Lee Child - Never Go Back

But he saw no such vehicles. Most were entirely normal, and three or four of them were new enough and bland enough to be airport rentals, which was what Espin and the 75th MP would be using, and two or three of them were weird enough to be FBI seizures, reissued for use as unmarked stake-out cars. Shadows and the glare of the sun and window tints made it hard to be sure whether any were occupied, or not.

They drove on, same speed, same trajectory, and they got on the freeway again, because Reacher felt a sudden U-turn or other atypical choice of direction would stand out, and they drove around the same long slow rectangle, and they came down Lankershim for the second time, and they parked in the mouth of the same cross street again, feeling comfortably remote and invisible from the south.

‘Want to see it again?’ Turner asked.

‘Don’t need to,’ Reacher said.

‘So what next?’

‘They could be anywhere. We don’t know what they look like, or what car they’ve got. So there’s no point driving around. We need to get a precise location from the lawyer. If the lawyer even knows, day to day.’

‘Sure, but how?’

‘I could call, or I could get Edmonds to call for me, but the lawyer is going to say all correspondence should come to the office, and all meetings should be held at the office. He can’t afford to give her location to a party as involved as I’m supposed to be. He would have to assume any contact I had would end up either creepy or violent. Basic professional responsibility. He could get sued for millions of dollars.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to do what guys do when they have nothing better going on.’

‘Which is what?’

‘I’m going to call a hooker.’

They backed up and headed north again, and they found a hamburger restaurant, where they drank coffee and Reacher studied certain entries in a Yellow Pages borrowed from the owner, and then they got back on the road again, as far as a motel they saw next to one of the Burbank airport’s long-term parking lots. They didn’t check in. They stayed in the car, and Reacher dialled a number he had memorized. The call was answered by a woman with a foreign accent. She sounded middle-aged, and sleepy.

Reacher asked her, ‘Who’s your top-rated American girl?’

The foreign woman said, ‘Emily.’

‘How much?’

‘A thousand an hour.’

‘Is she available now?’

‘Of course.’

‘Does she take credit cards?’

‘Yes, but then she’s twelve hundred an hour.’

Reacher said nothing.

The foreign woman said, ‘She can be with you in less than thirty minutes, and she’s worth every penny. How would you like her to dress?’

‘Like a grade-school teacher,’ Reacher said. ‘About a year out of college.’

‘Girl next door? That’s always a popular look.’

Reacher gave his name as Pete Lozano, and he gave the name and the address of the motel behind him.

‘Is that next to the airport parking lot?’ the foreign woman asked.

‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

‘We use it a lot. Emily will have no trouble finding it.’

Reacher clicked off the call, and they got comfortable, and they waited, not talking, doing nothing at all but look ahead through the windshield.

After ten minutes Turner said, ‘You OK?’

Reacher said, ‘Not really.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m sitting here staring at fourteen-year-old girls. I feel like a pervert.’

‘Recognize any?’

‘Not yet.’

Altogether they waited more than thirty-five minutes, and then Reacher’s phone rang. Not the foreign woman calling back with an excuse for Emily’s lateness, but Captain Edmonds calling back with what she announced as front-page news. Reacher tilted the phone and Turner put her head close to listen. Edmonds said, ‘I got the full jacket on A.M. 3435. It came through five minutes ago. Not without a little hustle on my part, I might add.’

Reacher said, ‘And?’

‘No, really, you’re most welcome, major. Absolutely my pleasure. I don’t mind risking my entire career by entering in where JAG captains should fear to tread.’

‘OK, thank you. I should have said that first. I’m sorry.’

‘Some things you need to understand. We’ve been in Afghanistan more than ten years now, and in that context 3435 is a relatively low number. Currently we’re well over a hundred thousand. Which means the data on this man was created some time ago. About seven years ago, I think, as far as I can tell. And there have been no significant updates. Nothing beyond the routine minimum. Because this is a fairly ordinary guy. Boring, even. At first glance he’s a meaningless peasant.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Emal Gholam Zadran. He’s now forty-two years old, and he’s the youngest of five Zadran brothers, all of them still alive. He seems to be the black sheep of the family, widely regarded as disreputable. The elder brothers are all fine upstanding poppy growers, working the family farm, like their ancestors did for a thousand years before them, very traditional, small time and modest. But young Emal didn’t want to settle for that. He tried his hand at a number of things, and failed at them all. His brothers forgave him, and took him back, and as far as anyone knows he lives near them in the hills, does absolutely nothing productive, and keeps himself to himself.’

‘What was he written up for seven years ago?’

‘One of the things he tried out, and failed at.’

‘Which was?’

‘Nothing was proved, or we’d have shot him.’

‘What wasn’t proved?’

‘The story is he set up as an entrepreneur. He was buying hand grenades from the 10th Mountain Division and selling them to the Taliban.’

‘How much did he get for them?’

‘It doesn’t say.’

‘Not proved?’

‘They tried their best.’

‘Why didn’t they shoot him anyway?’

‘Reacher, you’re talking to an army lawyer here. Nothing was proved, and we’re the United States of America.’

‘Suppose I wasn’t talking to an army lawyer.’

‘Then I would say nothing was proved, and right then we were probably kissing Afghan butt and hoping they would set up a civilian government of their own at some point in the not-too-distant future, so we could get the hell out of there, and in that atmosphere shooting indigenous individuals against whom nothing had been proved, even by our own hair-trigger military justice system, would have been regarded as severely counterproductive. Otherwise I’m sure they would have shot him anyway.’

‘You’re pretty smart,’ Reacher said. ‘For an army lawyer.’

And then he clicked off, because he was watching a kid who had gotten out of a cab and was walking into the motel driveway. She was luminous. She was young and blonde, and fresh and energetic, and somehow earnest, as if she was determined to use all the many years ahead doing nothing but good in the world. She looked like a grade-school teacher, about a year out of college.

FORTY-NINE

THE KID WALKED past the motel office, and then she stopped, as if she didn’t know where to go. She had a name but no room number. Turner buzzed her window down and called out, ‘Are you Emily?’

Which was something she and Reacher had rehearsed. No question it was weird to be approached in a motel parking lot by a woman in a car, ahead of what was clearly going to be a bizarre threesome. But a similar approach by a man would have been weirder still. So Turner got to ask the question, which the kid answered by saying, ‘Yes, I’m Emily.’

Turner said, ‘We’re your clients.’

‘I’m sorry. They didn’t tell me. It’s more money for couples.’