Night School

by Child, Lee

  Sinclair said, “We have forty-eight hours to figure it out.”

  “If they stick to the same schedule,” Neagley said. “Which they might not. It’s a lottery. Travel could be delayed. I imagine they’re making connections all over the place. Including third world countries. So I assume they build in extra time. If the planes go on schedule, then they get to hang out for two days. But if the planes are late, then they have their meetings more or less immediately. Or somewhere in between. That would be my assessment.”

  Bishop said, “We need eyes on the apartment building.”

  “Can’t do it,” Sinclair said. “Can’t risk the safe house.”

  “We’re blind if we don’t. We’re passing up a solid-gold chance of getting the guy.”

  Reacher looked at Bishop. An unexpected ally.

  Sinclair said, “There are future considerations.”

  “That’s then and this is now.”

  “Can’t do it,” Sinclair said again.

  “We’re already doing it,” Reacher said.

  “What?”

  “Chief of Detectives Griezman agreed to watch the apartment building. Plain-clothes officers in cars. They’re pretty good. We saw them at work. Or rather, we didn’t.”

  Sinclair went pale. Anger mostly, Reacher figured.

  She said, “Starting when?”

  “Maybe this afternoon,” he said. “Depends on his scheduling issues.”

  “Why is he doing it?”

  “I asked him to.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “I’m running the fingerprint.”

  Sinclair said, “Major, I need to talk to you.”

  Reacher said, “You are talking to me.”

  “In private.”

  Neagley said, “Use my room. We won’t hear you from there.”

  She tossed her room key, a soft underhand arc, and Sinclair caught it, one-handed, no trouble at all.

  She said, “Follow me.”

  Which Reacher did, down the corridor, to Neagley’s room. Sinclair went all the way in, to the window, and she turned around with the light behind her.

  Taller than the average, but no wider.

  The black dress, the pearls, the nylons, the shoes.

  The face and the hair, combed with her fingers.

  Looking good.

  She said, “You disobeyed an order.”

  Reacher said, “I don’t remember an order. I don’t remember much of anything after the National Security Adviser told us we get anything we need. And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn’t take that deal? The future means nothing if we don’t live to see it.”

  “So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year’s hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You’ll get a better deal that way.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “I will, if it turns out bad.”

  “You also just blew up forty years of legal precedent about which databases are secret and which are not. That’s a court martial offense all by itself. It’s a federal crime.”

  “OK,” Reacher said. “If it turns out bad, I’ll plead guilty.”

  “You’re guilty however it turns out.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. If it turns out good I get the Legion of Merit.”

  “What is this, a joke?”

  Reacher said, “No, it’s a gamble. And so far I’m beating the house. The messenger is back in Hamburg. That was ten-to-one at best. But it just paid out. We should ride the wave and keep on winning. Griezman’s OK. He won’t blow the safe house. The boys inside are very complacent. They pay no attention. They have a roommate who’s making secret phone calls, and composing secret messages for dead drops, and heading out to the park for no reason at all, and they haven’t noticed any of that. Why would they notice a car parked a hundred yards away?”

  Sinclair waved it off, like he was missing the point. Then she said, “The fingerprint issue is serious. Legal and political. No one can make that go away.”

  “I could say I worded the promise very carefully. I said I would run the print. That was all. I didn’t say I would share the result. A deception for sure, but hey, welcome to the major leagues. I could say for people like me it’s always the same gamble. Eggs get broken, the omelet gets made, and if it turns out tasty, then all is forgiven.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I’m always open to new experiences.”

  No reply from Sinclair.

  Reacher said, “If this turns out bad, you’re going to turn me in. You’re going to give evidence at the court martial. I understand that. And you’ll give it willingly. I understand that, too. You command us, but you don’t approve of us. I’ve played this game before. No hard feelings.”

  “What if it turns out good?”

  “Then you won’t turn me in and there won’t be a trial. You’ll get a glowing letter in your file, and I’ll get another medal.”

  “Which will it be?”

  “Honest answer?”

  “Always.”

  “It’s in the bag. It’s a done deal. This is an AWOL soldier. He and I are in the same city. It’s money in the bank.”

  “Are you always this confident?”

  “I used to be.”

  “What are you now?”

  “Even more.”

  “Are you sleeping with your sergeant?”

  “No, I am not. That would be inappropriate. And generally frowned upon, too. Not least by her.”

  “She’s crazy about you.”

  “We get along, as friends and colleagues.”

  Sinclair said nothing in reply.

  There was a knock at the door. Neagley herself, Reacher figured, right on cue, checking if Sinclair had killed him yet. Or Bishop, checking if he had killed Sinclair. He opened up, standing to one side, out of the line of fire.

  Long training.

  Neither Neagley nor Bishop.

  It was a young American man in a department-store suit and a Brooks Brothers tie. He was carrying a rubber pouch with a zip. It looked to have half an inch of paper in it. That kind of size. That kind of stiffness.

  The guy said, “For Dr. Sinclair. From the consulate. The document she requested.”

  Seriously fast.

  You bet your ass.

  Reacher took the pouch and handed it to Sinclair. The guy in the suit went back down the stairs. Reacher and Sinclair went back to her room, where the others were waiting.

  —

  Sinclair unzipped the pouch and Reacher smelled copier paper still hot from the printer. There had been a flurry of phone calls, he guessed, and then a high-speed digital transmission incoming from somewhere, either Personnel Command back home, or Stuttgart maybe, directly into the Hamburg consulate, where a high-speed machine had done fast work, and where the young attaché in the Brooks Brothers tie had caught the tumbling pages and butted them together and zipped them up and grabbed a cab. The National Security Council. Even faster than the army press room.

  The pages were crisp clear monochrome copies of a standard-issue army personnel file, for Private First Class Horace-none-Wiley, who was thirty-five years old, and from Sugar Land, Texas. He was coming to the end of his first three-year hitch. He had been a thirty-two-year-old recruit. He was five feet eight inches tall, and lightly built. Like a long-distance runner.

  The second page had his photograph. It was clipped to the top right corner. Not a passport thumbnail like the old days, but a bigger p
rint. Maybe three inches by two. The Xerox process had bleached out the highlights, like liquid neon, and made the shadows sooty. The image of the paperclip itself looked photographic, but also radioactive.

  It was the same guy.

  The Xerox imperfections gave the picture a hand-made quality, like a sketch done in charcoal. Like the sketch done in pencil. The same sketch. The same guy. No question. Zero doubt. The brow, the cheek bones, the deep-set eyes. The nose, like a blade. The crease in the cheek, exactly parallel. The set jaw, like he was clamping his teeth. The mouth, like a thin wound, completely expressionless.

  Only the hair was different. The photograph was three years old. Horace-none-Wiley had signed on with a regular country-boy buzz cut. A slam dunk, where Army Regulation 670-3-2 was concerned. The extreme, the eccentric, and the faddish had all come later.

  “We’ll show the photograph to Mr. Klopp,” Sinclair said. “But there’s really no doubt about it. Congratulations, major. And sergeant. Outstanding work. You started with two hundred thousand.”

  Reacher said, “Only because someone made a dumb note about a dumb phone call, which survived about seven different levels of bureaucracy before winding up with the United States government itself. We’re always trying to cut down on paperwork. Maybe we should rethink that.”

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait. For a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes to come on out and take a walk.”

  Chapter 20

  Sugar Land was what Wiley intended to call his new ranch. Or Sugarland, all one word. Not that he would grow sugar. It was cattle country. He was going to have the largest herd in the world. And the best. But first he would need a name across the top of his gate. Fancy wrought iron. Maybe leave it in red primer. Sugar Land would look good. All in capital letters. Or all one word, Sugarland. And it would be a kind of personal tribute. To an old ambition. Once upon a time he had tried to make it in Sugar Land. But it was a tough old town. Now he was buying a place forty times bigger than the entire incorporated municipality.

  All good.

  It was like falling. At first he had fought it, and then he had gone with it. And then he had fallen even faster. Everything had sped up around him. Which was why he was ready way too early. Ready for the meeting. He felt he had to be prepared. Especially now. The endgame would happen quickly. It always did.

  —

  In Sinclair’s presence Reacher called Griezman from the room phone, on the speaker, and he gave him Wiley’s name, to go with the face, and he told him as far as they knew the messenger had already arrived, and then he reconfirmed all the various protocols, about how to call it in if something happened, and above all about being cautious around the apartment. But not so cautious he would miss something. A tough job. But Griezman sounded on top of it. He agreed to all the points. His language was convincing. Reacher saw Sinclair relax a little. Then she looked at him, right in the eye, a level gaze. He wasn’t sure why. Either half approving, because the crazy plan might be working after all, or half disapproving, because now he had made her complicit.

  Then Bishop went back to the consulate, and Reacher and Neagley left Sinclair in her room and stopped in at his, to read Wiley’s file front to back. Their first question was why the guy had waited until the age of thirty-two to join the army. Abnormal behavior, right there. But there was no note from the recruiter. Nothing to explain it. Neagley called Waterman’s guy Landry, back in McLean, and she suggested he get the background check started right away. Thirty-two years of it, from the day the guy was born to the day he put on the green suit. There had to be a reason.

  An old man or not, Wiley’s early progress looked conventional. He completed basic training without complications, which indicated he had a certain amount of aptitude and fitness. He was promoted to private first class, which indicated he had a pulse and was still in the army. He was sent to Fort Sill, to the artillery school, for assessment. He was then trained and deployed in Germany with an air-defense company.

  “I can picture it,” Neagley said.

  Reacher nodded, because he could, too. The bland notations in the file were more than just marks on paper. They were like a box score in baseball. A person could make a whole big story out of it. This happened, and then that. The artillery school was the pivot. Not for dummies. Wiley was clearly an acceptable soldier. Probably up there near the top of his class after basic. Not elite school material. But maybe his CO had seen an aptitude. Or invented one. Some COs counseled people based on old wives’ tales. As in, left-handed people couldn’t be snipers. People who were small and wiry should be artillerymen. And so on. But either way it had worked. Wiley had fit right in. Not easy. The Chaparral was a weird machine. It had to stop driving and be more or less rebuilt before it could fire. Then packed up and driven on and stopped and rebuilt all over again. The crews were like the pit stop crews from a NASCAR automobile race. As complicated as a ballet, timed to a tenth of a second. An incoming airplane could get real close in a tenth of a second. It was team work at its finest. Almost gymnastic. And Wiley had earned his place. Maybe small and wiry helped for real. The guy was a competent soldier. No question. But dead-ended. Three years later he was still a private. The armored divisions were no longer hiring. The front line was a thing of the past.

  Had that been a surprise to him?

  Reacher said, “Did the MPs on the original AWOL out there talk to his buddies from four months ago?”

  Neagley nodded and said, “I already requested the transcripts.”

  “What is he selling?”

  Neagley didn’t answer.

  Instead she said, “How mad was Sinclair?”

  “Less mad than she could have been,” Reacher said. “I blew the safe house.”

  “How? Griezman won’t let you down.”

  “That’s what I told her. But she wasn’t convinced. Then I understood. The safe house was blown as soon as Griezman heard about it. Simple as that. It was no longer our secret. That’s what she meant. And I can see her point. Sooner or later Griezman will pass it on to his intelligence service. That’s his MO, and he’s obliged to anyway. So then the Germans will want a finger in the pie. It’s their turf. Which is too many cooks. Pretty soon the surveillance vehicles will be double-parked on the curb outside. My fault.”

  “Unless we get the guy.”

  “I told her that, too. But it doesn’t solve her problem. Win or lose, the Krauts will always know about that safe house.”

  “We would have told them anyway. Sooner or later. Next year, or the year after. This shit will go international. Believe me. We’re all going to be cooperating our asses off. You got in early, that’s all.”

  “She said the fingerprint thing is worse. It’s a federal crime.”

  “Same thing. If we get the guy.”

  “Or if I double-cross Griezman. If I steal his labor and give him nothing in return.”

  “Did she ask you to do that?”

  “I suggested it myself. I told him I would run the print. That was all. Why did I choose those particular words?”

  “Subconscious wiggle room.”

  “Doesn’t feel good.”

  “Would going to prison feel better?”

  “He’s a homicide cop with a fingerprint. What am I supposed to do?”

  “What did you think you were doing?”

  “I guess I was figuring I would tell him if it’s negative, and if it’s positive, maybe I would stall. I figured I could deal with it direct. That way everyone’s a winner, and I don’t break the law. Which I’m happy about, because I like that law. I like to control whether or not our people go on trial in foreign legal systems. So I made two separate errors of judgment.”

  “Why?”

  “The price,” Reacher said. “A hundred million dollars. I keep seeing it in my mind. It’s a lot of money. It’s front-burner money for sure. But I’m letting it get out of proportion. It’s all I can think about.”

  “Evidently.”

&nb
sp; “What does that mean?”

  “Why do you think Sinclair was less mad at you than she could have been?”

  “Maybe she secretly agrees with me.”

  “No,” Neagley said. “She likes you.”

  “What is this, high school?”

  “More or less.”

  “OK,” Reacher said.

  “Trust me,” Neagley said. “She was there, and you were here. Now she’s here, too. Not rocket science. Slim is better than none, whatever the target. She’s lonely. She lives in a big empty house on a suburban street.”

  “You know that?”

  “I’m guessing.”

  “I don’t think she likes me at all,” Reacher said.

  “Do you like her?”

  “What are you, my mom?”

  “You should have listened to her more.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mom. She was French. Those ladies have got it going on.”

  “What exactly are we talking about here?”

  But Neagley didn’t answer that, because the room phone rang. Griezman. Reacher put him on speaker. Griezman said his people were in position, and that surveillance could be considered officially active as of that moment. The apartment house lobby fed six separate units, one to the left and one to the right of the walk-up stairwell, on each of the second, third and fourth floors. Records showed a Turkish family and an Italian family also in residence, both diplomatic households, plus three German families, all of them prosperous and solidly middle class. There was a service entrance in back of the building, and it was covered by a supplementary car, just in case, but it likely wouldn’t be used as a pedestrian exit. Not the local custom, as the sleepers would surely know. Presumably they made conscious efforts to fit in, and not stand out.

  “Thank you,” Reacher said. “Good hunting.”

  Griezman asked, “How long do you expect to need us?”

  “Forty-eight hours or less.”

  “Any news on the fingerprint?”

  Reacher paused a beat.

  He said, “Not yet.”