Lee Child: Night School

“What stuff?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“But important stuff, right?”

“Far more important than this.”

“What was the thing you just closed out?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Was it an outstanding service to the United States in a key position of responsibility?”

“What?”

“Or words to that effect.”

“Yes, I would say so.”

“But this was your reward.”

Waterman said, “Mine, too. I’m in the same boat. I could say every word he just said. I expected a promotion. Not this.”

“A promotion for what? Or after what?”

“We closed a big case.”

“What kind of case?”

“A manhunt, basically. Years old and very cold. But we did it.”

“A service to our nation?”

“What’s this about?”

“I’m comparing the two of you. And there’s not much difference. You’re very good agents, already fairly senior, seen as loyal and reliable and trustworthy, and hence you’re given something useful to do. But then this is your reward for doing it. Which means one of two things.”

“Which are?” White said.

“Maybe the thing you did was embarrassing in certain circles. Maybe now it needs to be deniable. Maybe you need to be hidden away. Out of sight and out of mind.”

White shook his head. He said, “No, it was well regarded. It will be for years. I got a secret decoration. And a personal letter from the Secretary of State. And it doesn’t need to be deniable anyway, because it was completely secret. No one in those circles knew anything about it.”

Reacher looked at Waterman and said, “Was there anything embarrassing about your manhunt?”

Waterman shook his head, and said, “What’s the second possibility?”

“This is not a school.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s a place where they send good agents fresh off a big win.”

Waterman paused a beat. A new thought. He said, “Are you the same as us? I don’t see why you wouldn’t be. Why draft two the same and not three?”

Reacher nodded. “I’m the same. I’m fresh off a big win. That’s for damn sure. I got a medal this morning. On a ribbon around my neck. For a job well done. All clean and tidy. Nothing to get embarrassed about.”

“What kind of job was it?”

“I’m sure it’s classified. But I’m reliably informed it might have involved someone breaking into a house and shooting the occupant in the head.”

“Where?”

“One in the forehead and one behind the ear. Never fails.”

“No, where was the house?”

“I’m sure that’s classified, too. But overseas, I expect. And I’m reliably informed there were a lot of consonants in the name. Not many vowels at all. And then the same someone did the same thing the next night. At a different house. All for good reasons. Which taken together means I would expect him to get better than this afterward. I would expect him to get some input into his next deployment, at least. Maybe even a choice.”

“Exactly,” White said. “And my choice wouldn’t have been this. It would have been to do what I should be doing right now.”

“Which sounds challenging.”

“Very.”

“Which is typical. As a reward we want a challenge. We don’t want the easy commands. We want to step up.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe we have,” Reacher said. “Let me ask you a question. Think back to when you got these orders. Was it face to face, or written?”

“Face to face. It had to be, for a thing like this.”

“Was there a third person in the room?”

White said, “As a matter of fact there was. It was humiliating. An administrative assistant, waiting to deliver a stack of papers. He told her to stay. She was just standing there.”

Reacher looked at Waterman, who said, “Same for me. He kept his secretary in the room. Normally he wouldn’t. How did you know?”

“Because the same thing happened to me. His sergeant. A witness. But also a gossip. That was the whole point. They all talk to each other. Within seconds everyone knew I wasn’t going anywhere interesting. Just a meaningless course with a bullshit title. I was instantly yesterday’s news. Immediately off the radar. I’m sure it’s far and wide by now. I’m a non-person. I disappeared into the bureaucratic fog. And maybe you did, too. Maybe administrative assistants and FBI secretaries have networks of their own. If they do, then the three of us are the three most invisible people on the planet right now. No one is asking questions about us. No one is curious about us. No one can even remember us. There’s nothing more boring than where we are now.”

“You’re saying they moved three unrelated but in-form operatives completely under the radar. Why?”

“Under the radar doesn’t capture it. We’re in class here. We’re completely invisible.”

“Why? And why us three? What’s the connection?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s a challenging project. Possibly the kind of thing three in-form operatives might regard as a satisfactory reward for services rendered.”

“What is this place?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said again. “But it ain’t a school. That’s for damn sure.”

–

At five o’clock exactly two black vans pulled in off the road, and drove past the knee-high sign, and parked behind the three Caprices, like a barricade, trapping them in. Two men in suits got out of each of the vans. Secret Service, or U.S. Marshals. Both pairs of men looked around briefly, and gave themselves the all-clear, and ducked back to their vans to get their principals out.

From the second van came a woman. She had a briefcase in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. She was wearing a neat black dress. Knee length. It was the kind of thing that could do double duty, in the daytime with pearls in hushed high-floor offices, and in the evening with diamonds at cocktail parties and receptions. She was older than Reacher, maybe ten years or more. Middle forties, but doing well. Looking sharp. She had blonde hair, medium length, arranged in an unaffected style and no doubt combed with her fingers. She was taller than the average, but no wider.

Then out of the first van came a guy Reacher recognized instantly. His face was in the paper once a week, and on TV more than that, because as well as getting coverage for his own business, he was in a lot of stock photographs and B-roll footage, of Cabinet meetings, and tense shirt-sleeve discussions in the Oval Office. He was Alfred Ratcliffe, the National Security Adviser. The president’s top boy, whenever it came to things that might not end well. The go-to guy. The right-hand man. Rumor had it he was nearly seventy years old, but he didn’t look it. He was an old State Department survivor, historically in and out of favor as the winds changed and he didn’t, but he had hung in there long enough until finally his backbone got him the best job of all.

The woman joined up with him and they walked together, with the four suits all around them, to the lobby doors, which Reacher heard open, and then he heard feet on the hard carpet, and then they all came into the classroom, two suits hanging back, two walking point toward the chalkboard, Ratcliffe and the woman following them, and turning when they could get no further, to face the room, exactly like teachers at the start of a lesson.

Ratcliffe looked at White, and then at Waterman, and then at Reacher, way in back.

He said, “This is not a school.”

The woman bent decorously at the knees and laid her briefcase and her stack of papers on the floor. Ratcliffe took a step forward and said, “You three were brought here under false pretenses, obviously. But we didn’t want a lot of fanfare. A little misdirection was better. We want to avoid attention, if we can. At least at the beginning.”