Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16]

by Jack Reacher Series (epub)

  “Why would he do that?” Helen asked.

  “For an alibi.”

  “Making people think he couldn’t shoot?”

  Reacher nodded. “He noticed that the range master was saving the used targets. He’s an ice-cold pro who thinks about every wrinkle ahead of time.”

  “Who is he?” Franklin asked.

  “His real name is Chenko and he hangs with a bunch of Russians. He’s probably a Red Army veteran. Probably one of their snipers. And they’re real good. They always have been.”

  “How do we get to him?”

  “Through the victim.”

  “Square one. The victims are all dead ends. You’ll have to come up with something better than that.”

  “His boss calls himself the Zec.”

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “It’s a word, not a name. Old-time Soviet slang. A zec was a labor camp inmate. In the Gulag in Siberia.”

  “Those camps are ancient history.”

  “Which makes the Zec a very old man. But a very tough old man. Probably way tougher than we can imagine.”

  The Zec was tired after his stint with the backhoe. But he was used to being tired. He had been tired for sixty-three years. He had been tired since the day the recruiter came to his village, in the early fall of 1942. His village was four thousand miles from anywhere, and the recruiter was a type of Moscow Russian nobody had ever seen before. He was brisk, and self-assured, and confident. He permitted no argument. No discussion. All males between the ages of sixteen and fifty were to come with him.

  The Zec was seventeen at that point. Initially he was overlooked, because he was in prison. He had slept with an older man’s wife, and then beaten the guy badly when he complained about it. The beaten guy claimed exemption from the draft because of his physical condition, and then he told the recruiter about his assailant in prison. The recruiter was anxious to make his numbers, so the Zec was hauled out of his cell and told to line up with the others in the village square. He did so quite happily. He assumed he was being given a ride to freedom. He assumed there would be a hundred opportunities just to walk away.

  He was wrong.

  The recruits were locked into a truck, and then a train, for a journey that lasted five weeks. Formal induction into the Red Army happened along the way. Uniforms were issued, thick woolen garments, and a coat, and a pair of felt-lined boots, and a pay book. But no actual pay. No weapons. And no training either, beyond a brief stop in a snow-covered rail yard, where a commissar brayed over and over again at the locked train through a huge metal megaphone. The guy repeated a simple twenty-word speech, which the Zec remembered ever afterward: The fate of the world is being decided at Stalingrad, where you will fight to the last for the Motherland.

  The five-week journey ended on the eastern bank of the Volga, where the recruits were unloaded like cattle and forced to run straight for a small assemblage of old river ferries and pleasure cruisers. Half a mile away on the opposite bank was a vision from hell. A city, larger than anything the Zec had ever seen before, was in ruins, belching smoke and fire. The river was burning and exploding with mortar shells. The sky was full of airplanes, which lined up and fell into dives, dropping bombs, firing guns. There were corpses everywhere, and body parts, and screaming wounded.

  The Zec was forced onto a small boat that had a gaily-colored striped sunshade. It was crammed tight with soldiers. Nobody had room to move. Nobody had a weapon. The boat lurched out into the freezing current and airplanes fell on it like flies on shit. The crossing lasted fifteen minutes and at the end of it the Zec was slimy with his neighbors’ blood.

  He was forced off onto a narrow wooden pier and made to line up single file and then made to run toward the city, past a staging post where the second phase of his military training took place: two quartermasters were doling out loaded rifles and spare ammunition clips in an endless alternate sequence and chanting what later struck the Zec as a poem, or a song, or a hymn to complete and utter insanity, over and over again without pausing:

  The one with the rifle shoots

  The one without follows him

  When the one with the rifle is killed

  The one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots.

  The Zec was handed an ammunition clip. No rifle. He was shoved forward, and blindly followed the back of the man ahead. He turned a corner. Passed in front of a Red Army machine-gun nest. At first he thought the front line must therefore be very close. But then a commissar with a flag and another huge megaphone roared at him: No retreat! If you turn back even one step we will shoot you down! So the Zec ran helplessly onward and turned another corner and stepped into a hail of German bullets. He stopped, half-turned, and was hit three times in the arms and legs. He was bowled over and came to rest lying on the shattered remains of a brick wall and within minutes was buried under a mounting pile of corpses.

  He came to forty-eight hours later in an improvised hospital and made his first acquaintance with Soviet military justice: harsh, ponderous, ideological, but running strictly in accordance with its own arcane rules. The matter at issue was caused by his having half-turned: Were his wounds inflicted by the Motherland’s enemy, or had he been retreating toward his own side’s guns? Because of the physical ambiguity he was spared execution and sentenced to a penal battalion instead. Thus began a process of survival that had so far lasted sixty-three years.

  A process he intended to continue.

  He dialed Grigor Linsky’s number.

  “We can assume the soldier is talking,” he said. “Whatever he knows, they all know now. Therefore it’s time to get ourselves an insurance policy.”

  Franklin said, “We’re really no further ahead. Are we? No way is Emerson going to accept a damn thing unless we give him more than we’ve got right now.”

  “So work the victim list,” Reacher said.

  “That could take forever. Five lives, five life histories.”

  “So let’s focus.”

  “Great. Terrific. Just tell me which one you want me to focus on.”

  Reacher nodded. Recalled Helen Rodin’s description of what she had heard. The first shot, and then a tiny pause, and then the next two. Then another pause, a little longer, but really only a split second, and then the last three. He closed his eyes. In his mind he pictured Bellantonio’s audio graph from the cell phone voice mail. Pictured his own mute simulation, in the gloom of the new parking garage, his right arm extended like a rifle: click, click-click, click-click-click.

  “Not the first one,” he said. “Not the first cold shot. No guarantee of hitting anything with that. Therefore the first victim was meaningless. Part of the window dressing. Not the last three, either. That was bang-bang-bang. The deliberate miss, and more window dressing. The job was already done by then.”

  “So, the second or the third. Or both of them.”

  Click, click-click.

  Reacher opened his eyes.

  “The third,” he said. “There’s a rhythm there. The first cold shot, then a lead-in, and then the money shot. The target. Then a break. His eye is lagging in the scope. He’s making sure the target is down. It is. So then the last three.”

  “Who was the third?” Helen asked.

  “The woman,” Franklin said.

  Linsky called Chenko, and then Vladimir, and then Sokolov. He explained the mission and pulled them all in tighter. Franklin’s office had no back entrance. There was just the exposed staircase. The target’s car was right there on the apron. Easy.

  Reacher said, “Tell me about the woman.”

  Franklin shuffled his notes. Put them in a new order of priority.

  “Her name was Oline Archer,” he said. “Caucasian female, married, no children, thirty-seven years old, lived west of here in the outer suburbs.”

  “Employed in the DMV building,” Reacher said. “If she was the specific target, Charlie had to know where she was and when she would be coming out.”

  Fra
nklin nodded. “Employed by the DMV itself. Been there a year and a half.”

  “Doing what exactly?”

  “Clerical supervisor. Doing whatever they do in there.”

  “So was it work-related?” Ann Yanni asked.

  “Too long of a counter delay?” Franklin said. “A bad photo on a driver’s license? I doubt it. I checked the national databases. DMV clerks don’t get killed by customers. That just doesn’t happen.”

  “So what about her personal life?” Helen Rodin asked.

  “Nothing jumped out at me,” Franklin said. “She was just an ordinary woman. But I’ll keep digging. I’ll go down a few levels. Got to be something there.”

  “Do it fast,” Rosemary Barr said. “For my brother’s sake. We have to get him out.”

  “We need medical opinions for that,” Ann Yanni said. “Regular doctors now, not psychiatrists.”

  “Will NBC pay?” Helen Rodin asked.

  “If it’s likely to work.”

  “It should,” Rosemary said. “I mean, shouldn’t it? Parkinson’s is a real thing, isn’t it? Either he’s got it or he hasn’t.”

  “It might work at trial,” Reacher said. “A plausible reason why James Barr couldn’t have done it, plus a plausible narrative about someone else doing it? That’s usually how you create reasonable doubt.”

  “Plausible is a big word,” Franklin said. “And reasonable doubt is a risky concept. Better to get Alex Rodin to drop the charges altogether. Which means convincing Emerson first.”

  “I can’t talk to either one of them,” Reacher said.

  “I can,” Helen said.

  “I can,” Franklin said.

  “And I sure as hell can,” Ann Yanni said. “We all can, apart from you.”

  “But you might not want to,” Reacher said.

  “Why not?” Helen asked.

  “You’re not going to like this part very much.”

  “Why not?” Helen asked again.

  “Think,” Reacher said. “Work backward. The thing with Sandy being killed, and the thing in the sports bar Monday night, why did those two things happen?”

  “To tie you up. To prevent you hurting the case.”

  “Correct. Two attempts, same aim, same goal, same perpetrator.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And the thing Monday night started with me being followed from my hotel. Sandy and Jeb Oliver and his other pals were cruising around, standing by, waiting until someone called them and told them where I ended up. So really it started with me being followed to my hotel. Much earlier in the day.”

  “We’ve been through all of this.”

  “But how did the puppet master get my name? How did he even know I was in town? How did he know there was a guy here who was a potential problem?”

  “Someone told him.”

  “Who knew, early in the day on Monday?”

  Helen paused a beat.

  “My father,” she said. “Since early on Monday morning. And then Emerson, presumably. Shortly afterward. They’d have talked about the case. They’d have communicated immediately if there was a danger that the wheels were coming off.”

  “Correct,” Reacher said. “Then one of those two guys called the puppet master. Well before lunch on Monday.”

  Helen said nothing.

  “Unless one of those two guys is the puppet master,” Reacher said.

  “The Zec is the puppet master. You said so yourself.”

  “I said he’s Charlie’s boss. That’s all. We’ve got no way of knowing whether he’s actually at the top of the tree.”

  “You’re right,” Helen said. “I don’t like this line of thinking at all.”

  “Someone communicated,” Reacher said. “That’s for damn sure. Either your father or Emerson. My name was on the street two hours after I got off the bus. So one of them is bent and the other one won’t help us either because he already likes the case exactly the way it is.”

  The room went quiet.

  “I need to get back to work,” Ann Yanni said.

  Nobody spoke.

  “Call me if there’s news,” Yanni said.

  The room stayed quiet. Reacher said nothing. Ann Yanni crossed the room. Stopped next to him.

  “Keys,” she said.

  He dug in his pocket and handed them over.

  “Thanks for the loan,” he said. “Nice car.”

  Linsky watched the Mustang leave. It went north. Loud engine, loud exhaust. It was audible for a whole block. Then the street went quiet again and Linsky dialed his phone.

  “The television woman is out of there,” he said.

  “The private detective will stay at work,” the Zec said.

  “So what if the others leave together?”

  “I hope they don’t.”

  “What if they do?”

  “Take them all.”

  Rosemary Barr asked, “Is there a cure? For Parkinson’s disease?”

  “No,” Reacher said. “No cure, no prevention. But it can be slowed down. There are drugs for it. Physiotherapy helps. And sleep. The symptoms disappear when a person is asleep.”

  “Maybe that’s why he wanted the pills. To escape.”

  “He shouldn’t try to escape too much. Social contact is good.”

  “I should go to the hospital,” Rosemary said.

  “Explain to him,” Reacher said. “Tell him what really happened on Friday.”

  Rosemary nodded. Crossed the room and went out the door. A minute later Reacher heard her car start up and drive away.

  Franklin went out to the kitchenette to make coffee. Reacher and Helen Rodin were left alone in the office together. Reacher sat down in the chair that Rosemary Barr had used. Helen stepped to the window and looked down at the street below. She kept her back to the room. She was dressed the same as Rosemary Barr. Black shirt, black skirt, black patent-leather shoes. But she didn’t look like a widow. She looked like something from New York or Paris. Her heels were higher and her legs were long and bare and tan.

  “These guys we’re talking about are Russians,” she said.

  Reacher said nothing.

  “My father is an American,” she said.

  “An American called Aleksei Alekseivitch,” Reacher said.

  “Our family came here before World War One. There’s no possible connection. How could there be? These people we’re talking about are low-life Soviets.”

  “What did your father do before he was the DA?”

  “He was an assistant DA.”

  “Before that?”

  “He always worked there.”

  “Tell me about his coffee service.”

  “What about it?”

  “He uses china cups and a silver tray. The county didn’t buy them for him.”

  “So?”

  “Tell me about his suits.”

  “His suits?”

  “On Monday he was wearing a thousand-dollar suit. You don’t see many public servants wearing thousand-dollar suits.”

  “He’s got expensive tastes.”

  “How does he afford them?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “One more question.”

  Helen said nothing.

  “Did he pressure you not to take the case?”

  Helen said nothing. Looked left. Looked right. Then she turned around. “He said losing might be winning.”

  “Concern for your career?”

  “I thought so. I still think so. He’s an honest man.”

  Reacher nodded. “There’s a fifty percent chance you’re right.”

  Franklin came back in with the coffee, which was a thin own-brand brew in three nonmatching pottery mugs, two of them chipped, on a cork bar tray, with an open carton of half-and-half and a yellow box of sugar and a single pressed-steel spoon. He put the tray on the desk and Helen Rodin stared at it, like it was making Reacher’s point for him: This is how coffee is served in an office.

  “David Chapman knew you
r name on Monday,” she said. “James Barr’s first lawyer. He’s known about you since Saturday.”

  “But Chapman didn’t know I ever showed up,” Reacher said. “I assume nobody told him.”

  “I knew your name,” Franklin said. “Maybe I should be in the mix, too.”

  “But you knew the real reason I was here,” Reacher said. “You wouldn’t have had me attacked. You’d have had me subpoenaed.”

  Nobody spoke.

  “I was wrong about Jeb Oliver,” Reacher said. “He isn’t a dope dealer. There was nothing in his barn except an old pickup truck.”

  “I’m glad you can be wrong about something,” Helen said.

  “Jeb Oliver isn’t Russian,” Franklin said.

  “Apple pie,” Reacher said.

  “Therefore these guys can work with Americans. That’s what I’m saying. It could be Emerson. Doesn’t have to be the DA.”

  “Fifty percent chance,” Reacher said. “I’m not accusing anybody yet.”

  “If you’re right in the first place.”

  “The bad guys were all over me very fast.”

  “Doesn’t sound like either Emerson or the DA to me, and I know them both.”

  “You can say his name,” Helen said. “His name is Alex Rodin.”

  “I don’t think it’s either one of them,” Franklin said.

  “I’m going back to work,” Helen said.

  “Give me a ride?” Reacher asked. “Let me out under the highway?”

  “No,” Helen said. “I really don’t feel like doing that.”