by Lee Child
“Was she lonely?”
“I’m sure she was.”
“Did she feel isolated?”
“I’m sure she did.”
“Did she like to talk on the phone?”
“Most women do.”
Lee asked him, “Have you got kids?”
Jake shook his head again.
“No,” he said. “I don’t have kids. I’m not even married. I tried to learn from my big sister’s experience.”
Lee stayed quiet for a spell and then she said, “Thanks, Jake. I’m happy that Peter’s OK. And I’m sorry I had to bring all that bad stuff up.” Then she walked away and I followed her and she said, “I’ll check the other things too, but it will take time, because those channels are always slow, but right now my guess is that Lila Hoth will pan out just fine. She’s two for two so far, on the adoption thing and the mother-son thing. She knows stuff only a genuine friend would know.”
I nodded agreement. “You interested in the other thing? Whatever it was that got Susan so scared?”
“Not until I see actual evidence of a crime committed in New York City, somewhere between Ninth Avenue and Park, and 30th Street and 45th.”
“That’s this precinct?”
She nodded. “Anything else would be volunteer work.”
“You interested in Sansom?”
“Not even a little bit. Are you?”
“I feel like I should warn him, maybe.”
“About what? A million-to-one possibility?”
“It’s actually much shorter odds than a million to one. There are five million men called John in America. Second only to James, for popularity. That’s one in thirty guys. Which means that in 1983 there could have been about thirty-three thousand Johns in the U.S. Army. Discount it maybe ten percent for military demographics, the chances are about one in thirty thousand.”
“Those are still very big odds.”
“I think Sansom should know, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Call it a brother officer thing. Maybe I’ll head back to D.C.”
“No need. Save yourself the trip. He’s coming here. Tomorrow mid-day, for a fundraiser lunch at the Sheraton. With all the heavy hitters from Wall Street. Seventh Avenue and 52nd Street. We got a memo.”
“Why? He wasn’t getting much protection in Greensboro.”
“He isn’t getting much protection here, either. In fact he isn’t getting any. But we get memos about everything. That’s how it is now. That’s the new NYPD.” Then she walked away, leaving me all alone in the middle of the empty squad room. And leaving me feeling a little uneasy. Maybe Lila Hoth really was as pure as the driven snow, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that Sansom was walking into a trap, just by coming to the city.
Chapter 33
It has been a long time since you could sleep well in New York for five dollars a night, but you can still do it for fifty, if you know how. The key is starting late. I walked down to a hotel I had used before, near Madison Square Garden. It was a big place, once grand, now just a faded old pile, perpetually close to renovation or demolition but never actually getting there. After midnight the front-of-house staff shrinks down to a lone night porter responsible for everything including the desk. I walked up to him and asked if he had a room available. He made a show of tapping on a keyboard and looking at a screen and then he said yes, he did have a room available. He quoted a price of a hundred and eighty-five dollars, plus tax. I asked if I could see the room before I committed. It was the kind of hotel where that kind of request seemed reasonable. And sensible. Mandatory, even. The guy came out from behind the desk and took me up in the elevator and along a corridor. He opened a door with a pass card attached to his belt by a curly plastic cord and stood back to let me enter.
The room was OK. It had a bed in it, and a bathroom. Everything I needed, and nothing I didn’t. I took two twenties out of my pocket and said, “Suppose we don’t worry about that whole registration process downstairs?”
The guy said nothing. They never do, at that point. I took out another ten and said, “For the maid, tomorrow.”
The guy shuffled a little like I was putting him on the spot, but then his hand came out and he took the money. He said, “Be out by eight,” and he walked away. The door closed behind him. Maybe a central computer would show that his pass card had unlocked the room, and when, but he would claim that he had shown me the accommodations, and that I had been unmoved by their attractions, and that I had left again immediately. It was probably a claim he made on a regular basis. I was probably the fourth guy he had stowed away that week. Maybe the fifth, or the sixth. All kinds of things happen in city hotels, after the day staff has quit.
I slept well and woke up feeling good and I was out five minutes before eight. I forced my way through the crowds heading in and out of Penn Station and got breakfast in the back booth of a place on 33rd. Coffee, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and more coffee, all for six bucks, plus tax, plus tip. More expensive than North Carolina, but only slightly. The battery on Leonid’s cell was still about half-charged. An icon was showing some bars blank and some bars lit. I figured I had enough juice for a few calls. I dialed 600 and then aimed to dial 82219 but before I got halfway through the sequence the earpiece started up with a fast little triplet trill pitched somewhere between a siren and a xylophone. A voice came on and told me my call could not be completed as dialed. It asked me to check and try again. I tried 1-600 and got exactly the same result. I tried 011 for an international line, and then 1 for North America, and then 600. A circuitous route, but the outcome was no better. I tried 001 as the international code in case the phone thought it was still in London. No result. I tried 8**101, which was the Eastern European international code for America, in case the phone had been hauled all the way from Moscow a year ago. No result. I looked at the phone’s keypad and thought about using a 3 in place of the D, but the system was already beeping at me well before I got there.
So, 600-82219-D was not a phone number, Canadian or otherwise. Which the FBI must have known. Maybe they had considered the possibility for about a minute, and then dismissed it out of hand. The FBI is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. So back on 35th Street they had buried their real questions for me behind a smokescreen.
What else had they asked me?
They had gauged my level of interest, they had asked yet again if Susan had given me anything, and they had confirmed that I was leaving town. They had wanted me incurious, and empty-handed, and gone.
Why?
I had no idea.
And what exactly was 600-82219-D, if it wasn’t a phone number?
I sat another ten minutes with a final cup of coffee, sipping slowly, eyes open but not seeing much, trying to sneak up on the answer from below. Like Susan Mark had planned to sneak up out of the subway. I visualized the numbers in my mind, strung out, separately, together, different combinations, spaces, hyphens, groups.
The 600 part rang a faint bell.
Susan Mark.
600.
But I couldn’t get it.
I finished my coffee and put Leonid’s cell back in my pocket and headed north toward the Sheraton.
The hotel was a huge glass pillar with a plasma screen in the lobby that listed all the day’s events. The main ballroom was booked for lunch by a group calling itself FT. Fair Tax, or Free Trade, or maybe even the Financial Times itself. Plausible cover for a bunch of Wall Street fat cats looking to buy yet more influence. Their affair was due to start at noon. I figured Sansom would try to arrive by eleven. He would want some time and space and calm beforehand, to prepare. This was a big meeting for him. These were his people, and they had deep pockets. He would need sixty minutes, minimum. Which gave me two more hours to kill. I walked over to Broadway and found a clothing store two blocks north. I wanted another new shirt. I didn’t like the one I was in. It was a symbol of defeat. Don’t come dressed like that, or you won’t get in. If I was going to see Elspe
th Sansom again I didn’t want to be wearing a badge of my failure and her success.
I chose an insubstantial thing made from thin khaki poplin and paid eleven bucks for it. Cheap, and it should have been. It had no pockets and the sleeves ended halfway down my forearms. With the cuffs folded back they hit my elbows. But I liked it well enough. It was a satisfactory garment. And it was purchased voluntarily, at least.
By ten-thirty I was back in the Sheraton’s lobby. I sat in a chair with people all around me. They had suitcases. Half of them were heading out, waiting for cars. Half of them were heading in, waiting for rooms.
By ten-forty I had figured out what 600-82219-D meant.
Chapter 34
I got up out of my chair and followed engraved brass signs to the Sheraton’s business center. I couldn’t get in. You needed a room key. I hung around at the door for three minutes and then another guy showed up. He was in a suit and he looked impatient. I put on a big display of hunting through my pants pockets and then I stepped aside with an apology. The other guy pushed ahead of me and used his key and opened the door and I stepped in after him.
There were four identical work stations in the room. Each had a desk, a chair, a computer, and a printer. I sat down far from the other guy and killed the computer’s screen saver by tapping on the keyboard’s space bar. So far, so good. I checked the screen icons and couldn’t make much sense of them. But I found that if I held the mouse pointer over them, as if hesitating or ruminating, then a label popped up next to them. I identified the Internet Explorer application that way and clicked on it twice. The hard drive chattered and the browser opened up. Much faster than the last time I had used a computer. Maybe technology really was moving on. Right there on the home page was a shortcut to Google. I clicked on it, and Google’s search page appeared. Again, very fast. I typed army regulations in the dialog box and hit enter. The screen redrew in an instant and gave me whole pages of options.
For the next five minutes I clicked and scrolled and read.
I got back to the lobby ten minutes before eleven. My chair had been taken. I went out to the sidewalk and stood in the sun. I figured Sansom would arrive by Town Car and come in through the front door. He wasn’t a rock star. He wasn’t the President. He wouldn’t come in through the kitchen or the loading dock. The whole point was for him to be seen. The need to enter places undercover was a prize he had not yet won.
The day was hot. But the street was clean. It didn’t smell. There were a pair of cops on the corner south of me, and another pair on the corner to the north. Standard NYPD deployment, in midtown. Proactive, and reassuring. But not necessarily useful, given the range of potential threats. Alongside me, departing hotel guests climbed into taxis. The city’s rhythm ground on relentlessly. Traffic on Seventh Avenue flowed, and stopped at the light, and flowed again. Traffic from the cross-streets flowed, and stopped, and started. Pedestrians bunched on the corners and struck out for the opposite sidewalks. Horns honked, trucks roared, the sun bounced off high glass and beat down hard.
Sansom arrived in a Town Car at five past eleven. Local plates, which meant he had ridden up most of the way on the train. Less convenient for him, but a smaller carbon footprint than driving all the way, or flying. Every detail mattered, in a campaign. Politics is a minefield. Springfield climbed out of the front passenger seat even before the car had stopped, and then Sansom and his wife climbed out of the back. They stood for a second on the sidewalk, ready to be gracious if there were people to greet them, ready not to be disappointed if there weren’t. They scanned faces and saw mine and Sansom looked a little quizzical and his wife looked a little worried. Springfield headed in my direction but Elspeth waved him off with a small gesture. I guessed she had appointed herself damage control officer as far as I was concerned. She shook my hand like I was an old friend. She didn’t comment on my shirt. Instead she leaned in close and asked, “Do you need to talk to us?”
It was a perfect politician’s-wife inquiry. She freighted the word need with all kinds of meanings. Her emphasis cast me both as an opponent and a collaborator. She was saying, We know you have information that might hurt us, and we hate you for it, but we would be truly grateful if you would be kind enough to discuss it with us first, before you make it public.
Practically a whole essay, all in one short syllable.
I said, “Yes, we need to talk.”
Springfield scowled but Elspeth smiled like I had just promised her a hundred thousand votes and took my arm and led me inside. The hotel staff didn’t know or care who Sansom was, except that he was the speaker for the group that was paying a hefty fee for the ballroom, so they summoned up a whole lot of artificial enthusiasm and showed us to a private lounge and bustled about with bottles of lukewarm sparkling water and pots of weak coffee. Elspeth played host. Springfield didn’t speak. Sansom took a call on his cell from his chief of staff back in D.C. They talked for four minutes about economic policy, and then for a further two about their afternoon agenda. It was clear from the context that Sansom was heading back to the office directly after lunch, for a long afternoon’s work. The New York event was a fast hit-and-run, nothing more. Like a drive-by robbery.
The hotel people finished up and left and Sansom clicked off and the room went quiet. Canned air hissed in through vents and kept the temperature lower than I would have liked. For a moment we sipped water and coffee in silence. Then Elspeth Sansom opened the bidding. She asked, “Is there any news on the missing boy?”
I said, “A little. He skipped football practice, which apparently is rare.”
“At USC?” Sansom said. He had a good memory. I had mentioned USC only once, and in passing. “Yes, that’s rare.”
“But then he called his coach and left a message.”
“When?”
“Last night. Dinnertime on the Coast.”
“And?”
“Apparently he’s with a woman.”
Elspeth said, “That’s OK, then.”
“I would have preferred a live real-time conversation. Or a face-to-face meeting.”
“A message isn’t good enough for you?”
“I’m a suspicious person.”
“So what do you need to talk about?”
I turned to Sansom and asked him, “Where were you in 1983?”
He paused, just a fraction of a beat, and something flickered behind his eyes. Not shock, I thought. Not surprise. Resignation, possibly. He said, “I was a captain in 1983.”
“That’s not what I asked you. I asked where you were.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Were you in Berlin?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You told me you were spotless. You still stand by that?”
“Completely.”
“Is there anything your wife doesn’t know about you?”
“Plenty of things. But nothing personal.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You ever heard the name Lila Hoth?”
“I already told you I haven’t.”
“You ever heard the name Svetlana Hoth?”
“Never,” Sansom said. I was watching his face. It was very composed. He looked a little uncomfortable, but apart from that he was communicating nothing.
I asked him, “Did you know about Susan Mark before this week?”
“I already told you I didn’t.”
“Did you win a medal in 1983?”
He didn’t answer. The room went quiet again. Then Leonid’s cell rang in my pocket. I felt a vibration and heard a loud electronic tune. I fumbled the phone out and looked at the small window on the front. A 212 number. The same number that was already in the call register. The Four Seasons Hotel. Lila Hoth, presumably. I wondered whether Leonid was still missing, or whether he had gotten back and told his story and now Lila was calling me specifically.
I pressed random buttons until the ringing stopped and I put the phone back in my pock
et. I looked at Sansom and said, “I’m sorry about that.”
He shrugged, as if apologies were unnecessary.
I asked, “Did you win a medal in 1983?”
He said, “Why is that important?”
“You know what 600-8-22 is?”
“An army regulation, probably. I don’t know all of them verbatim.”
I said, “We figured all along that only a dumb person would expect HRC to have meaningful information about Delta operations. And I think we were largely right. But a little bit wrong, too. I think a really smart person might legitimately expect it, with a little lateral thinking.”
“In what way?”
“Suppose someone knew for sure that a Delta operation had taken place. Suppose they knew for sure it had succeeded.”
“Then they wouldn’t need information, because they’ve already got it.”
“Suppose they wanted to confirm the identity of the officer who led the operation?”
“They couldn’t get that from HRC. Just not possible. Orders and deployment records and after-action reports are classified and retained at Fort Bragg under lock and key.”
“But what happens to officers who lead successful missions?”
“You tell me.”
“They get medals,” I said. “The bigger the mission, the bigger the medal. And army regulation 600-8-22, section one, paragraph nine, subsection D, requires the Human Resources Command to maintain an accurate historical record of each and every award recommendation, and the resulting decision.”
“Maybe so,” Sansom said. “But if it was a Delta mission, all the details would be omitted. The citation would be redacted, the location would be redacted, and the meritorious conduct would not be described.”
I nodded. “All the record would show is a name, a date, and an award. Nothing else.”
“Exactly.”
“Which is all a smart person thinking laterally really needs, right? An award proves a mission succeeded, the lack of a citation proves it was a covert mission. Pick any random month, say early in 1983. How many medals were awarded?”
