by Lee Child
“I made a mistake,” Reacher said. “Remember I told you I couldn’t shake the feeling I was making a bad mistake? Well, I was wrong. It wasn’t a bad mistake. It was a catastrophic mistake. It was the biggest single mistake ever made in the history of the cosmos.”
“What mistake?”
“Tell me about the photographs in your apartment.”
“What about them?”
“Nieces and nephews, right?”
“Lots of them,” Pauling said.
“You know them well?”
“Well enough.”
“Spend time with them?”
“Plenty.”
“Tell me about their favorite toys.”
“Their toys? I don’t really know about their toys. I can’t keep up. X-boxes, video games, whatever. There’s always something new.”
“Not the new stuff. Their old favorites. Tell me about their favorite old toys. What would they have run into a fire to save? When they were eight years old?”
“When they were eight years old? I guess a teddy bear or a doll. Something they’d had since they were tiny.”
“Exactly,” Reacher said. “Something comforting and familiar. Something they loved. The kind of thing they would want to take on a journey. Like the family next to me in the lobby just now. The mother got them all out of the suitcase to quiet them down.”
“So?”
“What did those things look like?”
“Like bears and dolls, I guess.”
“No, later. When the kids were eight years old.”
“When they were eight? They’d had them forever by then. They looked like crap.”
Reacher nodded at the wheel. “The bears all worn, with the stuffing out? The dolls all chipped, with the arms off?”
“Yes, like that. All kids have toys like that.”
“Jade didn’t. That’s precisely what was missing from her room. There were new bears and new dolls. Recent things she hadn’t taken to. But there were no old favorites there.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if Jade had been kidnapped on the way to Bloomingdale’s on a normal everyday morning I would have found all her favorite old toys still in her room afterward. But I didn’t.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means Jade knew she was leaving. It means she packed.”
Reacher made the left at Regent’s Park and headed north, toward the M-1, which would carry them all the way back to the M-25 beltway. After the turn he drove on a little more sedately. He didn’t want to get arrested by any English traffic cops. He didn’t have time for that. He figured he was right then about two hours ahead of Edward Lane. It would take an hour for Lane to realize he had been ditched, and then it would take at least another hour for him to get hold of a car and organize a pursuit. So, two hours. Reacher would have liked more, but he figured two hours might be enough.
Might be.
Pauling said, “Jade packed?”
“Kate packed, too,” Reacher said.
“What did Kate pack?”
“Just one thing. But her most precious thing. Her best memory. The photograph with her daughter. From the bedroom. One of the most beautiful photographs I’ve ever seen.”
Pauling paused a beat.
“But you saw it,” she said. “She didn’t take it.”
Reacher shook his head. “I saw a photocopy. From Staples, color digital, laser, two bucks a sheet. Brought home and slipped into the frame. It was very good, but not quite good enough. A little vivid in the colors, a little plastic in the contours.”
“But who packs for a kidnap? I mean, who the hell gets the chance?”
“They weren’t kidnapped,” Reacher said. “That’s the thing. They were rescued. They were liberated. They were set free. They’re alive somewhere. Alive and well and happy. A little tense, maybe. But free as birds.”
They drove on, slow and steady, through the northern reaches of London, through Finchley and Swiss Cottage, toward Hendon.
“Kate believed Dee Marie,” Reacher said. “That’s what happened. Out there in the Hamptons. Dee Marie told her about Anne, and warned her, and Kate believed her. Like Patti Joseph said, there was something about the story and something about her husband that made Kate believe. Maybe she was already feeling the same kind of things that Anne had felt five years before. Maybe she was already planning to go down the same road.”
Pauling said, “You know what this means?”
“Of course I do.”
“Taylor helped them.”
“Of course he did.”
“He rescued them, and he hid them, and he sheltered them, and he risked his life for them. He’s the good guy, not the bad guy.”
Reacher nodded. “And I just told Lane where he is.”
They made it through Hendon and negotiated their last London traffic circle and joined the M-1 motorway at its southern tip. Reacher hit the gas and forced the little Mini up to ninety-five miles an hour.
Pauling said, “What about the money?”
“Alimony,” Reacher said. “It was the only way Kate was ever going to get any. We thought it was half of the Burkina Faso payment, and it was, but in Kate’s eyes it was also half of their community property. Half of Lane’s capital. She was entitled to it. She probably put money in, way back. That’s what Lane seems to want his wives for. Apart from their trophy status.”
“Hell of a plan,” Pauling said.
“They probably thought it was the only way. And they were probably right.”
“But they made mistakes.”
“They sure did. If you really want to disappear, you take nothing with you. Absolutely nothing at all. It’s fatal.”
“Who helped Taylor?”
“Nobody.”
“He had an American partner. On the phone.”
“That was Kate herself. You were half-right, days ago. It was a woman using that machine. But not Dee Marie. It was Kate herself. It must have been. They were a team. They collaborated. She did all the talking, because Taylor couldn’t. Not easy for her. Every time Lane wanted to hear her voice for a proof of life she had to pull the machine off the mouthpiece and then put it back on again.”
“Did you really tell Lane where Taylor is?”
“As good as. I didn’t say Bishops Pargeter. I stopped myself just in time. I said Fenchurch Saint Mary instead. But that’s close. And I had already said Norfolk. I had already said thirty miles from Norwich. And I had already said Grange Farm. He’ll be able to work it out. Two minutes, with the right map.”
“He’s way behind us.”
“At least two hours.”
Pauling was quiet for a second.
Reacher said, “What?”
“He’s two hours behind us right now. But he won’t always be. We’re taking the long way around because we don’t know the English roads.”
“Neither does he.”
“But Gregory does.”
Reacher drove seven exits on the M-1, acutely aware that the road was taking him west of north, not east of north. Then he drove six clockwise exits on the M-25 beltway before finding the M-11. All completely dead time. If Gregory drove Lane straight through the center of London directly to the southern tip of the M-11 he would cut the two-hour deficit by an exactly corresponding amount.
Pauling said, “We should stop and call ahead. You know the number.”
“That’s a big gamble,” Reacher said. “At highway speeds it costs time to slow down, turn off, park, find a phone that works, call, and get back on the road. A lot of time, at British speeds. And suppose there’s no answer? Suppose they’re still out there hoeing the weeds? We’d end up doing it again and again.”
“We have to try to warn them. There’s the sister to think about. And Melody.”
“Susan and Melody are perfectly safe.”
“How can you say that?”
“Ask yourself where Kate and Jade are.”
“I have
no idea where they are.”
“You do,” Reacher said. “You know exactly where they are. You saw them this morning.”
CHAPTER 64
They turned off the highway at Newmarket and set out cross-country toward Norwich. This time the road was familiar, but that didn’t make it any faster. Forward motion, without any visible result. A big sky, whipped clean by wind.
“Think about the dynamic here,” Reacher said. “Why would Kate ask Taylor for help? How could she ask any of them for help? They’re all insanely loyal to Lane. Did Knight help Anne? Kate had just heard that story. Why would she walk up cold to another of Lane’s killers and say, hey, want to help me get out of here? Want to double-cross your boss? Help me steal his money?”
Pauling said, “They already had a thing going.”
Reacher nodded at the wheel. “That’s the only way to explain it. They had already started an affair. Maybe long ago.”
“The CO’s wife? Hobart said no fighting man would do that.”
“He said no American fighting man would do that. Maybe the British SAS does things differently. And there were signs. Carter Groom is about as emotional as a fence post but he said that Kate liked Taylor and that Taylor got on well with the kid.”
“Dee Marie showing up must have acted like a kind of tipping point.”
Reacher nodded again. “Kate and Taylor made a plan and put it in action. But first they explained it to Jade. Maybe they thought it would be too much of a sudden trauma not to. They swore her to secrecy, as much as they could with an eight-year-old. And the kid did pretty well.”
“What did they tell her?”
“That she already had one replacement daddy, now she was getting another. That she already lived in one new place, now she was moving on.”
“Big secret for a kid to keep.”
“She didn’t exactly keep it,” Reacher said. “She was worried about it. She straightened it out in her head by drawing it. Maybe it was an old habit. Maybe mothers always say, draw a picture of something you’re going to see.”
“What picture?”
“There were four in her room. On her desk. Kate didn’t sanitize well enough. Or maybe she just mistook them for regular clutter. There was a big gray building with trees in front. At first I thought it was the Dakota from Central Park. Now I think it was the Grange Farm farmhouse. They must have shown her photographs, to prepare her. She got the trees just right. Thin straight trunks, round crowns. To withstand the wind. Like light green lollipops on brown sticks. And then there was a picture of a family group. I thought the guy was Lane, obviously. But there was something weird about his mouth. Like half his teeth had been punched out. So it wasn’t Lane. It was Taylor, clearly. The dentistry. Jade was probably fascinated by it. She drew her new family. Taylor, Kate, and her. To internalize the idea.”
“And you think Taylor brought them here to England?”
“I think Kate wanted him to. Maybe even begged him to. They needed a safe haven. Somewhere very distant. Out of Lane’s reach. And they were having an affair. They didn’t want to be apart. So if Taylor’s here, then Kate’s here, too. Jade did a picture of three people in an airplane. That was the journey she was going to take. Then she did one of two families together. Like double vision. I had no idea what it meant. But now my guess is that was Jackson and Taylor, and Susan and Kate, and Melody and herself. Her new situation. Her new extended family. Happy ever after on Grange Farm.”
“Doesn’t work,” Pauling said. “Their passports were still in the drawer.”
“That was crude,” Reacher said. “Wasn’t it? You must have searched a thousand desks. Did you ever see passports all alone in a drawer? Kind of ostentatiously displayed like that? I never did. They were always buried under other junk. Leaving them on show like that was a message. It said, hey, we’re still in the country. Which meant actually they weren’t.”
“How do you get out without a passport?”
“You don’t. But you once said, they don’t look as closely on the way out. You said sometimes a little resemblance is all you need.”
Pauling paused a beat. “Someone else’s passport?”
“Who do we know that fits the bill? A woman in her thirties and an eight-year-old girl?”
Pauling said, “Susan and Melody.”
“Dave Kemp told us Jackson had been alone at the farm,” Reacher said. “That was because Susan and Melody had flown to the States. They got all the correct entry stamps. Then they gave their passports to Kate and Jade. Maybe in Taylor’s apartment. Maybe over dinner. Like a little ceremony. Then Taylor booked on British Airways. He was sitting next to a British woman on the plane. We know that for sure. A buck gets ten she’s on the passenger manifest as Mrs. Susan Jackson. And another buck gets ten that next to her was a little British kid called Ms. Melody Jackson. But they were really Kate and Jade Lane.”
“But that leaves Susan and Melody stuck in the States.”
“Temporarily,” Reacher said. “What did Taylor mail back?”
“A thin book. Not many pages. With a rubber band around it.”
“Who puts a rubber band around a thin book? It was actually two very thin books. Two passports, bundled together. Mailed to Susan’s New York City hotel room, where she and Melody are right now sitting and waiting to get them back.”
“But the stamps will be out of sequence now. When they leave they’ll be exiting without having entered.”
Reacher nodded. “It’s an irregularity. But what are the people at JFK going to do about it? Deport them? That’s exactly what they want. So they’ll get home OK.”
“Sisters,” Pauling said. “This whole thing has been about the loyalty of sisters. Patti Joseph, Dee Marie Graziano, Susan Jackson.”
Reacher drove on. Said nothing.
“Unbelievable,” Pauling said. “We saw Kate and Jade this morning.”
“Setting out with their hoes,” Reacher said. “Starting out on their new lives.”
Then he accelerated a little, because the road was widening and straightening for the bypass around the town called Thetford.
John Gregory was hitting the gas, too. He was at the wheel of a rented dark green seven-seat Toyota Land Cruiser sports utility vehicle. Edward Lane was next to him in the front passenger seat. Kowalski and Addison and Carter Groom were shoulder to shoulder on the rear bench. Burke and Perez were on the jump seats way in back. They were joining the M-11 at its southern tip, having blasted straight through central London to the northeast corner of the inner city.
CHAPTER 65
This time in full daylight Reacher saw the sign to B’sh’ps P’ter a hundred yards away and slowed well in advance and made the turn like he had been driving the back roads of Norfolk all his life. It was close to two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was high and the wind was dropping. Blue skies, small white clouds, green fields. A perfect English late-summer day. Almost.
Pauling said, “What are you going to tell them?”
“That I’m sorry,” Reacher said. “I think that might be the best place to start.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll probably say it again.”
“They can’t stay there.”
“It’s a farm. Someone’s got to stay there.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“I might have to.”
“Do you know anything about farming?”
“Only what I’ve seen in the movies. Usually they get locusts. Or a fire.”
“Not here. Floods, maybe.”
“And idiots like me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. They faked a kidnap. Don’t blame yourself for taking it seriously.”
“I should have seen it,” Reacher said. “It was weird from the start.”
They passed the Bishop’s Arms. The pub. The end of the lunch hour. Five cars in the lot. The Grange Farm Land Rover was not one of them. They drove on, roughly east, and in the distance they saw the Bishops Pargeter church towe
r, gray, square, and squat. Only forty-some feet tall, but it dominated the flat landscape like the Empire State Building. They drove on. They passed the ditch that marked Grange Farm’s western boundary. Heard the bird scarer again, a loud booming shotgun blast.
“I hate that thing,” Pauling said.
Reacher said, “You might end up loving it. Camouflage like that could be our best friend.”
“Could be Taylor’s best friend, too. In about sixty seconds from now. He’s going to think he’s under attack.”
Reacher nodded.
“Take a deep breath,” he said.
He slowed the car well before the small flat bridge. Turned in wide and deliberate. Left it in second gear. Small vehicle, low speed. Unthreatening. He hoped.
The driveway was long and it looped through two curves. Around unseen softness in the dirt, maybe. The beaten earth was muddy and less even than it had looked from a distance. The tiny car rocked and bounced. The farmhouse’s gable wall was blank. No windows. The smoke from the chimney was thicker now and straighter. Less wind. Reacher opened his window and heard nothing at all except the noise of his engine and the slow rolling crunch of his tires on gravel and small stones.
“Where is everybody?” Pauling said. “Still out hoeing?”
“You can’t hoe for seven hours straight,” Reacher said. “You’d break your back.”
The driveway split thirty yards in front of the house. A fork in the road. West, the formal approach to the front door. East, a shabbier track toward the spot where the Land Rover had been parked, and the barns beyond. Reacher went east. The Land Rover wasn’t there anymore. All the barn doors were closed. The whole place was quiet. Nothing was moving.
Reacher braked gently and backed up. Took the wider path west. There was a gravel circle with a stunted ash tree planted at its center. Around the tree was a circular wooden bench way too big for the thin trunk. Either the tree was a replacement or the carpenter had been thinking a hundred years ahead. Reacher drove around the circle clockwise, the British way. Stopped ten feet from the front door. It was closed. Nothing was moving anywhere, except the column of slow smoke rising from the chimney.