Night School (3 page)

Sinclair sat up straight and
hitched closer to the table, as if to emphasize her points, and said, “The Iranian is by all accounts very smart and articulate and sensitive to the nuances of language, and the head of station went over and over it with him, and we firmly believe it was a simple declarative statement. During those fifty minutes the messenger met face to face with an American. Male, because there was no comment about it being a woman, and there would have been, the Iranian says. He’s completely certain of that. During the meeting the American told the messenger he wanted a hundred million dollars. As a price for something. That was clearly the context. But that was the end of the transmission. What American, we don’t know. A hundred million for what, we don’t know. From whom, we don’t know.”

White said, “But a hundred million narrows the field. Even if it’s an opening bid that gets knocked down to fifty, it’s still a good chunk of change. Who has that kind of money? Plenty of people, you would say, but at least you can get them all in one Rolodex.”

“Wrong end of the telescope,” Reacher said. “Better to find the seller than the buyer, surely. What kind of a thing would guys who climb ropes in Yemen pay a hundred million dollars for? And what kind of American in Hamburg has such a thing for sale?”

Waterman said, “A hundred million is a lot of money. That kind of price would worry me a little.”

Sinclair nodded and said, “That kind of price worries us a lot. It sounds deadly serious. It’s more than we ever heard of before. Therefore we’re working every channel we can. All our assets worldwide have been alerted. Hundreds of people are working hard already. But we need more. Your job is to find that American. If he’s still overseas, then CIA has jurisdiction, and Mr. White will lead the effort. If he’s back in the States now, the FBI has jurisdiction and Special Agent Waterman will step up instead. And because statistics tell us the overwhelming majority of Americans in Germany at any one time are U.S. military, we think we might need Major Reacher to be involved with either or both.”

Reacher looked at Waterman, then White, and saw issues in their eyes, and had no doubt they saw the same in his.

Sinclair said, “Staff and supplies will arrive in the morning. You can have anything you want, at any time. But you will talk to no one except me, Mr. Ratcliffe, or the president. This is a quarantined unit. Even if all you want is a box of pencils, you go through me, Mr. Ratcliffe, or the president. Which in practice will be me. Subsequent paperwork will be generated inside the West Wing. You must not be identified personally. Because a hundred million dollars is a lot of money. Government involvement is not impossible. The American could be State Department, or Justice, or in the Pentagon. You might talk to the wrong person by mistake. So talk to no one. That’s rule number two.”

Waterman said, “What was rule number one?”

“Rule number one is the Iranian must not be burned. We must do nothing that could be traced back to him. We have a lot invested in him and we’re going to need him, because we truly have no idea what’s coming next.”

Then she pushed her chair back and stood up and headed for the door. As she left she said, “Remember, hair on fire.”

Reacher lay back
in his leather chair, and White looked at him and said, “It has to be tanks and planes.”

Reacher said, “Our nearest tanks are a thousand miles from Yemen or Afghanistan, and they take weeks and weeks and thousands of people to move. It would be easier to bring Yemen or Afghanistan to them. Also faster and less obtrusive.”

“Planes, then.”

“I guess a hundred million might get a couple of pilots to come on over to the dark side. Maybe three or four. I doubt if Afghanistan has runways long enough. But maybe Yemen does. So it’s theoretically possible. Except planes are no good to them. They would need hundreds of tons of spare parts and hundreds of engineers and maintenance technicians. And hundreds of hours of training. And we’d find them five minutes later anyway, and destroy them on the ground with missiles. Or maybe we can do it remotely now.”

“Some other military hardware, then.”

“But what? A million rifles at a hundred bucks each? We don’t have that many.”

Waterman said, “It could be a secret, or a code word, or a password, or a formula, or a map or a plan or a diagram, or a list, or the blueprint of all of the world financial system’s computer security, or a commercial recipe, or the sum total of all the bribes required to pass legislation in all fifty states.”

White said, “You think data?”

“What else can be bought and sold unobtrusively and is worth that much? Diamonds, maybe, but they’re in Antwerp, not Hamburg. Drugs, maybe, but no American has a hundred million dollars’ worth ready to ship. That’s South and Central America. And Afghanistan has poppies of its own.”

“What’s the worst case scenario?”

“That’s above my pay grade. Ask Ratcliffe. Or the president.”

“In your own personal opinion?”

“What’s yours?”

“I’m a Middle East specialist. It’s all worst case to me.”

“Smallpox germs,” Waterman said. “That’s my worst case. Or something like that. A plague. A biological weapon. Or Ebola. Or an antidote. Or a vaccine. Which would mean they already have the germs.”

Reacher stared at the ceiling.

Things that might not end well.

You don’t sound happy. But you should
.

As long as it takes
.

Garber was like a crossword puzzle.

White looked at him and said, “What are you thinking about?”

He said, “The contradiction between rule one and the rest of it. We mustn’t burn the Iranian. Which means we can’t go anywhere near the messenger. We can’t even stake out a location the messenger leads us to. Because we don’t know the messenger exists. Not unless we got an inside whisper.”

“That’s an impediment,” Waterman said. “Not a contradiction. We’ll find a way to work around it. They need that guy.”

“It’s a question of efficiency. They need to know who these guys are ahead of time. They need to trace networks and build databases. Therefore they should focus on the messengers, surely. Verbal questions and verbal answers in their heads, back and forth, continent to continent, question, answer, question, answer. They know everything. They’re like audiotape. They’re worth a hundred inside men. Because they have the big picture. What has the Iranian got? Nothing but four walls in Hamburg and nothing to do.”

“He can’t just be sacrificed.”

“They could pull him out the same moment they hit the messenger. They could give him a house in Florida.”

White said, “The messenger wouldn’t talk. This is a tribal thing, going back a thousand years. They wouldn’t rat each other out. Not after the little we’re allowed to do to them, anyway. So it’s a smart play to keep the inside man where he is. They genuinely don’t know what’s coming. An early hint would be nice. Even part of a clue.”

Reacher said, “Do you know what’s coming?”

“Something unhinged. This is not the same as it used to be.”

“Have you worked with Ratcliffe before? Or Sinclair?”

“Never. Have you?”

Waterman said, “They didn’t choose us because they know us. They chose us because we weren’t in Hamburg at the critical time. We were engaged elsewhere. Therefore we can’t be the wrong people to talk to.”

A quarantined unit, Sinclair had said, and it felt like it. Three guys in a room, shut away from the outside world, because they were all infected, with an alibi.

At seven o’clock
Reacher got his bags from the car and hauled them up to his bedroom, which was at the far end of three in a line, in a corridor that looked like an office corridor, and might have been the day before. The room was spacious and had a bathroom attached. An executive’s suite. Designed for a desk, not a bed, but it worked.

Eating was a case of firing up the old Caprice and cruising McLean, turning by instinct into the kind of streets that might have the kind of eventual edge-of-town lots that might have the kind of restaurants he was looking for. Not everyone’s choice. His metabolism helped. He saw neon up ahead, and shiny aluminum, next to a gas station, next to a highway ramp. A diner, old enough to be nearly authentic. Some dents and tarnish. Some miles on the clock.

He pulled in and parked, and heaved open the chromium door, and stepped inside. The air was cold and bright with fluorescent light. The first person he saw was a woman he knew. All alone in a booth. From his last-but-one command. The best soldier he had ever worked with. His best friend, possibly, in a guarded way, if friendship was permission to leave things unsaid.

At first he thought it was a not-very-amazing coincidence. It was a small world, and close to the Pentagon it got smaller still. Then he reassessed. She had been his top sergeant during the 110th MP’s glory years. She had played as big a part as anyone, and bigger than some. Bigger than most. Bigger than him, probably.

By being very smart.

Way too smart to be a coincidence.

He stepped up to her table. She didn’t move. She was watching him in the back of an upturned spoon. He slid in opposite and said, “Hello, Neagley.”

Sergeant Frances Neagley looked up
from her spoon and said, “Of all the diners in all the towns. What were the odds?”

Reacher said, “Carefully calculated, I’m sure.”

“I guessed you were likely to drive west, because subconsciously you would want to keep D.C. behind you. I figured the turns you would make, which meant this is about the only obvious place. And this is the obvious time. I figured two hours of briefing, and then break for dinner.”

“It’s a school.”

“No it isn’t. The course title doesn’t even make sense.”

“They never make sense.”

“This one is worse than usual.”

“It’s a school.”

“They wouldn’t do that to you. Not while Garber lives and breathes.”

“I can’t discuss it. It’s too boring.”

“Let me hazard a wild-ass guess. It’s cover for something. Given your current batting average, it’s a high-level something. Which means you’ll get whatever you ask for. Especially staff. So you’ll be calling me in the morning anyway. Why not tell me twelve hours early?”

She was in woodland-pattern battledress uniform, the sleeves neatly rolled, her forearms on the table. She had dark hair, cut short, and dark eyes, and a tan. Her skin looked soft, but he was sure it wasn’t. He had seen her in action. She was fast and exceptionally strong. She would feel hard and solid underneath. But he didn’t know. He had never touched her. Never even shaken her hand.

He said, “I don’t know exactly what we’re going to need. The percentage play would be to start making lists. From movement orders. Active-duty personnel physically present in Germany on a certain day. And civilians, too, from passport records.”

“Why?”

“We need to find a particular American who was in Hamburg during a particular fifty-minute window.”

“Why?”

“He’s planning to sell something worth a hundred million dollars to a bunch of new-style bad guys from Yemen and Afghanistan.”

“Do we know what he’s selling?”

“No idea.”

“Land borders might be a problem. I think you can drive right through. Because of the European Union. The passport records might be incomplete.”

“Exactly. It’s only a percentage play. But we could help it a little. We could look at who was in and out of Switzerland, maybe the week before. When the guy was making his final decision. He was going to sell. He was about to open the bidding. Which he knew couldn’t last forever. So he needed to be ready ahead of time. So he opened a secret Swiss bank account. Probably in Zurich. Standing by and waiting. Then he went back to Hamburg and named his price.”

“Which is also only a percentage play. Therefore it can’t be an exclusionary factor. It could be an old account from years ago. This might not be a first-time bad guy. Or his secret account could be someplace else. Luxembourg, maybe.”

“Which is why I said I don’t know exactly what we’re going to need.”

“Do you think he’s military?”

“He could be. The odds say so. Like Americans in Korea or on Okinawa. So that’s another list we need, just in case. What could a military guy be selling? Is it intelligence? Or is it hardware? In which case, assume a shipping container, or a large van or a small truck, something unobtrusive, and make a list of what could fit inside and be worth a hundred million bucks.”

“It would have to be something reliable and simple to operate. There won’t be support troops coming with it.”

“OK, bear that in mind. Make a master list of all the other lists. That’s all we can do right now. Be ready to deploy about nine o’clock in the morning. I can’t see them doing it any faster. After that everything goes through the NSC, via a woman named Marian Sinclair.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Neagley said. “She’s Alfred Ratcliffe’s senior deputy.”

“Be ready with the things you need her to do for us. We shouldn’t waste time.”

“Is this thing a big problem?”

“I guess it could be. If it’s what we think it is. Which it might not be. It’s one sentence plucked out of the air. It could be a joke. Or some kind of insider sarcasm. Could be obscure rope-climbing Yemeni slang for not very much at all. But if it’s real, then yes, the price tag suggests a problem.”

The waitress came over, and they ordered. Neagley said, “Congratulations on the medal.”

Reacher said, “Thank you.”

“You OK?”

“Never better.”

“You sure?”

“What are you, my mother?”

“What did you think of Sinclair?”

“I liked her.”

“Who else have we got?”

“A guy named Waterman from the FBI. He’s an old-school prowler. And a guy named White from CIA. He’s a highly stressed individual. Probably with good cause. So far they’ve been adequate in several respects. They’ve had sensible things to say. Presumably they’ll bring in their own staffers now. And presumably above all of us will be some kind of a National Security Council supervisor, babysitting us and relaying our messages to Sinclair.”

“Why did you like her?”

“She was honest. Ratcliffe, too. They’re running around with their hair on fire.”

“You should call your brother. At Treasury. He could watch for wire transfers. A hundred million dollars might be visible at government level.”

“I would have to go through Sinclair.”

“Are you going to stick to that?”

Reacher said, “She thinks it could be anyone. She doesn’t want us to betray ourselves to the wrong person. But she’s missing a point. It isn’t anyone. It’s everyone. More or less. This is a broad sweep. No doubt our guy will prove to be one of many. We’re going to catch all kinds of people in and out of secret meetings, and in and out of Switzerland with suitcases full of cash, all of them up to no good, buying and selling and trading all kinds of stuff. We’re going to make a lot of enemies. Both military and civilian. But we can’t afford too much background noise. Not yet, anyway. Secrecy will delay it. So right now I think we should stick with Sinclair. We’ll reconsider as and when we need to.”

“Understood,” Neagley said.

The waitress brought their plates, and they started eating. Eight o’clock in the evening, in McLean, Virginia.

Eight o’clock in
the evening in McLean, Virginia, was two o’clock the next morning in Hamburg, Germany. Late, but the American was still awake. He was on his back in bed staring at a ceiling he had never seen before. A naked hooker lay in the crook of his arm. It was her place. It was clean, and neat, and fragrant, and vaguely house-proud. Not cheap, but then neither was she. Which was OK. He was about to become a very rich man. Therefore a small celebration had been in order. And he liked expensive women. They were a bigger thrill. His tastes were fairly simple. It was the degree of enthusiasm that counted. She had shown plenty. And then they had talked. Pillow-talk, literally. They snuggled. She had been interested in him. She had been a good listener.

He had said too much.

He figured hookers were better psychologists than real psychologists, and could tell the difference between bluster and boasting and bullshit and manic dreams. Which left a small category of truth. Not confessional truth. More like a happy thing. Like a bursting-to-tell-someone truth. It just came out, on a wave of excitement. He had been feeling great. She was worth the money. He was floating. He had mentioned his plan to buy a ranch in Argentina. About bigger than Rhode Island, he had said.

Which didn’t mean much, but she would remember. And in Germany hookers weren’t afraid of the cops. It was a welfare state. Everything was tolerated as long as it was regulated. So when the hunt began, she would be happy to drop by and tell them about the American she met, who was fixing to buy a ranch on the pampas bigger than Rhode Island. Some kind of compensation there, she would say. A take-me-seriously kind of thing. Because he was never real hard. And then the cops, being German, would write it all down, and then call someone who knew, and thereby discover a ranch on the pampas bigger than Rhode Island was a very expensive purchase.

A simple search of current real-estate transactions in one single country of the world would bring them straight to his brand-new door.

Stupid.

His own fault.

He moved around the room in his mind, retracing his steps, listing what he had touched. Which wasn’t much, apart from her. Were his fingerprints on her skin? He doubted it. They would be smeared, anyway. His DNA was in her stomach, but it was being attacked there by powerful acids and digestive enzymes. And the science was still in its infancy. Still in its PR phase. It would refuse to take a case, rather than fail in public.

Safe enough.

Which was crazy.

But also logical. In for a penny, in for a pound. All or nothing. He was committed. He had wondered how it would feel. It turned out to feel like falling. Like skydiving, maybe. The long, long free fall before the parachute opens. Falling, and falling. He couldn’t fight it. All he could do was take a breath and relax and surrender.

He had left the hotel unseen, through the parking garage. No reason, except a shortcut to another bar he knew. She was driving in, ready to start work. Late evening, high end, high rollers. A different world. Except not anymore. He could have anything he wanted. Asking was part of the fun. Right there in the garage. Suppose he was wrong? But he wasn’t. He had seen her before. She smiled and named a very high figure. He would have paid ten times more, just because of the way she was standing. And she was fresh out of the shower. Not a virgin, but as close as it got, on a day to day basis.

She drove, back to the place she had only just left.

Were there security cameras in the parking garage?

He thought not. He was the kind of guy who dealt in details. He was observant. He noticed everything. He had to. Part of his job. On the garage ceiling he had seen fireproof foam, and electrical conduits, and five-inch drains, and a sprinkler system.

No cameras.

Safe enough.

Which was crazy.

But also logical.

He rehearsed it in his mind, and then did it fast. At first she thought it was role play. Like he was acting out what he saw on VHS. He threw her on her front and straddled her, pinning her elbows under his knees, his butt on hers, crouched like a jockey on a horse, and she moaned like they all do, and he leaned down and strangled her from behind, fast and hard, shutting it all down double quick. She tried to buck and heave, but she could barely move. Only her feet, really, trying to get him in the back with her heels, but not quite making it, so they thrashed up and down uselessly, like swimming. And then they stopped, and he hung on tight until he was sure, and then he hung on some more, and then he let her go and got the hell out.

All or nothing.