Personal

by Lee Child

  ready to squeeze, through the slack, pausing, then moving again, like clicking a tiny mechanical switch, the quiet tick of a precision component, causing an immense chemical explosion, the recoil bucking, the bullet launching on its long, long journey. More than three whole seconds in the air, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, half an inch wide, like a human thumb, flying like a missile, straight and true, subject only to the immutable effects of gravity and elevation and temperature and humidity and wind and the curvature of the earth. I stared at the distant house and counted three long seconds in my head and tried to picture the bullet’s flight. It seemed as if I should be able to see it coming. Straight at me. Like a tiny dot, getting bigger.

  Flash one thousand two thousand three thousand game over.

  Which is when I knew.

  More than three whole seconds in the air.

  FORTY-ONE

  I WAS A lot faster getting back into the anteroom than I had been getting out of it. Bennett was watching me, and I asked him, ‘The bulletproof glass in Paris was new, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Improved, anyway.’

  ‘Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Other than it’s glass, and, well, bulletproof.’

  ‘I need to know everything about it. Who designed it, who researched it, who funded it, who manufactured it, who tested it, and who signed off on it.’

  ‘We already thought of that.’

  ‘Thought of what?’

  ‘Borrowing the shields and flying them in from Paris. Putting one either side. They’re not very wide, but given the way the streets run, they would reduce the field of fire by about ten per cent each. But we decided against it. Politicians are civilians. They’d cower behind the shields. Subconsciously, maybe, but it wouldn’t look good. And they couldn’t stay there for ever. Which would give the bad guys the other eighty per cent to aim at anyway. So all in all we thought it would be a net loss.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of. All I need is the information. On the quiet, if you can. No need to make a whole big thing out of it. Pretend it was just you and me. Like a private venture, outside of the mainstream. Like a hobby. But fast.’

  ‘How fast?’

  ‘Fast as you can.’

  ‘What does the bulletproof glass have to do with anything? We’re not going to use it. I told you that.’

  ‘Maybe I want to use it myself. Maybe I want to ask if they sell direct to the public.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘It’s a side venture, Mr Bennett. Just a small inquiry. Nothing to do with anything. But fast, OK? And face to face only. Nothing on paper. Nothing up the chain. Understood? Like a hobby.’

  He nodded, and glanced back at the corridor, which presumably led to other corridors, and staircases, and rooms, and he said, ‘Do you need to see anything else?’

  ‘No, we’re done here,’ I said. ‘We’re leaving, never to return. Like the Darby family, after all those years, when the motorway was built. No more Wallace Court for us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s never going to get this far.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Hundred per cent.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘You said that would be a favourable outcome. You said we were supposed to help each other. You said that’s how it’s supposed to work.’

  He said, ‘It is.’

  ‘Then relax. Trust me. Crack a smile. It’s never going to get this far.’

  He didn’t crack a smile.

  We drove back to the hotel, snarled all the way in traffic, maybe the peak of the morning rush, an hour or so after sunrise, or maybe just after the peak, but bad enough anyway. The immense sprawling city was still packing them in, but only just, and very slowly. We got back to Park Lane two hours after we left it, three-quarters of which had been spent in the car. Worse than LA.

  Bennett gave his keys to the valet, just like a regular person, and we all three rode up to the top-floor restaurant, where we figured the breakfast service would still be running. We got a booth behind a structural pillar. Worse view, but better privacy. Bennett spent a lot of time tapping on his phone. He said he was ordering stuff up for us, including large-scale government maps, and an architect’s blueprint still held by the zoning authority, and three sets of aerial images, one taken from a space satellite, and another from an accidentally-on-purpose-off-course sightseeing helicopter, and a third from an unknown source, which he said had to mean an American drone, except officially there were no American drones in Britain, which was why it was labelled an unknown source. He said his people would load what we needed on a secure tablet computer, and bring it to the hotel.

  Then he said, ‘We can’t afford collateral damage. Not there. Some people on that street are innocent members of the public. Not many, but a few. Which is a shame. We could have taken care of this long ago. We could have planted a bomb and called it a gas leak.’

  Then he left, but Nice and I lingered a little, over coffee in my case, and small bites of toast in hers, and she asked, ‘Why are you all of a sudden so interested in the bulletproof glass?’

  ‘Just a theory,’ I said.

  ‘Something I should know about?’

  ‘Not yet. It doesn’t change what we have to do next.’

  ‘Will Bennett get that information for you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Why? Does he owe you a favour now? Did I miss something?’

  ‘It’s a brother soldier thing. You should try it. You’d be happier.’

  ‘Is he British Army?’

  ‘Think about that fluid thing he keeps on talking about. It can only mean they’ve put special units together. The best of the best. All the different agencies, like an All-Star team. Who would lead such a thing?’

  ‘They would all want to.’

  ‘Exactly. So much so their heads would explode if they didn’t. But whose head would explode the worst? Who’s bringing the gun to the knife fight, in terms of exploding heads?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The SAS. They don’t like their own officers. They certainly aren’t going to work for someone else’s. Easiest just to put them in charge. Which is obviously what they did. Which was a good move. Because they know best anyway. Plus they think they have a dog in the fight. The renegade, Carson. Bennett wants him just as much as I want Kott.’

  ‘Bennett is SAS?’

  ‘No question.’

  ‘What do we have to do next?’

  ‘Get into Joey’s house.’

  ‘Into it?’

  ‘I’d prefer to make them come out. But that’s hard to do. In fact it’s a tactical question that has never really been answered. We studied it in the classroom. Easy enough to make sure they never come out, but that’s not the issue. How do you make them come out of there voluntarily? No one knows. No one ever has. I remember my dad studying it, when we were kids. With stuff like that, he used to involve us. With questions afterwards. My brother Joe came up with a huge machine like a gigantic subwoofer, blasting infrasonic waves at them, real low frequencies at a real high volume, because he said it was believed by some scientists that modern humans had a low tolerance for such a thing.’

  ‘What was your answer?’

  ‘Bear in mind I was younger than him.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said set the house on fire. Because I was damn sure modern humans had a low tolerance for that. I figured they’d come on out, sooner or later.’

  ‘Are we going to set Joey’s house on fire?’

  ‘It’s an option, obviously.’

  ‘What are our other options?’

  ‘They all involve taking Joey out of there and dealing with him separately. Ahead of time. Before we do anything else. Because in that case, back at the ranch, we would see a leadership vacuum. Which we could exploit.’

  ‘As in, we would be fighting a less effective enemy.’
<
br />   ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But we would be fighting somebody.’

  ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

  ‘You said they wouldn’t fight on for free. Because they’re unemployed now. You said they would disappear.’

  ‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst.’

  ‘Which is it going to be?’

  ‘It’s going to be the same thing it always is.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Somewhere in between.’

  The tablet computer showed up an hour later. Bennett’s people brought it. The computer looked very modern, and the people looked the way such people have always looked, which was surprisingly normal, but not completely. One was a man and one was a woman, both of them a long way past their rookie years, both of them quiet and contained and competent, and neither one visibly unhappy with their short-straw courier assignment. Good team players, obviously. Only the best for the best. They said normally they would ask us to sign for the delivery, given the sensitivity of the contents, but on this occasion Mr Bennett had waived the requirement. They said the computer required two passwords. They said the passwords were Ms Nice’s mother’s Social Security number, and the name of the prisoner Mr Reacher shot while attempting to escape. The passwords were case-sensitive, and could be entered one time only. No three-strikes-and-you’re-out with British software.

  Then they left.

  We took the tablet to Nice’s room. It was like half of a laptop computer. No keyboard. Just a screen. A blank screen. Nice said, ‘You remember his name, right?’

  ‘I remember both their names,’ I said.

  ‘But I assume the password is the first one. The main man.’

  ‘The target.’

  ‘Yes, him. Or was the other one attempting to escape also?’

  ‘Actually he was the only one attempting to escape. The target was already down. He didn’t see me coming.’

  ‘Which one were you investigated for?’

  ‘The second one, technically.’

  ‘Did people talk about the case?’

  ‘Not if they wanted to live. It was about the assassination of an American citizen on American soil.’

  ‘But if they had talked about it, what would they have called it? The case as a whole, I mean, like the John Doe thing, or whatever.’

  ‘Definitely the first guy.’

  ‘Who was the target. And Mr Bennett is British, and therefore ironic. Which means we can assume his mention of the escape was tongue-in-cheek. Which all focuses back to the target. Which was the first guy. Which is the name we should use.’

  ‘First or last?’

  ‘Has to be last. This was the U.S. Army, correct?’

  ‘Or code name?’

  ‘He had a code name?’

  ‘He had two. One from us, and one from the Iraqis.’

  She said, ‘Do you wake up in a sweat about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That operation.’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘But if you did, what name would you call him? Like, I shouldn’t have done that bad thing to whoever.’

  ‘You think it was a bad thing?’

  ‘It wasn’t helping old ladies across the street to the library in Africa.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Scarangello. We need to get you out of there and into the army before it’s too late.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  I said, ‘Tell me about your mother.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You know her Social Security number?’

  ‘I help her with her paperwork. She’s sick at the moment.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘She has a brain tumour. It won’t go away. She can’t think straight. I deal with insurance and disability and things like that. I know her details better than mine, probably.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘She must be young.’

  ‘Too young for this.’

  ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s just me.’

  I said, ‘Would the average person know her mother’s Social Security number?’

  ‘I don’t know. Did you know yours?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Do you visit your mother?’

  ‘As often as I can.’

  ‘In downstate Illinois? That’s a lot of flying.’

  ‘It keeps me busy.’

  ‘Plus you worry when you can’t get there, I guess. Like now.’

  ‘Nothing I can do.’

  ‘When did she get the diagnosis?’

  ‘Two years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, for the third time.

  She said, ‘It is what it is.’

  ‘When did Tony Moon start going to the doctor?’

  ‘It’s not connected.’

  ‘You absolutely sure about that?’

  ‘My mother isn’t here now.’

  ‘But you’re thinking about her.’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘And therefore feeling a little anxious.’

  ‘Not about her. It’s not connected.’

  I said nothing.

  She said, ‘I have one pill left.’

  ‘You took one?’

  ‘Last night. I had to sleep.’

  I said, ‘Do your bosses know about your mother?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s a requirement. Family situations must be reported. They’ve been very supportive about it. They keep me free on weekends whenever they can.’

  ‘So there’s a human resources file somewhere at Langley, recording the fact that your mother is sick and you’re taking care of business for her. Which has to be confidential. Because everything at the CIA is confidential. And there’s another file somewhere in the Pentagon, recording the name of a guy I shot in the head twenty years ago. Which I know for damn sure is confidential. But somehow MI5 in London got access to both files, to come up with unbreakable passwords for us. They’re like DNA, or fingerprints.’

  She nodded again. ‘Mr Bennett’s hacking theories might be true. In which case he’s showing off.’

  ‘Unless O’Day showed him the files.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘That’s a question we’ll ask Bennett.’

  ‘What was your guy’s name?’