Ли Чайлд: Blue Moon

The city looked small on a map of America. It was just a tiny polite dot, near a red threadlike road that ran across an otherwise empty half inch of paper. But up close and on the ground it had half a million people. It covered more than a hundred square miles. It had nearly a hundred and fifty thousand households. It had more than two thousand acres of parkland. It spent half a billion dollars a year, and raised almost as much through taxes and fees and charges. It was big enough that the police department was twelve hundred strong.

And it was big enough that organized crime was split two separate ways. The west of the city was run by Ukrainians. The east was run by Albanians. The demarcation line between them was gerrymandered as tight as a congressional district. Nominally it followed Center Street, which ran north to south and divided the city in half, but it zigged and zagged and ducked in and out to include or exclude specific blocks and parts of specific neighbourhoods, wherever it was felt historic precedents justified special circumstances. Negotiations had been tense. There had been minor turf wars. There had been some unpleasantness. But eventually an agreement had been reached. The arrangement seemed to work. Each side kept out of the other’s way. For a long time there had been no significant contact between them.

Until one morning in May. The Ukrainian boss parked in a garage on Center Street, and walked east into Albanian territory. Alone. He was fifty years old and built like a bronze statue of an old hero, tall, hard, and solid. He called himself Gregory, which was as close as Americans could get to pronouncing his given name. He was unarmed, and he was wearing tight pants and a tight T-shirt to prove it. Nothing in his pockets. Nothing concealed. He turned left and right, burrowing deep, heading for a backstreet block, where he knew the Albanians ran their businesses out of a suite of offices in back of a lumber yard.

He was followed all the way, from his first step across the line. Calls were made ahead, so that when he arrived he was faced by six silent figures, all standing still in the half circle between the sidewalk and the lumber yard’s gate. Like chess pieces in a defensive formation. He stopped and held his arms out from his sides. He turned around slowly, a full 360, his arms still held wide. Tight pants, tight T-shirt. No lumps. No bulges. No knife. No gun. Unarmed, in front of six guys who undoubtedly weren’t. But he wasn’t worried. To attack him unprovoked was a step the Albanians wouldn’t take. He knew that. Courtesies had to be observed. Manners were manners.

One of the six silent figures stepped up. Partly a blocking manoeuvre, partly ready to listen.

Gregory said, ‘I need to speak with Dino.’

Dino was the Albanian boss.

The guy said, ‘Why?’

‘I have information.’

‘About what?’

‘Something he needs to know.’

‘I could give you a phone number.’

‘This is a thing that needs to be said face to face.’

‘Does it need to be said right now?’

‘Yes, it does.’

The guy said nothing for a spell, and then he turned and ducked through a personnel door set low in a metal roll-up gate. The other five guys formed up tighter, to replace his missing presence. Gregory waited. The five guys watched him, part wary, part fascinated. It was a unique occasion. Once in a lifetime. Like seeing a unicorn. The other side’s boss. Right there. Previous negotiations had been held on neutral ground, on a golf course way out of town, on the other side of the highway.

Gregory waited. Five long minutes later the guy came back out through the personnel door. He left it open. He gestured. Gregory walked forward and ducked and stepped inside. He smelled fresh pine and heard the whine of a saw.

The guy said, ‘We need to search you for a wire.’

Gregory nodded and stripped off his T-shirt. His torso was thick and hard and matted with hair. No wire. The guy checked the seams in his T-shirt and handed it back. Gregory put it on and ran his fingers through his hair.

The guy said, ‘This way.’

He led Gregory deep into the corrugated shed. The other five guys followed. They came to a plain metal door. Beyond it was a windowless space set up like a boardroom. Four laminate tables had been pushed together end to end, like a barrier. In a chair in the centre on the far side was Dino. He was younger than Gregory by a year or two, and shorter by an inch or two, but wider. He had dark hair, and a knife scar on the left side of his face, shorter above the eyebrow and longer from cheekbone to chin, like an upside down exclamation point.

The guy who had done the talking pulled out a chair for Gregory opposite Dino, and then tracked around and sat down at Dino’s right hand, like a faithful lieutenant. The other five split three and two and sat alongside them. Gregory was left alone on his side of the table, facing seven blank faces. At first no one spoke. Then eventually Dino asked, ‘To what do I owe this great pleasure?’

Manners were manners.

Gregory said, ‘The city is about to get a new police commissioner.’

‘We know this,’ Dino said.

‘Promoted from within.’

‘We know this,’ Dino said again.

‘He has promised a crackdown, against both of us.’

‘We know this,’ Dino said, for the third time.

‘We have a spy in his office.’

Dino said nothing. He hadn’t known that.

Gregory said, ‘Our spy found a secret file on a standalone hard drive hidden in a drawer.’

‘What file?’

‘His operational plan for cracking down on us.’

‘Which is what?’

‘It’s short on detail,’ Gregory said. ‘In parts it’s extremely sketchy. But not to worry. Because day by day and week by week he’s filling in more and more parts of the puzzle. Because he’s getting a constant stream of inside information.’

‘From where?’

‘Our spy searched long and hard and found a different file.’

‘What different file?’

‘It was a list.’

‘A list of what?’

‘The police department’s most trusted confidential informants,’ Gregory said.

‘And?’

‘There were four names on the list.’

‘And?’

‘Two of them were my own men,’ Gregory said.

No one spoke.

Eventually Dino asked, ‘What have you done with them?’

‘I’m sure you can imagine.’

Again no one spoke.

Then Dino asked, ‘Why are you telling me this? What has this got to do with me?’

‘The other two names on the list are your men.’

Silence.

Gregory said, ‘We share a predicament.’

Dino asked, ‘Who are they?’

Gregory said the names.

Dino said, ‘Why are you telling me about them?’

‘Because we have an agreement,’ Gregory said. ‘I’m a man of my word.’

‘You stand to benefit enormously if I go down. You would run the whole city.’

‘I stand to benefit only on paper,’ Gregory said. ‘Suddenly I realize I should be happy with the status quo. Where would I find enough honest men to run your operations? Apparently I can’t even find enough to run my own.’

‘And apparently neither can I.’

‘So we’ll fight each other tomorrow. Today we’ll respect the agreement. I’m sorry to have brought you embarrassing news. But I embarrassed myself also. In front of you. I hope that counts for something. We share this predicament.’

Dino nodded. Said nothing.

Gregory said, ‘I have a question.’

‘Then ask it,’ Dino said.

‘Would you have told me, like I told you, if the spy had been yours, and not mine?’