Lee Child - A Wanted Man

Bale put up more of a fight. Apparently he had a bigger ego. The visit started out the same way. Light still on, a fast answer to the knock, genuine surprise at the ID thrust under his nose. Then the guy started to argue. He said he knew nothing about any of this. He hadn’t been informed. He hadn’t been briefed. Delfuenso wasn’t in his chain of command. She was an agent of equal rank, that’s all, Hoover Building or no Hoover Building. She couldn’t tell him what to do.

The guy was immovable. He was all the way up on his high horse.

Which put Delfuenso on the spot. She couldn’t put the guy on the line with the mothership. The Hoover Building was not going to back her up. Not then. Too cautious. The suits were not going to approve a half-assed night-time guerrilla excursion by two women agents and a civilian. Too much risk, too much liability. Way outside the box. All that was left was the power of personal persuasion. Agent to agent. Face to face. And it wasn’t working.

So Reacher hit the guy. Not hard. Just a pop to the solar plexus, left-handed. No big deal. Just enough to fold him up a little. Then it was easy to pin his arms behind his back while Sorenson took his gun out of his shoulder holster, and his spare magazine off his belt, and his cell phone out of one pocket, and his car key out of another. Trapattoni gave up the same four items voluntarily. And with a degree of haste and alacrity.

Reacher put Bale in one armchair, and Trapattoni joined him in the other.

Delfuenso said, ‘Your job is to stay here and attend to your duties. You still have two guests, one of which is my daughter. I expect her to be kept safe and treated well.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘You gave up your service weapons. Where I come from, that’s a real big no-no. I’m sure it’s the same with you. Do what you’re told, and no one will ever know about it. Step out of line, and I’ll make sure everyone knows about it. You’ll be a laughing stock. Robbed by two women? You’ll be a punchline. You won’t get a job as a dog catcher.’

There was no answer, but Reacher sensed surrender.

They checked both cars and chose the one with more gas, which was Bale’s. Delfuenso drove. Sorenson sat next to her in the front. Reacher sprawled in the back. A hundred yards later the motherly type in the office played it Trapattoni’s way, not Bale’s. She undertook to look after Lucy, and she hit the button for the gate at the first time of asking. Delfuenso and Sorenson and Reacher got back in Bale’s car and drove away. Around the traffic circle, along the concrete roadway, and out through the gate.

They turned right, north towards the Interstate.

The gate closed again behind them.

A car, three phones, a Glock 19, two Glock 17s, and eighty-eight rounds of nine-millimetre ammunition.

Good to go.

THE TWENTY-PLUS MILES of dark rural two-lane was hard going at speed, so there was no meaningful conversation until they were through the cloverleaf and heading east on the highway. Bale’s car drove straight and steady, just like Sorenson’s, just like the Impala. Quiet and smooth and unburstable, even at close to a hundred miles an hour. Impressive, Reacher thought.

Delfuenso asked, ‘What exactly does a CIA head of station do for a living?’

Reacher said, ‘He’s responsible for a chunk of foreign territory. He lives near and works out of its biggest embassy. He deals with defectors and runs the local agents who work for us.’

Then he said, ‘Or she.’

Delfuenso asked, ‘Are there any women CIA heads of station?’

‘I have no idea. I was in the army.’

‘Did you have female superiors?’

‘Whenever fortune felt like smiling on me.’

‘Local agents who work for us? What kind?’

‘The usual kind. Foreign nationals who because of blackmail, bribes, or ideology betray their countries to us. Now and then the head of station meets with the most important of them.’

‘How?’

‘Just like in the movies. A lonely café, a back street, a city park, packages on the shelf in a phone booth.’

‘Why do they meet?’

‘The blackmailed need to hear the threats over again, and the bribed need their bags of money, and the ideologues need to be stroked. And the heads of station need to collect their information.’

‘How often do they meet?’

‘Could be once a week, could be once a month, whatever the individual agent needs.’

‘And the rest of the time this guy is posing as a trade attaché?’

‘Or a cultural attaché. Or anything else that doesn’t sound like very much work.’

‘And this is Russia and the Middle East and Pakistan and places like that, right?’

‘I sincerely hope so,’ Reacher said.

‘So why would a guy like that try to kill an FBI agent in Nebraska?’

Sorenson said, ‘He was an Arabic speaker. So maybe one of the Syrians from Wadiah had been one of his agents, back in Syria. Or maybe he still was. Maybe it was all to do with something they started overseas. But no Syrian came to that meet in the bunker, so maybe the CIA guy got suspicious. I mean, from his point of view everyone except his own guy is a bad guy, right?’

‘Except that the CIA isn’t allowed to operate inside America.’

‘Well, maybe it’s super-covert. Maybe they were going to terminate the guy. Because of unfinished business or something. They’re not going to share that with us.’

Delfuenso said, ‘But the guy could tell the difference between McQueen and his best Syrian buddy, right? Or what? If he couldn’t terminate the right guy, he might as well just go right ahead and terminate the wrong guy instead? Did I miss that on the CIA web site?’

Reacher said, ‘They weren’t going to terminate anyone. They wouldn’t send a head of station to do that. They have specialists. They call them wet boys. That’s who they would have sent. And a wet boy wouldn’t have brought his Boy Scout knife. He’d have brought an altogether different kind of knife. And taken an altogether different kind of approach. We wouldn’t even have identified the dead guy yet. Not by fingerprints or face or dental work, anyway.’

Sorenson said, ‘OK, so it was just a regular meet. No drama. The CIA head of station was running his agent.’

‘But his agent didn’t show. So why didn’t he just bullshit his way out of there? Why pull the knife?’

‘Maybe he’s not a good bullshitter.’

‘He’s a CIA head of station. There are no better bullshitters.’

‘Maybe he knew McQueen from somewhere.’

‘McQueen didn’t know him.’

‘It doesn’t have to be a two-way street. So maybe the guy knew McQueen was FBI, and then he sees him inside a terrorist organization, in which case I guess most people are going think traitor well before they think undercover .’

‘So it was all an innocent accident? Mistaken identity?’

‘Some things are simpler than they appear.’

Reacher nodded.

‘I know,’ he said.

Delfuenso said, ‘But none of this explains why a CIA head of station showed up posing as a member of a terrorist group. That’s who King and McQueen were sent to meet, don’t forget.’

‘Maybe he was undercover too,’ Sorenson said.

‘The CIA isn’t allowed to operate inside America.’

‘This is the modern world, Karen.’

‘Two simultaneous undercover operations in the same place at the same time? What would be the odds?’

‘Not too long,’ Reacher said. ‘Not necessarily. All it takes is two people to get interested in the same interesting thing.’

‘Would they use a head of station for that kind of work?’

‘They might. He would be unknown back here. He’d have the skills. He’d be used to the life. He’d speak the language. As far as the paperwork goes, they might say he’s between postings.’