The quiet, scratchy click. The cell phone, imitating a camera.
Vantresca said, “The text below the image says the people in the picture are Jack, Joanna, and Abigail Reacher.”
He played and paused, played and paused, through four more bubbles. He stopped on a fifth. He said, “Right here they’ve already figured out it’s Abby Gibson, not Abigail Reacher. Next message down, they’re sending a guy to her place of work, to get her home address.”
He moved the video on.
“And here they have her home address, and now they’re sending a car to her house, with orders to bring her in if they find her.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Reacher said.
“It gets worse,” Vantresca said. He moved the video on again, to a fat green bubble from later in the day, which had the same photograph in it again, above a dense block of Cyrillic writing. Vantresca read out loud, “It has been reported that the old woman named Joanna Reacher in the picture above was in our pawn shop where she signed her name Maria Shevick.”
“Shit,” Reacher said. “That was their shop?”
“She should have expected it. Most everything is theirs, on the west side. Problem is, she gave them her real name. Which makes it at least somewhat likely she gave them her real address and her real Social Security number, too. Which puts them one step away from finding out she’s Aaron Shevick’s legal wife. From that point on it’s not going to be rocket science to figure out who’s really who. Whereupon they can act as fast as they like. They’re already waiting outside the house.”
“They’ll be plunged into an existential crisis. Do they want Aaron Shevick the name, or Aaron Shevick the physical human being who borrowed their money and is apparently covertly stirring them up? What, after all, is the nature of identity? It’s a question they’ll have to wrestle with.”
“Are you a West Pointer?”
“How could you tell?”
“The level of bullshit. This could get very serious. Obviously they want the right physical human being, but however they set about getting him, you got to figure a little china will get broken along the way. Starting right inside that house.”
Reacher nodded.
“I know,” he said. “Believe me. It’s already very serious. They’re seventy years old. But I don’t see what I can do about their physical safety. Not around the clock. The only rational response would be evacuate them to a safe location. But where? I don’t have the resources.” He paused a beat. Then he said, “Normally with this kind of thing, I would say, go stay with your daughter. I’m sure they would love to.”
Vantresca moved the video to a fat bubble from late the night before. He said, “This is where you say the name Trulenko to the doorman where Abby worked. From here the conversation spins off in two different directions. First, about you. They can’t understand why a downmarket applicant for credit would ask that question. Two different worlds. From there they develop the theory you’re a provocateur paid by an outside organization.”
“And the second direction is about Trulenko himself,” Abby said. “There are two separate mentions. First a status check and a threat assessment. Which comes back negative. All secure. But an hour later, they start to worry.”
“Because I got away,” Reacher said. “When you hauled me in your door. They knew I was still on the loose.”
Vantresca said, “They pulled four crews off their regular assignments and tol
d them to report for extra guard duty. They told the existing guards to fall back and form up again as Trulenko’s personal detail. They call it Situation B, which we think is a kind of Defcon level. It’s clearly pre-planned, probably rehearsed, maybe even used before.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “A crew is what, two guys in a car?”
“You would know.”
“Therefore eight guys in total. Reinforcing how many to start with? How many do they deploy on an everyday zero-threat basis? Not more than four, probably, if they can also seamlessly change into a personal detail afterward. So four fall back and eight take over the perimeter.”
“You against twelve guys.”
“Not if I pick the right spot on the perimeter. I could sneak in a gap.”
“Best case, four guys.”
“Moot point, unless the phone tells the eight guys exactly where to report, for their extra guard duty. A street address would be helpful.”
Vantresca didn’t answer.
Reacher looked at Abby.
She said, “It does say exactly where.”
“But?”
“It’s an incredibly difficult word. I looked it up all over the place. Originally it seemed to mean either a hive or a nest or a burrow. Or all three. Or somewhere in between. For something that might have hummed or buzzed or thrashed around. Like a lot of ancient words it was biologically inexact. Now it seems to be used exclusively as a metaphor. Like in the movies, when you see the mad scientist in his lab, full of lit-up machines and crackling energy. That’s how the word is used now.”
“Like a nerve center.”
“Exactly.”
“So all the phone says is, report to the nerve center.”
“Obviously they know where it is.”
“The guys I spoke to didn’t,” Reacher said. “I asked them, and I believed them. It’s classified information. Which means the crews they just hauled off their regular duties were senior people. In the know.”
“Makes sense,” Vantresca said. “The pick of the litter. Only the best for Situation B.”
“Told you so,” Hogan said. “The only route is straight through the top levels.”
Barton said, “Crazy.”
* * *
—
Vantresca and Abby started work on the Albanian messages, using the same system as before, side by side at the kitchen table. Vantresca was less familiar with the language, but the texts themselves were more formal and grammatical than their Ukrainian counterparts, so altogether the work went faster. And there was much less to do. All the relevant stuff came during the last few hours. Some of it was familiar. Reacher was once again taken to be a provocateur paid by outside forces. Some of it was new. The white Toyota had been seen driving in. Reacher and Abby had been seen getting out together, after parking way out in the wastelands. A small, slender woman with short dark hair, and a big ugly man with short fair hair. Be on the lookout.
“Technically I think it means plain-featured,” Abby said. “Or handsome in a rugged kind of way. Not ugly as such.”
Reacher said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
“These might,” Vantresca said. He was at the end of the video. The last Albanian text. He said, “They’re actively looking for you. They’re giving an estimate of your current position. They’re guessing you’re somewhere inside a particular twelve-block rectangle.”
“And are we?”
“Not far from its exact geographic center.”
“That’s not good,” Reacher said. “They seem to have plenty of information.”
“They have a lot of local knowledge. They have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and a lot of eyes behind a lot of windows, and a lot of cars on a lot of streets.”
“Sounds like you’ve been studying up on them.”
“Like I said, I hear things. Everyone has a story. Because everyone comes up against them, sooner or later. Whatever you’re into, it’s the cost of doing business, east of Center Street. People get used to it. Ultimately they see it as reasonable. Ten percent, like the church used to take, back in the olden days. Like taxes. Nothing to be done about it. That part becomes quite civilized. As long as you pay. Which everyone does, by the way. These are scary people.”
“Sounds like personal experience.”
“A couple of months ago I helped a journalist from Washington, D.C., with her local arrangements. I have a private security license. My number is listed in all the national directories. I don’t know what her story was going to be about. She wouldn’t tell me. Organized crime, I supposed, because that was what she seemed to be interested in. The Albanians and the Ukrainians both. More the Ukrainians, to be honest. That was my impression. But somehow she said the wrong thing east of Center and her first encounter was with the Albanians. They had a face to face discussion. A handful of them, and just her, on her own, in the back room of a restaurant. She came out and had me drive her straight to the airport. Not even her hotel first. She didn’t want to stop and get her stuff. She was terrified. Deep down scared. She was acting like an automaton. She took the first flight out and never came back. If they could make that happen just by talking to her, you better believe they can make a whole bunch of people keep their eyes peeled for a pair of strangers. Sheer intimidation. That’s how they get their information.”
“That’s not good either,” Reacher said. “I don’t want to bring bad luck to this household.”
Neither Barton nor Hogan had a comment, one way or the other.
“We can’t use hotels,” Abby said.
“Maybe we can,” Reacher said. “Maybe we should. It might be a way of accelerating the process.”
“You’re not ready,” Hogan said.
Barton said, “Stay the night. You’re already here. The neighbors don’t have X-ray vision. We have a lunchtime gig tomorrow. If you need to get going, you can ride along in the van. No one will see.”
“Where is the gig?”
“At a lounge west of Center. Closer to Trulenko than you are now.”
“Does the lounge have a guy on the door?”
“Always. Probably best to get out around the corner.”
“Or not, if we wanted to accelerate the process.”
“We have to work there, man. It’s a good gig for us. Do us a favor and accelerate the process someplace else. If you need to. Which I hope you don’t. Because it’s crazy.”
“Deal,” Reacher said. “We’ll ride with you tomorrow. Thank you very much. And for your hospitality tonight.”
Vantresca left ten minutes later. Barton locked the doors. Hogan put headphones on and lit a blunt the size of Reacher’s thumb. Reacher and Abby went upstairs, to the room with the tipped-up guitar amplifier for a nightstand. Three blocks away a brand new text message failed to reach the Albanian phone in the abandoned metal mailbox. A minute later the same thing happened with the Ukrainian phone.
Chapter 29
Dino’s right-hand man had the given name Shkumbin, which was a beautiful river deep in the heart of his beautiful homeland. But it was not an easy name to use in English. At first most people said it Scum Bin, some of them tauntingly, but those only once. When they could speak again, after months of dental procedures, they seemed very willing to try very hard with the sound of his name’s initial syllable. Although that could have been less than perfect reconstructive work. But eventually Shkumbin got tired of hurting his knuckles, and he took his dead brother’s name, partly as a convenience, and partly as a tribute. Not his elder dead brother’s name, which had been Fatbardh, which meant may he be the fortunate one, which was another beautiful name, but again, hard to use in English. Instead Shkumbin now went by his younger dead brother’s name, which was Jetmir, one who will live a good life, another warm sentiment, and this time easy to say in English, and memorable,
quite flashy and futuristic, even if really a traditional blessing, and even if a bit communist-sounding, like a Red Army test pilot in a Soviet comic book, or a hero cosmonaut on a propaganda billboard. Not that Americans seemed to care about that stuff anymore. Ancient history.
Jetmir got to the conference room in back of the lumber yard office and found the rest of the inner council already assembled. Apart from Dino himself, of course. Dino had not been informed. Not yet. It was their second meeting without him. A big step. One meeting might be explained away. To explain two was exponentially harder.
To explain three would be impossible.
Jetmir said, “The missing phone came back on line for almost twenty minutes. It sent nothing and received nothing. Then it went dark again. Like they’re hiding out deep in a basement or something, or an underground cellar, but then they came up to the street, just for a short time, maybe to walk to the corner store and back.”
“Did we get a location?” someone asked.
“We got a pretty good triangulation, but it’s a densely populated area. Every corner has a store. But it’s right where we thought they would be. Close to the center of the shape we marked out.”
“How close?”
“I say we forget the twelve blocks we figured before. We can squeeze it down to the middle four. Maybe the middle six, to be certain.”
“In a basement?”
“Or somewhere there’s no signal.”
“Maybe they took the battery out. And then put it back in.”
“To do what? I told you, they didn’t make or receive a call.”
“OK, a basement.”
“Or a building with a thick iron frame. Somewhere like that. Keep an open mind. Tell everyone to squeeze in tight. Really flood the area. Look for lights behind drapes. Look for cars and pedestrians. Knock on doors and ask questions if necessary.”