Lee Child - Personal

Further down the pile, again, many were completely destroyed, but the good ones were pretty damn good, including three with the hole right between my eyes, one fractionally left, one fractionally right, the last dead centre.

From fourteen hundred yards.

More than three-quarters of a mile.

Casey Nice asked, ‘How old is the photograph?’

I said, ‘Could be twenty years.’

‘So he could have had the file before he went to jail.’

I shook my head. ‘Some of those bad things happened after he went away. He got the file when he came out.’

‘He seems really mad at you.’

‘You think?’

‘He’s in London.’

‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘Why would he be? If he’s this mad at me, why would he take time out overseas?’

‘Lots of reasons. First is money, because this thing is going to be a real big payday, believe me. But second is he can’t find you. You’re a hard man to pin down. He could look for ever. He didn’t think that far ahead.’

‘Maybe. But right now he doesn’t need to find me. I showed up at his door. And the odds are three in four he’s here.’

‘He could have shot us a dozen times. But he hasn’t. Because he isn’t here.’

‘Was he ever? Where’s his stuff?’

‘I’m guessing he doesn’t have stuff. Maybe a bedroll and a backpack. A monkish existence, or whatever they call people who meditate. He packed it up and took it with him to Paris. And then to London.’

Which made some kind of sense. I nodded. Kott had nothing for fifteen years. Maybe he had gotten used to it. I took a good long look at the target with the dead-centre hole, right between my eyes, and then I said, ‘Let’s go.’

The walk back to the red truck felt better than I thought it might. Because of the trees. It was geometrically impossible to hit a long-range target through a forest. There would always be a tree in the way, to stop the bullet, or deflect it uncontrollably. Safe enough.

There was no width to turn the truck around, and we didn’t want to back all the way down, so we drove on up to the house again and U-turned on the gravel patch, and came back facing the right way. We saw nothing and no one on the track, and the two-lane road was empty. We told the navigation device to take us back to the airport, and it set about doing so. The same fifty miles, in reverse.

I said, ‘I apologize.’

She said, ‘For what?’

‘I made a category error. I took you to be a State Department person loaned out to the CIA for exposure and experience. And therefore maybe a little out of your depth. But it’s the other way around, isn’t it? You’re a CIA agent loaned out to the State Department. For exposure and experience. Of passports and visas and all kinds of forms. Therefore not out of your depth at all.’

‘What gave me away?’

‘A couple of things. The infantry hand signal. You knew that.’

She nodded. ‘Lots of time at Fort Benning.’

‘And you were all business.’

‘Didn’t Shoemaker tell you I’m tougher than I look?’

‘I thought he was trying to justify a crazy risk.’

‘And by the way, the State Department does way more than passports and visas. It does all kinds of things. Including it supervises operations like these.’

‘How? This operation is O’Day and two CIA people. You and Scarangello. The State Department isn’t involved.’

‘I’m the State Department. Like you said. Temporarily. And theoretically.’

‘Are you keeping your temporary and theoretical boss in the loop?’

‘Not completely.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because this is too important for the State Department. If it’s the Brit or the Russian or the Israeli, then sure, we’ll let State take the victory lap, but until we know that for certain, this remains a closely held project.’

‘Is that what you call it now?’

‘Top secret was already taken.’

‘It’s headline news. How top secret can it be?’

‘Tomorrow it will be yesterday’s news. The French are going to make an arrest. That should calm things down.’

‘Who are they going to arrest?’

‘Some patsy or other. They’ll find some guy willing to play a wild-eyed terrorist for three weeks. In exchange for favours elsewhere. I imagine they’re casting the role right now. Which will give us time and space to work.’

‘It’s fourteen hundred yards,’ I said. ‘That’s what matters. Not which one is shooting. They need a perimeter. Call it at least a mile.’

‘Or they could hide in holes in the ground. Which they might have to, sooner or later. But until then we prefer a proactive approach. We need John Kott in custody. Certainly we don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t get his guy.’

‘How are the others doing?’

‘You heard what O’Day said this morning. They have names and photographs and histories.’

‘Is that all?’

‘They’ve got what we’ve got. It’s a level playing field so far.’

We drove on, and eventually returned the truck and hiked over to a wire gate in a wire fence, and then a golf cart picked us up and drove us to our plane. Two hours later we were back at Pope, where we found out the playing field wasn’t level any more.

THE PLAYING FIELD wasn’t level anymore because the Israelis had found their guy. Mr Rozan had been located. He had been on vacation. The Red Sea. The watchers had missed his departure. But now he was back. His movements had been traced and all kinds of bar staff and restaurant workers had confirmed his story. It was watertight. He had not been in Paris. He was not a possibility. He was off the list.

‘Which makes our task slightly more urgent,’ O’Day said. He liked afternoon conferences too. We were all in the same upstairs room again, with the pushed-together tables. O’Day, Shoemaker, and Scarangello, all in position, with me and Casey Nice as late arrivals, jet whine still whistling in our ears. We told them what we had found in Arkansas, and we gave them the dust and the grit, in an evidence bag, not the pill bottle. Shoemaker was disappointed there had been no just-in-case surveillance. He had wanted the bait ploy to work. And then O’Day said he figured Kott’s obsession with me was understandable.

I said, ‘I’d like to know how he got my file.’

He said, ‘A friend in the bureaucracy, presumably. It’s a routine file in routine storage in Missouri.’

‘He has no friends in the bureaucracy. He didn’t even have friends in his unit. None of them would lie for him.’

‘Then he bought the file.’

‘With what? He was just out of Leavenworth. And then he went out in his back yard and fired about a thousand fifty-calibre rounds, which can be five bucks a pop. Even in Arkansas. Where did he get that kind of money?’

‘We’ll look into it.’

‘How? You’re not equipped. Enough with the national security bullshit. This is a police inquiry now. He had a fourteen-hundredyard practice range and a fourteen-hundred-yard money shot. Is that a coincidence? Or was that apartment balcony in Paris selected long ago? Did he train for it specifically? In which case this could be a conspiracy already dating back most of a year. We need data. As in, for a start, who owns that apartment in Paris?’

‘Are you volunteering to be our policeman?’

‘I thought I was bait.’

‘You could be both.’

‘I never volunteer for anything. Soldier’s basic rule.’

‘Maybe you should. You won’t rest easy. Not after seeing what you saw.’

‘There could be a dozen people in the world still real mad at me. Why would I care? None of them is ever going to find me.’

‘We found you.’

‘That’s different. You think I would answer an ad from Kott?’