Lee Child - Personal

‘You’d leave him out there?’

Socratic.

I said, ‘I’m not his parole officer.’

He said, ‘You’re in pretty good shape for your age, Reacher. No doubt because your chosen lifestyle gives you plenty of opportunity for exercise. Walking, mostly, I suppose. Which is the best kind of exercise, they tell me. But my guess is it’s not really a chore. It’s part of the appeal, isn’t it? Open roads, sunny days, far horizons. Or the city, with noises and lights, and hustle and bustle, and a freak show everywhere you look. You like walking. You enjoy the freedom.’

I said, ‘What’s your point?’

‘It’s not the same with a sniper out there.’

Joan Scarangello looked straight at me, daring me to disagree.

O’Day said, ‘Especially with a sniper so batshit crazy he does yoga for fifteen years and then draws a picture on his bedroom wall.’

I said nothing.

He said, ‘What type of police inquiries would you make?’

‘He left his truck at home. Therefore he was picked up. Not by a car service, because he has no phone and there’s no cell signal. It was prearranged. As was everything, obviously, which means people have been up and down that driveway for months. Someone must have seen something.’

‘The neighbour didn’t.’

‘So he says now. He’s been paid off. And coached.’

‘You think?’

I nodded. ‘He had to admit knowing his neighbour. Too weird not to, for Arkansas. But he was told to clam up about the comings and goings. As soon as I asked about foreigners hanging around, he changed the subject. He insulted the Marine Corps and started leering at Ms Nice.’

O’Day turned to Casey Nice and said, ‘Is that what happened?’

She said, ‘I dealt with it.’

‘What did he say about the Marines?’

‘Showboating glory hunters.’

‘Was he a navy man?’

‘Air force.’

O’Day nodded sagely and turned back to me. He said, ‘Conclusion?’

I said, ‘The neighbour’s got a bag of cash in the back of his closet.’

‘Untraceable.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. But he knows who gave it to him. And more of the same cash is in some ammo dealer’s register. Who will remember selling a thousand fifty-calibre rounds. That’s a big order.’

‘Could be he went to many different dealers.’

‘Exactly. And it could be many different folks made the buys, to keep it clean. And the more guys, the more flights in and out of Little Rock and Texarkana, and the more car rentals, and the more gas bought at the local stations, and maybe speeding tickets and parking tickets and video in cop car dashboards, and the more breakfasts and lunches and dinners bought in the local restaurants, and the more nights spent in the local motels. All these things should be checked out. As well as what the neighbour knows.’

O’Day worked his mouth, opening it and closing it like he was rehearsing different answers, but in the end all he said was, ‘OK.’

I said, ‘I can’t go do it. I have no status. No one would talk to me.’

‘The FBI will do it.’

‘I thought this thing was top secret. Or closely held.’

‘Divide and conquer,’ O’Day said. ‘They can all have a small piece of it. As long as no one has enough to see the whole.’

‘Then I recommend they start yesterday.’

‘Tomorrow’s the best I can do.’ He made a note on a piece of paper. He said, ‘The Russians are getting nowhere. Comrade Datsev has disappeared completely. The British think their boy Carson is travelling on a passport recently and fraudulently acquired. So they’re looking at people with brand-new passports who travelled to Paris during the relevant time frame. Trains, planes, automobiles and boats. They have nearly a thousand names.’

‘Where was Carson last seen?’

‘At home, a month ago. A routine drive-by, by Special Branch.’

‘What about Datsev?’

‘Similar, in Moscow. About a month ago. The difference is neither one has been traced to a fourteen-hundred-yard practice range. I have a bad feeling this one is down to us.’

‘Carson or Datsev could have trained overseas. They wouldn’t need as long as Kott. He had catching up to do. Maybe they all got together somewhere. Maybe there was an audition before the audition. Maybe there was a three-way competition, winner gets the job.’

O’Day said, ‘Maybe a lot of things.’

I said, ‘Do we have photographs?’

He opened a red file folder and took out four head shots, all colour. He slipped one out of the pile and discarded it. A curly-haired guy, with a tan and a guileless smile. Rozan, presumably, the Israeli, no longer a suspect. He skimmed the remaining three across the table, in my direction. First up was a shavenheaded guy of about fifty, with a face as blank as a two-by-four, and dark eyes that tilted slightly at the outer corners. Mongolian blood in there somewhere.

‘Fyodor Datsev,’ O’Day said. ‘Fifty-two years old. Born in Siberia.’

Then came a guy who might have started out pale, but who had gotten lined and darkened by sun and wind. Short brown hair, a watchful gaze, a busted nose, and a half-smile that was either ironic or threatening, depending on how you chose to look at it.

‘William Carson,’ O’Day said. ‘Born in London, forty-eight years old.’

Last up was John Kott. Some people got bigger with age, bloated and doughy, like Shoemaker for instance, but Kott had gotten smaller, wirier, boiled down to muscle and sinew. His Czech cheekbones were prominent, and his mouth was a tight line. Only his eyes had gotten bigger. They blazed out at me.

O’Day said, ‘That’s his prison release picture. The most recent we have.’

An unsavoury trio. I butted the photographs into a stack and slid them back.

I said, ‘How are the Brits doing with their moat?’

Scarangello said, ‘They’re not going to enforce a mile perimeter. You know how densely populated Great Britain is. It would be like emptying Manhattan. It’s not going to happen.’

‘So what next?’

O’Day said, ‘You go to Paris.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘As bait or a cop?’

‘Both. But mostly we need eyeballs on the crime scene. In case something was missed.’

‘Why would they show me anything? I’m nobody.’

‘Your name will get you in anywhere. I called ahead. Anything they’d show me, they’ll show you. Such is the power of O’Day. Especially now.’

I said nothing.

Shoemaker said, ‘You speak French, am I right?’

I said, ‘Yes.’

‘And English.’

‘A little.’

‘Russian?’

‘Why?’

‘The Brits and the Russians are sending people too. You’re bound to meet. Get what you can from them, but don’t give anything away.’

‘Maybe they’ve been given the same instructions.’

O’Day said, ‘We need a CIA presence,’ and Casey Nice sat forward in her chair.

Joan Scarangello said, ‘I’ll go.’

THEY GAVE US the same plane, but a fresh crew. Two new guys in the cockpit, and a new flight attendant, this one a woman, all of them in air force fatigues. I got on board straight out of the shower, in my new clothes from Arkansas, and Scarangello followed me five minutes later, showered too, in another black skirt suit. She had a small wheeled suitcase with her, and a purse. It was going to be an overnight flight, seven hours in the air plus six time zones, which would get us in at nine in the morning, French time. My usual armchair had been laid flat and butted up against the armchair opposite, which had also been laid flat, to make a couch. The same thing had been done to the pair of chairs on the other side of the cabin. There were pillows and sheets and blankets. Two long thin beds, separated by a narrow aisle. Which worked for me. Scarangello didn’t look so sure. She was a woman of a certain age and a certain type. I think she might have appreciated a little more privacy.