Lee Child - 61 Hours

Peterson asked, ‘What did you think of Mrs Salter?’

‘She’s probably very well read.’

‘As a witness?’

‘Excellent.’

‘Is she holding up?’

‘She’s scared.’

‘Can’t blame her.’

‘What about raw material supply to the lab? For that matter, what about intercepting the finished product as they ship it out?’

‘We’re trying. But to guarantee anything we’d have to be on that road all day and all night and all week.’

‘With the right people, too,’ Reacher said. ‘Some of your guys look asleep at the switch. But whatever, you need to tell Mrs Salter you’re doing everything you can. Right now she feels all the weight is on her shoulders.’

‘We told her nothing is obligatory.’

‘Some people see obligation in their own way.’ Reacher picked up the phone. Hit nine for a line. Dialled the number he remembered and waited for the start of the recording. If you know your party’s extension, you may dial it at any time. He hit 110. The same male voice answered. The captain, from the South. The same one-word greeting.

‘Yes?’

Reacher said, ‘Amanda, please.’

There was a click and a purr and a second of dial tone and the voice came on. Warm, husky, breathy, intimate. It said, ‘You’re a pain in the ass.’

Reacher said, ‘Am I?’

‘As if I don’t have enough to do.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Your place five miles west of Bolton isn’t exactly front and centre in the records. There’s nothing listed in the establishments register.’

‘There wouldn’t be. It’s abandoned. Maybe never even used in the first place.’

‘Was it sold?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe just yielded back. It’s on what the cops here call public land.’

‘I went back fifty years in the title register and found no transfers.’

‘So maybe it’s still ours.’

‘In which case it would be costing us something. Biannual inspections and a little maintenance at the least. But there’s no expenditure record.’

‘There has got to be something. Not even the army builds places and then forgets all about them.’

‘Is it fenced?’

‘I don’t know. I’m five miles away. Why?’

‘Because not even the army builds places and then forgets all about them. Therefore the absence of records could mean it’s on a different list. It could have been a secret installation.’

Reacher said, ‘They all were.’

‘Some more than others.’

‘The old folks here remember a security cordon.’

‘There was always a security cordon.’

‘How secret could it be? They put construction workers on the site.’

‘Secret then, abandoned now. Maybe because it was very weird. Which could be important to you. But if you really want to know, I’m going to have to do some digging.’

‘Can you?’

‘It’ll cost you.’

‘Cost me what?’

Warm, husky, breathy, intimate. ‘I want to know the story behind the dent in the desk.’

‘You don’t have time. You’ve got enough to do.’

‘Right now I’m just hanging out, waiting on a call.’

‘Something interesting?’

‘It’s pretty good.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘That’s not the deal. This is about you telling me.’

‘I don’t want to talk through a switchboard.’

‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. Obviously the colonel’s head was righteous, or you would have been busted at the time. And the statute of limitations ran out long ago on damage to government property.’

‘How hard will you dig?’

‘As hard as you want me to.’

‘When is your call coming through?’

‘Soon, I hope.’

‘Then we don’t have time for the story. Get me what I need by tomorrow, and I’ll tell you then.’

‘You drive a hard bargain.’

‘I was hoping for something for nothing.’

‘At least give me a hint.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘It wasn’t a colonel. It was a one-star general.’

Plato decided on an early dinner, because he was hungry, because he had skipped lunch. So he showed up in his kitchen. It was something he liked to do occasionally. He felt it demonstrated solidarity with the people who worked for him. He felt it was inclusive and democratic. But it always came out feudal. His people would bob and bow and scrape and get all flushed and flustered. Probably because they were afraid of him. But they had no reason. He had never victimized his domestic staff. None of them had ever suffered. Not the current generation, anyway. Two of their predecessors were buried on the property, but no one presently in his employ knew anything about that.

He ordered a cold appetizer and a hot entrée and took a beer from the refrigerator and went to wait in the smaller outdoor dining area. He took out his cell and dialled the walled villa a hundred miles away in the city. He asked, ‘How are we doing in South Dakota?’

The man in the villa said, ‘The lawyer was taken care of six hours ago.’

‘And the witness?’

‘Not yet.’

‘So when?’

‘Soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘Very soon.’

Plato felt his blood pressure build behind his temples. He looked at the next twenty-four hours in his mind. He liked to think visually. He liked to see chronological intervals laid out in a linear fashion, like ticks on a ruler. He inspected them at close quarters, like a bird swooping low over the sea, and he filled some of them in, and left others blank. He said, ‘Call the guy and tell him the thing with the witness can’t wait.’

The man in the villa said, ‘I will.’

Plato hung up and redialled. The airfield. He put his plane on standby. It was to be fuelled and ready for takeoff at a moment’s notice. The flight plan should show Canada, but that would be a decoy. The reality would be seventeen hundred miles there and seventeen hundred miles back. Fuel was to be made available at the midpoint for the return leg.

Then he made a third call. He needed six men to go with him. Good men, but not so good he couldn’t afford to leave them behind. If it came to that.

Which, he hoped, it would.

Reacher stopped thinking about the woman with the voice when he heard shouting in the police station lobby. One-sided shouting. A phone call. It had started out formal, gotten polite, then gotten a little defensive, and then gotten exasperated. It had ended with yelling. It had been followed by a three-way back and forth. The old guy from the desk to Holland’s office, Peterson to Holland’s office, the old guy back to the lobby, Peterson back to the squad room.

Peterson said, ‘Biker trouble. One of them just called. Three of their people are missing over here, and why aren’t we doing anything about it?’

Reacher said, ‘What did you tell them?’

‘We said we’re working on it.’

‘And?’

‘They said we better work harder, or they’ll come to town and work on it themselves. They said they’ll give us until tomorrow.’

Five to five in the afternoon.

Thirty-five hours to go.

PETERSON LEFT AGAIN AND REACHER SAT ALONE IN THE EMPTY squad room and looked out the window. It was still snowing. The flakes came down through pools of yellow sodium light. The sky was dark. The day was ending. Twelve thousand nearby souls were huddling in houses, staying warm, looking at the television, getting ready to eat. To the north the prison was seething. To the west the bikers were doing who knew what. And somewhere an unknown marksman was rehearsing a second shot.

Peterson came back and said, ‘Chief Holland thinks they’re bluffing. He says their whole strategy all along has been to stay inside the law and deny us probable cause.’