Bad Luck and Trouble

18

Reacher spun away from the computer like he had been slapped and said, “Ah, man, that ain’t fair.”

“He liked you,” O’Donnell said. “He admired you.”

“It’s like a voice from the grave. Like a call.”

“You were here anyway.”

“It doubles everything. Now I can’t let him down.”

“You weren’t going to in the first place.”

“Too much pressure.”

“No such thing as too much pressure. We like pressure. We thrive on pressure.”

Neagley was at the desk, fingers on the laptop’s keyboard, staring at the screen.

“Eight separate files,” she said. “Seven of them are a bunch of numbers and the eighth is a list of names.”

“Show me the names,” O’Donnell said.

Neagley clicked on an icon and a word processor page opened. It contained a vertical list of five names. At the top, typed in bold and underlined, was Azhari Mahmoud. Then came four Western names: Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, and Anthony Matthews.

“Initials are all the same,” O’Donnell said. “Top one is Arab, anywhere from Morocco to Pakistan.”

“Syrian,” Neagley said. “That would be my guess.”

“Last four names feel British,” Reacher said. “Don’t you think? Rather than American? English or Scottish.”

“Significance?” O’Donnell asked.

Reacher said, “At first glance I would say one of Franz’s background checks came up with a Syrian guy with four known aliases. Because of the five sets of common initials. Clumsy, but indicative. Maybe he’s got monogrammed shirts. And maybe the phony names are British because the paperwork is British, which would get around the kind of scrutiny that American paperwork would invite over here.”

“Possible,” O’Donnell said.

Reacher said, “Show me the numbers.”

Neagley closed the word processor document and opened the first of seven spreadsheets. It was nothing more than a page-long vertical list of fractions. At the top was 10/12. At the bottom was 11/12. In between were twenty-some similar numbers, including a repeated 10/12 and a 12/13 and a 9/10.

“Next,” Reacher said.

The next spreadsheet was essentially identical. A long vertical column, starting with 13/14 and ending with 8/9. Twenty-some similar numbers in between.

“Next,” Reacher said.

The third spreadsheet showed more or less exactly the same thing.

“Are they dates?” O’Donnell said.

“No,” Reacher said. “Thirteen-fourteen isn’t a date whether it’s month-day or day-month.”

“So what are they? Just fractions?”

“Not really. Ten-over-twelve would be written five-over-six if it was a regular fraction.”

“They’re like box scores, then.”

“For the game from hell. Thirteen for fourteen and twelve for thirteen would imply lots of extra innings and a three-figure final score, probably.”

“So what are they?”

“Show me the next one.”

The fourth spreadsheet showed the same long vertical list of fractions. The denominators were pretty much the same as in the first three, twelves and tens and thirteens. But the numerators were generally smaller. There was a 9/12, and an 8/13. Even a 5/14.

O’Donnell said, “If these are box scores, someone’s slumping.”

“Next,” Reacher said.

The trend continued. The fifth sheet had a 3/12, and a 4/13. The best was a 6/11.

“Someone’s heading back to the minor leagues,” O’Donnell said.

The sixth list had 5/13 as its best score and 3/13 as its worst. The seventh and last was about the same, varying between 4/11 and 3/12.

Neagley looked up at Reacher and said, “You figure it out. You’re the numbers guy. And Franz addressed all of this to you, after all.”

“I was his password,” Reacher said. “That’s all. He didn’t address anything to anyone. These aren’t messages. He’d have made it clearer if he was trying to communicate. These are working notes.”

“Very cryptic working notes.”

“Can you print them out for me? I can’t think without seeing them on paper.”

“I can print them in the business center downstairs. That’s why I stay in places like this now.”

O’Donnell asked, “Why would they trash an office to look for a list of numbers?”

“Maybe they didn’t,” Reacher said. “Maybe they were looking for the list of names.”

Neagley shut down the spreadsheets and reopened the word processor document. Azhari Mahmoud, Adrian Mount, Alan Mason, Andrew MacBride, Anthony Matthews.

“So who is this guy?” Reacher said.

Three time zones away in New York City it was three hours later in the day and the dark-haired forty-year-old man who could have been Indian, or Pakistani, or Iranian, or Syrian, or Lebanese, or Algerian, or Israeli, or Italian was crouching on a bathroom floor inside an expensive Madison Avenue hotel room. The door was closed. There was no smoke detector in the bathroom, but there was an extractor fan. The British passport issued to Adrian Mount was burning in the toilet pan. As always the inside pages went up easily. The stiff red covers burned slower. Page 31 was the laminated ID page. It burned slowest of all. The plastic curled and twisted and melted. The man used the hairdryer from the bathroom wall at a distance to fan the flames. Then he used the butt-end of his toothbrush to stir the ashes and the unburned flakes of paper. He lit another match and went after anything that was still recognizable.

Five minutes later Adrian Mount was flushed away and Alan Mason was on his way down to the street in the elevator.