Ли Чайлд - Persuader

“Drive north to Saco,” I said. “Right now. Meet me in the big brick mall on the river island in a coffee shop called Café Café. Last one there buys.”

I finished my candy bar as I drove south. The Saab rode hard and it was noisy compared to Beck’s Cadillac or Harley’s Lincoln. It was old and worn. The carpets were thin and loose. It had six figures on the clock. But it got the job done. It had decent tires and the wipers worked. It made it through the rain OK. And it had nice big mirrors. I watched them all the way. Nobody came after me. I got to the coffee shop first. Ordered a tall espresso to wash the taste of chocolate out of my mouth.

Duffy showed up six minutes later. She paused in the doorway and looked around and then headed over toward me and smiled. She was in fresh jeans and another cotton shirt, but it was blue, not white. Over that was her leather jacket and over that was a battered old raincoat that was way too big for her. Maybe it was the old guy’s. Maybe she had borrowed it from him. It wasn’t Eliot’s. That was clear. He was smaller than she was. She must have come north not expecting bad weather.

“Is this place safe?” she said.

I didn’t answer.

“What?” she said.

“You’re buying,” I said. “You got here second. I’ll have another espresso. And you owe me for the first one.”

She looked at me blankly and then went to the counter and came back with an espresso for me and a cappuccino for herself. Her hair was a little wet. She had combed it with her fingers. She must have parked her car on the street and walked in through the rain and checked her reflection in a store window. She counted her change in silence and dealt me bills and coins equal to the price of my first cup. Coffee was another thing way more expensive than gasoline, up here in Maine. But I guessed it was the same everywhere.

“What’s up?” she said.

I didn’t answer.

“Reacher, what’s the matter?”

“You put another agent in eight weeks ago,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?”

“What I said.”

“What agent?”

“She died this morning. She underwent a radical double mastectomy without the benefit of anesthetic.”

She stared at me. “Teresa?”

I shook my head.

“Not Teresa,” I said. “The other one.”

“What other one?”

“Don’t bullshit me,” I said.

“What other one?”

I stared at her. Hard. Then softer. There was something about the light in that coffee shop. Maybe it was the way it came off all the blond wood and the brushed metal and the glass and the chrome. It was like X-ray light. Like a truth serum. It had shown me Elizabeth Beck’s genuine uncontrollable blush. Now I was expecting it to show me the exact same thing from Duffy. I was expecting it to show me a deep red blush of shame and embarrassment, because I had found her out. But it showed me total surprise instead. It was right there in her face. She had gone very pale. She had gone stark white with shock. It was like the blood had drained right out of her. And nobody can do that on command, any more than they can blush.

“What other one?” she said again. “There was only Teresa. What? Are you telling me she’s dead?”

“Not Teresa,” I said again. “There was another one. Another woman. She got hired on as a kitchen maid.”

“No,” she said. “There’s only Teresa.”

I shook my head again. “I saw the body. It wasn’t Teresa.”

“A kitchen maid?”

“She had an e-mail thing in her shoe,” I said. “Exactly the same as mine. The heel was scooped out by the same guy. I recognized the handiwork.”

“That’s not possible,” she said.

I looked straight at her.

“I would have told you,” she said. “Of course I would have told you. And I wouldn’t have needed you if I had another agent in there. Don’t you see that?”

I looked away. Looked back. Now I was embarrassed.

“So who the hell was she?” I asked.

She didn’t answer. Just started nudging her cup around and around on her saucer, prodding at the handle with her forefinger, turning it ten degrees at a time. The heavy foam and the chocolate dust stayed still while the cup rotated. She was thinking like crazy.

“Eight weeks ago?” she said.

I nodded.

“What alerted them?” she asked.

“They got into your computer,” I said. “This morning, or maybe last night.”

She looked up from her cup. “That’s what you were asking me about?”

I nodded. Said nothing.

“Teresa isn’t in the computer,” she said. “She’s off the books.”

“Did you check with Eliot?”

“I did better than check,” she said. “I searched the whole of his hard drive. And all of his files on the main server back in D.C. I’ve got total access everywhere. I looked for Teresa, Daniel, Justice, Beck, Maine, and undercover. And he didn’t write any of those words anywhere.”

I said nothing.

“How did it go down?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure,” I said. “I guess at first the computer told them you had somebody in there, and then it told them it was a woman. No name, no details. So they looked for her. And I think it was partly my fault they found her.”

“How?”

“I had a stash,” I said. “Your Glock, and the ammo, and a few other things. She found them. She hid them in the car she was using.”

Duffy was quiet for a second.

“OK,” she said. “And you’re thinking they searched the car and your stuff made her look bad, right?”

“I guess so.”

“But maybe they searched her first and found the shoe.”

I looked away. “I sincerely hope so.”

“Don’t beat up on yourself. It’s not your fault. As soon as they got into the computer it was only a matter of time for the first one they looked at. They both fit the bill. I mean, how many women were there to choose from? Presumably just her and Teresa. They couldn’t miss.”

I nodded. There was Elizabeth, too. And there was the cook. But neither one of them would figure very high on a list of suspicious persons. Elizabeth was the guy’s wife. And the cook had probably been there twenty years.

“But who was she?” I said.

She played with her cup until it was back in its starting position. The unglazed rim on the bottom made a tiny grinding sound.

“It’s obvious, I’m afraid,” she said. “Think of the time line here. Count backward from today. Eleven weeks ago I screwed up with the surveillance photographs. Ten weeks ago they pulled me off the case. But because Beck is a big fish I couldn’t give it up and so nine weeks ago I put Teresa in without their knowledge. But also because Beck is a big fish, and without my knowledge, they must have reassigned the case to someone else and eight weeks ago that someone else put this maid person in, right on top of Teresa. Teresa didn’t know the maid was coming and the maid didn’t know Teresa was already there.”

“Why would she have nosed into my stuff?”

“I guess she wanted to control the situation. Standard procedure. As far as she was concerned, you weren’t anybody kosher. You were just a loose cannon. Some kind of troublemaker. You were a cop-killer, and you were hiding weapons. Maybe she thought you were from a rival operation. She was probably thinking of selling you out to Beck. It would have enhanced her credibility with him. And she needed you out of the way, because she didn’t need extra complications. If she didn’t sell you out to Beck, she would have turned you in to us, as a cop-killer. I’m surprised she didn’t already.”

“Her battery was dead.”

She nodded. “Eight weeks. I guess kitchen maids don’t have good access to cell phone chargers.”