by Lee Child
* * *
—
At that same moment Jetmir’s opposite number on the other side of Center Street was also in a meeting, also of his inner council, in the room in back of the taxi company, across from the pawn shop, next to the bail bond operation. But in his case his boss was present. Gregory was right there, as always, at the head of the table, presiding. He had called the meeting himself, right after he heard about one of his downtown guys getting stuck up by Aaron Shevick.
He said, “This latest incident feels completely different to me. There was no attempt at deception. He wasn’t expecting us to blame the Albanians for it. It was completely blatant, face to face. Apparently he has been instructed to abandon his earlier tactics. In favor of a new phase. I think a mistake. They have revealed more about themselves than they will discover about us.”
“The phone,” his right-hand man said.
“Precisely,” Gregory said. “Taking the gun was to be expected. Anyone would. But why the instruction to take the phone?”
“It’s a necessary component of their new strategy. They’re going to attempt to inflict electronic damage. To weaken us further. They’re going to try to get inside our operating system through our phones.”
“Who in the whole wide world would have the skills and the experience and the sheer confidence and the deluded arrogance to even hope to succeed with that?”
“Only the Russians,” his right-hand man said.
“Precisely,” Gregory said again. “Their new tactic has revealed their identity. Now we know. The Russians are moving in on us.”
“Not good.”
“I wonder if they took an Albanian phone, too.”
“Probably. The Russians don’t like sharing territory. I’m sure they plan to replace us both. This is going to be very tough. There are a lot of them.”
There was silence for a long moment.
Then Gregory asked, “Can we beat them?”
His right-hand man said, “They won’t get inside our operating system.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Well, whatever we bring to the fight, they bring twice the men, twice the money, and twice the material.”
“These are desperate times,” Gregory said.
“Truly.”
“They call for desperate measures.”
“Like what?”
“If the Russians are going to bring twice as much as we can, then we need to rebalance the scale. Simple as that. Just temporarily. Just for the time being. Until the present crisis has passed.”
“How?”
“We need to form a short-term defensive alliance.”
“Who with?”
“Our friends east of Center.”
“With the Albanians?”
“They’re in the same boat.”
“Would they do it?”
“Against the Russians, they’re going to need it just as much as we do. If we join forces, we might just match them. If we don’t, we can’t. United we stand, divided we fall.”
Silence again.
“It’s a big step to take,” someone said.
“I agree,” Gregory said. “Even weird and crazy. But necessary.”
No one spoke after that.
“OK,” Gregory said. “I’ll go talk to Dino again, first thing in the morning.”
* * *
—
Reacher woke up in the gray gloom of night, with the clock in his head showing ten minutes to four. He had heard a sound. A car, on the street, outside and below the round window. The bite and grind of brakes, the compression of springs, the stress of tires. A car, slowing to a stop.
He waited. Abby slept on beside him, warm, and soft, and comfortable. The old house creaked and ticked. There was a stripe of light under the door out to the hallway. The bulb over the stairs was still on. Maybe another fixture too, in a downstairs room. The kitchen or the parlor. Maybe Barton or Hogan was still up. Or both of them, shooting the shit. Ten to four in the morning. Musicians’ hours.
Out on the street the car’s engine idled quietly. The faint thrash of belts, the whir of a fan, the rustle of pistons slapping up and down, uselessly. Then a faint muted thump from under the hood, and a sensation of new permanence.
The transmission had been shoved forward into park.
The engine turned off.
Silence again.
A door opened.
A leather sole clapped down on the sidewalk. A seat spring clicked as weight was lifted off. A second shoe joined the first. Someone stood up straight, with a tiny huff of effort.
The door closed.
Reacher slid out of bed. He found his pants. He found his shirt. He found his socks. He laced his shoes. He slipped his jacket on. Reassuring weight in the pockets.
One floor below there was a loud knock at the street door. A booming, wooden sound. Ten to four in the morning. Reacher listened. Heard nothing. In fact less than nothing. Certainly less than before. Like a hole in the air. It was the negative sound of two guys previously shooting the shit, now dumbstruck and craning around and thinking what the hell? Barton and Hogan, still up. Musicians’ hours.
Reacher waited. Deal with it, he thought. Don’t make me come downstairs. He heard one of them get to his feet. A sideways shuffle. Looking out the window, probably, through a crack in the drapes, sideways, obliquely.
He heard a low voice say, “Albanian.”
It was Hogan’s voice.
Barton’s voice whispered back, “How many?”
“Just one.”
“What does he want?”
“I was out sick the day they taught predicting the future.”
“What should we do?”
The knock came again, boom, boom, boom, heavy and wooden.
Reacher waited. Behind him Abby stirred and said, “What’s happening?”
“There’s an Albanian footsoldier at the door. Almost certainly looking for us.”
“What time is it?”
“Eight minutes to four.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Barton and Hogan are downstairs. They haven’t gone to bed yet. Hopefully they can deal with it.”
“I should put some clothes on.”
“Sad, but true.”
She dressed like he had, fast, pants, shirt, shoes. Then they waited. The knock came for a third time. Bang, boom, bang. The kind of knock you didn’t ignore. They heard Hogan offer to get it. They heard Barton accept. They heard Hogan’s footsteps across the hallway floor, solid, determined, implacable. The U.S. Marine. The drummer. Reacher wasn’t sure which counted for more.
They heard the door open.
They heard Hogan say, “What?”
Then a new voice. Quieter, because it was outside the structure, not inside, and because of its pitch, which was instantly two things in one, both conversational and mocking. Friendly, but not really.
The voice said, “Everything OK in there?”
Hogan said, “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I saw the light inside,” the voice said. “I was worried you had been woken up in the night by a misfortune or a calamity.”
It was talking low, but even so it was a big voice, full of physical power, from a big chest and a thick neck, and also full of command and arrogance and entitlement. The guy was accustomed to getting his own way. He had the kind of voice that never said please and never heard no.
Deal with it, Reacher thought. Don’t make me come downstairs.
Hogan said, “We’re good in here. Nothing to worry about. No misfortunes. No calamities.”
“You sure? You know we like to help out when we can.”
“No help required,” Hogan said. “The light was on because not everyone sleeps at the same time. Not a hard con
cept to grasp.”
“Hey, I know all about that,” the Albanian guy said. “Here I am, working all night long, keeping the neighborhood safe. Actually, you could help me with that, if you like.”
Hogan didn’t answer.
The guy said, “Don’t you want to help me with that?”
Still no reply.
“What goes around comes around,” the guy said. “It’s that kind of thing. You help us now, we’ll help you, down the road. Could be important. Could be just what you need. Could solve a big problem. On the other hand, if you get in our way now, we could make things tough for you later. In the future, I mean. All kinds of different ways. For instance, what do you do for a living?”
“What help?” Hogan said.
“We’re looking for a man and a woman. He’s older, she’s younger. She’s petite and dark-haired, he’s big and ugly.”
Deal with it, Reacher thought. Don’t make me come downstairs.
“Why are you looking for them?” Hogan asked.
The guy at the door said, “We think they’re in terrible danger. We need to warn them. For their own sake. We’re trying to help. It’s what we do.”
“We haven’t seen them.”
“You sure?”
“Hundred percent.”
“One more thing you could do,” the guy said.
“What?”
“Call us if you see them. Would you do that for us?”
No answer from Hogan.
“It’s not much to ask,” the guy said. “Either you feel like helping us out with a ten-second phone call, or you don’t, I guess. Either way is fine. It’s a free country. We’ll make a note and move right along.”
“OK,” Hogan said. “We’ll call.”
“Thanks. Any time, night or day. Don’t delay.”
“OK,” Hogan said again.
“One last thing.”
“What?”
“Another way you could help me out.”
“How?”
“Obviously I’m going to report this address as what we call in our business a place of zero concern. Targets clearly not there, just regular folks going about their regular business, and so on and so forth.”
“Good,” Hogan said.
“But in our business we take process very seriously. We like numbers. At some point I’m sure to be asked, with what exact degree of confidence do I make that assessment?”
“Hundred percent,” Hogan said again.
“I hear you, but at the end of the day, that’s just a verbal report by an interested party.”
“All you got.”
“My point exactly,” the guy said. “It would really help me out if I could take a walk through your property and see for myself. Then we got a foundation of solid evidence to go on. Case closed. We wouldn’t need to bother you again. Maybe you would get an invitation to the July Fourth picnic. One of the family now. A solid guy who helps out.”
“It’s not my property,” Hogan said. “I rent a room. I don’t think I have the authority.”
“Maybe the other gentleman, in the living room.”
“You need to take our word for it, and you need to leave now.”
“Don’t worry about the weed,” the guy said. “Is that it? I could smell it down the street. I don’t care about weed. I’m not a cop. I’m not here to bust you. I’m a representative from the local mutual aid society. We work hard in the community. We achieve impressive results.”
“Take our word for it,” Hogan said again.
“Who else is in the house?”
“No one.”
“Been alone all night?”
“We had people over for the evening.”
“What people?”
“Friends,” Hogan said. “We had Chinese food and a little wine.”
“Did they stay over?”
“No.”
“How many friends?”
“Two.”
“A man and a woman, by any chance?”
“Not the man and woman you’re looking for.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they can’t be. They’re just regular folks. Like you said.”
“You sure they didn’t stay over?”
“I saw them leave.”
“OK,” the guy said. “Then you have nothing to worry about. I’ll just take a quick glance around. I’ll know right away anyway. I have some experience in these matters. I was a police detective back in Tirana. Usually I found it impossible for a person to be in a house without leaving visible clues somewhere, including about who they were, and why they were there.”
Hogan had no answer.
Reacher and Abby heard footsteps in the hallway directly below them. The guy had stepped inside.
Abby whispered, “I can’t believe Hogan let him in. Obviously this guy will look everywhere. It won’t be a quick glance around. Hogan fell for it.”
“Hogan is doing fine,” Reacher said. “He’s a U.S. Marine. He has a sound grasp of strategy. He gave us plenty of time to get dressed and make the bed and get the window open, so that right about now, as the guy steps inside, we climb outside, and we hide on the roof or in the yard, and the guy doesn’t find us, and he goes away happy, all without a single moment of confrontation. The best fights are the ones you don’t have. Even Marines understand that.”
“But we’re not climbing out the window. We’re just standing here. We’re not following the plan.”
“There might be an alternative approach.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe something more army than Marine Corps.”
“Like what?” she said again.
“Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said.
Below them they heard the guy tramp his way into the parlor.
They heard him say, “You’re musicians?”
“Yes.”
“You play our clubs?”
“Yes.”
“Not anymore, unless your attitude improves.”
No reply. Silence for a second. Then from above they heard the guy move out to the hallway again, and onward into the kitchen.
“Chinese food,” they heard him say. “Lots of containers. You were telling the truth.”
“Plus wine,” Hogan said. “Like I told you.”
They heard a clink. Two empty bottles, picked up or knocked together or otherwise examined or inspected or disturbed.
Then silence.
Then they heard the guy say, “What’s this?”
They heard the air suck out of the room.
No sound at all.
Until they heard the guy answer his own question.
They heard him say, “It’s a scrap of paper with the Albanian word for ugly written on it.”
Chapter 30
Reacher and Abby stepped out the bedroom door, to the upstairs hallway. Below them in the kitchen there was no sound. Just some kind of silent tension, hissing and crackling off the tile. Reacher pictured worried glances, Barton to Hogan, Hogan to Barton.
Abby whispered, “We should go down there and help them out.”
“We can’t,” Reacher said. “If that guy sees us here, we can’t let him leave.”
“Why not?”
“He would report back. This address would be blown forever. Barton could get all kinds of problems in the future. They would stop him playing their clubs, for sure. Hogan, too. Same boat. They got to eat.”
Then he paused.
Abby said, “What do you mean, can’t let him leave?”
“There are a number of options.”
“You mean take him prisoner?”
“Maybe this house has a cellar.”
“What are the other options?”
“There�
��s a range. I’m pretty much a whatever works kind of guy.”
Abby said, “I guess this is my fault. I shouldn’t have left the paper.”
“You were defending me. It was nice of you.”
“Still a mistake.”
“Spilled milk,” Reacher said. “Move on. Don’t waste mental energy.”
Below them the conversation started up again.
They heard the guy ask, “Are you learning a new language?”
No answer.
“Probably better not to start with Albanian. And probably better not to start with this particular word. It’s kind of subtle. It has a bunch of meanings. Country people use it. I guess originally it’s an old folk word, from long ago. It’s quite rare now. Not used often.”
No response.
“Why did you write it on a scrap of paper?”
No reply.
“Actually I don’t think you did. I think this is a woman’s handwriting. I told you, I have experience in these matters. I was a police detective in Tirana. I like to keep abreast of relevant data. Especially concerning my new country. The woman who wrote this word is too young to have learned formal cursive penmanship in school. She’s less than forty.”
No answer.
“Perhaps she’s your friend, who came to dinner. Because the paper was left on the table among the cartons of food. In what they call the same archaeological layer. Which means they were deposited at the same time.”
Hogan said nothing.
The guy asked, “Is your friend who came to dinner less than forty?”
Hogan said, “She’s about thirty, I guess.”
“And she came over for Chinese food and a little wine.”
No answer.
“And maybe some weed, and some gossip about people you both know, and then some serious conversation, about your lives, and the state of the world.”
“I suppose,” Hogan said.
“In the middle of which she suddenly jumped up and found a scrap of paper and wrote a single rare and subtle word in a foreign language completely unknown to most Americans. Can you explain that to me?”
“She’s a smart person. Maybe she was talking about something. Maybe it was the exact right word, if it’s so rare and subtle. Smart people do that. They use foreign words. Maybe she wrote it down for me. So I could look it up later.”