Lee Child: Night School

“That’s above my pay grade. Ask Ratcliffe. Or the president.”

“In your own personal opinion?”

“What’s yours?”

“I’m a Middle East specialist. It’s all worst case to me.”

“Smallpox germs,” Waterman said. “That’s my worst case. Or something like that. A plague. A biological weapon. Or Ebola. Or an antidote. Or a vaccine. Which would mean they already have the germs.”

Reacher stared at the ceiling.

Things that might not end well.

You don’t sound happy. But you should .

As long as it takes .

Garber was like a crossword puzzle.

White looked at him and said, “What are you thinking about?”

He said, “The contradiction between rule one and the rest of it. We mustn’t burn the Iranian. Which means we can’t go anywhere near the messenger. We can’t even stake out a location the messenger leads us to. Because we don’t know the messenger exists. Not unless we got an inside whisper.”

“That’s an impediment,” Waterman said. “Not a contradiction. We’ll find a way to work around it. They need that guy.”

“It’s a question of efficiency. They need to know who these guys are ahead of time. They need to trace networks and build databases. Therefore they should focus on the messengers, surely. Verbal questions and verbal answers in their heads, back and forth, continent to continent, question, answer, question, answer. They know everything. They’re like audiotape. They’re worth a hundred inside men. Because they have the big picture. What has the Iranian got? Nothing but four walls in Hamburg and nothing to do.”

“He can’t just be sacrificed.”

“They could pull him out the same moment they hit the messenger. They could give him a house in Florida.”

White said, “The messenger wouldn’t talk. This is a tribal thing, going back a thousand years. They wouldn’t rat each other out. Not after the little we’re allowed to do to them, anyway. So it’s a smart play to keep the inside man where he is. They genuinely don’t know what’s coming. An early hint would be nice. Even part of a clue.”

Reacher said, “Do you know what’s coming?”

“Something unhinged. This is not the same as it used to be.”

“Have you worked with Ratcliffe before? Or Sinclair?”

“Never. Have you?”

Waterman said, “They didn’t choose us because they know us. They chose us because we weren’t in Hamburg at the critical time. We were engaged elsewhere. Therefore we can’t be the wrong people to talk to.”

A quarantined unit, Sinclair had said, and it felt like it. Three guys in a room, shut away from the outside world, because they were all infected, with an alibi.

–

At seven o’clock Reacher got his bags from the car and hauled them up to his bedroom, which was at the far end of three in a line, in a corridor that looked like an office corridor, and might have been the day before. The room was spacious and had a bathroom attached. An executive’s suite. Designed for a desk, not a bed, but it worked.

Eating was a case of firing up the old Caprice and cruising McLean, turning by instinct into the kind of streets that might have the kind of eventual edge-of-town lots that might have the kind of restaurants he was looking for. Not everyone’s choice. His metabolism helped. He saw neon up ahead, and shiny aluminum, next to a gas station, next to a highway ramp. A diner, old enough to be nearly authentic. Some dents and tarnish. Some miles on the clock.

He pulled in and parked, and heaved open the chromium door, and stepped inside. The air was cold and bright with fluorescent light. The first person he saw was a woman he knew. All alone in a booth. From his last-but-one command. The best soldier he had ever worked with. His best friend, possibly, in a guarded way, if friendship was permission to leave things unsaid.

At first he thought it was a not-very-amazing coincidence. It was a small world, and close to the Pentagon it got smaller still. Then he reassessed. She had been his top sergeant during the 110th MP’s glory years. She had played as big a part as anyone, and bigger than some. Bigger than most. Bigger than him, probably.

By being very smart.

Way too smart to be a coincidence.

He stepped up to her table. She didn’t move. She was watching him in the back of an upturned spoon. He slid in opposite and said, “Hello, Neagley.”

Sergeant Frances Neagley looked up from her spoon and said, “Of all the diners in all the towns. What were the odds?”

Reacher said, “Carefully calculated, I’m sure.”

“I guessed you were likely to drive west, because subconsciously you would want to keep D.C. behind you. I figured the turns you would make, which meant this is about the only obvious place. And this is the obvious time. I figured two hours of briefing, and then break for dinner.”

“It’s a school.”

“No it isn’t. The course title doesn’t even make sense.”

“They never make sense.”

“This one is worse than usual.”

“It’s a school.”

“They wouldn’t do that to you. Not while Garber lives and breathes.”

“I can’t discuss it. It’s too boring.”

“Let me hazard a wild-ass guess. It’s cover for something. Given your current batting average, it’s a high-level something. Which means you’ll get whatever you ask for. Especially staff. So you’ll be calling me in the morning anyway. Why not tell me twelve hours early?”

She was in woodland-pattern battledress uniform, the sleeves neatly rolled, her forearms on the table. She had dark hair, cut short, and dark eyes, and a tan. Her skin looked soft, but he was sure it wasn’t. He had seen her in action. She was fast and exceptionally strong. She would feel hard and solid underneath. But he didn’t know. He had never touched her. Never even shaken her hand.

He said, “I don’t know exactly what we’re going to need. The percentage play would be to start making lists. From movement orders. Active-duty personnel physically present in Germany on a certain day. And civilians, too, from passport records.”

“Why?”

“We need to find a particular American who was in Hamburg during a particular fifty-minute window.”

“Why?”

“He’s planning to sell something worth a hundred million dollars to a bunch of new-style bad guys from Yemen and Afghanistan.”

“Do we know what he’s selling?”

“No idea.”

“Land borders might be a problem. I think you can drive right through. Because of the European Union. The passport records might be incomplete.”

“Exactly. It’s only a percentage play. But we could help it a little. We could look at who was in and out of Switzerland, maybe the week before. When the guy was making his final decision. He was going to sell. He was about to open the bidding. Which he knew couldn’t last forever. So he needed to be ready ahead of time. So he opened a secret Swiss bank account. Probably in Zurich. Standing by and waiting. Then he went back to Hamburg and named his price.”

“Which is also only a percentage play. Therefore it can’t be an exclusionary factor. It could be an old account from years ago. This might not be a first-time bad guy. Or his secret account could be someplace else. Luxembourg, maybe.”

“Which is why I said I don’t know exactly what we’re going to need.”

“Do you think he’s military?”

“He could be. The odds say so. Like Americans in Korea or on Okinawa. So that’s another list we need, just in case. What could a military guy be selling? Is it intelligence? Or is it hardware? In which case, assume a shipping container, or a large van or a small truck, something unobtrusive, and make a list of what could fit inside and be worth a hundred million bucks.”