Ли Чайлд - Blue Moon

‘Good work.’

‘Thank Barton. He knows a saxophone player with a day job in the department of buildings.’

Apparently Vantresca had called room service on arrival, because a waiter showed up with a cart full of things to eat and drink. Finger sandwiches, cupcakes, a plate of cookies still warm from the microwave oven. Plus water, and soda, and iced tea, and hot tea, and best of all hot coffee, in a tall chromium flask that flashed in the sun. They ate and drank together. Vantresca said he had already sent a biohazard clean-up crew to the Shevicks’ house, and a drywall guy, and a painter. He said they could go home in the morning. If they wanted. They said they did, very much. They said thank you for fixing the holes.

Then they looked at Reacher, a question in their eyes.

‘Close of business today,’ he said. ‘Watch out for a wire transfer.’

Aaron hesitated a second, politely, and asked, ‘How big?’

‘I’m pretty much a round-figures type of guy. If it’s too much, give the rest away. To people in the same situation. Maybe some to those lawyers. Julian Harvey Wood, Gino Vettoretto, and Isaac Mehay-Byford. They’re doing good work, for guys with so many names.’

Then he got out the envelope from the pawn shop. The wedding bands, the small solitaires, the watch with the broken crystal. He gave it to Maria. He said, ‘They went out of business.’

Then they left, Reacher, Abby, Barton, Hogan, Vantresca, riding down in the elevator together, stepping out to the street.

Half a block short of the office tower’s street-level lobby was a single-wide coffee shop with tables in back. They went in and crowded knee to knee, five people at a four-top. Vantresca and Barton ran through what they knew. The building had been completed three years previously. It had twenty floors. It had a total of forty suites. So far it was a commercial failure. The local economy was uncertain. The unknown corporation had gotten a great deal on eighteen, nineteen and twenty. The only other tenants were a dentist, down on three, and a commercial real estate broker, on two. The rest was empty.

Reacher asked Hogan, ‘What would the Marine Corps do?’

‘Most likely evacuate the broker and the dentist and then set the building on fire. Either the high-floor targets would make it down the emergency stairs, or they would get burned up where they were. Either way a win-win, for not much effort.’

Reacher asked Vantresca, ‘What would the armoured divisions do?’

‘Standard urban doctrine is shoot out the ground-floor walls, so the building falls directly in on itself. You need to keep the streets clear of rubble if you can. Anything still moving a minute later, you hit it with the machine gun.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

Vantresca asked, ‘What would the MPs do?’

‘No doubt something subtle and ingenious. Given our comparative lack of resources.’

‘Like what?’

Reacher thought hard for a minute, and then he told them.

Five minutes later Barton left the coffee shop for an imaginary dental appointment. Reacher and the others stayed where they were. It was a convenient base. Close by. No doubt the counterman was a west side informant, but there was no one left to inform. Reacher saw him make a couple of calls. Apparently they weren’t answered. The guy stared at his phone, puzzled.

Then Hogan and Vantresca left for an imaginary discussion about commercial real estate. Reacher and Abby stayed at the table. Theirs were the only faces on Ukrainian phones. They figured they better not start the party too early.

The counterman tried a third call.

It wasn’t answered.

Abby said, ‘I guess this means we can go back to my place tonight.’

‘No reason why not,’ Reacher said.

‘Unless you leave before tonight.’

‘Depends what happens. All five of us might be running.’

‘Suppose we aren’t.’

‘Then we’ll go back to your place tonight.’

‘For how long?’

He said, ‘What would be your answer to that question?’

She said, ‘I guess not for ever.’

‘That’s my answer too. Except my for ever horizon is closer than most. Full disclosure.’

‘How close?’

He looked out the window, at the street, at the brick, at the afternoon shadows. He said, ‘I already feel like I’ve been here for ever.’

‘So you’ll leave anyway.’

‘Come with me.’

‘What’s wrong with sticking around?’

‘What’s wrong with not?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m not complaining. I just want to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘How long we’ve got. So I can make the most of it.’

‘You don’t want to come with me?’

‘Seems to me I have a choice of two things. Either a good memory with a beginning and an end, or a long slow fizzle, where I get tired of motels and hitchhiking and walking. I choose the memory. Of a successful experiment. Much rarer than you think. We did good, Reacher.’

‘We’re not at the end yet. Don’t count your chickens.’

‘You worried?’

‘Professionally concerned.’

‘Maria told me what you said to her. One day you’re going to lose. Just not today.’

‘I was trying to cheer her up. That was all. She was really feeling it. I would have said anything.’

‘I think you meant it.’

‘It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred per cent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.’

‘Sounds empowering.’

‘It’s the army. What they really mean is, if you fail today, it’s completely your own fault.’

‘We’ve done OK so far.’

‘But now the game has changed. Now we’re fighting Moscow. Not just a bunch of pimps and thieves.’

‘Same actual people.’

‘But a better system, guaranteed. Better planning. The pick of the litter. Fewer weaknesses. Fewer mistakes.’

‘Sounds bad.’

‘I’m guessing about fifty-fifty. Win or lose. Which is OK. I like the simplicity.’

‘How do we do it?’

‘Intelligence, planning, execution. First we think like them. Which isn’t difficult. We studied them endlessly. Vantresca could tell you. They’re smart people, organized, bureaucratic, cautious, careful, scientific, and painfully rational.’

‘So how can we win?’

‘We can exploit the rational part of their natures,’ Reacher said. ‘We can do something a rational person would never even consider. Something completely unhinged.’

Then the first intelligence report came back. Barton stepped in, and nodded a greeting, and headed to the counter. He got coffee, and walked over to the table. He sat down, but before he could say anything the second report arrived. Hogan and Vantresca, stepping in together. They came straight to the table. They jostled for space and squeezed themselves in. Five people at a four-top.

Barton said, ‘The front wall of the lobby is all glass. You go in a revolving door. The back wall of the lobby is the front face of the building’s core. There are five openings in it. A fire stair door, three elevators, and another fire stair door. Between you and them are security turnstiles and a security desk. Behind the security desk is what looks to me like a regular civilian rent-a-cop.’

‘Is that all?’ Reacher said.

‘I guess it’s all that the building provides,’ Barton said. ‘But there are also four men in suits and ties. I guess provided by someone else. Two of them were waiting just inside the revolving door. They asked my business. I said the dentist. They stepped aside and waved me forward, towards the security desk. Where the rent-a-cop asked my business all over again.’