Night School

by Child, Lee

  —

  Reacher called Griezman back and asked if the pretty girl had been seen near the bar. The answer was no. Wiley neither. No sign. Reacher said, “OK, they’re meeting somewhere else. Get those cars moving, too.”

  This time Sinclair just nodded.

  Griezman said, “But those men didn’t see the girl.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Reacher said. “They have the drawing of Wiley’s face. Where we find one we’ll find the other.”

  —

  The new messenger turned left into the Reeperbahn and was hit by all the light and all the noise she was expecting. Flashing and blinking and glaring, and thumping and booming and distorting. Not bland and small anymore. This time it was more than she had imagined. She took a breath and walked on. She knew the name of the club she was looking for. In a manner of speaking. She knew the shape its letters made. She knew it had a photograph in its window, of a naked woman and a German Shepherd. Which was a kind of dog. Inside it would smell of beer. She had been told there would be things she might prefer not to look at.

  She heard police sirens, howling and baying in the distance. She slowed down, suddenly uncertain. Many places had the same letters in their names. The same shapes. Mostly at what Westerners would call the end of the word. Like a suffix, repeated over and over. Then suddenly she understood. All such places had steps leading down. To rooms under the ground. Like caves. Keller. Part of a word. It meant underground cave.

  She walked on. She found the place she wanted. It was lit up red. It had a narrow door, with a narrow window alongside it, sandwiched between two other places. A lobby, with a stair head. The window carried the promised photograph. It was bleached by many daylight hours. It showed a naked woman on her back, with a big dog squatting over her, its hindquarters over her face. She had the dog’s penis in her mouth. No big deal. Not to one from the tribal areas. The messenger had seen it done before. Boys on men, mostly, on command, or sometimes goats.

  She pushed the door and went inside. There was a sharp chemical smell. Astringent. She had smelled the same thing in the airport bathroom. There was a big man on a stool. Men had to pay him, but women didn’t. What they called a cover charge. She had been coached. She smiled at him, shyly, and set off down the stairs. They were narrow. At the bottom was blue light and a roar of noise. Music, talking, the slam of heavy glass pitchers on wooden tables.

  She stepped into the basement room. There was a lit stage at the far end. A naked woman was bent double, having sex with a donkey. The donkey was in a kind of hammock, to take its weight off the woman’s back. The room was crowded with men, all of them rearing up, and craning their necks. They were shouting and grunting in time with the donkey’s bewildered thrusts. She saw Wiley two-thirds of the way back, alone at a table. She had memorized his face. He had a tall glass of golden liquid. It was half gone. Beer, she assumed.

  She stood still. Men were looking at her. She had on black pants and her travel shirt, open two buttons. She ignored the looks and threaded her way between the tables. There was a clatter of hooves as the donkey finished and struggled out of its hammock. All around her men clapped and cheered. The naked woman straightened up and waved to them, graciously.

  —

  In Reacher’s room they heard the phone ringing through the wall, next door in Sinclair’s room. Then it stopped and Reacher’s own phone rang in turn. It was Bishop, from the consulate. The CIA head of station. He wanted Sinclair. She put him on speaker and he said, “The Iranian just called it in. About the lamp in the window. The messenger is a woman and as of right now she’s out of the house.”

  “We’re on it already,” Sinclair said.

  “But not really,” Reacher said. “It’s a hopeless task. Not going to work. Griezman’s guys have got an hour, maximum. Twelve cars in a big city. It’s way too random. I suggest we go to plan B immediately.”

  “Which is what?” Bishop asked.

  “Pull Griezman’s guys back to the safe house, and hit the messenger on her way back in. Fast and hard, as soon as they’re sure. She might tell us where she went. Wiley might have lingered there. He lingered last time. About thirty minutes, according to Klopp. Maybe he thinks it’s a security measure.”

  “She won’t tell us.”

  “We’ll ask her nicely.”

  “But that way we burn the Iranian.”

  “Can you get him out?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Right now. You must have rehearsed it.”

  “I’d have to talk to Mr. Ratcliffe at the NSC.”

  Sinclair said, “Damn right you would. All of us would.”

  Reacher said, “We need a decision.”

  Sinclair said, “We won’t get one inside thirty minutes. But we still have a car at the house. We’ll know when she’s back for the night. That gives us hours.”

  “That’s half a loaf. We don’t get Wiley.”

  “Not this time. But they must have fixed another meeting. This is a back-and-forth negotiation. She might tell us where and when.”

  “Better to hit her now. She thinks her job is done. She’s coming down off a high. Her adrenaline is low. She’ll be braver in the morning.”

  Bishop said, “I’ll call Ratcliffe,” and he hung up, crackly and distant.

  —

  The new messenger was touched on the leg by one man and on the bottom by another, but she ignored them both and pushed on through the throng. She wondered if they thought she was an employee of the club. Western behaviors had been explained to her. She could see Wiley up ahead, watching her. A frank and interested stare. Maybe he thought she was an employee, too. She walked up to him and leaned close to his ear, so he could hear above the noise, and she said in carefully practiced English, “I bring greetings from your friends in the east. The elevation of Sugar Land Regional Airport is eighty-two feet above sea level.”

  Wiley said, “Well, don’t this just beat the band.”

  She said, unsure, “Does it?”

  “They sent a girl.”

  “Yes, sir, they did.”

  “And you speak English.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  Then suddenly Wiley said, “Why? Why did they send a girl? Are they saying no?”

  “No, sir, that’s not the message.”

  “Then what is?”

  “The message is, we accept your price.”

  “Say that again.”

  “We accept your price.”

  “What, all of it?”

  “Sir, what I am permitted to know is, we accept your price.”

  Wiley closed his eyes. Bigger than Rhode Island. Visible from outer space. His new Swiss friends would be delighted, too. It was double what he had told them. He had never expected to get it all. He would have plenty left over. A massive fortune. He would have a portfolio. Guys in suits would call him on the phone.

  He opened his eyes.

  He said, “When?”

  The messenger said, “I believe you agreed on a delivery date. Your friends in the east expect you to honor it.”

  “No problem,” Wiley said. “As agreed is fine.”

  “Then that is the response I will carry back.”

  “Tell them it’s a pleasure doing business. And tell them thanks for the extra gift. Much appreciated.”

  She said, unsure again, “Sir, I brought nothing with me.”

  “You brought yourself,” Wiley said. “You’re the gift. Right? I mean, get with the program. Why else would they send a girl with the good news? You’re the icing on the cake. Like when you get a bottle of Scotch when you buy a car.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You like this place?”

  On the stage a naked woman was lying on a plastic sheet. Three men were urinating on her face.

  The messenger said, “It seems very popular.”

  “We could go to a hotel.”

  She had been coached.

  She said, “Sir, this is a business arrangement. It can�
��t proceed any further until I get home safe and sound.”

  “OK,” Wiley said. “I get it. But you got to give me some little thing. We’re friends. We’re celebrating here. I’m giving you people something you never had before. One more button.”

  “What?”

  “On your shirt. Right here. Like a token. To seal the deal.”

  Great struggles require great sacrifices. And it was a small enough price, she thought. The room was dark. No one was looking. They were all watching the stage. She undid the third button. She parted the seams. Wiley looked and smiled.

  He said, “I knew I could make you do it.”

  She walked away, through the crowd, ignoring the grabbing hands, up the stairs, past the doorman on the stool, out to the street, where she walked twenty paces and flagged down a cab. She settled in the back seat and said in carefully practiced German, “The airport, please. International departures.”

  Chapter 23

  In a different club two miles away two men were having dinner. The club was small, but paneled in oak. The tables were cramped, but the cloths were linen. More wine was served than beer. Lamb chops were on the menu. One of the men was an importer of shoes from Brazil. He was a solid figure, about forty-five years old. His hair was blond, going gray, and his face was red, also going gray. His name was Dremmler. He was in a suit, with a high lapel.

  The other man was similar in appearance. Mid-forties, bulky, a little redder, a little less gray. He was also in a suit, a chainstore label, but not cheap. His name was Muller. He was a policeman.

  Dremmler said, “One of our members is a man named Helmut Klopp. He saw an Arab talking to an American and reported it. Guess what happened?”

  Muller said, “Nothing, probably.”

  “Two secret investigators came here from America. In a big hurry. Your chief of detectives was kissing their ass.”

  “Griezman?”

  “So evidently what Klopp saw was a very important meeting. They questioned him for hours. He says they showed him two hundred photographs, but he recognized none of them. So they made a sketch, from the description he gave them.”

  “That’s a lot of work.”

  “Exactly,” Dremmler said. “Therefore something is going on. Of great importance to the Americans. One of their own is talking to an Arab. We’d like to know what about. Is one buying and the other selling? We need you to see if Griezman wrote anything down.”

  “Why?” Muller said. “Why help either Griezman or the Americans?”

  “We’ll be helping ourselves,” Dremmler said. “Don’t you see? We could get in the middle of this. There will be money going one way and something else going the other. Either of which we could use. Or both. And we could use them better than they could. Even part of it could help us make a statement. They’ve got their cause, and we’ve got ours. May the best man win.”

  “We’re planning a hijack?”

  “We should at least consider it.”

  “OK,” Muller said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  A waiter in a short jacket took their plates away.

  Dremmler said, “One more thing.”

  “Yes?” Muller said.

  “We have four youth members who were beaten up outside a bar. They were quite badly hurt. They say their attacker was a very big man. An American, holding to a pro-occupation position. He was with a dark-haired woman.”

  “And?”

  “According to Helmut Klopp, those were the secret investigators from America. The descriptions match exactly.”

  “OK.”

  “I can’t let such a thing go unpunished. Klopp says the man’s name is Reacher and the woman’s name is Neagley. I would like to find them. I’m sure your chief of detectives knows where they’re staying. I need you to see if he wrote it down.”

  “OK,” Muller said again. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  —

  At ten o’clock in the evening Hamburg time Ratcliffe approved plan B. At eleven o’clock Reacher gave up on it. The messenger had not come home. She was never planning to. That was clear by then. Griezman said she could have taken any one of twenty or more international flights in the last few hours. Or flown domestic to Berlin, where the whole world was a hop and a skip away. Or driven to Amsterdam. Or taken a train to Paris. Or gone to another safe house in the city, which was a separate nightmare all by itself.

  Reacher and Sinclair were in Sinclair’s room, all showered and dressed long ago. Neagley was back. They had brought her up to speed with the whole sorry mess. The missed cues, the wrong assumptions, the late connections. Which led inevitably to a debate about next steps. Which led inevitably to a debate about the fingerprint. Sinclair said, “Wiley has Sixth Amendment rights to a speedy trial for the homicide. Which he wouldn’t get, because we would tie him up for years about the other thing. And we can’t let the Germans have him first, because we might never get him back again.”

  Neagley said, “We could negotiate that ahead of time.”

  “We can’t be in a position where we have to ask the Germans for permission to run our own national security the way we want to.”

  “We’d be giving up all kinds of capabilities. The clock is really ticking now. It’s getting loud.”

  Sinclair said, “Reacher?”

  He said, “I think it’s fifty-fifty. A physical search of the city would be a waste of time. Even if they could eyeball a thousand faces a day, it would take nearly five years to cover the whole population. But their records could be useful. Wiley came to town not more than four months ago. We know that for sure. So we have a hard start date. Obviously he rented a place, because he killed the hooker in her apartment, not a hotel room. So he has a lease somewhere. And then a new name, probably German, to go with his new passport, probably also German. He has utility bills. Probably a telephone. We have no access to those databases. That’s where Griezman could help us.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I’m biased,” Reacher said. “I owe the guy.”

  “He did nothing for you. He didn’t find Wiley, and he didn’t find the messenger.”

  “He tried.”

  “What did you think of Mr. Bishop, from the consulate?”

  “The head of station?”

  “The CIA veteran.”

  “He’s not bad for an old guy.”

  “Obviously our older German-speakers were trained under the previous system. For duty in East Germany, not the civilized west. They like to know everything about everybody. For recruitment, back then, and for blackmail, and for a better understanding of the local inside stories. They have extensive files. Not all of them in the official cabinets.”

  “And?”

  “Chief of Detectives Griezman was the dead hooker’s client about a year ago. Four times. We know this for sure. He spent his kids’ college fund. Therefore my guess is he wants to close the case so no one goes poking and prying too far back. My guess is his noble quest for justice is not so noble after all.”

  Reacher paused a beat.

  “OK,” he said.

  “So yes or no?”

  “Wiley still walks on the homicide.”

  “We can’t hang him twice.”

  Reacher paused again.

  Then he said, “Griezman was stupid.”

  “Overcome by lust,” Sinclair said. “It happens.”

  “He was stupid because of what you’re going to realize about five seconds from now. Only because you’re a nicer person than me.”

  Sinclair didn’t answer.

  Then she said, “Oh.”

  Reacher nodded. “We can sidestep the fingerprint issue completely. We don’t need to trade. We can get everything we want by blackmailing the guy.”

  “I hope so,” Sinclair said.

  “Except I don’t want to do that. So not yet, OK? Wiley is an AWOL soldier in the same city as me. It’s money in the bank.”

  “How much time would Griezman save you?”

  “He’s a
last resort either way around. I don’t want to get bogged down in databases. There are other ways. I was trained under the previous system, too. So Griezman’s zipper problem doesn’t matter yet. There’s nothing he can do for us right now.”

  “Are you saying that because you owe him?”

  “I’m saying it because it’s true.”

  “What are the other ways?”

  “We get to know the guy. We find him from the inside.”

  —

  By then Neagley had the transcripts from the original AWOL file, so she and Reacher left Sinclair in her room and headed down to Neagley’s, to read them. The physical chronology was straightforward enough. Wiley had failed to return from a routine ninety-six-hour pass. Simple as that. He had never been seen again. He had mentioned nothing in advance to his crewmates about where he was going on the pass. Best guess was Frankfurt, where the hookers were plentiful and inventive, because of the convention business. Did Wiley like hookers? No more than the next guy, was the answer.

  Then there were background questions, to build up a picture of the guy. Hobbies, interests, enthusiasms, things he talked about. He was from Texas, and sometimes he talked about beef cattle. He was proud of his home town. Sometimes he got all excited and said things he seemed to regret later. Other times he was quiet. One time he said he had joined the army only because an uncle had told him stories about Davy Crockett. He liked beer better than hard liquor, and he didn’t smoke. He was unmarried and had never talked about a partner back home. He was extremely happy where he was. He liked his posting and gave the impression he had aimed for it.

  “That’s weird,” Neagley said. “Most AWOLs aren’t extremely happy where they are. That’s kind of the point.”

  Reacher said, “And who would aim for a Chaparral unit on an abandoned front? The guy is still a private. Always will be. He must have known.”

  “Was Davy Crockett even in the army?”