“What’s up?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“Reacher, what’s the matter?”
“You put another agent in eight weeks ago,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What?”
“What I said.”
“What agent?”
“She died this morning. She underwent a radical double mastectomy without the benefit of anesthetic.”
She stared at me. “Teresa?”
I shook my head.
“Not Teresa,” I said. “The other one.”
“What other one?”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I said.
“What other one?”
I stared at her. Hard. Then softer. There was something about the light in that coffee shop. Maybe it was the way it came off all the blond wood and the brushed metal and the glass and the chrome. It was like X-ray light. Like a truth serum. It had shown me Elizabeth Beck’s genuine uncontrollable blush. Now I was expecting it to show me the exact same thing from Duffy. I was expecting it to show me a deep red blush of shame and embarrassment, because I had found her out. But it showed me total surprise instead. It was right there in her face. She had gone very pale. She had gone stark white with shock. It was like the blood had drained right out of her. And nobody can do that on command, any more than they can blush.
“What other one?” she said again. “There was only Teresa. What? Are you telling me she’s dead?”
“Not Teresa,” I said again. “There was another one. Another woman. She got hired on as a kitchen maid.”
“No,” she said. “There’s only Teresa.”
I shook my head again. “I saw the body. It wasn’t Teresa.”
“A kitchen maid?”
“She had an e-mail thing in her shoe,” I said. “Exactly the same as mine. The heel was scooped out by the same guy. I recognized the handiwork.”
“That’s not possible,” she said.
I looked straight at her.
“I would have told you,” she said. “Of course I would have told you. And I wouldn’t have needed you if I had another agent in there. Don’t you see that?”
I looked away. Looked back. Now I was embarrassed.
“So who the hell was she?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Just started nudging her cup around and around on her saucer, prodding at the handle with her forefinger, turning it ten degrees at a time. The heavy foam and the chocolate dust stayed still while the cup rotated. She was thinking like crazy.
“Eight weeks ago?” she said.
I nodded.
“What alerted them?” she asked.
“They got into your computer,” I said. “This morning, or maybe last night.”
She looked up from her cup. “That’s what you were asking me about?”
I nodded. Said nothing.
“Teresa isn’t in the computer,” she said. “She’s off the books.”
“Did you check with Eliot?”
“I did better than check,” she said. “I searched the whole of his hard drive. And all of his files on the main server back in D.C. I’ve got total access everywhere. I looked for Teresa, Daniel, Justice, Beck, Maine, and undercover. And he didn’t write any of those words anywhere.”
I said nothing.
“How did it go down?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure,” I said. “I guess at first the computer told them you had somebody in there, and then it told them it was a woman. No name, no details. So they looked for her. And I think it was partly my fault they found her.”
“How?”
“I had a stash,” I said. “Your Glock, and the ammo, and a few other things. She found them. She hid them in the car she was using.”
Duffy was quiet for a second.
“OK,” she said. “And you’re thinking they searched the car and your stuff made her look bad, right?”
“I guess so.”
“But maybe they searched her first and found the shoe.”
I looked away. “I sincerely hope so.”
“Don’t beat up on yourself. It’s not your fault. As soon as they got into the computer it was only a matter of time for the first one they looked at. They both fit the bill. I mean, how many women were there to choose from? Presumably just her and Teresa. They couldn’t miss.”
I nodded. There was Elizabeth, too. And there was the cook. But neither one of them would figure very high on a list of suspicious persons. Elizabeth was the guy’s wife. And the cook had probably been there twenty years.
“But who was she?” I said.
She played with her cup until it was back in its starting position. The unglazed rim on the bottom made a tiny grinding sound.
“It’s obvious, I’m afraid,” she said. “Think of the time line here. Count backward from today. Eleven weeks ago I screwed up with the surveillance photographs. Ten weeks ago they pulled me off the case. But because Beck is a big fish I couldn’t give it up and so nine weeks ago I put Teresa in without their knowledge. But also because Beck is a big fish, and without my knowledge, they must have reassigned the case to someone else and eight weeks ago that someone else put this maid person in, right on top of Teresa. Teresa didn’t know the maid was coming and the maid didn’t know Teresa was already there.”
“Why would she have nosed into my stuff?”
“I guess she wanted to control the situation. Standard procedure. As far as she was concerned, you weren’t anybody kosher. You were just a loose cannon. Some kind of troublemaker. You were a cop-killer, and you were hiding weapons. Maybe she thought you were from a rival operation. She was probably thinking of selling you out to Beck. It would have enhanced her credibility with him. And she needed you out of the way, because she didn’t need extra complications. If she didn’t sell you out to Beck, she would have turned you in to us, as a cop-killer. I’m surprised she didn’t already.”
“Her battery was dead.”
She nodded. “Eight weeks. I guess kitchen maids don’t have good access to cell phone chargers.”
“Beck said she was out of Boston.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “They probably farmed it out to the Boston field office. That would work, geographically. And it would explain why we didn’t pick up any kind of water-cooler whispers in D.C.”
“He said she was recommended by some friends of his.”
“Plea-bargainers, for sure. We use them all the time. They set each other up quite happily. No code of silence with these people.”
Then I remembered something else Beck had said.
“How was Teresa communicating?” I asked.
“She had an e-mail thing, like yours.”
“In her shoe?”
Duffy nodded. Said nothing. I heard Beck’s voice, loud in my head: I’m going to start searching people’s shoes, that’s for damn sure. You can bet your life on that.
“When did you last hear from her?”
“She fell off the air the second day.”
She went quiet.
“Where was she living?” I asked.
“In Portland. We put her in an apartment. She was an office clerk, not a kitchen maid.”
“You been to the apartment?”
She nodded. “Nobody’s seen her there since the second day.”
“You check her closet?”
“Why?”
“We need to know what shoes she was wearing when she was captured.”
Duffy went pale again.
“Shit,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “What shoes were left in her closet?”
“The wrong ones.”
“Would she think to ditch the e-mail thing?”
“Wouldn’t help her. She’d have to ditch the shoes, too. The hole in the heel would tell the story, wouldn’t it?”
“We need to find her,” I said.
“We sure do,” she said. Then she paused a beat. “She was very lucky today. They went looking for a woman, and they h
appened to look at the maid first. We can’t count on her staying that lucky much longer.”
I said nothing. Very lucky for Teresa, very unlucky for the maid. Every silver lining has a cloud. Duffy sipped her coffee. Grimaced slightly like the taste was off and put the cup back down again.
“But what gave her away?” she said. “In the first place? That’s what I want to know. I mean, she only lasted two days. And that was nine whole weeks before they broke into the computer.”
“What background story did you give her?”
“The usual, for this kind of work. Unmarried, unattached, no family, no roots. Like you, except you didn’t have to fake it.”
I nodded slowly. A good-looking thirty-year-old woman who would never be missed. A huge temptation for guys like Paulie or Angel Doll. Maybe irresistible. A fun thing to have around. And the rest of their crew might be even worse. Like Harley, for instance. He didn’t strike me as much of an advertisement for the benefits of civilization.
“Maybe nothing gave her away,” I said. “Maybe she just went missing, you know, like women do. Lots of women go missing. Young women especially. Single, unattached women. Happens all the time. Thousands a year.”
“But you found the room they were keeping her in.”
“All those missing women have to be somewhere. They’re only missing as far as the rest of us are concerned. They know where they are, and the men who took them know where they are.”
She looked at me. “You think it’s like that?”
“Could be.”
“Will she be OK?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope so.”
“Will they keep her alive?”
“I think they want to keep her alive. Because they don’t know she’s a federal agent. They think she’s just a woman.”
A fun thing to have around.
“Can you find her before they check her shoes?”
“They might never check them,” I said. “You know, if they’re seeing her in one particular light, as it were, it would be a leap to start seeing her as something else.”
She looked away. Went quiet.
“One particular light,” she repeated. “Why don’t we just say what we mean?”
“Because we don’t want to,” I said.
She stayed quiet. One minute. Two. Then she looked straight back at me. A brand-new thought.
“What about your shoes?” she said.
I shook my head.
“Same thing,” I said. “They’re getting used to me. It would be a leap to start seeing me as something else.”
“It’s still a big risk.”
I shrugged.
“Beck gave me a Beretta M9,” I said. “So I’ll wait and see. If he bends down to take a look I’ll shoot him through the middle of the forehead.”
“But he’s just a businessman, right? Basically? Would he really do bad stuff to Teresa without knowing she was a threat to his business?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Did he kill the maid?”
I shook my head. “Quinn did.”
“Were you a witness?”
“No.”
“So how do you know?”
I looked away.
“I recognized the handiwork,” I said.
The fourth time I ever saw Sergeant First Class Dominique Kohl was a week after the night we spent in the bar. The weather was still hot. There was talk of a tropical storm blowing in from the direction of Bermuda. I had a million files on my desk. We had rapes, homicides, suicides, weapons thefts, assaults, and there had been a riot the night before because the refrigeration had broken down in the enlisted mess kitchens and the ice cream had turned to water. I had just gotten off the phone with a buddy at Fort Irwin in California who told me it was the same over there whenever the desert winds were blowing.
Kohl came in wearing shorts and a tank top shirt. She still wasn’t sweating. Her skin was still dusty. She was carrying her file, which was then about eight times as thick as when I had first given it to her.
“The sabot has got to be metal,” she said. “That’s their final conclusion.”
“Is it?” I said.
“They’d have preferred plastic, but I think that’s just showboating.”
“OK,” I said.
“I’m trying to tell you they’ve finished with the sabot design. They’re ready to move on with the important stuff now.”
“You still feel all warm and fuzzy about this Gorowski guy?”
She nodded. “It would be a tragedy to bust him. He’s a nice guy and an innocent victim. And the bottom line is he’s good at his job and useful to the army.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“It’s tricky,” she said. “I guess what I want to do is bring him on board and get him to feed phony stuff to whoever it is who’s got the hook in. That way we keep the investigation going without risking putting anything real out there.”
“But?”
“The real thing looks phony in itself. It’s a very weird device. It’s like a big lawn dart. It has no explosive in it.”
“So how does it work?”
“Kinetic energy, dense metals, depleted uranium, heat, all that kind of stuff. Were you a physics postgrad?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t understand it. But my feeling is if we screw with the designs the bad guy is going to know. It’ll put Gorowski at risk. Or his baby girls, or whatever.”
“So you want to let the real blueprints out there?”
“I think we have to.”
“Big risk,” I said.
“Your call,” she said. “That’s why you get the big bucks.”
“I’m a captain,” I said. “I’d be on food stamps if I ever got time to eat.”
“Decision?”
“Got a line on the bad guy yet?”
“No.”
“Feel confident you won’t let it get away?”
“Totally,” she said.
I smiled. Right then she looked like the most self-possessed human being I had ever seen. Shining eyes, serious expression, hair hooked behind her ears, short khaki shorts, tiny khaki shirt, socks and parachute boots, dark dusty skin everywhere.
“So go for it,” I said.
“I never dance,” she said.
“What?”
“It wasn’t just you,” she said. “In fact, I’d have liked to. I appreciated the invitation. But I never dance with anybody.”
“Why not?”
“Just a thing,” she said. “I feel self-conscious. I’m not very coordinated.”
“Neither am I.”
“Maybe we should practice in private,” she said.
“Separately?”
“One-on-one mentoring helps,” she said. “Like with alcoholism.”
Then she winked and walked out and left a very faint trace of her perfume behind her in the hot heavy air.
Duffy and I finished our coffee in silence. Mine tasted thin and cold and bitter. I had no stomach for it. My right shoe pinched. It wasn’t a perfect fit. And it was starting to feel like a ball and chain. It had felt ingenious at first. Smart, and cool, and clever. I remembered the first time I opened the heel, three days ago, soon after I first arrived at the house, soon after Duke locked the door to my room. I’m in. I had felt like a guy in a movie. Then I remembered the last time I opened it. Up in Duke’s bathroom, an hour and a half ago. I had fired up the unit and Duffy’s message had been waiting there for me: We need to meet.
“Why did you want to meet?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter now. I’m revising the mission. I’m scrapping all our objectives except getting Teresa back. Just find her and get her out of there, OK?”
“What about Beck?”
“We’re not going to get Beck. I screwed up again. This maid person was a legitimate agent and Teresa wasn’t. Nor were you. And the maid died, so they’re going to fire me for going off the books with Teresa
and you, and they’re going to abandon the case against Beck because I compromised procedure so badly they could never make it stand up in court anymore. So just get Teresa the hell out and we’ll all go home.”
“OK,” I said.
“You’ll have to forget about Quinn,” she said. “Just let it go.”
I said nothing.
“We failed anyway,” she said. “You haven’t found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all. It’s been a complete waste of time, beginning to end.”
I said nothing.
“Like my career,” she said.
“When are you going to tell the Justice Department?”
“About the maid?”
I nodded.
“Right away,” she said. “Immediately. I’ll have to. No choice. But I’ll search the files first and find out who put her in there. Because I’d prefer to break the news face-to-face, I guess, at my own level. It’ll give me a chance to apologize. Any other way all hell will break loose before I get the opportunity. All my access codes will be canceled and I’ll be handed a cardboard box and told to clear my desk within thirty minutes.”
“How long have you been there?”
“A long time. I thought I was going to be the first woman director.”
I said nothing.
“I would have told you,” she said. “I promise, if I’d had another agent in there I would have told you.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”
“It’s the stress,” she said. “Undercover is tough.”
I nodded. “It’s like a hall of mirrors up there. One damn thing after another. Everything feels unreal.”
We left our half-finished cups on the table and headed out, into the mall’s interior sidewalks, and then outside into the rain. We had parked near each other. She kissed me on the cheek. Then she got into her Taurus and headed south and I got into the Saab and headed north.
Paulie took his own sweet time about opening the gate for me. He made me wait a couple of minutes before he even came lumbering out of his house. He still had his slicker on. Then he stood and stared for a minute before he went near the latch. But I didn’t care. I was busy thinking. I was hearing Duffy’s voice in my head: I’m revising the mission. Most of my military career a guy named Leon Garber was either directly or indirectly my boss. He explained everything to himself by making up little phrases or sayings. He had one for every occasion. He used to say: Revising objectives is smart because it stops you throwing good money after bad. He didn’t mean money in any literal sense. He meant manpower, resources, time, will, effort, energy. He used to contradict himself, too. Just as often he would say: Never ever get distracted from the exact job in hand. Of course, proverbs are like that generally. Too many cooks spoil the broth, many hands make light work, great minds think alike, fools never differ. But overall, after you canceled out a few layers of contradiction, Leon approved of revision. He approved of it big time. Mainly because revision was about thinking, and he figured thinking never hurt anybody. So I was thinking, and thinking hard, because I was aware that something was slowly and imperceptibly creeping up on me, just outside of my conscious grasp. Something connected to something Duffy had said to me: You haven’t found anything useful. Not a thing. No evidence at all.
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