Ли Чайлд - Without Fail

“Reacher,” Neagley called. Soft voice, with some kind of strain in it. He stepped away from Nendick and joined her at the credenza. She handed him something. It was an envelope. There was a Polaroid photograph in it. The photograph showed a woman sitting on a chair. Her face was white and panicked. Her eyes were wide. Her hair was dirty. It was Nendick’s wife, looking about a hundred years older than the pictures in the living room. She was holding up a copy of USA Today . The masthead was right under her chin. Neagley passed him another envelope. Another Polaroid in it. Same woman. Same pose. Same paper, but a different day.

“Proofs of life,” Reacher said.

Neagley nodded. “But look at this. What’s this proof of?”

She passed him another envelope. A padded brown mailer. Something soft and white in it. Underwear. One pair. Discolored. Slightly grimy.

“Great,” he said. Then she passed him a fourth envelope. Another padded brown mailer. Smaller. There was a box in it. It was a tiny neat cardboard thing like a jeweler might put a pair of earrings in. There was a pad of cotton wool in it. The cotton wool was browned with old blood, because lying on top of it was a fingertip. It had been clipped off at the first knuckle by something hard and sharp. Garden shears, maybe. It was probably from the little finger of the left hand, judging by the size and the curve. There was still paint on the nail. Reacher looked at it for a long moment. Nodded and handed it back to Neagley. Walked around and faced Nendick head on across the breakfast bar. Looked straight into his eyes. Gambled.

“Stuyvesant,” he called. “And Froelich. Go wait in the hallway.”

They stood still for a second, surprised. He glared hard at them. They shuffled obediently out of the room.

“Neagley,” he called. “Come over here with me.”

She walked around and stood quiet at his side. He leaned down and put his elbows on the counter. Put his face level with Nendick’s. Spoke soft.

“OK, they’re gone,” he said. “It’s just us now. And we’re not Secret Service. You know that, right? You never saw us before the other day. So you can trust us. We won’t screw up like they will. We come from a place where you’re not allowed to screw up. And we come from a place where they don’t have rules. So we can get her back. We know how to do this. We’ll get the bad guys and we’ll bring her back. Safe. Without fail, OK? That’s a promise. Me to you.”

Nendick leaned his head back and opened his mouth. His lips were dry. They were flecked with sticky foam. Then he closed his mouth. Tight. Clamped his jaw hard. So hard his lips were compressed into a bloodless thin line. He brought one shaking hand out from under his arm and put the thumb and forefinger together like he was holding something small. He drew the small imaginary thing sideways across his lips, slowly, like he was closing a zipper. He put his hand back under his arm. Shook. Stared at the wall. There was crazy fear in his eyes. Some kind of absolute, uncontrolled terror. He started rocking again. Started coughing. He was coughing and choking in his throat. He wouldn’t open his mouth. It was clamped tight. He was bucking and shaking on the stool. Clutching his sides. Gulping desperately inside his clamped mouth. His eyes were wild and staring. They were pools of horror. Then they rolled up inside his head and the whites showed and he pitched backward off the stool.

They did what they could at the scene, but it was useless. Nendick just lay on the kitchen floor, not moving, not really conscious, but not really unconscious either. He was in some kind of a fugue state. Like suspended animation. He was pale and damp with perspiration. His breathing was shallow. His pulse was weak. He was responsive to touch and light but nothing else. An hour later he was in a guarded room at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a tentative diagnosis of psychosis-induced catatonia.

“Paralyzed with fear, in layman’s language,” the doctor said. “It’s a genuine medical condition. We see it most often in superstitious populations, like Haiti, or parts of Louisiana. Voodoo country, in other words. The victims get cold sweats, pallor, loss of blood pressure, near-unconsciousness. Not the same thing as adrenaline-induced panic. It’s a neurogenic process. The heart slows, the large blood vessels in the abdomen take blood away from the brain, most voluntary function shuts down.”

“What kind of threat could do that to a person?” Froelich asked, quietly.

“One that the person sincerely believes,” the doctor answered. “That’s the key. The victim has to be convinced. My guess is his wife’s kidnappers described to him what they would do to her if he talked. Then your arrival triggered a crisis, because he was afraid he would talk. Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he knew he couldn’t afford to. I wouldn’t want to speculate about the exact nature of the threat against his wife.”

“Will he be OK?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends toward heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress is truly enormous.”

“When can we talk to him?”

“No time soon. Depends on him, basically. He needs to come around.”

“It’s very important. He’s got critical information.”

The doctor shook his head.

“Could be days,” he said. “Could be never.”

They waited a long fruitless hour during which nothing changed. Nendick just lay there inert, surrounded by beeping machines. He breathed in and out, but that was all. So they gave it up and left him there and drove back to the office in the dark and the silence. Regrouped in the windowless conference room and faced the next big decision.

“Armstrong’s got to be told,” Neagley said. “They’ve staged their demonstration. No place to go now except stage the real thing.”

Stuyvesant shook his head. “We never tell them. It’s a rigid policy. Has been for a hundred and one years. We’re not going to change it now.”

“Then we should limit his exposure,” Froelich said.

“No,” Stuyvesant said. “That’s an admission of defeat in itself, and it’s a slippery slope. We pull out once, we’ll be pulling out forever, every single threat we get. And that must not happen. What must happen is that we defend him to the best of our ability. So we start planning, now. What are we defending against? What do we know?”

“That two men are already dead,” Froelich replied.

“Two men and one woman,” Reacher said. “Look at the statistics. Kidnapped is the same thing as dead, ninety-nine times in a hundred.”

“The photographs were proof of life,” Stuyvesant said.

“Until the poor guy delivered. Which he did almost two weeks ago.”

“He’s still delivering. He’s not talking. So I’m going to keep on hoping.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Know anything about her?” Neagley asked.

Stuyvesant shook his head. “Never met her. Don’t even know her name. I hardly know Nendick, either. He’s just some technical guy I sometimes see around.”

The room went quiet.

“FBI has got to be told as well,” Neagley said. “This isn’t just about Armstrong now. There’s a kidnap victim dead or in serious danger. That’s the Bureau’s jurisdiction, no question. Plus the interstate homicide. That’s their bag too.”

The room stayed very quiet. Stuyvesant sighed and looked around at each of the others, slowly and carefully, one at a time.

“Yes,” he said. “I agree. It’s gone too far. They need to know. God knows I don’t want to, but I’ll tell them. I’ll let us take the hit. I’ll hand everything over to them.”