by Child, Lee
‘I was as a kid. Then I stopped. Then I took it up again in Iraq. Every big base had a kit lying around somewhere. I was advised I would enjoy creating patterns I alone controlled. I was advised I would find it helpful, since I could already play a bit anyway. Also I was advised it would get rid of aggression.’
‘Who advised you?’
‘Some old sawbones. I laughed it off at first. But then I found I was really enjoying it again. I realized I should have been doing it all my life. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since. Trying to learn. I missed a few years.’
‘You sounded pretty good to me.’
‘Now you’re blowing smoke. And trying to change the subject. You’re one guy. You’re not a SEAL team.’
‘I’ll figure it out. By definition there must be a dozen better plans than what the navy would come up with. All I need to do is find the guy.’
‘There can’t be many suitable locations,’ Abby said again.
Reacher nodded and went quiet. The conversation bounced around him. The other three seemed to be good friends. They had worked together now and then, in the fluid world of clubs, and music, and dance, and men in suits on the door. They all had stories, some of them funny, and some of them not. They seemed to draw no distinction between the Ukrainians and the Albanians. They seemed to think that working east and west of Center was equally good and bad.
A kid in a car brought Chinese food. Reacher shared hot and sour soup with Abby and sweet and sour chicken with Barton. They drank wine. He drank coffee. When he finished, he said, ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Abby said, ‘Alone?’
‘Nothing personal.’
‘Where?’
‘West of Center. I need to hurry this up. The Shevicks are about to get hit by another big bill. They can’t wait.’
‘Crazy, man,’ Barton said.
Hogan didn’t speak.
Reacher got up and stepped out the front door.
TWENTY-FOUR
Reacher walked west, towards the night-time glow of the tall downtown buildings. The banks and the insurance companies and the local TV. And the chain hotels. All clustered astride Center Street, all penetrated by one faction or the other, all probably unaware of the fact, at management level, unless the manager was also the mole. Along the way he passed bars and clubs and storefront restaurants. Here and there he saw men in suits on the door. He ignored them. Wrong faction. He was still east of Center. He walked on.
If he had eyes in the back of his head, he would have seen one of the men in suits think hard for a second, and then send a text.
He walked on. He crossed Center Street three blocks north of the first tall building, into a neighbourhood no different, with bars and clubs and storefront restaurants, some of them with men in suits on the door, just the same, except the suits were different, and the ties were silk, and the faces were paler. This time he watched them all carefully, from the shadows when he could, looking for the kind of guy he wanted. Which was alert, but not too alert, and tough, but not too tough. There were several candidates. In particular three looked good. Two were in wine bars, and one was in some kind of a lounge. Maybe a comedy club.
Reacher chose the one sitting nearest the street door. A tactical advantage. It was the lounge. The guy was right inside the glass. Reacher walked towards him, three quarters in his field of vision. The guy noticed the movement. Turned his head. Reacher stopped walking. The guy stared. Reacher moved on again. Straight towards him. The guy remembered. Texts, descriptions, photographs, names. Aaron Shevick. Be on the lookout.
Reacher stopped again.
The guy pulled out his phone, and jabbed at it.
Reacher pulled out his gun, and aimed it. One of the two H&K P7s taken from the guys in the Lincoln. Before it burned up. German police issue. Beautifully engineered. Steely and hard edged. The guy froze. Reacher was three steps away. Just enough time. Tempting. The guy dropped his phone and put his hand up under his armpit to get his own gun.
Not enough time.
The guy was right inside the door. Right inside the glass. Reacher got to him before his gun was halfway out, and he pressed the H&K’s muzzle against his right eye, hard enough not to get shaken loose, hard enough to get the guy’s attention, which it did right away, because the guy went immediately quiet and still. With his left hand Reacher picked up his phone, and then took his gun, which was another H&K P7, just like the two he had already. Maybe standard issue west of Center. Maybe a bulk order, at a good price, from some bent German copper.
With his left hand he put the phone and the gun in his pockets. With his right hand he pressed his own H&K harder on the guy’s eyeball.
‘Let’s take a walk,’ he said.
The guy got up off his stool, awkward, all bent backward against the pressure, and he shuffled around and backed out the door, to the sidewalk, where Reacher turned him right, and pushed him six more backward paces, and turned him right again, backward into an alley that smelled like a garbage receptacle and a kitchen door.
Reacher backed the guy against the wall.
He said, ‘How many people saw?’
The guy said, ‘Saw what?’
‘You with a gun to your head.’
‘A few, I guess.’
‘How many came to help you out?’
The guy didn’t answer.
‘Yeah, none of them,’ Reacher said. ‘No one likes you. No one would piss on you if you were on fire. So it’s just you and me now. No one is going to ride to the rescue. Are we clear on that?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Where is Max Trulenko?’
‘No one knows.’
‘Someone must.’
‘Not me,’ the guy said. ‘I promise. I swear on my sister’s life.’
‘Where is your sister right now?’
‘Kiev.’
‘Which makes your promise kind of theoretical. Don’t you think? Try again.’
‘On my life,’ the guy said.
‘Which is not so theoretical,’ Reacher said. He pressed harder with the H&K. Through the steel he felt the guy’s eyeball squash. He felt the jelly.
The guy gasped and said, ‘I swear I don’t know where Trulenko is.’
‘But you heard of him.’
‘Of course.’
‘Does he work for Gregory now?’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Where?’
‘No one knows,’ the guy said. ‘It’s a big secret.’
‘You sure?’
‘On my mother’s grave.’
‘Which is where?’
‘You got to believe me. Maybe six people know where Trulenko is. I ain’t one of them. Please, sir. I’m just a doorman.’
Reacher took the gun away. He stepped back. The guy blinked and rubbed his eye and stared through the gloom. Reacher kicked him hard in the nuts, and left him there, doubled over, making all kinds of retching and puking sounds.
Reacher got back to Center Street with no trouble anywhere. His problems started immediately after that. When he was east of Center, which he didn’t understand at all. Wrong faction, surely. But right away he felt eyes on him. He felt people watching him. No benevolence in their gaze. He knew that absolutely. He got a chill on his neck. Some kind of an ancient instinct. A sixth sense. A survival mechanism, baked deep in the back of his brain by evolution. How not to get eaten. Millions of years of practice. His hundred-thousand-times-great-great-grandmother, stiffening, changing course, looking for the trees and the shadows. Living to fight another day. Living to have a kid, who a hundred thousand generations later had a descendant also looking for the shadows, not on the verdant savannah but on the grey night-time streets, as he slid by lit-up clubs and bars and storefront restaurants.
It was the men in suits who were watching him. Organized guys. Made men, and the soon-to-be. Why? He didn’t know. Had he upset the Albanians too? He didn’t see how. Mostly he had done them a favour, surely, according to their own crud
e calculus. They should be giving him a parade.
He moved on.
He heard a footstep far behind him.
He kept on walking. The glow of Center Street was long gone, both literally and figuratively. The streets ahead were narrow and dark, and got shabbier with every step. There were parked cars and alleys and deep doorways. Two out of three street lights were busted. There were no pedestrians.
His kind of place.
He stopped walking.
More than one way not to get eaten. Grandma’s instinct worked for today. A hundred thousand generations later her descendant’s instinct worked for tomorrow, too. And for ever. More efficient. Natural selection, right there. He stood in the half gloom for a minute, and then backed away into deep shadow, and listened.
He heard the diamond scrape of a leather sole on the sidewalk. Maybe forty feet back. Some kind of hastily arranged surveillance. Some guy, suddenly ordered off his stool and out into the night. To follow. But for how long? That was the critical question. All the way home, or only as far as a hastily arranged up-ahead ambush?
Reacher waited. He heard the leather sole again. Or its opposite number, on the other foot, taking a cautious step, moving forward. He pressed deeper into the shadows. Into a doorway. He leaned up against ribs of carved stone. A fancy entrance. Some long-forgotten enterprise. No doubt rewarding while it lasted.
He heard the scrape of the shoe again. Now maybe twenty feet back. Making progress. He heard nothing from the other direction. Just city quiet, and old air, and the faint smell of soot and bricks.
He heard the shoe again. Now ten feet back. Still making progress. He waited. The guy was already within range. But another couple of steps would make the whole thing more comfortable. He sketched out the geometry in his head. He put his hand in his pocket and found the H&K he had used before. Because he knew for sure it worked. Always an advantage.
Another step. The guy was maybe seven feet away. Not small. The sound of his shoe was a faint, heavy, grinding, spreading crunch. The sound of a big guy, creeping slow.
Now four feet away.
Show time.
Reacher stepped out and turned to face the guy. The H&K gleamed in the dark. He aimed it at the guy’s face. The guy went cross-eyed, trying to stare at it in the poor illumination.
Reacher said, ‘Don’t make a sound.’
The guy didn’t. Reacher listened beyond his shoulder. Did the guy have back-up behind him? Apparently not. Nothing to hear. Same as up ahead. City quiet, and old air.
Reacher said, ‘Do we have a problem?’
The guy was six feet and maybe two-twenty, maybe forty years old, lean and hard, all bone and muscle and dark suspicious eyes. His lips were clamped tight and pulled back in a rictus grin that could have been worried, or quizzical, or contemptuous.
‘Do we have a problem?’ Reacher asked again.
‘You’re a dead man,’ the guy said.
‘Not so far,’ Reacher said. ‘In fact right now you’re closer to that unhappy state than I am. Don’t you think?’
‘Mess with me, and you’re messing with a lot of people.’
‘Am I messing with you? Or are you messing with me?’
‘We want to know who you are.’
‘Why? What did I do to you?’
‘Above my pay grade,’ the guy said. ‘All I got to do is bring you in.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ Reacher said.
‘Easy to say, with a gun in my face.’
Reacher shook his head in the gloom.
‘Easy to say any time,’ he said.
He stepped back a pace, and put the gun back in his pocket. He stood there, empty-handed, palms out, with his arms held away from his sides.
‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Now you can bring me in.’
The guy didn’t move. He was five inches down in height, maybe thirty pounds in weight, maybe a whole foot in reach. Evidently unarmed, because otherwise his weapon would have been out and in his hand already. Evidently unsettled, too, by Reacher’s gaze, which was steady, and calm, and slightly amused, but also undeniably predatory, and even a little unhinged.
Not a good situation for the guy to be in.
Reacher said, ‘Maybe we could get to the same place a different way.’
The guy said, ‘How?’
‘Give me your phone. Tell your boss to call me. I’ll tell him who I am. The personal touch is always better.’
‘I can’t give you my phone.’
‘I’m going to take it anyway. Your choice when.’
The gaze. Steady, calm, amused, predatory, unhinged.
The guy said, ‘OK.’
Reacher said, ‘Take it out and set it down on the sidewalk.’
The guy did.
‘Now turn around.’
The guy did.
‘Now run away as far and as fast as you can.’
The guy did. He took off at a musclebound sprint and was immediately swallowed up by the urban darkness. His footsteps rang out long after he had disappeared from sight. This time he made no attempt at stealth. Reacher listened to the rapid slapping and crunching and sliding until the sound quieted down and faded away to nothing. Then he picked up the phone and walked on.
Three blocks from Barton’s house, Reacher took off his jacket, and folded it into a square, and rolled the square into a tube, and stuffed the tube inside a rusted mailbox outside a one-storey office building with boarded-up windows and fire damage on the siding. He walked the rest of the way in his T-shirt only. The night-time air was cool. It was still springtime. The full weight of summer was yet to come.
Hogan was waiting for him in Barton’s hallway. The drummer. Once a U.S. Marine. Now enjoying patterns he alone controlled.
‘You OK?’ he asked.
‘Were you worried about me?’ Reacher said.
‘Professionally curious.’
‘I wasn’t playing a gig with the Rolling Stones.’
‘My previous profession.’
‘Objective achieved,’ Reacher said.
‘Which was what exactly?’
‘I wanted a Ukrainian phone. Apparently they text each other a lot. I figured I could look back and see where they’re up to with this. Maybe they mention Trulenko. Maybe I could make them panic, and make them move him. That would be the time of maximum opportunity.’
Abby came down the stairs. Still dressed.
She said, ‘Hey.’
Reacher said, ‘Hey back.’
‘I heard all that. Good plan. Except won’t they just kill the phone remotely? You won’t hear from them, and they won’t hear from you.’
‘I chose the guy I took it from pretty carefully. He was relatively competent. Therefore relatively trusted. Maybe relatively senior. Therefore relatively reluctant to fess up that I took his lunch money. I left him a little embarrassed. He won’t report anything in a hurry. It’s a pride thing. I think I have a few hours, at least.’
‘OK, good plan, except nothing.’
‘Except I’m not great with phones. There might be menus. All kinds of buttons to press. I might delete something by mistake.’
‘OK, show me.’
‘And even if I don’t delete them by mistake, the texts are probably in Ukrainian. Which I can’t read without the internet. And I’m really not great with computers.’
‘That would be the second step. We would need to start with the phone. Show me.’
‘I didn’t bring it here,’ Reacher said. ‘The guy in the Lincoln claimed they could be traced. I don’t want someone knocking on the door five minutes from now.’
‘So where is it?’
‘I hid it three blocks from here. I figured that was safe enough. Pi times the radius squared. They would have to search nearly a thirty-block circle. They wouldn’t even try.’
Abby said, ‘OK, let’s go take a look.’
‘I also got an Albanian phone. Kind of accidentally. But in the end the same kind of deal. I want to read it. Ma
ybe I can figure out what they’re mad with me about.’
‘Are they mad with you?’
‘They sent a guy after me. They want to know who I am.’
‘That could be normal. You’re a new face in town. They like to know things.’
‘Maybe.’
Hogan said, ‘There’s a guy you should talk to.’
Reacher said, ‘What guy?’
‘He comes to gigs sometimes. A dogface, just like you.’
‘Army?’
‘Stands for, aren’t really Marines yet.’
‘Like Marine stands for muscles are requested, intelligence not expected.’
‘This guy I’m talking about speaks a bunch of old Commie languages. He was a company commander late on in the Cold War. Also he knows what’s going on here in town. He could be helpful. Or at least useful. With the languages especially. You can’t rely on a computer translation. Not for a thing like this. I could call him, if you like.’
‘You know him well?’
‘He’s solid. Good taste in music.’
‘Do you trust him?’
‘As much as I trust any dogface who doesn’t play the drums.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Call him. Can’t hurt.’
He and Abby stepped out to the night-time stillness, and Hogan stayed behind, in the half-lit hallway, dialling his phone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Reacher and Abby covered the three block distance via a roundabout route. Obviously if the phones were truly traceable, they might have already been discovered, in what was clearly a temporary stash, in which case surveillance might have been set up against their eventual retrieval. Better to play it safe. Or as safe as possible, which wasn’t very. There were shadows and alleys and deep doorways and two out of every three street lights were busted. There was plenty of habitat for hidden night-time watchers.
Reacher saw the rusty mailbox up ahead. The middle of the next block. He said, ‘Pretend we’re having some kind of a deep conversation, and when we get level with the mailbox we stop to make an especially big point.’
‘OK,’ Abby said. ‘Then what?’
‘Then we ignore the mailbox completely and we move on. But at that point very quietly. We glide away.’
