Lee Child - Persuader

“He mails the cash,” Kohl said. “To Grand Cayman, first.”

“Is that safe?” I said.

She nodded. “Safe enough. The only risk would be postal workers stealing it. But the destination address is a PO box and he sends it book rate, and nobody steals books out of the mail. So he gets away with it.”

“Half a million dollars is a lot of money.”

“It’s a valuable weapon.”

“Is it? That valuable?”

“Don’t you think so?”

I shrugged. “Seems like a lot to me. For a lawn dart?”

She pointed at the tape player. Pointed at Quinn’s voice filling the air. “Well, that’s what they’re paying, obviously. I mean, how else did he get half a million dollars? He didn’t save it out of his salary, that’s for sure.”

“When will you make your move?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll have to. He’s got the final blueprint. Gorowski says it’s the key to the whole thing.”

“How will it go down?”

“Frasconi is dealing with the Syrian. He’s going to mark the cash, with a judge advocate watching. Then we’ll all observe the exchange. We’ll open the briefcase that Quinn gives to the Syrian, immediately, in front of the same judge. We’ll document the contents, which will be the key blueprint. Then we’ll go pick Quinn up. We’ll arrest him and impound the briefcase that the Syrian gave to him. The judge can watch us open it later. We’ll find the marked cash inside, and therefore we’ll have a witnessed and documented transaction, and therefore Quinn will go down, and he’ll stay down.”

“Watertight,” I said. “Good work.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Will Frasconi be OK?”

“He’ll have to be. I can’t deal with the Syrian myself. Those guys are weird with women. They can’t touch us, can’t look at us, sometimes they can’t even talk to us. So Frasconi will have to do it.”

“Want me to hold his hand?”

“His part is all offstage,” she said. “There’s nothing much he can screw up.”

“I think I’ll hold his hand anyway.”

“Thank you,” she said again.

“And he’ll go with you to make the arrest.”

She said nothing.

“I can’t send you one-on-one,” I said. “You know that.”

She nodded.

“But I’ll tell him you’re the lead investigator,” I said. “I’ll make sure he understands it’s your case.”

“OK,” she said.

She pressed the stop button on her tape player. Quinn’s voice died, halfway through a word. The word was going to be dollars, as in two hundred thousand. But it came out as doll. He sounded bright and happy and alert, like a guy at the top of his game, fully aware he was busy playing and winning. Kohl ejected the cassette. Slipped it into her pocket. Then she winked at me and walked out of my office.

“Who’s Quinn?” Elizabeth Beck asked me, ten years later.

“Frank Xavier,” I said. “He used to be called Quinn. His full name is Francis Xavier Quinn.”

“You know him?”

“Why else would I be here?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a guy who knew Frank Xavier back when he was called Francis Xavier Quinn.”

“You work for the government.”

I shook my head. “This is strictly personal.”

“What will happen to my husband?”

“No idea,” I said. “And I don’t really care either way.”

I went back inside Paulie’s little house and locked the front door. Came out again and locked the back door behind me. Then I checked the chain on the gate. It was tight. I figured we could keep intruders out for a minute, maybe a minute and a half, which might be good enough. I put the padlock key in my pants pocket.

“Back to the big house now,” I said. “You’ll have to walk, I’m afraid.”

I drove the Cadillac down the driveway, with the ammunition boxes stacked behind and beside me. I saw Elizabeth and Richard in the mirror, hurrying side by side. They didn’t want to get out of town, but they weren’t too keen on being left alone. I stopped the car by the front door and backed it up ready to unload. I opened the trunk and took the ceiling hook and the chain and ran upstairs to Duke’s room. His window looked out along the whole length of the driveway. It would make an ideal gunport. I took the Beretta out of my coat pocket and snicked the safety off and fired it once into the ceiling. I saw Elizabeth and Richard fifty yards away stop dead and then start running toward the house. Maybe they thought I had shot the cook. Or myself. I stood on a chair and punched through the bullet hole and raked the plaster back until I found a wooden joist. Then I aimed carefully and fired again and drilled a neat nine-millimeter hole in the wood. I screwed the hook into it and slipped the chain onto it and tested it with my weight. It held.

I went back down and opened the Cadillac’s rear doors. Elizabeth and Richard arrived and I told them to carry the ammunition boxes. I carried the big machine gun. The metal detector on the front door squealed at it, loud and urgent. I carried it upstairs. Hung it on the chain and fed the end of the first belt into it. Swung the muzzle to the wall and opened the lower sash of the window. Swung the muzzle back and traversed it side to side and ranged it up and down. It covered the whole width of the distant wall and the whole length of the driveway down to the carriage circle. Richard stood and watched me.

“Keep stacking the boxes,” I said.

Then I stepped over to the nightstand and picked up the outside phone. Called Duffy at the motel.

“You still want to help?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then I need all three of you at the house,” I said. “Quick as you can.”

After that there was nothing more to be done until they arrived. I waited by the window and pressed my teeth into my gums with my thumb and watched the road. Watched Richard and Elizabeth struggling with the heavy boxes. Watched the sky. It was noon, but it was darkening. The weather was getting even worse. The wind was freshening. The North Atlantic coast, in late April. Unpredictable. Elizabeth Beck came in and stacked a box. Breathed hard. Stood still.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked.

“No way of telling,” I said.

“What’s this gun for?”

“It’s a precaution.”

“Against what?”

“Quinn’s people,” I said. “We’ve got our backs to the sea. We might need to stop them on the driveway.”

“You’re going to shoot at them?”

“If necessary.”

“What about my husband?” she asked.

“Do you care?”

She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“I’m going to shoot at him, too.”

She said nothing.

“He’s a criminal,” I said. “He can take his chances.”

“The laws that make him a criminal are unconstitutional.”

“You think?”

She nodded again. “The Second Amendment is clear.”

“Take it to the Supreme Court,” I said. “Don’t bother me with it.”

“People have the right to bear arms.”

“Drug dealers don’t,” I said. “I never saw an amendment that says it’s OK to fire automatic weapons in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. Using bullets that go through brick walls, one after the other. And through innocent bystanders, one after the other. Babies and children.”

She said nothing.

“You ever seen a bullet hit a baby?” I said. “It doesn’t slide right in, like a hypodermic needle. It crushes its way through, like a bludgeon. Crushing and tearing.”

She said nothing.

“Never tell a soldier that guns are fun,” I said.

“The law is clear,” she said.

“So join the NRA,” I said. “I’m happy right here in the real world.”