Lee Child - Personal

‘I said he wasn’t on the balcony. He was in the dining room, prone on the dining table, the end part of which was about the size of an eight-by-four sheet of plywood. He was aiming over his partner’s head. Think about it. Two snipers. One is cross-legged behind the planter. The other is prone on the table. They’ve been there thirty minutes. They’re in the zone. They’re breathing slow. They’re just floating along. The French doors are open. The one behind the planter is set up on the glass shield. He’s chambered with an armour-piercing round. He’s chosen the exact same aiming point Ms Nice did. Purely by instinct. Above and behind him, the one on the table is chambered with a match-grade bullet. He’s set up on the French guy. On his temple, probably. Maybe the guy’s wearing body armour under his suit. Not much of an impediment, probably, but why risk an unknown factor? The head is better. So it’s right there in the scope. He’s just waiting for the glass to break.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘So they beat feet and get the hell out of Dodge. But Kott stays in Paris. He’d prefer to stop the investigation right there. He camps out and watches that balcony, day after day. Or maybe he’s tipped off by the French. You should check. But whichever, finally he gets his chance. Three investigators show up. When he saw me in his scope he must have thought he’d won the lottery. His little heart must have gone pit-a-pat. Then he calmed down and pulled the trigger.’

‘And hit Khenkin by mistake?’

‘Not by mistake. He got me centre mass, a dead-on bull’s-eye, a no-doubter, an Olympic gold medal right there. I was a dead man from the moment he pulled the trigger. But the bullet was in the air nearly four seconds. And there was a gust of wind. I remember seeing it. I remember the muzzle flash, and then the snap of a flag, and then Khenkin got hit. Because the wind moved the bullet. Only about a foot and a half, over sixteen hundred yards. It nudged it just a little, right to left as it flew, from my chest to his head.’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘I can,’ I said. ‘If it was Datsev aiming at Khenkin, then Bennett would have been killed. He was next in line. You can’t argue with the wind. It was right there. The flags went crazy, and then stopped just as fast. It was gusty all morning. Check it out.’

O’Day was quiet for a spell. Then he said, ‘Two shooters. Jesus.’ Then he said, ‘We have to give this theory to London and Moscow. If we’re all behind it, that is. Rick?’

Shoemaker paused a beat, and nodded.

‘I’m in,’ he said.

‘Joan?’

Scarangello said, ‘Better to think two if it’s really one, than one if it’s really two. We should err on the side of caution.’

O’Day didn’t ask Casey Nice.

I said, ‘I’m going to London now.’

O’Day said, ‘Now?’

‘I don’t mind about the picture in his bedroom. I don’t even mind that the little runt just took a shot at me. That’s an occupational hazard, for a cop. But he was careless and he missed. He shouldn’t have tried on a windy day. He killed an innocent man. That’s different. That was a mistake. And like you said, I caught him once. I can catch him again.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’m going to twist his arm out of his shoulder socket and beat him to death with his own right hand.’

‘Negative,’ O’Day said. ‘You’ll go to London when I tell you to. This is a complex business. Preparations must be made.’

‘You can’t give me orders. I’m a civilian.’

‘Helping his country. Let’s do it right.’

I said nothing.

He said, ‘Khenkin wasn’t an innocent man. He was KGB. He did bad things.’

I said nothing.

He said, ‘I told you so.’

‘Told me what?’

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

Scarangello asked, ‘Will they work together in London too?’

‘Probably,’ I said. ‘It’s a target-rich environment. It would double their firepower.’

‘So who’s in the frame for the second spot? Carson or Datsev?’

‘I’m not a gambling man.’

‘If you were?’

‘Then Carson. Khenkin said Datsev wouldn’t audition. I didn’t read that as hype. It felt authentic to me.’

‘Wait until we’re ready,’ O’Day said. ‘Then you can go to London.’

THE CONFERENCE ENDED and I headed downstairs and out the red door, aiming for my corrugated quarters, but Casey Nice caught up to me steps later and said, ‘You want to go get some dinner?’ Which sounded like a fine idea to me. The last hot food I had eaten was the croque madame , in Paris, paid for by Yevgeniy Khenkin himself.

I said, ‘Where?’

‘Off post,’ she said. ‘Barbecue or something.’

‘You have a car?’

‘More or less.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Deal,’ I said.

‘I should change,’ she said. She was in a black skirt suit. Dark nylons, good shoes. Perfect for D.C. or Virginia, maybe not so much in a country shack outside of Fayetteville.

I said, ‘I’m happy to wait.’

‘Five minutes,’ she said.

Which turned out closer to ten. But it was worth the delay. She knocked on my door and I opened up and found her in a ponytail and a version of her Arkansas outfit. The same brown leather jacket, over a white T-shirt, with different jeans. Same colour, but lower cut. And all scraped and sanded and beat up. Distressed , I believed they called it, which to me meant upset , which just didn’t compute. Was there a finer place to be, than where those jeans were?

She had car keys dangling from her finger, and she held them up to show me, and she said, ‘I apologize in advance.’

‘For what?’

‘You’ll see.’

And I did, about two hundred yards later, in a fenced lot near Pope Field’s perimeter road. The lot was full of everything I had expected to see, which was pick-up trucks and domestic muscle cars about twenty years old, and beat-up Mercedes and BMWs brought home from deployments in Germany. I kept my eye out for anomalies, and I saw a tiny Mini Cooper the colour of lavender, and then further on a VW new-style Beetle, yellow, half hidden behind some hideous old farm vehicle. I figured hers was the Beetle, if she was already apologizing. Maybe it was a graduation present. Maybe she had a daisy in the vase on the dash, to match the paint.

But it wasn’t the Beetle. It was the hideous old farm vehicle next to it. I said, ‘What the hell is this thing?’

She said, ‘Some of it’s an old Ford Bronco. The rest of it is metal sheets welded on, as and when the original parts fell off. The brown coloration is equal parts rust and mud. I was advised not to wash the mud off. For corrosion protection and added strength.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘A guy at Fort Benning sold it to me.’

‘For how much?’

‘Twenty-two dollars.’

‘Outstanding.’

‘Climb aboard. It’s open. I never lock it. I mean, why would I?’

The passenger door hinge was more rust than mud, and I had to put some strength into it. I squealed it open just wide enough to slide in sideways, and I saw Casey Nice was doing the exact same thing on her side, like we were limbo dancing towards each other. There were no seat belts. No seats at all, really. Just a green canvas sling fraying its way off a tubular metal frame.

But the engine started, eventually, after a bunch of popping and churning, and then it idled, wet and lumpy. The transmission was slower than the postal service. She rattled the selector into reverse, and all the mechanical parts inside called the roll and counted a quorum and set about deciding what to do. Which required a lengthy debate, apparently, because it was whole seconds before the truck lurched backward. She turned the wheel, which looked like hard work, and then she jammed the selector into a forward gear, and first of all the reversing committee wound up its business and approved its minutes and exited the room, and then the forward crew signed on and got comfortable, and a motion was tabled and seconded and discussed. More whole seconds passed, and then the truck slouched forward, slow and stuttering at first, before picking up its pace and rolling implacably towards the exit gate.