Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

When they got there they found a low sign of chiseled granite and a big prosperous mirror-glass cube set behind a tall hurricane fence topped with coils of razor wire. The fence was impressive at first sight, but only semi-serious, in that ten seconds and a pair of bolt cutters would get a person through it unscathed. The building itself was surrounded by a wide parking lot studded with specimen trees. The way the mirror glass reflected the trees and the sky made the building look like it was there and not there simultaneously.

The main gate was lightweight and standing wide open and there was no sentry post next to it. It was just a gate. Beyond it the lot was about half-full of parked cars. Neagley paused to let a photocopier truck out and then drove in and put the Mustang in a visitor slot near the entrance lobby. She and Reacher got out and stood for a moment. It was the middle of the morning and the air was warm and heavy. The neighborhood was quiet. It sounded like a whole lot of people were concentrating very hard, or else no one was doing very much of anything.

The reception entrance had a shallow step up to double glass doors that opened for them automatically and admitted them to a large square lobby that had a slate floor and aluminum walls. There were leather chairs and a long reception counter in back. Behind the counter was a blonde woman of about thirty. She was wearing a corporate polo shirt with New Age Defense Systems embroidered above her small left breast. Clearly she had heard the doors open but she waited until Reacher and Neagley were halfway across the floor before she looked up.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We’re here to see Tony Swan,” Reacher said.

The woman smiled automatically and asked, “May I know your names?”

“Jack Reacher and Frances Neagley. We were good friends of his in the service.”

“Then please take a seat.” The woman picked up her desk phone and Reacher and Neagley stepped away to the leather chairs. Neagley sat down but Reacher stayed on his feet. He watched the dull aluminum reflection of the woman on the phone and heard her say, “Two friends of Tony Swan to see him.” Then she put the phone down and smiled in Reacher’s direction even though he wasn’t looking directly at her. Then the lobby went quiet.

It stayed quiet for about four minutes and then Reacher heard the click of shoes on slate from a corridor that entered the lobby to the side of and behind the desk. A measured stride, no hurry, a person of medium height and medium weight. He watched the mouth of the corridor and saw a woman step into view. About forty years old, slim, brown hair stylishly cut. She was in a tailored black pant suit and a white blouse. She looked swift and efficient and had an open and welcoming expression on her face. She smiled a token thank you to the receptionist and walked straight past her toward Reacher and Neagley. Held out her hand and said, “I’m Margaret Berenson.”

Neagley stood up and she and Reacher said their names and shook hands with her. Up close she had old looping car crash scars under her makeup and the chilly breath of a big-time gum chewer. She was wearing decent jewelry, but no wedding band.

“We’re looking for Tony Swan,” Reacher said.

“I know,” the woman said. “Let’s find somewhere to talk.”

One of the aluminum wall panels was a door that led to a small rectangular conference room directly off the lobby. Clearly it was designed for discussions with visitors who didn’t merit admission into the inner sanctums. It was a cool spare space with a table and four chairs and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave directly onto the parking lot. The front bumper of Neagley’s Mustang was about five feet away.

“I’m Margaret Berenson,” the woman said again. “I’m New Age’s Human Resources director. I’ll get straight to the point, which is that Mr. Swan isn’t with us anymore.”

Reacher asked, “Since when?”

“A little over three weeks ago,” Berenson said.

“What happened?”

“I’d feel more comfortable talking about it if I knew for sure you have a connection with him. Anyone can walk up to a reception counter and claim to be old friends.”

“I’m not sure how we could prove it.”

“What did he look like?”

“About five-nine tall and about five-eight wide.”

Berenson smiled. “If I told you he used a piece of stone as a paperweight, could you tell me where that piece of stone came from?”

“The Berlin Wall,” Reacher said. “He was in Germany when it came down. I saw him there just afterward. He took the train up and got himself a souvenir. And it’s concrete, not stone. There’s a trace of graffiti on it.”

Berenson nodded.

“That’s the story I heard,” she said. “And that’s the object I’ve seen.”

“So what happened?” Reacher asked. “He quit?”

Berenson shook her head.

“Not exactly,” she said. “We had to let him go. Not just him. You have to understand, this is a new company. It was always speculative, and there was always risk. In terms of our business plan, we’re not where we want to be. Not yet, anyway. So we reached the stage where we had to revise our staffing levels. Downward, unfortunately. We operated a last-in-first-out policy, and basically that meant we had to let the whole assistant management level go. I lost my own assistant director. Mr. Swan was Assistant Director of Security, so unfortunately the policy swept him away, too. We were very sorry to see him go, because he was a real asset. If things pick up, we’ll beg him to come back. But I’m sure he’ll have secured another position by then.”

Reacher glanced through the window at the half-empty parking lot. Listened to the quiet of the building. It sounded half-empty, too.

“OK,” he said.

“Not OK,” Neagley said. “I’ve been calling his office over and over for the last three days and every time I was told he had just stepped out for a minute. That doesn’t add up.”

Berenson nodded again. “That’s a professional courtesy that I insist upon. With this caliber of management it would be a disaster for an individual if his personal network of contacts heard the news secondhand. Much better if Mr. Swan can inform people himself, directly. Then he can spin it however he wants. So I insist that the remaining secretarial staff tell little white lies during the readjustment period. I don’t apologize for it, but I do hope you understand. It’s the least I can do for the people we’ve lost. If Mr. Swan can approach a new employer as if it were a voluntary move, he’s in a far better position than if everyone knew he’d been let go from here.”

Neagley thought about it for a moment, and then she nodded.

“OK,” she said. “I can see your point.”

“Especially in Mr. Swan’s case,” Berenson said. “We all liked him very much.”

“What about the ones you didn’t like?”

“There weren’t any. We would never hire people we didn’t believe in.”

Reacher said, “I called Swan and nobody answered at all.”

Berenson nodded again, still patient and professional. “We had to cut the secretarial pool, too. The ones we kept on are covering five or six phones each. Sometimes they can’t get to every call.”

Reacher asked, “So what’s up with your business plan?”

“I really can’t discuss that in detail. But I’m sure you understand. You were in the army.”

“We both were.”

“Then you know how many new weapons systems work straight out of the gate.”

“Not many.”

“Not any . Ours is taking a little longer than we hoped.”

“What kind of a weapon is it?”

“I really can’t discuss that.”

“Where is it made?”