Lee Child - Persuader

She said nothing. I closed the door on her. Tied the phone cord tight around the knob. Opened the office door as wide as it would go and tied the other end of the cord to its handle. She could haul on the inside of the bathroom door all weekend long without getting anywhere. Nobody can break electrical wire by pulling on it lengthwise. I figured she’d give up after an hour and sit tight and drink water from the sink faucet and use the toilet and try to pass the time.

I sat down at her desk. I figured an operations manager should have some interesting paperwork. But she didn’t. The best thing I found was a copy of the Keast and Maden order. The caterers. 18 @ $55. Somebody had penciled a note on the bottom. A woman’s handwriting. Probably Emily Smith’s own. The note said: lamb, not pork! I swiveled her chair around and looked at the wrapped dress on the coat rack. Then I swiveled it back and checked my watch. My ten minutes were up.

I rode the elevator to the garage and left by a fire exit in the rear. The rent-a-cop didn’t see me. I walked around the block and came up on Duffy and Villanueva from behind. Their car was parked on the corner and they were together in the front, staring forward through the windshield. I guessed they were hoping to see two people walking down the street toward them. I opened the door and slid into the back seat and they spun around and looked disappointed. I shook my head.

“Neither of them,” I said.

“Somebody answered the phone,” Duffy said.

“A woman called Emily Smith,” I said. “His operations manager. She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“What did you do with her?”

“Locked her in the bathroom. She’s out of the picture until Monday.”

“You should have sweated her,” Villanueva said. “You should have pulled her fingernails out.”

“Not my style,” I said. “But you can go right ahead, if you want. Feel free. She’s still up there. She’s not going anywhere.”

He just shook his head and sat still.

“So what now?” Duffy asked.

“So what now?” Kohl asked.

We were still inside the utility truck. Kohl, the judge advocate, and me. Frasconi had taken the Syrian away. Kohl and I were thinking hard and the judge was in the process of washing his hands of the whole thing.

“I was only here to observe,” he said. “I can’t give you legal advice. It wouldn’t be appropriate. And frankly I wouldn’t know what to tell you anyway.”

He glared at us and let himself out the rear door and just walked away. He didn’t look back. I guess that was the downside of picking out a royal pain in the ass for an observer. Unintended consequences.

“I mean, what happened?” Kohl said. “What exactly did we see?”

“Only two possibilities,” I said. “One, he was ripping the guy off, plain and simple. Classic confidence trick. You drip, drip, drip the unimportant stuff, and then you hold back on the final installment. Or two, he was working as a legitimate intelligence officer. On an official operation. Proving that Gorowski was leaky, proving that the Syrians were willing to pay big bucks for stuff.”

“He kidnapped Gorowski’s daughter,” she said. “No way was that officially sanctioned.”

“Worse things have happened,” I said.

“He was ripping them off.”

I nodded. “I agree with you. He was ripping them off.”

“So what can we do about it?”

“Nothing,” I said “Because if we go ahead and accuse him of scamming them for personal profit, he’ll just automatically say no, I wasn’t doing that, actually I was running a sting, and I invite you to try to prove otherwise. And then he’ll not very politely remind us to keep our big noses out of intelligence business.”

She said nothing.

“And you know what?” I said. “Even if he was ripping them off, I wouldn’t know what to charge him with. Does the Uniform Code stop you taking money from foreign idiots in exchange for briefcases full of fresh air?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I.”

“But whatever, the Syrians will go ape,” she said. “I mean, won’t they? They paid him half a million bucks. They’ll have to react. Their pride is at stake. Even if he was legit, he took a hell of a big risk. Half a million big risks. They’ll be coming after him. And he can’t just disappear. He’ll have to stay on-post. He’ll be a sitting target.”

I paused a beat. Looked at her. “If he’s not going to disappear, why was he moving all his money?”

She said nothing. I looked at my watch. Thought: This, not that . Or, just perhaps, just for once, this and that.

“Half a million is too much money,” I said.

“For what?”

“For the Syrians to pay. It’s just not worth it. There’ll be a prototype soon. Then there’ll be a preproduction batch. There’ll be a hundred finished weapons down at the quartermaster level within a matter of months. They could buy one of those for ten thousand dollars, probably. Some bent corporal would sell them one. They could even steal one for free. Then they could just reverse-engineer it.”

“OK, so they’re dumb businessmen,” Kohl said. “But we heard Quinn on the tape. He put half a million in the bank.”

I looked at my watch again. “I know. That’s a definite fact.”

“So?”

“It’s still too much. The Syrians are no dumber than anybody else. Nobody would value a fancy lawn dart at half a million bucks.”

“But we know that’s what they paid. You just agreed it’s a definite fact.”

“No,” I said. “We know Quinn’s got half a million in the bank. That’s the fact. It doesn’t prove the Syrians paid him half a million. That part is speculation.”

“What?”

“Quinn’s a Middle East specialist. He’s a smart guy, and he’s a bad guy. I think you stopped looking too soon.”

“Looking at what?”

“At him. Where he goes, who he meets. How many dubious regimes are there in the Middle East? Four or five, minimum. Suppose he’s in bed with two or three of them at once? Or all of them? With each one thinking it’s the only one? Suppose he’s leveraging the same scam three or four times over? That would explain why he’s got half a million in the bank for something that isn’t worth half a million to any one individual.”

“And he’s ripping them all off?”

I checked my watch again.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s playing for real with one of them. Maybe that’s how it got started. Maybe he intended it to be for real all along, with one favored client. But he couldn’t get the kind of big money he wanted from them. So he decided to multiply the yield.”

“I should have watched more cafés,” she said. “I shouldn’t have stopped with the Syrian guy.”

“He’s probably got a fixed route,” I said. “Lots of separate meetings, one after another. Like a damn mail carrier.”

She checked her watch.

“OK,” she said. “So right now he’s taking the Syrian’s cash home.”

I nodded. “And then he’s heading out again right away to meet with the next guy. So you need to get Frasconi and get some more surveillance going. Find Quinn on his way back into town. Haul in anybody he swaps a briefcase with. Maybe you’ll just end up with a bunch of empty briefcases, but maybe one of them won’t be empty, in which case we’re back in business.”

She glanced around the inside of the truck. Glanced down at her tape recorder.

“Forget it,” I said. “No time for the clever stuff. It’ll have to be just you and Frasconi, out there on the street.”

“The warehouse,” I said. “We’re going to have to check it out.”