Ли Чайлд - Smile

On the screen Anenko and his bodyguard were about to walk under the camera recording them. Jack Reacher was about twenty paces behind them. He was a big guy. Not a circus freak, but enough for a double take. Skelton changed the angle to a new camera set well to the side of dead ahead, so that the walking figures seemed likely to pass out of the frame, until they changed direction, in a long curve, homing in on the camera itself, as if it was their exact destination. Which it was, in the short term, because Skelton's next change showed it to be high above the perfumed air of the dedicated first-class check-in area. Anenko stepped past the concierge at the velvet rope, without showing paperwork, as if obviously entitled. Reacher followed. He showed his printed-out itinerary. The woman smiled and waved him in.

Anenko's bodyguard put the suitcase on the check-in scale and handed the briefcase to his boss. Then he stood back a pace, respectfully.

“Not going with him,” the detective said. “Operationally a no-brainer, I suppose. I'm sure he has regional specialists waiting at his destination. And as soon as he's through security, he's in a sterile area anyway, by definition. He doesn't need anyone now. And air fares for the help add up, you know, whoever you are.”

The hidden cameras in the check-in desks had microphones with them. Anenko was headed to New York. All was in order. He was in plenty of time. Two desks away Reacher was checking in for San Francisco. All was equally in order, but he had much less time. The West Coast flight left much earlier than the East Coast.

Skelton hopped sources again, to a head-on camera above the entrance to the dedicated and very genteel first-class security line. The bodyguard stood back and watched his boss walk on without him. He stayed in position, motionless, like a wistful relative. Reacher stepped around him and followed Anenko, about ten feet behind.

Skelton paused the playback.

He said, “With all due respect to whoever you all really are, surely we need to admit the first mistake has already been made.”

Glover said, “Careful, now.”

“What mistake?” the detective said.

“This man is flying from London to San Francisco with nothing but a tiny little messenger bag. That should have been profiled.”

The woman from MI6 whispered to Glover.

Who said, “We used to, but we had to abandon it. All we caught was billionaires. Tech people with homes in both cities, and sleeping pills in their bags to get them back and forth.”

“No sleeping pills in this bag,” Skelton said. He clicked a couple things and an X-ray photograph of a bag came up. Taken from directly above. All green and orange, like the agents saw. There were three rectangular shapes inside.

“A hardcover book, a boarding card, and a passport,” Skelton said. He called up a second image, of ghostly items in a dog-bowl container. “Plus a clip-together toothbrush, a credit card of some sort, a wad of paper money, which seems to be about half pounds and half dollars, plus what looks like twenty-nine cents in American change, and thirty-three pence in English money. Altogether not much for a long journey. And he isn't a tech guy. He's a retired military cop, currently under the radar.”

Skelton switched back to a moving picture. A guy one ahead of Anenko and two ahead of Reacher was holding things up at the metal detector hoop. Something beeped. The guy tried again. It still beeped. Anenko's briefcase was already out the far end of the X-ray tunnel. It rattled down the rollers and came to rest among a small but growing pile. Then Reacher's canvas bag came out and jammed up behind it.

In the end the guy got through the hoop with his shoes off, and after that it was plain sailing first for Anenko, and then Reacher. Anenko stepped ahead and shook his briefcase loose from a minor tangle of straps and handles and walked away with it into a glamorous corridor, which according to a discreet little sign led to the first-class lounge. Reacher stepped around the guy putting his shoes back on, picked up his own bag and followed Anenko.

Skelton switched from angle to angle, accounting for every second and every step, like a prosecutor building his case. Anenko entered the first-class lounge. Reacher entered the first-class lounge. Anenko sat down. Reacher sat down, far enough away to be in the background, but close enough to watch what was going on. Which for a long time wasn't much. Attentive waiters took orders. Tea for Anenko, coffee for Reacher. That was about it.

Skelton watched the clock in the corner of the picture, and he said, “The San Francisco flight is taking off right about. now.”

On the screen Anenko drank tea, and Reacher drank coffee.

“Watch now,” Skelton said.

Anenko stood up and glanced around. Looking for something. His bearings, possibly, or a discreet little sign. To the men's room. He saw it and set off. In the background Reacher also stood up. He chose a direct and nimble route through the chairs. He arrived at the bathroom just a step behind Anenko. Anenko went in. Reacher went in.

“This is where we run out of luck,” Skelton said. “There are no cameras in the bathrooms. I mean, we could do it. No one would ever know. But if they ever found out, obviously there would be a huge scandal. Especially the women's bathroom. So we've never done it. Right now they're both in a dead zone.”

One of the detectives laughed.

“Careful, now,” Glover said. “Show some respect.”

On the screen the shot stayed static on the outside of the men's room door. Time ticked by. A guy came out, a guy went in. Then Reacher came out. A total of almost five minutes inside.

“OK, spoiler alert,” the detective said. “Anenko doesn't come out again, never ever. In fact about four hours from now he is discovered dead on the floor of a cubicle locked from the inside. Dead with a broken neck. Discovered by an ear-witness who at the crucial time was facing the opposite direction, taking a leak, but who heard a sound he describes as exactly like a fat man falling off a chair, and he turned around to see the dead guy's face jammed in the gap at the bottom of the door. Kind of leering out at him. Naturally the gentleman made a considerable fuss about it. We were called in. The initial assumption was Anenko had died there and then. Maybe a heart attack, and a post-mortem break of the neck in the subsequent fall.”

Another detective said, “But then they worked out he had missed his flight by hours and had checked in much earlier in the day, so the doctors took a closer look, and they figured he had died right back at the beginning. Mostly because the toilets are automatic. They count the flushes. That stall saw no action all day long, because Anenko was dead in there.”

“Of what?” Glover asked.

“Could still have been a heart attack, just four hours earlier than initially assumed. Maybe it came on peacefully, and then hours later the gases swelled up and tipped him off the throne and bust his neck for him.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“You know how it is, sir. They'll say whatever we tell them to say.”

“Would a neck break that way, post-mortem?”

“Medical opinion says it's very unlikely.”

“Then what really happened?”

“No one liked Anenko,” the guy said. “Even his friends didn't like him. Certainly not his enemies or his customers. We didn't like him. I'm sure no one in this room liked him. But there was nothing much we could do. Too many rules. But those don't apply to everyone. Maybe Anenko made the wrong kind of enemy. Maybe someone hired a contractor.”

“This Reacher guy?”

“The timing is exactly right. Reacher follows Anenko into the bathroom, wrestles him into a stall, breaks his neck, props his body on the can, leans over from the outside and locks the door, then leaves. The airport is the one place in the world they don't take their bodyguards, and the one place in the airport with guaranteed no cameras is the bathroom. This was planned. Reacher was recruited. He's not a first-class kind of guy. The airline never heard of him. He's not a frequent flier. He's an old bruiser. His army record shows he did this stuff for a living.”