by Child, Lee
‘An actual pretend conversation? Or just moving our lips, like a silent movie?’
‘Maybe whispered. Like we’re dealing with secret information.’
‘Starting when?’
‘Now,’ Reacher said. ‘Keep on walking. Don’t slow down.’
‘What do you want to whisper about?’
‘I guess whatever is on your mind.’
‘Are you serious? We could be walking into a dangerous situation here. That’s what’s on my mind.’
‘You said you want to do one thing every day that scares you.’
‘I’m already way over quota.’
‘And you survived every time.’
‘We could be walking into a hail of gunfire.’
‘They won’t shoot me. They want to ask me questions.’
‘You absolutely sure?’
‘It’s a psychological dynamic. Like in the theatre. It’s not necessarily the kind of thing that has a yes or no answer.’
The mailbox was coming up.
‘Get ready to stop,’ Reacher whispered.
‘And give them a stationary target?’
‘Only as long as it takes to make a big imaginary statement. Then we move on again. But very quietly, OK?’
Reacher stopped.
Abby stopped.
She said, ‘What kind of big imaginary statement?’
‘Whatever is on your mind.’
She was quiet a beat.
Then she said, ‘No. What’s on my mind is I don’t want to make a statement about what’s on my mind. Not yet. That’s my statement.’
‘Go,’ he said.
They moved on. As quiet as they could. Three paces. Four.
‘OK,’ Reacher said.
Abby said, ‘OK what?’
‘No one here.’
‘And we know this how?’
‘You tell me.’
She was quiet another beat, and then she said, ‘We were quiet because we were listening.’
‘And what did we hear?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly. We paused right by the target, and we heard no one stepping out or tensing up, and then we moved on, and we heard no one stepping back and relaxing, or scuffling around, waiting for word on plan B. Therefore there’s no one here.’
‘That’s great.’
‘So far,’ Reacher said. ‘But who knows how long these things take? Not my area of expertise. They could be here any minute.’
‘So what should we do?’
‘I guess we should take the phones someplace else. We should make them start the search all over again.’
Two blocks south they saw headlight beams coming out of a cross street. Like a distant early warning. Seconds later a car made the left and drove up towards them. Slowly. Maybe searching. Or maybe just a regular night-time driver worried about a ticket or a DUI. Hard to tell. The headlights were low and wide spaced. A big sedan. It kept on coming.
‘Stand by,’ Reacher said.
Nothing. The car drove past, same steady speed, same decided direction. An old Cadillac. The driver looked neither left nor right. An old lady, peering out from underneath the rim of the steering wheel.
Abby said, ‘Whatever, we better be quick about this. Because like you said, we don’t know how long these things take.’
They walked back, four fast paces, and Reacher pulled his rolled-up jacket out of the rusty mailbox.
Abby carried the phones. She insisted. They walked another three blocks on another roundabout route and found a bodega open late. No man in a suit on the door. No suits anywhere, as a matter of fact. The clerk at the register was wearing a white T-shirt. There were no other customers. The space was crowded with humming chiller cabinets and bright with fluorescent light. There was a two-top table in back, unoccupied.
Reacher got two cardboard cups of coffee and carried them back to the table. Abby had the phones laid out side by side. She was looking at them, conflicted, as if half eager to get started on them, and half worried about them, as if they were pulsing secret SOS signals out into the ether. Find me, find me.
Which they were.
She said, ‘Can you remember which was which?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They all look the same to me.’
She clicked one to life. No password required. For speed, and arrogance, and easy internal review. She dabbed and swiped through a bunch of screens. Reacher saw a vertical array of green message bubbles. Texts. Unreadable foreign words, but mostly regular letters, the same as English. Some were doubled up. Some had strange accents above or below. Umlauts and cedillas.
‘Albanian,’ Reacher said.
Out on the street a car drove by. Slowly. Its headlight wash scoured a thin blue blade of light across the room. All the way along the back wall, and then all the way along the end wall, and then it was gone. Abby clicked the second phone to life. No password. She found another long sequence of text messages, to and from. Green bubbles, one after the other. All in the Cyrillic alphabet. Named for St Cyril, who worked on alphabets in the ninth century.
‘Ukrainian,’ Reacher said.
‘There are hundreds of texts here,’ Abby said. ‘Literally hundreds. Maybe thousands.’
Another car drove by outside, faster.
Reacher said, ‘Can you make out the dates?’
Abby scrolled and said, ‘There are at least fifty since yesterday. Your picture is in some of them.’
Another car drove by outside. This time slowly. Lights on bright. Searching for something, or worried about a ticket. A glimpse of the driver. A man in dark clothing, his face lit up spooky by the lights on his dash.
‘There are at least fifty Albanian texts too,’ Abby said. ‘Maybe more.’
‘So how do we do this?’ Reacher asked. ‘We can’t take the phones home. We can’t copy out all this crap on to napkins. We would make mistakes. And it would take for ever. We don’t have time.’
‘Watch me,’ Abby said.
She took out her own phone. She squared the Ukrainian phone on the tabletop. She hovered her own phone above it, parallel, moving in, moving out, until satisfied.
‘Taking a picture?’ Reacher asked.
‘Video,’ she said. ‘Watch.’
She held her own phone in her left hand, and with her right forefinger she scrolled through a long and complex chain of Ukrainian texts on the captured phone, at a moderate speed, on and on, consistent, five seconds, ten, fifteen, twenty. Then the end of the chain bounced to a halt and she shut off the recording.
She said, ‘We can play it and pause it as much as we want. We can freeze it anywhere. Just as good as having the phones themselves.’
She did the same thing with the Albanian phone. Five seconds, ten, fifteen, twenty.
‘Nice work,’ Reacher said. ‘Now we should move these phones again. Can’t leave them here. This place doesn’t deserve a visit from the goon squad.’
‘So where?’
‘I vote back in the mailbox.’
‘But that’s ground zero for their search. If they’re behind the curve a little, they could be getting there right about now.’
‘Actually I’m hoping being in a small metal box will cut off the transmissions. They won’t be able to search at all.’
‘Then they never could.’
‘Probably not.’
‘Then there never was any danger.’
‘Until we took them out.’
‘How long does it take, for a thing like that?’
‘We already agreed, neither one of us knows.’
‘Does it have to be that mailbox? How about the nearest mailbox?’
‘No collateral damage,’ Reacher said. ‘Just in case.’
‘You don’t really know, do you?’
‘It’s not necessarily the kind of thing that has a yes or no answer.’
‘Are the transmissions cut off or not?’
‘I’m guessing probably. Not my area of expertise. But I listen to people talk. T
hey’re for ever bitching and moaning about their calls cutting out. For all kinds of reasons, all of which sound much less serious than getting shut in a small metal box.’
‘But right now they’re right here on the table, so there is currently a degree of danger.’
Reacher nodded.
‘Getting larger every minute,’ he said.
This time Reacher carried the phones, for no reason other than normal squad rotation. There were plenty of cars around. Plenty of bouncing, blinding headlight beams. All kinds of makes and models. But no Lincoln Town Cars. No sudden changes in speed or direction. Apparently no interest at all.
They put the phones in the mailbox and squealed it shut. This time Reacher kept his jacket. Not just for the warmth. For the guns in the pockets. They set out to walk back to Barton’s house. They got less than a block and a half.
TWENTY-SIX
Nothing to do with complex triangulations of cell phone signals, or GPS pinpoint telltales accurate to half a yard. Much later Reacher figured it had happened the old-school way. A random guy in a random car had remembered his pre-watch briefing. That was all. Be on the lookout. A man and a woman.
Reacher and Abby made a right, intending to make the next left, which involved walking the length of a cobblestone block, on a narrow sidewalk, defined on the right-hand side by an unbroken sequence of iron-bound loading docks in back of the next street’s buildings, and on the left-hand side by a sporadic line of cars parked on the kerb. Not every space was filled. Maybe fifty-fifty. One of the cars was parked the wrong way around. Head on. It had no night-time dew on it. In the split second it took the back of Reacher’s brain to spark the front, the car’s door opened, and the driver’s gun came out, followed by the driver’s hand, and then the driver himself, in a smooth athletic crouch, concealed behind the open door, aiming level through the open window.
At Reacher, at first. Then at Abby. Then back again. And again. Back and forth. Like on a TV show. The guy was making it clear he was covering both of them at once. He was wearing a blue suit. And a red tie, tied tight.
They won’t shoot me. They want to ask me questions.
It’s a psychological dynamic. Like in the theatre.
It’s not necessarily the kind of thing that has a yes or no answer.
The gun was a Glock 17, a little scratched and worn. The guy was using a two-handed grip. Both wrists were resting on the window rubber. His trigger finger was in position. The gun was steady. Its left-right arc was controlled and horizontal only. Competent, except that a crouch was an inherently unstable position, and also a pointless one, because a car door offered no kind of meaningful protection against a bullet. Better than aluminium foil, but not much. A smart guy would stand straight and rest his wrists on top of the door. More commanding. Easier to transition to whatever came next, like walking or running or fighting.
The guy with the gun called out, ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’
Reacher called back, ‘Do we have a problem?’
The guy called out, ‘I don’t have a problem.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Good to know.’ He turned to Abby and said, quieter, ‘You could head back to the corner, if you like. I could join you there in a minute. This guy wants to ask me questions, is all.’
But the guy called out, ‘No, she stays too. Both of you.’
A man and a woman.
Reacher turned to face front again, and used the manoeuvre to conceal half a step of forward progress.
He said, ‘We stay for what?’
‘Questions.’
‘Ask away.’
‘My boss will ask the questions.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Coming.’
‘What’s on his mind?’
‘Many things, I’m sure.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Put the gun away and come out from there and we’ll all wait together. Right here on the sidewalk. Until he shows up.’
The guy stayed crouched behind his door.
The gun didn’t move.
‘You can’t use it anyway,’ Reacher said. ‘Your boss wouldn’t like it if he showed up and found us dead or wounded or in shock or in a coma. Or quivering with some kind of traumatic stress disorder. He wants to ask us questions. He wants coherent answers that make sense. Plus the cops wouldn’t stand for it. I don’t care what kind of accommodations you think you got with them. A gunshot on a city street at night is going to get a reaction.’
‘You think you’re a smart guy?’
‘No, but I’m hoping you are.’
The gun didn’t move.
Which was OK. The trigger was the important part. Specifically the finger. Which was connected to the guy’s central nervous system. Which could get all frozen up, even if just temporarily, with doubts and thoughts and second guesses.
Or at least slowed down a beat.
Reacher took another step. He raised his left hand halfway, palm out, patting the air, a conciliatory gesture, but also urgent, as if there was an immediate problem to solve. The guy’s gaze followed the moving object, and appeared to miss Reacher’s right hand, which was also moving, but slower and lower. It slipped unobtrusively into his right-hand pocket, where the H&K was, that he knew for sure worked.
The guy said, ‘We wait in the car. Not on the sidewalk.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said.
‘Doors closed.’
‘Sure.’
‘You in the back, me in the front.’
‘Until your boss shows up,’ Reacher said. ‘Then he can get in the front with you. He can ask his questions. Is that the plan?’
‘Until then you keep quiet.’
‘Sure,’ Reacher said again. ‘You win. You’re the man with the gun, after all. We’ll get in the car.’
The guy nodded, satisfied.
After which it was easy. The guy dropped the outer fingers out of his two-handed grip, and pressed them hard on the window rubber, tented, like a pianist playing an emphatic chord, which could have been a semaphore signal that a conclusive agreement had been reached, but was more likely simple physics, as the guy prepared to boost and balance and bounce his way up out of his crouch. Which by then had been going on a long time, to bad effect, in terms of numbness and tingle. Either way the gun came under reduced control, and its butt tipped back and its barrel tipped up, which again could have been seen as a gesture, that the immediate threat was thereby formally withdrawn, in favour of newfound cooperation, but was more likely weight and balance and a natural backward rotation around the trigger guard.
Reacher left the H&K in his pocket.
He took a long pace forward and kicked the car door gently. It clanged back and whacked the guy in the knees, and that small pulse of force rolled him backward over the balls of his feet, agonizingly slow, but irresistible, until finally he rolled over on his back, helpless, like a turtle. His hands whipped up to break his fall and the clenched Glock hit the sidewalk with a plastic smack and bounced loose and skittered away. But then the guy jerked sideways and rolled once and sprang up, from the horizontal to the vertical almost instantly, and without apparent effort. Athletic, like he had been minutes before, getting out of the car. All of which meant Reacher got there half a step late.
The guy danced sideways, out of range of the swing of the still-open driver’s door, and then he came up with another instant change of direction, suddenly leaning in and launching a clubbing right at Reacher’s face, which Reacher saw coming, so he ducked and twisted and took it high on the shoulder, all sharp knuckles, not much of a blow, but even so the action and reaction opened up a fractional gap between them, just a split second, which given the guy’s speed meant he could dance away again, scuffing his feet across the ground, glancing down, searching for his gun.
Physically Reacher could have been called athletic in his own right, but it was a heavyweight kind of athleticism, a kind of weightlifter savagery, not nimbleness. He was fast, but not real fast. He was not capable of a
n instant reversal of momentum. Which meant he spent a certain half second of time locked in a neutral position, neither stop nor go, during which interval the other guy threw another punch, which Reacher ducked and dodged again, and like before the guy danced away to safety and searched on another radius, scuffing his feet, glancing down in the dark. Reacher kept on coming, a half step at a time, dodging and weaving, on the one hand slow in comparison, but on the other hand hard to stop, especially with the kind of weak blows so far attempted, and furthermore the guy was tiring all the time, hopping about and breathing hard.
The guy danced away.
Reacher kept on coming.
The guy found his gun.
The side of the guy’s shoe tapped against it and sent it skittering an extra inch, with a brief plastic scraping sound, unmistakable. The guy froze for an imperceptible period, just a blink of time, thinking as fast as he was about to act, and then he swooped down, twisting, his right hand whipping through a long arc, aiming to snatch up the gun and grab it tight and whirl it away to safety. An instinctive calculation, based on space and time and speed, all four dimensions, with his own generous capabilities no doubt accurately accounted for, and his opponent’s capabilities no doubt cautiously estimated, based on worst-case averages, plus a safety margin, for the purposes of the arithmetic, which still showed plenty of time for a guy as quick as he was. Reacher’s own instinctive calculation came to the same conclusion. He agreed. No way could he get there first.
Except that some of his disadvantages carried their own compensation. His limbs were slow because they were heavy, and they were heavy because they were not only thick but also long. In the case of his legs, very long. He drove hard off his left foot and kicked out with his right, stretching low, a huge vicious wingspan, aiming at anything, any part of the guy, any part of the swoop, any window of time, whatever came along.
What came along was the guy’s head. A freak result. Four-dimensional geometry gone wrong. His slight hesitation, Reacher’s primeval thrust, triggered by instinct, soaked in ancient all-or-nothing aggression. The guy chose to keep his head up and his arm long, all the better to scoop up the gun and wheel away, but Reacher was already there, like a batter early on a fastball, a foul ball for sure, and the guy hit the first inch of his follow-through, his temple solidly against the welt of Reacher’s shoe, not a perfect connection, but close to it. The guy’s neck snapped back and he scraped and clattered cheek-down on the sidewalk.
