Lee Child - Personal

‘Doing what?’

‘Shooting the people we wanted shot.’

‘But not any more?’

Khenkin said, ‘Do you follow soccer?’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘The best players get big offers. One week they’re dirt poor in some little village, the next week they’re millionaires in Barcelona or Madrid or London or Manchester.’

‘And Datsev got an offer like that?’

‘He claimed to have a vest pocket full of them. He got mad at me when I wouldn’t match them. And then he disappeared. And now here we are.’

‘How good is he?’

‘Supernatural.’

‘Does he like fifty-calibre rounds?’

‘Horses for courses. At that range, sure.’

I said nothing.

Khenkin said, ‘But I don’t think it’s him.’

‘Why not?’

‘He wouldn’t agree to an audition. He has nothing to prove.’

‘So who do you think it is?’

‘I think it’s your guy. He has something to prove. He was in prison fifteen years.’

I heard a cell phone ring, and I waited for Khenkin to dig in his pocket to answer it, but he didn’t, and I realized the ringing was in my own pocket. The phone Scarangello had given me. I hauled it out and checked the screen. Blocked , it said. I pressed the green button and said, ‘Yes?’

It was Scarangello. She said, ‘Are you alone?’

I said, ‘No.’

‘Are we being overheard?’

‘By three separate governments, probably.’

‘Not on this phone,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I just heard from O’Day. The chromatograph tests are in on the fragments you brought back from Arkansas.’

‘And?’

‘They’re not the same bullets. Not armour piercing. They were match grade. Cast and machined for improved accuracy.’

‘American made?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Those things are six bucks each. Is O’Day following the money?’

‘The FBI is on it. But this is good, right? Overall?’

‘Could be worse,’ I said, and she clicked off, and I put the phone back in my pocket.

Khenkin asked me, ‘What’s American made and six bucks each?’

I said, ‘That sounds like the start of a joke.’

‘What’s the punchline?’

I didn’t answer, and then the same elderly waiter came by and Khenkin ordered coffee and white rolls, with butter and apricot jam. He spoke in French, again fluent but not rooted in any physical part of the world. After the waiter left again Khenkin turned back to me and said, ‘And how is General O’Day?’

I said, ‘You know him?’

‘Of him. We learned all about him. Studied him, in fact. Literally, in the classroom. He was a KGB role model.’

‘I’m not surprised. He’s doing OK. He’s the same as he ever was.’

‘I’m glad he’s back. I’m sure you are, too.’

‘Did he ever leave?’

Khenkin made a face, not yes , not no . He said, ‘We understood his star was fading. Periods of relative stability are bad for an old warhorse like him. A thing like this reminds people. There’s always a silver lining.’

Then another black Citroën nosed through the pedestrian chaos and turned into the alley. Driver in the front, passenger in the back. It stopped at the green door, and waited a beat. They’re expecting you, monsieur . The passenger climbed out. He was a solid guy, maybe forty or forty-five, a little sunburned, with cropped fair hair and a blunt, square face. He was wearing blue denim jeans, and a sweater, and a short canvas jacket. He had tan suede boots on his feet. Maybe British Army desert issue. His car drove away, and he glanced at the green door once, and then he turned away from it and scanned ahead, left, right, and he crossed rue Monsigny and came straight towards us.

He said, ‘Reacher and Khenkin, is it?’

‘You’re well informed,’ Khenkin said. ‘To already know our names, I mean.’

‘We try our best,’ the guy said. He sounded Welsh to me, way back. A little sing-song. He stuck out his hand and said, ‘Bennett. Pleased to meet you. No point in trying my first name. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He answered with a guttural sound, like he was a coal miner with a lung disease. I said, ‘OK, Bennett it is. You MI6?’

‘I can be if you want. They paid for my ticket. But it’s all pretty fluid at the moment.’

‘You know your guy Carson?’

‘We met many times.’

‘Where?’

‘Here and there. Like I said, it’s all pretty fluid now.’

‘You think it’s him?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the Frenchman is still alive. I think it’s your guy.’ Bennett sat down, on my right side, face-on to Khenkin on my left. The waiter showed up with Khenkin’s order, and Bennett asked him for the same thing. I asked for more coffee. The old guy looked happy. The tab was building. I hoped either Khenkin or Bennett had a wad of local currency. I didn’t.

Khenkin looked across at Bennett and asked, ‘Do you know the G8 venue?’

Bennett nodded. ‘By conventional standards it’s pretty safe. Maybe not so much, with Kott on the loose.’

I said, ‘It might not be Kott. You need to keep an open mind. Preconceptions are the enemy here.’

‘My mind is open so wide my brains are about to fall out. I still don’t think it’s Carson. Datsev, maybe.’

Khenkin said, ‘Then it wasn’t an audition, and we’re wasting our time on all this theoretical shit. Datsev wouldn’t audition. He’s too arrogant. If it was Datsev shooting, then it was what it was, which was a hit on the Frenchman, which failed, because of the glass, which also means we’re wasting our time, because the trail went cold days ago.’

The waiter came back, with Bennett’s coffee and bread, and a third pot of coffee for me, and across the street a minivan painted up in police department colours eased into the alley and stopped at the green door. A lone cop got out, in a blue uniform and a kepi hat, and he knocked on the green door and waited. A minute later a woman in a housedress opened up, and there followed a brief and confused conversation. I’ve come for the three guys , probably. They haven’t checked in yet , presumably. The cop stepped back and looked all around, up and down the alley, across rue Monsigny, and he tipped his hat forward and scratched the back of his head, and then his eyes came back to us in a kind of long-delayed slow-motion double take, and he thanked the woman in the housedress and set off towards us. I saw him make up his mind to pretend not to have been confused at all, to take the chance we were who he thought we were, and he stepped up to our table and said, ‘We have to go to the police station first.’ He said it in French, in a guttersnipe Paris accent the equivalent of a Brooklyn accent in old New York, or a Cockney accent in London, but without the charm, just a sulky put-upon whine, like the weight of an unfair world was pressing down on his shoulders.

Bennett said, ‘He says we have to go to the police station first.’

‘I know,’ Khenkin said.

I said nothing.

In the end Khenkin paid our tab, from a roll of crisp new euros that might have been genuine, or not. We all stood up and stretched and brushed crumbs from our clothes, and then we followed the cop across the street to the van. The sun was climbing higher in the morning sky, which was as blue as a robin’s egg, and I felt a little warmth, until the gusting wind snapped in again, like a cold hand on my shoulder. Khenkin’s expensive coat flapped around his knees, and then the gust died just as suddenly and the warmth came back, until we stepped into the shadow of the alley.