Lee Child: Personal

Shoemaker said, ‘Joan Scarangello told us you fully understand your role.’

All I am is bait .

I said, ‘Are you serious?’

He said, ‘It’s no big deal. As you point out, if Kott’s the guy, he’s unlikely to be there himself. But if he is the guy, then they might have someone there to monitor our progress. It’s an obvious first stop. It’s one we should make anyway. We need to confirm he took up shooting again. If he didn’t, we’re home and dry. Yoga and meditation get you only so far. You need some trigger time too. They might be expecting us to check. They’ll be low-grade people. No problem for you. But we might get something out of them.’

‘If it’s him.’

‘And if it isn’t, you’ve got even less to worry about.’

‘Why me? There are plenty of federal agents in the world. They would work as bait. Better than me, probably. They could show up with lights and sirens.’

‘You know how many Americans have top secret security clearances now?’

‘No idea.’

‘Nearly a million, and half of them are civilians. Executives and business people and contractors and subcontractors. And best case, out of any million people a couple hundred will be seriously bent.’

‘That’s O’Day talking.’

‘He’s usually right.’

‘And always paranoid.’

‘OK, cut it in half. We’ve got a hundred traitors with top secret security clearances. National security is completely out of control. It has been for a decade. Therefore right now this is a closely held project. This information is not being widely distributed. At the moment General O’Day prefers people he knows he can trust.’

‘I can’t even rent a car. I don’t have a driver’s licence or a credit card.’

‘Casey Nice will go with you,’ Shoemaker said. ‘She’s old enough to drive.’

‘Then she’ll be bait too.’

‘She knows what she signed up for. And she’s tougher than she looks.’

In the end the detailed tactical planning came down to grabbing my toothbrush from my bathroom, and copying down Kott’s last known address, which was a rented place miles from anywhere in the bottom left corner of the state, where Arkansas becomes either Oklahoma or Texas or Louisiana. Casey Nice went into her white box wearing her black skirt suit and came out again five minutes later wearing blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. Which I agreed was better for the bottom left corner of Arkansas.

They gave us the same plane. Same crew. I let Casey Nice precede me up the steps, which was the only rational thing to do, when one of you is a twenty-something girl in jeans, and one of you isn’t. I sat in the same chair, and she sat opposite. This time the steward knew all about where we were going, which was Texarkana. A civilian field, with car rental. Not a Great Circle route. Just west and south, over Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi. One pot of coffee would do it, probably, unless Casey Nice wanted a cup.

I said to her, ‘Shoemaker told me you know what you signed up for.’

She said, ‘I think I do.’

‘Which is what?’

‘It’s a theory they have. You’ve seen how it is. We’re all working together. The theory is in the future we’ll merge completely. Behind the scenes, that is. So we have to get exposure. Which is fine. I need to be ready. Most of my career is in the future.’

‘What kind of exposure have you gotten so far?’

‘I’m not worried about this, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Good to know,’ I said.

‘Should I be?’

‘You ever been in a hotel with one of those real big beds? About seven feet long? If we’re ever out in the open, that’s how far you should be from me. Because best case here is Kott has nothing to do with any of this, and he was away on a fishing trip when your drones came over, and now he’s back home again, with a long straight driveway and a loaded gun by his kitchen window. Depending on how excited he gets, the first shot might miss by six feet. But it won’t miss by seven.’

‘I don’t think he’s home. I think he’s in London.’

‘Why him? The others sound better.’

‘Datsev was Red Army as a very young man, and then Russian Army. Until five years ago. He left the state’s employ. Rozan has been out of the IDF even longer. Carson the Brit has been out of the SAS longer still. But Paris was a brand-new profile. Why would Datsev or Rozan or Carson wait so long before going into business? This feels like a guy who just spent a year tuning up ahead of hanging out a shingle. A guy whose retirement only just began.’

‘You should still stay seven feet away. Datsev and Rozan and Carson could have been otherwise employed. Private armies or security, or maybe they were running organic bookstores, but times went bad. Or maybe their pensions just ran out. Or maybe they just got out of jail for unconnected offences. Kott could have been on the freelance market longer than any of them, even if it was only a year.’

‘Then they’d pick him first, because he’s the most experienced. He’s in London. I’m sure of it. I’m not worried about Arkansas.’

Neither was I, at first.

WE LANDED IN Texarkana and found rental cars at the end of a long line of establishments all connected with the aviation business. Casey Nice came out with a perfectly standard Maryland driver’s licence, and I caught a glimpse of her date of birth, and I worked out she was twenty-eight years old. She accompanied the licence with a Visa card from a Maryland bank. In exchange she got a whole bunch of forms to sign, and then the key to a Ford F-150 pick-up truck, which seemed to be what people wanted at the Texarkana airport.

The truck was red and had a navigation device connected to the cigarette lighter. She put in the address we had. The thing scrolled like it was summoning up vast reserves of local knowledge, and then it told us the trip was going to be fifty miles. I looked back at the airport as we left. I could see our plane. Ahead were narrow winding roads and new leaves on the trees.

I said, ‘We should stop for lunch.’

She said, ‘Shouldn’t we do the job first?’

‘Eat when you can. That’s the golden rule.’

‘Where?’

‘First place we see.’

Which turned out not to be the kind of rural diner I was hoping for. Instead we rolled through a neat little crossroads town and came upon a crisp little commercial development with a Shell station at one end and a family restaurant at the other. In between were budget establishments selling life’s necessities at low prices, including a pharmacy and a clothing store. The restaurant had plain wood tables and mismatched plates, but it had good solid fare on the menu. I caught up on breakfast, with coffee and pancakes and eggs and bacon. Casey Nice ordered a salad, and drank plain water. She paid, on O’Day’s budget, presumably.

Then I detoured to the clothing store and hunted around at the khaki end of the colour spectrum and the low end of the price list, and I picked out underwear and socks, and pants, and a shirt, and a jacket that might have been intended for golf in the rain. I didn’t find any shoes better than the pair I had on. As always I changed in the cubicle and left my old stuff in the trash. As always Casey Nice was interested in the process. She said, ‘I heard about this at the briefing, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it.’

I said, ‘You had a briefing about me?’

‘General O’Day calls you Sherlock Homeless.’

‘He should think about buying a new sweater himself.’

We got back in the red truck and moved on, north and west, skirting the corner of Texas, heading for the Oklahoma line. The navigation device showed our destination as a black and white chequered flag, like the end of an auto race, and it seemed to be out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I hoped more roads would show up on the screen when we got closer.