Lee Child - Night School

Behind the desk in a chair was a guy Reacher took to be Dremmler. He looked like the boss of something. He looked like a leader. He was about forty-five years old. An imposing individual. His hair was blond, going gray, and his face was red, going gray. He was wearing a suit, with a high lapel. An old German style. His elbows were on the desk. His fingers were steepled. He was studying the secret file. Or he had been. Now he was staring at Reacher. Or his Colt Government Model. Which was aimed at his face.

Reacher said, “Hände hoch.”

Like an old black-and-white movie.

Hands up.

Dremmler did nothing. The men either side went for the biding-his-time tough guy version, their hands coming up halfway, fingers straight, tense and speculative. A cease fire, but not a surrender.

Reacher stepped closer.

He said, “Do you speak English?”

Dremmler said, “Yes.”

“You’re under arrest.”

“On what authority?”

“The U.S. Army.”

Dremmler glanced down, at the crumpled camouflage canvas.

Reacher said, “Did you mess with that thing?”

“Not yet,” Dremmler said. “We don’t know what it is.”

“It’s nothing of interest.”

“We clicked the knobs a little. To see what they were, really.”

“And the switches?”

“On and off, a couple of times.”

“And now you’re studying the file. Trying to puzzle it out.”

“What is it exactly?”

Reacher said, “Step out of the room one by one.”

The first guy came out. The man Reacher had seen. He walked on his toes, tense and ready, biding his time. Then the second guy came out, just the same.

Reacher said to Dremmler, “You stay there.”

Dremmler stayed at his desk, his fingers still steepled.

Reacher said to the two guys, “You are in the custody of the United States Army. I am obliged by law to tell you if you mess with us we will hurt you very badly.”

The two men didn’t move.

Reacher said to Orozco, “You and Hooper take these guys out to Griezman. Send Neagley out to guard the truck. New departure time is fifteen minutes from now.”

“Why?”

“He messed with the switches.”

“It has to need more than that.”

“I sure hope so. But I would like to check. Herr Dremmler can help me. He has the file, after all.”

Dremmler stayed at his desk and Reacher sat in an empty chair next to the Davy Crockett. Like a host and two guests. A three-way conversation. Three points of view. But nothing was said. Not for the first many minutes. Reacher took the file off the desk and tried to make sense of it. A six-digit code was entered by turning the chicken-head knobs. Officially one guy did three digits, and clicked his arming switch, and then the second guy did three more, and clicked his arming switch. The center switch stayed off. What was it for? The file didn’t say.

Ten six-digit codes were listed. They were indexed against ten serial numbers. Ready for an armorer’s stick of chalk.

Dremmler said, “What is that thing?”

Reacher said, “What were you hoping for?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“To help your cause make a statement.”

“You should leave now,” Dremmler said. “This discussion is over.”

Reacher said, “Is it?”

“You have no authority here. This is a simple misunderstanding. I don’t even know what that thing is.”

“It’s a bomb. You stole it. After asking about Horace Wiley’s new name.”

“Griezman would find it very difficult to make legal progress against me.”

“Because you have people in places that might surprise him?”

“Hundreds and hundreds of people.”

“Are you their leader?”

“I have that honor.”

“Where are you leading them?”

“They want their country back. I will make sure they get it. And more. I’ll make sure they get the country they deserve. Strong again. With purity of purpose. All pulling together in the same direction. No more dead wood. No more outside interference. Nothing of that kind will be tolerated. Germany will be for Germans.”

Reacher was quiet a long moment.

Then he said, “How much do you know about the history of your country?”

“The truth or the lies?”

“The terror and the misery and the eighty million dead. We learned that stuff in class. Then at night we’d be shooting the shit, and someone would talk about a time machine, which meant you could go back and take the guy out. Before he even got started. Would you do it?”

“What was your opinion?”

“I was all for it. But it was a dumb question. There are no time machines. And hindsight is always twenty-twenty vision. I figured the real challenge was to ask the question backward. Starting in the here and now. Looking ahead. With foresight. Which is the opposite of a time machine. Is there a guy you could take out today, so no one would need to dream about time machines tomorrow? If so, would you do it? Suppose you were wrong. But suppose you were right. Eighty million lives for one.”

The clock in his head told him fifteen minutes had passed. The bomb was fine. Random twisting and clicking meant nothing. Which made sense. A bad parachute landing could have been worse.

He said, “It was a hardcore moral question. Some said no, because the guy has broken no laws. Not yet. But that was true of all of them once. If you would come back in a time machine to do it, why wouldn’t you do it now? Some worried about degrees of certainty. What if you’re only ninety percent sure? Some said better safe than sorry. Which logically meant anything better than fifty percent. But not really. Anything over one percent might be worth it. A one-in-a-hundred chance of saving eighty million people from terror and misery? Do you have a view, Herr Dremmler?”

Dremmler said nothing.

Reacher said, “We were undergraduates. West Point is a college. It’s the kind of thing we talked about then. Were we serious? Didn’t matter. There was no way to prove we would do what we said. Or not. But life’s a bitch. Now I get to answer the question for real. Was I bullshitting all those years ago?”

He shot Dremmler in the heart, and when he settled he shot him again, in the head, from the same range, to be sure and certain. Then he put his gun in his pocket, and stuffed the file in the camouflaged backpack, and hoisted the Davy Crockett up on his shoulder, and walked out to the van. He stepped one way and hit the green magic mushroom, to open the door, and then the other, to dump the backpack down with its nine other siblings. He pulled the door on them and locked the lever tight.

He got in the passenger seat.

Neagley said, “You OK?”

“Never better.”

“You sure?”

“What are you, my mother?”

The door came all the way up.

Reacher said, “Drive.”

–

The NSC ran an emergency protocol whereby the participants were immediately dispersed, to reduce the risk of visual identification, and consequently the risk of subpoenas. Within sixteen hours Reacher was in Japan. He heard a nuclear recovery company had been sent out to unload the van. They had an old-style vehicle, from back in the days when nuclear-tipped missiles would fall off planes and land in fields. Later he heard White and Vanderbilt had flown direct to Zurich with the messenger. They had drained one account and filled another. The CIA was up six hundred million. The Iranian was given a condo in Century City. Within a week he had a job in the movies. The Saudis were called home to Yemen. After that, there was no further trace of them. Wiley was buried in a potter’s field, on the shoulder of a German highway, with no stone or marker.

–