The Essential Jack Reacher 10-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  She wore dark red underwear. It was made of silk, or satin. I could smell her perfume everywhere. It was in the room and on her body. She was tiny and delicate and quick and strong. The same city light was coming in the window. Now it bathed me in warmth. Gave me energy. I could see the Eiffel Tower’s lights on her ceiling. We matched our rhythm to their rhythm, slow, fast, relentless. Afterward we turned away from them and lay like spoons, burned out and breathing hard, close but not speaking, like we weren’t sure exactly what we had done.

  I slept an hour and woke up in the same position. I had a strong sensation of something lost and something gained, but I couldn’t explain either feeling. Summer stayed asleep. She was nestled solidly into the curve of my body. She smelled good. She felt warm. She felt lithe and strong and peaceful. She was breathing slow. My left arm was under her shoulders and my right arm was draped across her waist. Her hand was cupped in mine, half-open, half-curled.

  I turned my head and watched the play of light on the ceiling. I heard the faint noise of a motorbike maybe a mile away, on the other side of the Arc de Triomphe. I heard a dog bark in the distance. Other than that the city was silent. Two million people were asleep. Joe was in the air, somewhere on the Great Circle route, maybe closing in on Iceland. I couldn’t picture my mother. I closed my eyes. Tried to sleep again.

  The alarm clock in my head went off at four. Summer was still asleep. I eased my arm out from under her and worked some kind of circulation back into my shoulder and slid out of bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. Then I put my pants on and shrugged into my sweatshirt and woke Summer with a kiss.

  “Rise and shine, Lieutenant,” I said.

  She stretched her arms up high and arched her back. The sheet fell away to her waist.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  I kissed her again.

  “I like Paris,” she said. “I had fun here.”

  “Me too.”

  “Lots of fun.”

  “Lobby in half an hour,” I said.

  I went back to my own room and called room service for coffee. I was through shaving and showering before it arrived. I took the tray at the door wearing just a towel. Then I dressed in fresh BDUs and poured my first cup and checked my watch. It was four-twenty in the morning in Paris, which made it ten-twenty in the evening on the East Coast, which made it well after the end of bankers’ hours. And which made it seven-twenty in the evening on the West Coast, which was early enough that a hardworking guy might still be at his desk. I checked the plate on the phone again and hit nine for a line. Dialed the only number I had ever permanently memorized, which was the Rock Creek switchboard back in Virginia. An operator answered on the first ring.

  “This is Reacher,” I said. “I need a number for Fort Irwin’s MP XO.”

  “Sir, there’s a standing order from Colonel Willard that you should return to base immediately.”

  “I’ll be right there, soon as I can. But I need that number first.”

  “Sir, where are you now?”

  “In a whorehouse in Sydney, Australia,” I said. “Give me that Irwin number.”

  He gave me the number. I repeated it to myself and hit nine again and dialed it. Calvin Franz’s sergeant answered, second ring.

  “I need Franz,” I said.

  There was a click and then silence and I was settling in for a long wait when Franz came through.

  “I need you to do something for me,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “You’ve got a XII Corps guy called Marshall there. You know him?”

  “No.”

  “I need him to stay there until I can get there myself. It’s very important.”

  “I can’t stop people leaving the post unless I arrest them.”

  “Just tell him I called from Berlin. That should do it. As long as he thinks I’m in Germany, he’ll stay in California.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what he’s been told to do.”

  “Does he know you?”

  “Not personally.”

  “Then that’s an awkward conversation for me to have. Like, I can’t just walk up to a guy I never met and say, Hey, hot news, another guy you never met called Reacher wants you to know he’s stuck in Berlin.”

  “So be subtle,” I said. “Tell him I asked you to ask him a question for me, because there’s no way I can get there myself.”

  “What question?”

  “Ask him about the day of Kramer’s funeral. Was he at Arlington? What did he do the rest of the day? Why didn’t he drive his guys to North Carolina? What reason did they give him for wanting to drive themselves?”

  “That’s four questions.”

  “Whatever, just make it sound like you’re asking on my behalf because California isn’t in my travel plans.”

  “Where can I get back to you?”

  I looked down at the phone and read out the George V’s number.

  “That’s France,” he said. “Not Germany.”

  “Marshall doesn’t need to know that,” I said. “I’ll be back here later.”

  “When are you coming to California?”

  “Within forty-eight hours, I hope.”

  “OK,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Call Fort Bird for me and ask my sergeant to get histories on General Vassell and Colonel Coomer. Specifically I want to know if either one of them has a connection with a town called Sperryville in Virginia. Born there, grew up there, family there, any kind of connection that would indicate they might know what kind of retail outlet was where. Tell her to sit on the answers until I get in touch.”

  “OK,” he said again. “Is that it?”

  “No,” I said. “Also tell her to call Detective Clark in Green Valley and have him fax his street canvasses relating to the night of New Year’s Eve. She’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m glad someone will,” Franz said.

  He paused. He was writing stuff down.

  “So is that it?” he said.

  “For now,” I said.

  I hung up and made it down to the lobby about five minutes after Summer. She was waiting there. She had been much faster than me. But then, she didn’t have to shave and I don’t think she had made any calls or taken time for coffee. Like me, she was back in BDUs. Somehow she had cleaned her boots, or had gotten them cleaned. They were gleaming.

  We didn’t have money for a cab to the airport. So we walked back through the predawn darkness to the Place de l’Opéra and caught the bus. It was less crowded than the last time but just as uncomfortable. We got brief glimpses of the sleeping city and then we crossed the Périphérique and ground slowly through the dismal outer suburbs.

  We got to Roissy–Charles de Gaulle just before six. It was busy there. I guessed airports worked on floating time zones all their own. It was busier at six in the morning than it would be in the middle of the afternoon. There were crowds of people everywhere. Cars and buses were loading and unloading, red-eyed travelers were coming out and going in and struggling with bags. It looked like the whole world was on the move.

  The arrivals screen showed that Joe’s flight was already on the ground. We hiked around to the customs area’s exit doors. Took our places among a big crowd of meeters and greeters. I figured Joe would be one of the first passengers through. He would have walked fast from the plane and he wouldn’t have checked any luggage. No delays.

  We saw a few stragglers coming out from the previous flight. They were mostly families slowed by young children or individuals who had waited for odd-sized luggage. People in the crowd turned toward them expectantly and then turned away again when they realized they weren’t who they were looking for. I watched them do it for a spell. It was an interesting physical dynamic. Just subtle adjustments of posture were enough to display interest, and then lack of interest. Welcome, and then dismissal. A half-turn inward, and then a half-turn away. Sometimes it was nothing more than a tra
nsfer of body weight from one foot to the other.

  The last stragglers were mixed in with the first people off of Joe’s flight. There were businessmen moving fast, humping briefcases and suit carriers. There were young women in high heels and dark glasses, expensively dressed. Models? Actresses? Call girls? There were government people, French and American. I could pick them out by the way they looked. Smart and serious, plenty of eyeglasses, but their shoes and suits and coats weren’t the best quality. Low-level diplomats, probably. The flight was from D.C., after all.

  Joe came out about twelfth in line. He was in the same overcoat I had seen before, but a different suit and a different tie. He looked good. He was walking fast and carrying a black leather overnight bag. He was a head taller than anyone else. He came out of the door and stopped dead and scanned around.

  “He looks just like you,” Summer said.

  “But I’m a nicer person,” I said.

  He saw me right away, because I was also a head taller than anyone else. I pointed to a spot outside of the main traffic stream. He shuffled through the crowd and made his way toward it. We looped around and joined him there.

  “Lieutenant Summer,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  I hadn’t seen him look at the tapes on her jacket, where it said Summer, U.S. Army. Or at the lieutenant’s bars on her collar. He must have remembered her name and her rank from when we had talked before.

  “You OK?” I asked him.

  “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Want breakfast?”

  “Let’s get it in town.”

  The taxi line was a mile long and moving slow. We ignored it. Headed straight for the navette again. We missed one and were first in line for the next. It came inside ten minutes. Joe spent the waiting time asking Summer about her visit to Paris. She gave him chapter and verse, but not about the events after midnight. I stood on the curb with my back to the roadway, watching the eastern sky above the terminal roof. Dawn was breaking fast. It was going to be another sunny day. It was the tenth of January, and the weather was the best I had seen in the new decade so far.

  We got in the bus and sat in three seats together that faced sideways opposite the luggage rack. Summer sat in the middle seat. Joe sat forward of her and I sat to the rear. They were small, uncomfortable seats. Hard plastic. No legroom. Joe’s knees were up around his ears and his head was swaying from side to side with the motion. He looked pale. I guessed putting him on a bus was not much of a welcome, after an overnight flight across the Atlantic. I felt a little bad about it. But then, I was the same size. I had the same accommodation problem. And I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep either. And I was broke. And I guessed being on the move was better for him than standing in the taxi line for an hour.

  He brightened up some after we crossed the Périphérique and entered Haussmann’s urban splendor. The sun was well up by then and the city was bathed in gold and honey. The cafés were already busy and the sidewalks were already crowded with people moving at a measured pace and carrying baguettes and newspapers. Legislation limited Parisians to a thirty-five-hour workweek, and they spent a lot of the remaining hundred thirty-three taking great pleasure in not doing very much of anything. It was relaxing just to watch them.

  We got out at the familiar spot in the Place de l’Opéra. Walked south the same way we had walked the week before, crossing the river at the Pont de la Concorde, turning west on the Quai d’Orsay, turning south into the Avenue Rapp. We got as far as the Rue de l’Université, where the Eiffel Tower was visible, and then Summer stopped.

  “I’ll go look at the tower,” she said. “You guys go on ahead and see your mom.”

  Joe looked at me. Does she know? I nodded. She knows.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’ll go see how she is. If she’s up for it, maybe you could join us at lunch.”

  “Call me at the hotel,” she said.

  “You know where it is?” I said.

  She turned and pointed north along the avenue. “Across the bridge right there and up the hill, on the left side. Straight line.”

  I smiled. She had a decent sense of geography. Joe looked a little puzzled. He had seen the direction she had pointed, and he knew what was up there.

  “The George V?” he said.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Is that on the army’s dime?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “Outstanding.”

  Summer stretched up tall and kissed me on the cheek and shook Joe’s hand. We stayed there with the weak sun on our shoulders and watched her walk away toward the base of the tower. There was already a thin stream of tourists heading the same way. We could see the souvenir sellers unpacking. We stood and watched them in the distance. Watched Summer get smaller and smaller as she got farther away.

  “She’s very nice,” Joe said. “Where did you find her?”

  “She was at Fort Bird.”

  “You figured out what’s going on there yet?”

  “I’m a little closer.”

  “I would hope you are. You’ve been there nearly two weeks.”

  “Remember that guy I asked you about? Willard? He would have spent time with Armored, right?”

  Joe nodded. “I’m sure he reported to them direct. Fed his stuff straight into their intelligence operation.”

  “Do you remember any names?”

  “In Armored Branch? Not really. I never paid much attention to Willard. His thing wasn’t very mainstream. It was a side issue.”

  “Ever heard of a guy called Marshall?”

  “Don’t remember him,” Joe said.

  I said nothing. Joe turned and looked south down the avenue. Wrapped his coat tighter around him and turned his face up to the sun.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “When did you call her last?”

  “The day before yesterday. It was your turn next.”

  We moved off and walked down the avenue, side by side, matching our pace to the leisurely stroll of the people around us.

  “Want breakfast first?” I said. “We don’t want to wake her.”

  “The nurse will let us in.”

  There was a car abandoned halfway up on the sidewalk. It had been in some kind of an accident. It had a smashed fender and a flat tire. We stepped out into the street to pass it by. Saw a large black vehicle double-parked on the road forty yards ahead.

  We stared at it.

  “Un corbillard,” Joe said.

  A hearse.

  We stared at it. Tried to figure which building it was waiting at. Tried to gauge the distance. The head-on perspective made it difficult. I glanced upward at the rooflines. First came a limestone Belle Époque facade, seven stories high. Then a drop to my mother’s plainer six-story building. I traced my gaze vertically all the way down the frontage. To the street. To the hearse. It was parked right in front of my mother’s door.

  We ran.

  There was a man in a black silk hat standing on the sidewalk. The street door to my mother’s building was open. We glanced at the man in the hat and went in through the door to the courtyard. The concierge was standing in her doorway. She had a handkerchief in her hand and tears in her eyes. She paid us no attention. We headed for the elevator. Rode up to five. The elevator was agonizingly slow.

  The door to the apartment was standing open. I could see men in black coats inside. Three of them. We went in. The men in the coats stood back. They said nothing. The girl with the luminous eyes came out of the kitchen. She looked pale. She stopped when she saw us. Then she turned and walked slowly across the room to meet us.

  “What?” Joe said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “When?” I said.

  “Last night,” she said. “It was very peaceful.”

  The men in the coats realized who we must be and shuffled out into the hallway. They were very quiet. They made no noise at all. Joe took an unsteady step and sat down on the sofa. I stayed wh
ere I was. I stood still in the middle of the floor.

  “When?” I said again.

  “At midnight,” the girl said. “In her sleep.”

  I closed my eyes. Opened them again a minute later. The girl was still there. Her eyes were on mine.

  “Were you with her?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “All the time,” she said.

  “Was there a doctor here?”

  “She sent him away.”

  “What happened?”

  “She said she felt well. She went to bed at eleven. She slept an hour, and then she just stopped breathing.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Was she in pain?”

  “Not at the end.”

  “But she said she felt well.”

  “Her time had come. I’ve seen it before.”

  I looked at her, and then I looked away.

  “Would you like to see her?” the girl said.

  “Joe?” I said. He shook his head. Stayed on the sofa. I stepped toward the bedroom. There was a mahogany coffin set up on velvet-padded trestles next to the bed. It was lined with white silk and it was empty. My mother’s body was still in the bed. The sheets were made up around her. Her head was resting gently on the pillow and her arms were crossed over her chest outside the covers. Her eyes were closed. She was barely recognizable.

  Summer had asked me: Does it upset you to see dead people?

  No, I had said.

  Why not? she had asked me.

  I don’t know, I had said.

  I had never seen my father’s body. I was away somewhere when he died. It had been a heart thing. Some VA hospital had done its best, but it was hopeless from the start. I had flown in on the morning of the funeral and had left again the same night.

  Funeral, I thought.

  Joe will handle it.

  I stayed by my mother’s bed for five long minutes, eyes open, eyes dry. Then I turned and stepped back into the living room. It was crowded again. The croques-morts were back. The pallbearers. And there was an old man on the sofa, next to Joe. He was sitting stiffly. There were two walking sticks propped next to him. He had thin gray hair and a heavy dark suit with a tiny ribbon in the buttonhole. Red, white, and blue, maybe a Croix de Guerre ribbon, or the Medaille de la Résistance. He had a small cardboard box balanced on his bony knees. It was tied with a piece of faded red string.