Lee Child - Persuader

“He’s my husband.”

“You said he deserved to go to prison.”

“Yes,” she said. “But he doesn’t deserve to die.”

“You think?”

“He’s my husband,” she said again.

“How does he make the sales?” I asked.

“He uses I- 95,” she said. “He cuts the centers out of the cheap rugs and rolls the guns in them. Like tubes, or cylinders. Drives them to Boston or New Haven. People meet him there.”

I nodded. Remembered the stray carpet fibers I had seen around.

“He’s my husband,” Elizabeth said.

I nodded again. “If he’s got the sense not to stand right next to Quinn he might be OK.”

“Promise me he’ll be OK. Then I’ll leave. With Richard.”

“I can’t promise,” I said.

“Then we’re staying.”

I said nothing.

“It was never a voluntary association, you know,” she said. “With Xavier, I mean. You really need to understand that.”

She moved to the window and gazed down at Richard. He was heaving the last ammunition case out of the Cadillac.

“There was coercion,” she said.

“Yes, I figured that out,” I said.

“He kidnapped my son.”

“I know,” I said.

Then she moved again and looked straight at me.

“What did he do to you?” she asked.

I saw Kohl twice more that day as she prepared her end of the mission. She was doing everything right. She was like a chess player. She never did anything without looking two moves ahead. She knew the judge advocate she asked to monitor the transaction would have to recuse himself from the subsequent court-martial, so she picked one she knew the prosecutors hated. It would be one less obstacle later. She had a photographer standing by to make a visual record. She had timed the drive out to Quinn’s Virginia house. The file I had given her at the start now filled two cardboard boxes. The second time I saw her she was carrying them. They were stacked one on top of the other and her biceps were straining against their weight.

“How is Gorowski holding up?” I asked her.

“Not good,” she said. “But he’ll be out of the woods tomorrow.”

“You’re going to be famous.”

“I hope not,” she said. “This should stay classified forever.”

“Famous in the classified world,” I said. “Plenty of people see that stuff.”

“So I guess I should ask for my performance review,” she said. “Day after tomorrow, maybe.”

“We should have dinner tonight,” I said. “We should go out. Like a celebration. Best place we can find. I’ll buy.”

“I thought you were on food stamps.”

“I’ve been saving up.”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunity. It’s been a long case.”

“Slow as molasses,” I said. “That’s your only problem, Kohl. You’re thorough, but you’re slow.”

She smiled again and hitched the boxes higher.

“You should have agreed to date me,” she said. “Then I could have shown you how slow can be better than fast.”

She carried the boxes away and I met her two hours later at a restaurant in town. It was an upmarket place so I had showered and put a clean uniform on. She showed up wearing a black dress. Not the same one as before. No dots on it. Just sheer black. It was very flattering, not that she needed the help. She looked about eighteen.

“Great,” I said. “They’re going to think you’re dining with your dad.”

“My uncle, maybe,” she said. “My dad’s younger brother.”

It was one of those meals where the food wasn’t important. I can remember everything else about the evening, but I can’t remember what I ordered. Steak, maybe. Or ravioli. Something. I know we ate. We talked a lot, about the kind of stuff we probably wouldn’t share with just anybody. I came very close to breaking down and asking her if she wanted to find a motel. But I didn’t. We had a glass of wine each and then switched to water. There was an unspoken agreement we needed to stay sharp for the next day. I paid the check and we left at midnight, separately. She was bright, even though it was late. She was full of life and energy and focus. She was bubbling with anticipation. Her eyes were shining. I stood on the street and watched her drive away.

“Someone’s coming,” Elizabeth Beck said, ten years later.

I glanced out the window and saw a gray Taurus far in the distance. The color blended with the rock and the weather and made it hard to see. It was maybe two miles away, coming around a curve in the road, moving fast. Villanueva’s car. I told Elizabeth to stay put and keep an eye on Richard and I went downstairs and out the back door. I retrieved Angel Doll’s keys from my hidden bundle. Put them in my jacket pocket. I took Duffy’s Glock and her spare magazines, too. I wanted her to get them back intact. It was important to me. She was already in enough trouble. I stashed them in my coat pocket with my Beretta and walked around to the front of the house and got in the Cadillac. Drove it up to the gate and slid out and waited out of sight. The Taurus stopped outside the gate and I saw Villanueva at the wheel with Duffy next to him and Eliot in the back. I stepped out of hiding and took the chain off the gate and swung it open. Villanueva eased through and stopped nose to nose with the Cadillac. Then three doors opened and they all climbed out into the cold and stared at me.

“What the hell happened to you?” Villanueva said.

I touched my mouth. It felt swollen and tender.

“Walked into a door,” I said.

Villanueva glanced at the gatehouse.

“Or a door man ,” he said. “Am I right?”

“You OK?” Duffy asked.

“I’m in better shape than the doorman,” I said.

“Why are we here?”

“Plan B,” I said. “We’re going to Portland, but if we don’t find what we need up there we’re going to have to come back here and wait. So two of you are coming out with me right now and the other one is staying here to hold the fort.” I turned around and pointed at the house. “The center second-floor window has got a big machine gun mounted in it to cover the approach. I need one of you in there manning it.”

Nobody volunteered. I looked straight at Villanueva. He was old enough to have been drafted, way back. He might have spent time around big machine guns.

“You do it, Terry,” I said.

“Not me,” he said. “I’m coming out with you to find Teresa.”

He said it like there was going to be no way to argue with him.

“OK, I’ll do it,” Eliot said.

“Thanks,” I said. “You ever seen a Vietnam movie? Seen the door gunner on a Huey? That’s you. If they come, they won’t try to get through the gate. They’ll go in the front window of the gatehouse and out the back door or the back window. So you be ready to hose them down as they come out.”

“What if it’s dark?”

“We’ll be back before dark.”

“OK. Who’s in the house?”

“Beck’s family. And the cook. They’re noncombatants, but they won’t leave.”

“What about Beck himself?”

“He’ll come back with the others. If he got away again in the confusion it wouldn’t break my heart. But if he got hit in the confusion it wouldn’t break my heart either.”

“OK.”

“They probably won’t show up,” I said. “They’re busy. This all is just a precaution.”

“OK,” he said again.

“You keep the Cadillac,” I said. “We’ll take the Taurus.”

Villanueva got back in the Ford and reversed it out through the gate again. I walked out with Duffy and closed the gate from the outside and chained it and locked it and tossed the padlock key over to Eliot.

“See you later,” I said.

He turned the Cadillac around and I watched him drive it down toward the house. Then I got in the Taurus with Duffy and Villanueva. She took the front seat. I took the back. I got her Glock and her spare magazines out of my pocket and passed them forward to her, like a little ceremony.