Lee Child - Night School

“A service, I think.”

“Then she probably had her car washed, too. Maybe on a regular basis. Waxed and detailed. Inside and out. Which is good. Not many old prints.”

Griezman spoke German to the guy in the lab coat. A request for a progress report, possibly. The guy answered and pointed here and there. Griezman stuck his head in for a better view. Then he backed out again, ponderously, and said, “We think there’s a partial left thumb on the seat belt release. But it’s narrow, because the button is ridged. And smudged somehow. Possibly the same thing on the seat belt tongue, but the surface is hopeless. Hard plastic, with tiny pimples for grip. A regulation, no doubt. We should have a word with the department concerned. They’re not helping us.”

Reacher said, “What kind of a car is this?”

Griezman said, “It’s an Audi.”

“Then Audi has already helped you. I had a friend with the same problem. About a year ago. Fort Hood, which is about the same size as Hamburg. Off-post married quarters. A Jaguar, not an Audi, but they’re both premium brands. They put chrome on their door-release levers. Looks expensive, feels great, and it gleams in the dark so you can find it. All of which enhances what they call the user experience. The passenger puts his middle finger in and pulls. Not his little finger, because he thinks it’s too weak, and not his ring finger, because he thinks it’s too clumsy, and not his index finger, because his wrist would need to rotate an extra twenty-five percent, which borders on the uncomfortable. Always his middle finger. So you need to take the door apart, and print the back of the lever. That’s what my friend would say.”

The guy in the lab coat said something in German. Unknown words, but an indignant tone. Clearly he could follow along in English. Griezman said, “That was going to be our next step anyway. Did your friend secure a conviction?”

“No,” Reacher said. “The chain of evidence broke down. He could prove the guy’s print was on the lever, but he couldn’t prove the lever came from the ex-wife’s car. Defense counsel said it could have come from anywhere.”

“What should he have done?”

“Before he started he should have engraved his initials on the front of the lever. While it was still right there on the door. With a dentist’s drill. He should have had himself photographed doing it. Wide shots, to establish the car, and then close ups.”

Griezman spoke in German, a long list of instructions. Reacher caught the word zahnarzt, which he knew from having a toothache in Frankfurt meant dentist . The guy in the lab coat listened and nodded.

–

They got back to the interview room just as Klopp was getting set to leave. The sketch artist gave them a copy of a drawing made with colored pencils. Griezman told them he would fax a further copy to McLean, Virginia, and then keep the original on file.

Reacher and Neagley carried their copy to the door, where the wired-glass window let in some natural light. The American looked exactly like Klopp had described. The artist had done a fine job capturing his words. The wave of blond hair. The skin stretched tight over the skull beneath. The brow and the cheek bones, horizontal and parallel and close together, like two bars on an old-style football helmet, with the eyes flashing out from way behind. The mouth, like a gash. Plus two vertical lines, the nose like a blade, and a crease down the right cheek, as if the most the mouth ever moved was in a lopsided and sardonic smile. The guy was shown in a jacket like Reacher’s. Pale tan denim, authentic in every respect. Under it was a white T-shirt. His collar bones stood out, like his cheek bones. His neck was shown corded with sinew. A hardscrabble guy, no longer young.

Neagley said, “Military?”

Reacher said, “Can’t tell by looking.”

“Then why are we staying?”

“I don’t know. Ratcliffe said we could have what we want. I guess what I want is not to be trapped in someone else’s mistake.”

“The second rendezvous might not even be in Hamburg.”

“I agree. It’s probably ten to one against. Which means if we stick around we have a one-in-ten chance of being in the right place at the right time. Whereas if we go back to Virginia we have a zero chance. They’re not going to meet at the Washington Monument. That’s for damn sure.”

The translator came over and said, “Mr. Klopp is asking when you want to schedule the rest of the debriefing session.”

Reacher said, “Tell Mr. Klopp we’re done with him. Tell him if I ever see him again I’ll pop his eyeballs out one at a time with my thumbnail.”

Then Griezman came over and said, “Will you be my guests for lunch?”

Twelve noon, in Hamburg, Germany.

–

Which was one o’clock in the afternoon in Kiev, Ukraine. The messenger was getting off a plane. He had been driven through the mountains to Peshawar in Pakistan, and had flown to Karachi, and then to Kiev. He had used a different passport for each of the flights, and he had changed his shirt once, from pink to black, and added shades and a Donetsk soccer supporter’s hat. He was untraceable and anonymous. Ukraine border control gave him no problems. He walked through baggage claim and out of the terminal. He joined the taxi line and smoked a cigarette while he waited.

The taxi was an old Czech Skoda, and he told the driver the address he wanted, which was a flower market five streets from his real destination, which was a small apartment occupied by four of the faithful from Turkmenistan and Somalia. A safe house. Always better to make the final approach on foot. Taxi drivers remembered things, the same as anyone else. Some even made notes. Mileage logs, gasoline consumption, addresses. He didn’t know the four guys. But they were expecting him. Kiev was not the same as Hamburg. He couldn’t just walk in. A messenger had been sent ahead. Of the messenger. Such were the necessary precautions.

He got out of the Skoda at the flower market. He walked between stalls crowded with bright blooms, into a humid hall full of rarer specimens, and when he came out the other end he was back in his pink shirt and the hat and the sunglasses were gone.

He walked the final five blocks and found the right building. It was a squat concrete tower, set off-center in a row of older and more elegant buildings. Like a false tooth. As if long ago a bomb had fallen, randomly, and made a space. Perhaps it had. The lobby smelled of ammonia. The elevator worked, but with unpleasant noises. The upstairs hallways were narrow.

He knocked on the door and waited. He counted the seconds in his head. He had knocked on a lot of doors. He knew how it worked. One, they hear the knock, two, they get up off the couch, three, they thread around the clutter, four, they step to the door, five, they open it.

The door opened. A guy stood there. On his own, with silence behind him.

The messenger said, “You’re expecting me.”

The guy said, “We have to go out.”

“When?”

“Now.”

The guy was Somali, the messenger thought. In his twenties, but already worn down to nothing but dusty skin and sinew. Primitive, like an ancestor species. The messenger said, “I don’t want to go out. I’m tired. I have to be on my way first thing in the morning. I have an onward flight.”

“No choice. We have to go out.”

“The point of a safe house is that I don’t have to go out.”

“The Kiev soccer team is playing an evening game in Moscow. It’s on the television in the bars. It starts soon, because of the time zones. It would be weird for us not to go. We would stand out.”

“You can go.”

“We can’t have anyone in the apartment. Not this afternoon. Someone would notice. It’s a big rivalry. Like a patriotic thing. We’re supposed to fit in here.”