Night School

by Child, Lee

  Chapter 13

  After lunch Griezman drove Reacher and Neagley to the hotel they had used before. They thanked him and waved him away but didn’t check in. Reacher didn’t like to stay in the same place twice. A habit. Unnecessary, some said. He said he was thirty-five years old and still alive. Had to mean something.

  They checked Neagley’s map. She put her fingernail on the safe house. She said, “Of course, they might have more than one.”

  “Possible,” Reacher said. “This whole thing is a percentage game.”

  They set out walking, and found the street they had seen before, where the four cop cars had been parked. Where the hooker had been killed. They made a left, toward the safe house, close but not too close, and they checked the side streets on the way. Not easy to do. Not like some parts of the world. There were no big signs. No flashing neon, no shingles swinging in the wind. Prohibited, presumably. On grounds of good taste. Every commercial unit had to be eyeballed individually. They saw a car rental franchise occupying two side-by-side addresses. Other operations were also self-explanatory. But some weren’t. Reacher stepped into a lobby with armchairs and a reception desk, thinking it was a hotel, but it turned out to be a tanning salon, with the booths in back. The woman at the desk laughed, and then tried to suppress it, and then further atoned by mentioning a boutique establishment a block away. Which turned out to be a good-looking place. There was a guy in a top hat, standing ready to open the door.

  “You got money?” Neagley asked.

  “Ratcliffe will pay,” Reacher said.

  “He doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “We’ll call him. We should anyway.”

  “From where?”

  “A room. Yours or mine.”

  “We won’t have rooms. They won’t let us check in without money.”

  Reacher pulled out his wad of walking-around money. Logged out, but never logged back in. A modest sum. Neagley had the same.

  Reacher said, “We’ll get one room. For the time being. Until the NSC calls them.”

  Neagley paused a beat, and said, “OK.”

  They went in.

  —

  At that moment the American was three streets away, slowing to a stop outside the car rental franchise they had just seen. He had stopped for an early lunch in Groningen. With a glass of wine. Therefore he lingered, to let it wear off. Just in case. The laws were tough. So he took a walk. It was a pretty town. Then he drove on, across the nominal border, and he hit the fast road through Bremen. He enjoyed every mile. Like a premature nostalgic feeling. It would be a long time before he saw Europe again. Maybe never.

  He gave back the key and walked away, out of the neighborhood, toward the water. Toward his place. Rented, with less than a month left on the lease. Waste not, want not. Good timing.

  —

  The room they got had dark green wallpaper and pewter accents all over the place. But the phone worked. Reacher got the duty NSC guy, who undertook to finance their stay through the consulate. Then White came on the line and said, “Vanderbilt went back four years with the Switzerland thing. Then he cross-checked. There were exactly one hundred Americans in Germany that day who had visited Zurich on a prior occasion.”

  “Good data,” Reacher said. “But not definitive. He might have used the Cayman Islands. Or Luxembourg. Or Monaco. Or maybe he went to Zurich for a vacation. I did, once, and I sure as hell didn’t go to a bank while I was there.”

  White said, “Understood.”

  “But tell Vanderbilt thanks.”

  Then Waterman got on, and said, “They’re nervous about you.”

  Reacher said, “Who are?”

  “Ratcliffe and Sinclair.”

  “He said we should roll the dice. No point all doing it in the same place.”

  “Getting anywhere?”

  “Are you?”

  “We’re nowhere.”

  “So are we. And there’s no point being nowhere all in the same place either.”

  “Sinclair will want to speak to you.”

  “Tell her I’ll check in later. After the consulate comes through. That might give them an incentive.”

  “And there’s mail from the Department of the Army for Sergeant Neagley.”

  “Urgent?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Put it on hold until I’ve spoken with Sinclair.”

  “Can we agree on a time?”

  “Tell her two hours from now,” Reacher said.

  —

  They went to find the bar where Helmut Klopp had seen the rendezvous. It was twenty minutes away, the same as it was from the safe house, but on a different vector. Like two spokes of the same wheel. They walked past it, not slowing down, not speeding up, looking straight ahead, inspecting the place obliquely. It was on the ground floor of an older building made of stone, which once might have been a tenement or a factory, probably burned out in the wartime firestorm but deemed repairable. The bar had a center door in a planked wood façade. But it wasn’t a rustic look. Not like the side of a barn way out in the country. The planks were tight and true and planed smooth. They were dark gold in color, heavily varnished and shiny, like a rowboat on a lake in a park. There were small windows, with cream lace café curtains hung behind the bottom halves, and loops of small paper flags hung on strings behind the top halves. All the paper flags were German. The light inside looked dim and amber.

  Neagley said, “We have two people following us.”

  Reacher said, “Where?”

  “On the corner fifty yards behind us.”

  He didn’t look.

  He said, “Who?”

  “Two males between thirty and forty. Bigger than me and smaller than you. Probably not Germans. They walk like Americans.”

  “How do Americans walk?”

  “Like us.”

  “How long have they been there?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Cheek bones?”

  “No. Also too tall.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

  They strolled on, at the same lazy pace, and came to a pastry shop with a display case full of confections, and an espresso machine, and four small tables with two chairs each. The tables and chairs were metal painted silver. They were right up against the windows, with a good view of the street. Neagley sat down and Reacher went to the counter. He ordered two double espressos and called, “You want a cake?”

  “Sure,” Neagley said. “Apple strudel.”

  “Two,” Reacher said to the woman at the register. The old army rule. Eat when you can. The next chance could be days away. The woman pantomimed that Reacher should go sit down and she would bring a tray. Reacher pantomimed that he wanted to pay right away. His own rule. He might need to leave without warning, and he didn’t like to stiff ordinary working folk. He got his change and stepped over to the table and sat down, and Neagley craned her neck, very discreetly, and said, “They saw us come in here. They sped up. We’ll see them in a minute.”

  Reacher checked the view left and right. There was another coffee shop across the street, twenty yards farther on. Tables in the window. A good view. Anyone with any sense would stop in there. They could wait as long as they needed to, raising no suspicion at all, and then they could resume the tail whenever their quarry moved.

  “There they are,” Neagley said.

  Reacher saw two guys, as advertised, in their thirties, bigger than her and smaller than him. Maybe six feet and two hundred pounds. Short hair. Walking like Americans. Dressed like Americans. Specifically, to his practiced eye, dressed like off-duty American military. Put a civilian in uniform for an hour, for a movie role or a fancy-dress party, and he looks wrong, somehow, as if uncomfortable, or unaccustomed. Equally, put a guy who has worn a uniform for the last ten years in jeans and a jacket, and he looks wrong, too. Equally unaccustomed. Wrong posture, too neat, creases too sharp, no slouch or shuffle.

  They came on, the sa
me way Reacher and Neagley had passed the bar, not slowing down, not speeding up, looking straight ahead, checking the scene in the corners of their eyes. Big hard faces, worn hands. NCOs, probably. Lifers, by the look of them. They ambled on, and one whispered something to the other, and the other nodded, and they ducked in at the coffee shop twenty yards farther on, across the street. Cars drove by, both ways, and shoppers and office workers hustled past on the sidewalks. The guys got a table in the window and sat there, pretending not to look at Reacher and Neagley, just as Reacher and Neagley were pretending not to look at them.

  “Who are they?” Reacher said.

  “Can’t tell by looking,” Neagley said.

  “Ballpark guess?”

  “Army, obviously. Terminal at sergeant. Probably not combat troops. Old sergeants in the battle area look different than that. Those guys are some other thing.”

  “But they’re not company clerks.”

  “No. They’re muscle workers.”

  “Agreed. They’re support troops of some kind. Transportation, maybe. Maybe they load trucks. And unload them.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m wondering why they’re here,” Reacher said. “How did they know?”

  “Griezman? Maybe he made a call. As soon as he left us at the hotel.”

  “But we didn’t stay at that hotel. They didn’t follow us from there. Because we didn’t start from there.”

  “Which means the NSC leaked it. They’re the only ones who knew what hotel we were in. Which is ridiculous.”

  “Agreed. Therefore they didn’t follow us from either hotel. We came to them. They were waiting here.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe that bar is more than just a place for like-minded folk. Maybe it’s a rendezvous for all kinds of people. Maybe money is earned there. So what happens when two unexplained military cops show up in town? They post sentries, just in case. And here we are. We just tripped their wire.”

  “They don’t know we’re military cops. They don’t know our names. No one even knows we’re in the country.”

  “How did we find out about Helmut Klopp?”

  “Griezman passed on some dumb police report. To the consulate.”

  “Because he’s a noble citizen?”

  “No, because he was covering his very considerable ass.”

  “Such a guy would also pass on a dumb police report about two military personnel recorded in a homicide investigation. Walking past the scene and claiming to be tourists. Our names are right there in black and white. So he had to pass it on. Probably straight to HQ in Stuttgart. Where someone looked us up, and saw the 110th in our recent pasts, and hit some kind of a secret alarm button. Like in a bank. No one heard anything, but people started scrambling all over town. Who are we here for? This is a broad sweep. We’re going to upset all kinds of people.”

  “Suppose these are the right people?”

  “You take the one on the left, and you can have the Legion of Merit.”

  “They would never give a Legion of Merit to a sergeant.”

  “They’re not the right people. I’m a lucky man, but not that lucky.”

  “So who are they?”

  “Can’t tell by looking,” Reacher said.

  They chased the last strudel crumbs around their plates, and drained their coffee cups down to the muddy paste at the bottom, and then they stood up fast and hustled out the door.

  Chapter 14

  Reacher and Neagley dodged pedestrians on the sidewalk and cars on the street, and they headed diagonally toward the second coffee shop on the other side. Through the window they saw the two guys startle and sit up straight. Too late. They were sitting together on the far side of a corner table for four, where their angle was good. Which left two empty chairs between them and the rest of the room. Neagley went in first and took one of the chairs. Reacher followed and took the other. Which meant the two guys were trapped. All quiet and genteel and civilized, but they had no way out. Not unless Reacher and Neagley stood up again to let them by. Which was not on the immediate agenda.

  Reacher said, “Listen carefully, guys, because I’m going to say this once and once only. We have a one-time special offer. We’ll help you if we can. Minimum sentences in exchange for full disclosure. Unless it’s the one thing we’re interested in. But I don’t think it is. I think you’re the wrong kind of guys for that.”

  The guy on the left said, “Get lost.”

  He was closer to forty than thirty, with graying black hair buzzed short, and a doughy slab of a face, like an uncooked loaf. He had dark eyes and calluses on his hands. His accent was from Arkansas, or Tennessee, or maybe Mississippi.

  Reacher said, “You know our names, because someone checked us out and raised the alarm. Therefore you know we’re MPs. You’re under arrest as of this moment.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I’m pretty sure we can. The Uniform Code says so. We could arrest the Chief of Staff if we wanted to. We would need a pretty good case, but in theory we could do it. You present much less of a problem.”

  “You have no jurisdiction.”

  “That’s a big word.”

  “We’re not military personnel.”

  “I think you are.”

  “We’re not American either.”

  “I think you are.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Prove it. Show me ID.”

  “Get lost,” the guy said again.

  “The law in Germany requires you to identify yourselves to the police on request.”

  “German police. Not you.”

  “You’re doing this wrong. Now you’re heading for maximum sentences.”

  The guy said nothing. The other guy was watching the conversation, his eyes going back and forth, like tennis.

  Reacher said, “Show me ID.”

  The guy on the left said, “We’d like to leave now. Please step aside.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “We could make it happen.”

  “You could try,” Reacher said. “But you’d get hurt. You’re out of your league. You’re up against something you never saw before.”

  “You have a mighty high opinion of yourself.”

  Reacher nodded at Neagley. “I’m talking about her. I’m just here to clean up the mess.”

  They looked at Neagley. Dark hair, dark eyes, a tan. A good-looking woman. She smiled at them. Her forearms were on the table. Reacher noticed her nails. They were shiny with clear polish, and neatly filed. Even on the right, which she must have done left-handed. She wouldn’t use a nail salon. She couldn’t bear her hands to be touched. She looked at one guy, and then the other.

  The guy on the left shrugged and raised up an inch off his chair and dug in his back pants pocket. The other guy did the same. Reacher watched. Safe enough. No one kept a weapon in his back pants pocket. Uncomfortable. Not readily accessible.

  The guys came out with two IDs each. Plastic, the size of credit cards. But not. They were national identity cards, and driver’s licenses. Both had Bundesrepublik Deutschland at the top. Germany. The Federal Republic. The photographs were right. The guy on the left was named Bernd Durnberger, and the guy on the right was named Klaus Augenthaler.

  Reacher said, “You’re German citizens?”

  The guy on the left took his cards back and nodded.

  “Naturalized?”

  The guy nodded again.

  “Did you have to take a test?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “Not very.”

  “What state are we in?”

  “Germany.”

  “That’s the country. It’s a federal system. There’s a clue where it says Bundesrepublik. It means it has states, like America. Only sixteen of them, not fifty, but the principle is the same.”

  “I guess I forget.”

  “Hamburg,” Reacher said.

  “That’s the town.”

&nbs
p; “Also the state. Like New York. Next to Schleswig Holstein and Bremen. Then comes Lower Saxony. Did you change your name?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why Durnberger?”

  “I like the way it sounds.”

  “Did you retain your American citizenship?”

  “No, we renounced. We’re not dual. So there’s nothing you can do.”

  “We can be impolite.”

  “What?”

  “Americans often are, overseas. You Europeans are always complaining about it. We could just sit here in the way.”

  “No, we’re going to leave now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want to.”

  “You need the bathroom?”

  “No.”

  “You got a pressing engagement?”

  “We got freedom of movement.”

  “Sure you do. Like a person in Times Square, trying to get to work on time. No way to do that, unless he runs right over the tourist in front of him.”

  The guy said nothing.

  Reacher looked at the other guy, and said, “How did you choose your name?”

  “The same,” the guy said. “I liked the sound of it.”

  “Really? Say it for me.”

  The guy didn’t answer.

  “Say it for me,” Reacher said again. “Let me hear how nice it sounds.”

  No response.

  “Say it for me.”

  Nothing.

  Reacher hooked his thumbs under the edge of the table top and clamped down hard with his fingers. He leaned forward. He said, “Say your name for me.”

  The guy couldn’t.

  Reacher said, “So we got one guy who can’t remember Germany has states, and another guy who can’t remember his own name. You’re not doing a real great job of convincing me.”

  He was clamping the table and leaning forward not for the drama, but to be ready for what came next. And it came right then. The guy on the right shoved the table hard, aiming to jab Reacher in the midsection with it, like a punch, or even to knock him over backward in his chair, but Reacher was ready, and he shoved back ten times as hard and drove the wooden edge into the guy’s gut. A satisfactory blow, but the movement of the furniture gave the guy on the left a widening gap to stand up in, which he did, and then he slid around behind Reacher’s seated back and hustled for the street door. Except by then Neagley was also on her feet, stepping left, leading with her shoulder, drifting toward the guy, and then rotating savagely and slamming a roundhouse right into his chest, dead on the solar plexus, which stood him up panicked and breathless, like he had swallowed an electric cattle prod. Which gave her plenty of time to call her next shot. Which was her left knee to his groin, followed by her right knee to his face, as he crumpled to the floor in front of her.