by Lee Child
“And nothing.”
“No, it said “ ‘Please call soonest.’ ”
“That’s ridiculous,” Neagley said. “If he won’t tell me by e-mail, why would he tell me on the phone?”
“It didn’t say, ‘Please call me.’ A coded note like that, every word counts.”
“So who am I supposed to call?”
“There must be somebody. He knows you know somebody that can help.”
“Who’s going to help with a thing like this? If he won’t?”
“Who does he know you know? Maybe from Washington, since he used that word, and every word counts?”
Neagley opened her mouth to say Nobody. Reacher saw the denial forming in her throat. But then she paused.
“There’s a woman,” she said. “She’s called Diana Bond. We both know her. She’s a staffer for a guy on the Hill. The guy is on the House Defense Committee.”
“There you go. Who’s the guy?”
Neagley said a familiar but unloved name.
“You’ve got a friend who works for that asshole?”
“Not exactly a friend.”
“I should hope not.”
“Everyone needs a job, Reacher. Except you, apparently.”
“Whatever, her boss is signing the checks, so he’ll have been briefed. He’ll know what Little Wing is. Therefore she will, too.”
“Not if it’s secret.”
“That guy can’t spell his own name without help. Believe me, if he knows, she knows, too.”
“She’s not going to tell me.”
“She is. Because you’re going to play hardball. You’re going to call her and tell her that Little Wing’s name is out there, and you’re about to tell the papers that the leak came from her boss’s office, and the price for your silence is everything she knows about it.”
“That’s dirty.”
“That’s politics. She can’t be exactly unfamiliar with the process, working for that guy.”
“Do we really need to do this? Is it relevant?”
“The more we know the luckier we get.”
“I don’t want to involve her.”
“Your Pentagon buddy wants you to,” O’Donnell said.
“That’s just Reacher’s guess.”
“No, it’s more than that. Think about the e-mail. He said the sixth track was dynamically brilliant. That’s a weird phrase. He could have just said it was great. Or amazing. Or brilliant on its own. But he said dynamically brilliant, which is the letters d and b. Like this Diana Bond woman’s initials.”
38
Neagley insisted on making the call to Diana Bond alone. When they got back to the hotel she parked herself in a far corner of the lobby and did a whole lot of dialing and redialing. Then some serious talking. She came back a long twenty minutes later. Slight distaste on her face. Slight discomfort in her body language. But a measure of excitement, too.
“Took me some time to track her down,” she said. “Turns out she’s not far away. She’s up at Edwards Air Force Base for a few days. Some big presentation.”
O’Donnell said, “That’s why your guy said call her soonest. He knew she was in California. Every word counts.”
“What did she say?” Reacher asked.
“She’s coming down here,” Neagley said. “She wants to meet face-to-face.”
“Really?” Reacher said. “When?”
“Just as soon as she can get away.”
“That’s impressive.”
“You bet your ass it is. Little Wing must be important.”
“Feel bad about the call?”
Neagley nodded. “I feel bad about everything.”
They went up to Neagley’s room and looked at maps and figured out Diana Bond’s earliest possible arrival time. Edwards was on the other side of the San Gabriel Mountains, out in the Mojave, about seventy miles north and east, past Palmdale and Lancaster, about halfway to Fort Irwin. A two-hour wait, minimum, if Bond got away immediately. Longer if she didn’t.
“I’m going for a walk,” Reacher said.
O’Donnell said, “I’ll come with you.”
They headed east on Sunset again to where West Hollywood met regular Hollywood. It was early afternoon and Reacher felt the sun burning his head through his shaved hair. It was like the rays had extra intensity after bouncing around through glittering particles of air pollution.
“I should buy a hat,” he said.
“You should buy a better shirt,” O’Donnell said. “You can afford one now.”
“Maybe I will.”
They saw a store they had passed on the way to Tower Records. It was some kind of a popular chain. It had an artfully pale and un-crowded window, but it wasn’t expensive. It sold cotton stuff, jeans, chinos, shirts, and T-shirts. And ball caps. They were brand new but looked like they had been worn and washed a thousand times already. Reacher picked one out, blue, no writing on it. He never bought anything with writing on it. He had spent too long in uniform. Name tapes and badges and alphabet soup all over him for thirteen long years.
He loosened the strap at the back of the cap and tried it on.
“What do you think?” he asked.
O’Donnell said, “Find a mirror.”
“Doesn’t matter what I see in a mirror. You’re the one laughing at how I look.”
“It’s a nice hat.”
Reacher kept it on and moved across the store to a low table piled high with T-shirts. In the center of the table was a mannequin torso wearing two of them, one under the other, pale green and dark green. The underneath shirt showed at the hem and the sleeves and the collar. Together the two layers were reassuringly thick and hefty.
Reacher asked, “What do you think?”
“It’s a look,” O’Donnell said.
“Do they need to be different sizes?”
“Probably not.”
Reacher picked a light blue and a dark blue, both XXLs. He took off the hat and carried the three items to the register. Refused a bag and bit off the tags and stripped off his bowling shirt right there in the middle of the store. Stood and waited, naked to the waist in the chill of the air conditioning.
“Got a trash can?” he asked.
The girl behind the counter bent down and came back with a plastic item with a liner. Reacher tossed his old shirt in and put his new shirts on, one after the other. Tugged them around and rolled his shoulders to get them comfortable and jammed the cap on his head. Then he headed back to the street. Turned east.
O’Donnell asked, “What are you running from?”
“I’m not running from anything.”
“You could have kept the old shirt.”
“Slippery slope,” Reacher said. “I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants. Then I’d need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”
“People do that.”
“Not me.”
“So like I said, what are you running from?”
“From being like people, I guess.”
“I’m like people. I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan. I fill out forms.”
“Whatever works for you.”
“Do you think I’m ordinary?”
Reacher nodded. “In that respect.”
“Not everyone can be like you.”
“That’s ass-backward. The fact is, a few of us can’t be like you.”
“You want to be?”
“It’s not about wanting. It just can’t be done.”
“Why not?”
“OK, I’m running.”
“From what? Being like me?”
“From being different than I used to be.”
“We’re all different than we used to be.”
“We don’t all have to like it.”
“I don’t like it,” O’Donnell said. “But I deal with it.”
Reacher nodded. “You’re doing great, Dave. I mean it. It’s me that I worry about.
I’ve been looking at you and Neagley and Karla and feeling like a loser.”
“Really?”
“Look at me.”
“All that we’ve got that you don’t is suitcases.”
“But what have I got that you don’t?”
O’Donnell didn’t answer. They turned north on Vine, middle of the afternoon in America’s second-largest city, and saw two guys with pistols in their hands jumping out of a moving car.
39
The car was a black Lexus sedan, brand new. It sped up and took off again immediately, leaving the two guys alone on the sidewalk maybe thirty yards ahead. They were the bag man and the stash man from the vacant lot behind the wax museum. The pistols were AMT Hardballers, which were stainless-steel copies of Colt Government 1911 .45 automatics. The hands holding them were shaking a little and moving up level and rotating through ninety degrees into flat movie-approved bad-boy grips.
O’Donnell’s own hands went straight to his pockets.
“They want us?” he said.
“They want me,” Reacher said. He glanced back at what was behind him. He wasn’t very worried about being hit by a badly-held .45 from thirty yards away. He was a big target but statistics were on his side. Handguns were in-room weapons. Under expert control in high-pressure situations the average range for a successful engagement was about eleven feet. But even if Reacher himself wasn’t hit, someone else might be. Or something else. A person a block away, or a low-flying plane, maybe. Collateral damage. The street was thick with potential targets. Men, women, children, plus other folks Reacher wasn’t entirely sure how to categorize.
He turned to face front again. The two guys hadn’t moved far. Not more than a couple of steps. O’Donnell’s eyes were locked hard on them.
“We should take this off the street, Dave,” Reacher said.
O’Donnell said, “Roger that.”
“Moving left,” Reacher said. He crabbed sideways and risked a glance to his left. The nearest door was a narrow tarot reader’s dive. His mind was working with a kind of icy high-pressure speed. He was moving normally, but the world around him had slowed. The sidewalk had become a four-dimensional diagram. Forward, backward, sideways, time.
“Break back a yard and left, Dave,” he said.
O’Donnell was like a blind man. His eyes were tight on the two guys and wouldn’t leave them. He heard Reacher’s voice and tracked backward and left, fast. Reacher pulled the tarot reader’s door and held it open and let O’Donnell loop in around him. The two guys were following. Now twenty yards away. Reacher crowded inside after O’Donnell. The tarot parlor was empty apart from a woman of about nineteen sitting alone at a table. The table was a dining room item about seven feet long, draped to the floor with red cloth. Packs of cards all over it. The woman had long dark hair and was wearing a purple cheesecloth dress that was probably leaking vegetable dye all over her skin.
“Got a back room?” Reacher asked her.
“Just a toilet,” she said.
“Go in there and lie down on the floor, right now.”
“What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
The woman didn’t move until O’Donnell’s hands came out of his pockets. The knuckles were on his right fist like a shark’s smile. The switchblade was in his left hand. It was closed. Then it popped open with a sound like a bone breaking. The woman jumped up and fled. An Angelina, who worked on Vine. She knew the rules of the game.
O’Donnell said, “Who are these guys?”
“They just bought me these shirts.”
“Is this going to be a problem?”
“Possibly.”
“Plan?”
“You like the Hardballer?”
“Better than nothing.”
“OK, then.” Reacher flipped up the edge of the tablecloth and crouched down and backed under the table on his knees. O’Donnell followed him to his left and dragged the cloth back into position. He touched it with his knife, a short gentle sideways stroke, and a slit appeared in front of him. He widened it to the shape of an eye with his fingers. Then he did the same in front of Reacher. Reacher braced the flat of his hands against the underside of the table. O’Donnell swapped the knife into his right hand and braced his left the same way as Reacher’s.
Then they waited.
The guys were at the door within about eight seconds. They paused and peered in through the glass and then they pulled the door and came inside. Paused again, six feet in front of the table, guns pointed straight out with the butts twisted parallel to the floor.
They took a cautious step forward.
Paused again.
O’Donnell’s right hand was wrapped with the knuckles and was gripping the knife but it was the only free hand under the table. He used it to count down. Thumb, index finger, middle finger. One, two, three.
On three Reacher and O’Donnell heaved the table up and out. They powered it through an explosive quarter-circle, three feet in the air, three feet forward. The flat of the top tipped vertical and collected the guns first and then moved on and smacked the two guys full in the chests and faces. It was a heavy table. Solid wood. Maybe oak. It put the guys straight down with no trouble at all. They went over on their backs in a cloud of tarot cards and lay still under the slab in a tangle of red cloth. Reacher got up and stepped onto the upside-down table and rode it like a surfboard. Then he jumped up and down a couple of times. O’Donnell timed it for when Reacher’s weight was off it and kicked the table backward six inches until the two guys were exposed to the waist and their gun hands were accessible. He took the Hardballers and used his switchblade to slice the webs of the two guys’ thumbs. Painful, and a real disincentive against holding pistols again until they healed, which could be a long time, depending on their approach to nutrition and antisepsis. Reacher smiled, briefly. The technique had been a part of his unit’s SOP. Then he stopped smiling, because he recalled that Jorge Sanchez had developed it, and Jorge Sanchez was dead in the desert somewhere.
“Not too much of a problem,” O’Donnell said.
“We’ve still got the good stuff,” Reacher said.
O’Donnell put his ceramic collection back in his pockets and tucked a Hardballer into his waistband under his suit coat. Handed the second gun to Reacher, who shoved it in his pants pocket and draped his T-shirts over it. Then they stepped out to the sunshine and headed north on Vine again and turned west on Hollywood Boulevard.
Karla Dixon was waiting for them in the Chateau Marmont’s lobby.
“Curtis Mauney called,” she said. “He liked that thing you did with Franz’s mail. So he got the Vegas PD to check through the stuff in Sanchez and Orozco’s office. And they found something.”
40
Mauney showed up in person thirty minutes later. He stepped through the lobby door, still tired, still carrying his battered leather briefcase. He sat down and asked, “Who is Adrian Mount?”
Reacher looked up. Azhari Mahmoud, Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews. The Syrian and his four aliases. Information Mauney didn’t know they had.
“No idea,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Pretty much.”
Mauney balanced his briefcase on his knees and opened the lid and took out a sheet of paper. Handed it over. It was blurred and indistinct. It looked like a fax of a copy of a copy of a fax. At the top it said Department of Homeland Security. But not in the style of an official letterhead. It looked more like content hacked out of a computer file. Plain DOS script. It related to an airline booking that a guy called Adrian Mount had made on British Airways, London to New York. The booking had been finalized two weeks ago for a flight three days ago. First class, one way, Heathrow to JFK, seat 2K, last departure of the evening, expensive, paid for with a legitimate credit card. Booked through British Airways’ U.K. website, although it was impossible to say exactly where in the world the mouse had been physically clicked.
“This came in the mail?�
�� Reacher asked.
Mauney said, “It was stored in their fax machine’s memory. It came in two weeks ago. The machine was out of paper. But we know that Sanchez and Orozco weren’t around two weeks ago. Therefore this must be a response to a request they made at least a week earlier. We think they put a bunch of names on an unofficial watch list.”
“A bunch of names?”
“We found what we think is the original request. They had notes circulating in the mail, just like Franz. Four names.” Mauney pulled a second sheet of paper from his case. It was a photocopy of a sheet of blank paper with Manuel Orozco’s spidery handwriting all over it. Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews, check w. DHS for arrival. Fast untidy scrawl, written in a hurry, not that Orozco’s penmanship had ever been neat.
Four names. Not five. Azhari Mahmoud’s real name wasn’t there. Reacher figured that Orozco knew that whoever the hell Mahmoud was, he would be traveling under an alias. No point in having aliases if you didn’t use them.
“DHS,” Mauney said. “The Department of Homeland Security. You know how hard it is for a civilian to get cooperation out of Homeland Security? Your pal Orozco must have called in a shitload of favors. Or spent a shitload of bribe money. I need to know why.”
“Casino business, maybe.”
“Possible. Although Vegas security doesn’t necessarily worry if bad guys show up in New York. New York arrivals are more likely headed for Atlantic City. Someone else’s problem.”
“Maybe they share. Maybe there’s a network. Guys can hit Jersey first and Vegas second.”
“Possible,” Mauney said again.
“Did this Adrian Mount guy actually arrive in New York?”
Mauney nodded. “The INS computer has him entering through Terminal Four. Terminal Seven had already closed for the night. The flight was delayed.”
“And then what?”
“He checks in at a Madison Avenue hotel.”
“And then?”
“He disappears. No further trace.”
“But?”
“We move on down the list. Alan Mason flies to Denver, Colorado. Takes a room at a downtown hotel.”
“And then?”
