Lee Child - Night School

“So what now?”

“Did Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee tell you who sold them the ID?”

“They won’t. They’re scared. This is some kind of big mobbed-up thing. But not Italian. Nostalgic Germans instead. They have members and chapters and rules and all kinds of things. Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee are more afraid of them than me.”

“And the bar is where these guys meet?”

“It’s their unofficial HQ.”

“And what are they exactly?”

“The biggest far-right faction. So far all talk, but that can’t last forever.”

“OK, tell Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee we don’t care who they bought their ID from. Tell them we won’t ask again, in exchange for an answer to one simple question. They gave the impression they picked out their new names themselves. One of them said because he liked the sound of it. Ask them if that’s true. Could they really get any name they wanted?”

“OK,” Orozco said. “I’ll ask them. Anything else?”

“Not right now.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“Don’t worry. We’re golden.”

“If you get the guy.”

“How hard can it be?”

Reacher hung up the phone and turned to face the room. By that point lots of people were looking at him. Word had gotten around. There was a huddle at the street door, and another at the back door. Both sets of guys were watching him. Waiting for him. Which meant the fight would be outside. He would leave, and they would follow. If there was a fight. Which was not certain. These were mostly above average people. Above average age, above average weight. Heart attacks just waiting to happen. Discretion would be the better part of valor for most of them. The exceptions were of no real concern. They were younger and a little fitter, but they were desk workers. Nothing to worry about. Reacher was a good street fighter. Mostly because he enjoyed it.

He pushed off the wall and parted the crowd, chest out, as straight and slow as a funeral march. No one blocked him. He made it to the street door. In front of it was a tight knot of six men. In their thirties, probably, and none of them slender. But desk workers. Their suits were shiny on the ass and the elbow. He could read their body language. They were set to let him pass, and then they would about-turn fast and spill out behind him, on the damp and shiny cobblestones.

Reacher said, “You speak English?”

One guy said, “Yes.”

“You ever wonder why? Why you speak my language and I don’t speak yours?”

“What?”

“Never mind. What are your orders?”

“Orders?”

“If I wanted a parrot I’d go to a pet store. Someone just told you to do something. Tell me what it was.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to evaluate a large number of theoretical possibilities. One of which is you want a rumble on the sidewalk. Maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe I’ve misjudged you terribly. But I’ll have to err on the side of caution. You see that, right? It’s my only sensible course of action. So don’t follow me out the door. Maybe all you want is a breath of air. But erring on the side of caution means I’ll have to interpret it as a hostile act. Current NATO doctrine requires an immediate reaction with overwhelming force. I know you have a welfare state, but a hospital is still a hospital, no matter who pays for it. No fun at all. So my advice is to sit this one out.”

“You’re afraid of us.”

“Sadly, no. I’m trying to be fair, is all. No reason for you to get hurt. If one of your bosses has a beef with me, send him out alone. I’ll walk him around the block. We’ll have an exchange of views. That way everyone’s a winner.”

No answer.

Reacher pushed his way between the first guy and the second, and pulled the door. He slid out around its swing and took two fast paces to the curb and turned around.

No one followed.

He waited in the gutter a whole minute, but no one came out. He turned his collar up against the nighttime mist and set out walking back to the hotel. From the corner he saw the guy with the top hat was gone. The evening shift had ended, and the night shift had started. He slowed down and scanned ahead. Habit.

There was a guy in a doorway on the other side of the street. Barely visible. He was lit from the side, softly, in green, by a pharmacy sign two units further away. He was wearing a dark parka and a little Bavarian hat. Probably had a feather in the band. He was watching the hotel. No doubt about that. He was face-on to it, wedged in the doorway corner. White, and a little stout. Maybe six feet and two-ten. Hard to say how old.

Reacher walked on. Maybe part of a diplomatic protection team. A courtesy from the German government. Maybe they had found out Sinclair was in town. Or maybe Bishop had sent a guy. From the consulate. A third under-deputy for cultural affairs, with brass knuckles in his pocket. Trained under the previous system.

Reacher walked on, looking at nothing in particular, with the guy in the corner of his eye. But then a car turned in from the four-way up ahead, and bright headlights came straight at him, fast and dazzling, a big vehicle pattering over the cobblestones.

The car stopped alongside him. A Mercedes. A department Mercedes. Griezman. Who buzzed the passenger window down and said, “Get in. I’ve been calling you. I thought you must be asleep with the phone turned off. I was coming to wake you up.”

Reacher said, “Why?”

“We saw Wiley.”

Reacher glanced up.

The man in the doorway was gone.

“Get in,” Griezman said.

Reacher did.

Griezman took off fast, his seat back yielding and groaning under the sudden acceleration. He said one of the cops in one of the unmarked cars parked at the bar earlier in the evening had been a night-shift guy, brought in early on overtime rates of pay, and therefore still on duty, still on his regular watch. Still with the sketch of Wiley on the seat beside him. He had been cruising the western edge of St. Pauli, and he had seen a guy he swore matched the sketch. Carrying a bottle-shaped carrier bag from an all-night wine store. Walking south toward the water.

Reacher said, “When?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“How sure is he?”

“I believe him. He’s a good cop.”

Traffic was light, but the road surface was slick, and most other drivers were heading home from bars, so Griezman wasn’t as fast as he might have been. But even so they got where they were going within ten minutes. They stopped between high buildings, twenty yards short of a crossroads. Griezman said the possible Wiley had been seen crossing the street, up ahead, walking right to left from the cop’s point of view. Now thirty minutes ago, in total. In that direction lay huge new apartment blocks. A brand-new residential development. Immense. On reclaimed land, from when the docks moved downriver, in search of more space. There were thousands and thousands of separate addresses.

Reacher said, “Rentals, right?”

Griezman said, “You think he lives there?”

“He was carrying a bottle of wine. Conceivably taking it to a party, but more likely taking it home. Given the late hour.” Reacher looked the other way, to his right. He said, “I bet I know what he bought. Let’s go find the store.”

–

The store was a clean, well lit place, with what looked like a fine selection of wines, red, white, rosé, and sparkling, including a shelf of lower-priced items, for folks who didn’t live in brand-new residential developments. The clerk was an amiable old guy of about sixty-something. Reacher took his copy of Wiley’s sketch from his pocket and the old guy confirmed it immediately. The man in the sketch had been in the store about forty minutes previously. He had bought a bottle of chilled champagne.