by Lee Child
“I would say we do.”
“Me too. But Helen needs to swallow that. She needs to agree. But she’s got that guy standing over her all the time, turning her head. I know her. She’s not going to suck it up until he’s out of the picture.”
“I don’t see what I can do.”
“I want you to bring him in.”
“I can’t,” Emerson said. “Not without a complaint.”
Rodin went quiet.
“Well, keep an eye on him,” he said. “He spits on the sidewalk, I want you to bring him in and do something to him.”
“This isn’t the Wild West,” Emerson said. “I can’t run him out of town.”
“An arrest might be enough. We need something that breaks the spell. He’s pushing Helen where she doesn’t want to go. I know her. On her own she’ll give Barr up, no question.”
Linsky was in pain on the way back to his car. An hour on his feet was about all he could take. A long time ago the bones in his spine had been methodically cracked with an engineer’s ball-peen hammer, one after the other, starting with the coccyx and moving upward through all the lower vertebrae, and not in rapid sequence. Generally one bone had been allowed to heal before the next was broken. When the last had healed, they had started over again. Playing the xylophone, they had called it. Playing scales. Ultimately he had lost count of how many scales they had played on him.
But he never spoke of it. Worse had happened to the Zec.
The Cadillac had a soft seat and it was a relief to get in. It had a quiet motor and a gentle ride and a nice radio. Cadillacs were the kind of things that made America such a wonderful place, along with the trusting population and the hamstrung police departments. Linsky had spent time in several different countries and there was no question in his mind about which was the most satisfactory. Elsewhere he had walked or run or crawled through dirt or hauled carts and sleds by hand. Now he drove a Cadillac.
He drove it to the Zec’s house, which stood eight miles north and west of town, next to his stone-crushing plant. The plant was a forty-year-old industrial facility built on a rich limestone seam that had been discovered under farmland. The house was a big fancy palace built a hundred years ago, when the landscape was still unspoiled, for a rich dry-goods merchant. It was bourgeois and affected in every way, but it was a comfortable house in the same way that the Cadillac was a comfortable car. Best of all it stood alone in the center of many acres of flat land. Once there had been beautiful gardens, but the Zec had razed the trees and leveled the shrubberies to create a completely flat and open vista all around. There were no fences, because how could the Zec bear to live another day behind wire? For the same reason there were no extra locks, no bolts, no bars. The openness was the Zec’s gift to himself. But it was also excellent security in its own right. There were surveillance cameras. Nobody could approach the house undetected. By day visitors were clearly visible at least two hundred yards away, and after dark night-vision enhancement picked them up only a little closer.
Linsky parked and eased himself out of the car. The night was quiet. The stone-crushing plant shut down at seven every evening and sat brooding and silent until dawn. Linsky glanced in its direction and walked toward the house. The front door opened before he got near it. Warm light spilled out and he saw that Vladimir himself had come down to welcome him, which meant that Chenko had to be there too, upstairs, which meant that the Zec had assembled all his top boys, which meant that the Zec was worried.
Linsky took a breath, but he walked inside without a moment’s hesitation. After all, what could be done to him that hadn’t been done to him before? It was different for Vladimir and Chenko, but for men with Linsky’s age and experience nothing was entirely unimaginable anymore.
Vladimir said nothing. Just closed the door again and followed Linsky upstairs. It was a three-story house. The first floor was used for nothing at all, except surveillance. All the rooms were completely empty, except one that had four TV screens on a long table, showing wide-angle views north, east, south, and west. Sokolov would be in there, watching them. Or Raskin. They alternated twelve-hour shifts. The second floor of the house had a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and an office. The third floor had bedrooms and bathrooms. The second floor was where all the business was done.
Linsky could hear the Zec’s voice from the living room, calling him. He went straight in without knocking. The Zec was in an armchair with a glass of tea clamped between his palms. Chenko was sprawled on a sofa. Vladimir pushed in behind Linsky and sat down next to Chenko. Linsky stood still and waited.
“Sit, Grigor,” the Zec said. “Nobody’s upset at you. It was the boy’s failure.”
Linsky nodded and sat down in an armchair, a little closer to the Zec than Chenko was. That maintained the hierarchy in the proper order. The Zec was eighty, and Linsky himself was more than sixty. Chenko and Vladimir were both in their forties, important men for sure, but comparative youngsters. They didn’t have the history that the Zec and Linsky shared. Not even close.
“Tea?” the Zec asked in Russian.
“Please,” Linsky said.
“Chenko,” the Zec said. “Bring Grigor a glass of tea.”
Linsky smiled inside. Chenko being made to serve him tea was a statement of the greatest importance. And he noted that Chenko did it with no unwillingness. He just got up out of his slouch and went out to the kitchen and came back in with a glass of tea on a small silver tray. Chenko was a very small man, short, wiry, no bulk at all. He had coarse black hair that stuck up in all directions even though he kept it cropped short. Vladimir was different. Vladimir was very tall and heavy and blond. Unbelievably strong. It was entirely possible that Vladimir had German genes somewhere in his background. Perhaps his grandmother had picked them up back in 1941, like germs.
“We’ve been talking,” the Zec said.
“And?” Linsky said.
“We have to confront the fact that we made a mistake. Just one, but it could prove irksome.”
“The cone,” Linsky said.
“Obviously Barr isn’t on tape placing it,” the Zec said.
“Obviously.”
“But will it be a problem?”
“Your opinion?” Linsky asked politely.
“Significance is in the eye of the beholder,” the Zec said. “The detective Emerson and the DA Rodin won’t care about it. It’s a minor detail, one they won’t feel inclined to pursue. Why would they? They’re not looking to trip themselves up. And no case is ever a hundred percent perfect. They know that. So they’ll write it off as an inexplicable loose end. They might even convince themselves that Barr used a different vehicle.”
“But?”
“But it’s still a loose end. If the soldier tugs on it, something might unravel.”
“The evidence against Barr is indisputable.”
The Zec nodded. “That’s true.”
“So won’t that be enough for them?”
“Certainly it would have been. But it’s possible that Barr no longer exists. Not in the sense that he’s a legal entity accessible to their jurisprudence. He has permanent retrograde amnesia. It’s possible that Rodin won’t be able to put him on trial. If so, Rodin will be extremely frustrated about that. He’ll be expected to seek a consolation prize. And if the consolation prize were eventually to assume a higher profile than Barr himself, how could Rodin turn it down?”
Linsky sipped his tea. It was hot and sweet.
“All this from a videotape?” he said.
“It depends entirely on the soldier,” the Zec said. “It depends on his tenacity and his imagination.”
“He was a military cop,” Chenko said in English. “Did you know that?”
Linsky glanced at Chenko. Chenko rarely spoke English in the house. He had a perfect American accent, and sometimes Linsky thought he was ashamed of it.
“That doesn’t necessarily impress me,” Linsky said in Russian.
“Or me,” the Zec said.
“But it’s a factor we must weigh in the balance.”
“Silencing him now would draw attention,” Linsky said. “Wouldn’t it?”
“It would depend on how it was done.”
“How many ways are there?”
“We could use the redheaded girl again,” the Zec said.
“She would be no use against the soldier. He’s a giant, and almost certainly extensively trained in self-defense.”
“But he already has an established issue with her. Several people know she tried to set him up for a beating. Perhaps she could be found severely injured. If she was, the soldier would be the obvious prime suspect. We could let the police department silence him for us.”
“She would know who attacked her,” Vladimir said. “She would know it wasn’t the soldier.”
The Zec nodded appreciatively. Linsky watched him. He was accustomed to the Zec’s methods. The Zec liked to tease solutions out of people, like Socrates of old.
“Then perhaps she should be left unable to tell anyone anything,” the Zec said.
“Dead?”
“We’ve always found that the safest way, haven’t we?”
“But it’s possible she has many enemies,” Vladimir said. “Not just him. Maybe she’s a big-time prick-teaser.”
“Then we should firm up the link. Possibly she should be found somewhere suggestive. Maybe he invited her out to renew their acquaintance.”
“In his hotel?”
“No, outside his hotel, I think. But close by. Where she can be discovered by someone other than the soldier himself. Someone who can call the police while the soldier is still asleep. That way he’s a sitting duck.”
“Why would her body be outside his hotel?”
“Evidently he hit her and she staggered away and collapsed before she got very far.”
“The Metropole Palace,” Linsky said. “That’s where he is.”
“When?” Chenko asked.
“Whenever you like,” the Zec said.
The Astros beat the Cardinals 10–7 after a limp defensive performance by both franchises. Plenty of cheap hits, plenty of errors. A bad way to win, and a worse way to lose. Reacher had stopped paying attention halfway through. He had started thinking about Eileen Hutton instead. She was part of his mosaic. He had seen her once in the States before the Gulf War, just briefly across a crowded courtroom, just long enough to register her head-turning quality, and he had assumed he would never see her again, which he figured was a pity. But then she had showed up in Saudi as part of the long, ponderous Desert Shield buildup. Reacher had been there pretty much from the start, as a recently demoted captain. The first stage of any clean-sheet foreign deployment always resembled gang warfare between the MPs and the troops they were sent out with, but after six weeks or so the situation usually settled down some, and Desert Shield wasn’t any different. After six weeks there was a structure in place, and in terms of military law enforcement, a structure demanded in-country personnel all the way up from jailers to judges, and Hutton had shown up as one of the prosecutors they shipped in. Reacher had assumed it was volunteer duty for her, which he was happy about, because that made it likely she was unmarried.
She was unmarried. First time their paths crossed, he checked her left hand and saw no ring. Then he checked her collar and saw a major’s oak leaves. That would make it a challenge, he figured, for a recently demoted captain. Then he checked her eyes and saw that the challenge would be worth it. Her eyes were blue and full of intelligence and mischief. And promise, he figured. And adventure. He had just turned thirty-one years old, and he was up for anything.
The desert heat helped. Most of the time the temperature was above a hundred and twenty degrees, and apart from regular gas-attack practices, standard on-post dress devolved down to shorts and sleeveless undershirts. And in Reacher’s experience the close proximity of hot and nearly naked men and women always led somewhere good. Better than serving out November in Minnesota, that was for damn sure.
The initial approach had promised to be tricky, given the disparity in rank. And when it came to it he fumbled it slightly, and was saved only because she was just as up for it as he was, and wasn’t afraid to let it show. After that it had been as smooth as silk, three long months. Good times. Then new orders had come through, like they always did eventually. He hadn’t even said goodbye to her. Didn’t get the chance. Never saw her again, either.
I’ll see her again tomorrow, he thought.
He stayed in the bar until ESPN started recycling the highlights it had already shown once. Then he settled up his tab and stepped out to the sidewalk, into the yellow glare of the streetlights. He decided he wouldn’t go back to the Metropole Palace. He decided it was time for a change. No real reason. Just his normal restless instinct. Keep moving. Never stay in one place too long. And the Metropole was a gloomy old pile. Unpleasant, even by his undemanding standards. He decided to try the motor court instead. The one he had seen on his way to the auto parts store. The one next to the barbershop. Any Style $7. Maybe he could get a haircut before Hutton blew into town.
Chenko left the Zec’s house at midnight. He took Vladimir with him. If the redhead was to be beaten to death, then Vladimir would have to do it. It had to look right, forensically. Chenko was too small to inflict the kind of battering that an enraged six-foot-five, two-hundred-fifty-pound ex-soldier might be provoked to. But Vladimir was a different matter. Vladimir might well be able to do the job with a single blow, which might be convincing on the postmortem slab. A refusal, an objection, a sexual taunt, a big man might lash out once in frustration, a little harder than he intended.
They were both familiar with the girl. They had met her before, because of her connection to Jeb Oliver. They had even all worked together once. They knew where she lived, which was in a rented garden apartment that nestled on a barren patch of land in the shadow of the state highway, where it first rose on its stilts, south and west of downtown. And they knew that she lived there alone.
Reacher walked a long aimless three-block circle before approaching the motor court. He kept his own footsteps light and listened hard for the gritty crunch of a shadow behind him. He heard nothing. Saw nothing. He was alone.
The motor court was practically an antique. At one time it must have been the latest thing and consequently fairly upmarket. But since then the relentless march of time and fashion had left it behind. It was well maintained but not updated. It was exactly the kind of place he liked.
He roused the clerk and paid cash for one night only. He used the name Don Heffner, who had played second base and hit .261 during the Yankees’ lean year of 1934. The clerk gave him a big brass key and pointed him down the row to room number eight. The room was faded and a little damp. The counterpane on the bed and the drapes at the window looked original. So did the bathroom. But everything worked and the door locked tight.
He took a short shower and folded his pants and his shirt very carefully and put them flat under the mattress. That was as close as he ever got to ironing. They would look OK in the morning. He would shave and shower very carefully and go to the barbershop after breakfast. He didn’t want to devalue whatever memories Hutton might have retained. Assuming she had retained any at all.
Chenko parked east of the highway and he and Vladimir walked under it and approached the girl’s apartment building from the back, unseen. They kept close to the wall and walked around to her door. Chenko told Vladimir to keep out of sight. Then he knocked gently. There was no response, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. It was late, and she was probably already in bed. So Chenko knocked again, a little louder. And again, as loud as he dared. He saw a light come on in a window. Heard the quiet shuffle of feet inside. Heard her voice through the crack where the door met the jamb.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“It’s me,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“We need to talk.”
“I was asleep.”
; “I’m sorry.”
“It’s awful late.”
“I know,” Chenko said. “But it’s very urgent.”
There was a pause.
“Wait a minute,” she said.
Chenko heard her shuffle back toward her bedroom. Then silence. Then she came back. The door opened. She was standing there, clutching a blue robe around her.
“What?” she said.
“You need to come with us,” Chenko said.
Vladimir stepped out of the shadow.
“Why is he here?” Sandy asked.
“He’s helping me tonight,” Chenko said.
“What do you want?”
“You need to go out.”
“Like this? I can’t.”
“I agree,” Chenko said. “You need to get dressed. Like for a date.”
“A date?”
“You need to look really good.”
“But I’ll have to shower. Do my hair.”
“We have time.”
“A date with who?”
“You just have to be seen. Like you were ready for a date.”
“At this time of night? The whole town is asleep.”
“Not the whole town. We’re awake, for instance.”
“How much do I get?”
“Two hundred,” Chenko said. “Because it’s so late.”
“How long will it take?”
“Just a minute. You just have to be seen walking somewhere.”
“I don’t know.”
“Two hundred for a minute’s work isn’t bad.”
“It isn’t a minute’s work. It’ll take me an hour to get ready.”
“Two-fifty, then,” Chenko said.
“OK,” Sandy said.
Chenko and Vladimir waited in her living room, listening through the thin walls, hearing the shower running, hearing the hair dryer, the held breaths as she put on her makeup, the elastic snap of undergarments, the whisper of fabric on skin. Chenko saw that Vladimir was restless and sweating. Not because of the task ahead. But because there was a woman in a state of undress in a nearby room. Vladimir was unreliable, in certain situations. Chenko was glad he was there to supervise. If he hadn’t been, the plan would have derailed for sure.