Blue Moon

FORTY-ONE

In the background on the line Reacher heard all kinds of hustle and bustle. A big open space. Maybe a low hard ceiling. The clatter of keyboards. A dozen conversations. He said, ‘I’m guessing you’re at a desk in a newsroom.’

Barbara Buckley said, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘I’m guessing you’ve got tickers and cable news on screens all around you.’

‘Hundreds of them.’

‘Maybe right now one of them is showing regional coverage of a fire in a lumber yard in a city you know.’

No answer.

Reacher said, ‘The good news is the lumber yard was the Albanian gang’s HQ. It’s burning to the ground. Most of them are dead inside. The rest have fled. They’re history. The things they said to you don’t apply any more. From when you had that meeting, a couple months ago. In the back room of the restaurant. Those threats are now gone for ever. As of today. We believe it was important you should know as soon as possible. It’s a part of our victim’s rights protocol.’

‘Is this the police department?’

‘Strictly speaking, no.’

‘But you are law enforcement?’

‘Which has many levels.’

‘Which level are you?’

‘Ma’am, with the greatest possible respect, you’re a journalist. There are some things better not said out loud.’

‘You mean, you could tell me, but then you would have to kill me?’

‘Ma’am, we don’t really say that.’

‘Are you speaking from there?’

‘I would prefer not to discuss specific locations. But I will say it’s very warm here.’

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘How did you even find me? I didn’t report the threats to anyone.’

Reacher took a breath, ready to launch into the second part of his script, but she beat him to it, like the investigative reporter he guessed she was, with a rapid-fire chain of fast connections and assumptions and wild-ass guesses, all of which ended up pretty much where he would have wanted to anyway. She said, ‘Wait, the only person who could have known anything about this was the guy who drove me to the airport afterwards, who was the local help I hired, who was ex-military, a fairly senior rank, which I know for sure because obviously I checked him out, so it must have been him who reported it, presumably to a friend or an associate with a particular interest, possibly in the Pentagon, which is probably where you come from. Some secret three-letter agency no one has ever heard of.’

Reacher said, ‘Ma’am, I would very much prefer not to confirm or deny.’

‘Whatever,’ she said. Then she took a breath and her voice changed a little. She said, ‘I appreciate the call. Thank you. Your protocol works well.’

‘Feel better?’

‘You said you had a story for me. Is that it? The Albanians are gone?’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘Something different. Involving you.’

‘I won’t go public. I dropped the story. Not what a fearless reporter is supposed to do.’

‘This is the other side of the coin,’ Reacher said. ‘This is where the fearless reporter breaks the case wide open. Because of the research you did. You came here for a reason. Which wasn’t the Albanians. You gave the impression you were much more interested in the Ukrainians. It would help us to know the basis for that interest.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What did you think the Ukrainians were doing?’

‘I understood the question. What I didn’t understand was why you were asking it. You’re a secret three-letter agency. Surely you know why you’re there. Or is this what you do now? You outsource the actual investigative part of the investigation to newspapers?’

Reacher took a breath, and launched into the third part of his script. He said, ‘Clearly you derived information from somewhere. As did we, of course. But your somewhere was not the same place as our somewhere. I can pretty much guarantee that. Therefore if we make you the star of the show, we keep ourselves in the shadows. We throw suspicion in the wrong direction. We protect our sources. They live to fight another day. Which might be important. But the rules of engagement require that we hear a credible accusation from a credible person before we can proceed. We can’t just make it up. It’s subject to review.’

‘Are you recording this?’

‘I would need your permission.’

‘You would admit I broke the case?’

‘I think we would be obliged to spin it that way. Best all around. No one would look at our guys. Plus we don’t care anyway. I don’t want to go on TV.’

‘I’m a journalist,’ Buckley said. ‘No one would call me credible.’

‘These are just boxes to check. We would take a tarot card reader.’

‘It started with a rumour I heard from a friend of a friend. The story was, whatever was claimed politically, the intelligence professionals had in fact traced the fake news on the internet all the way back to the Russian government in Moscow, and they had also gotten pretty good at blocking it, except suddenly they had a setback. The rumour was somehow the Russians had gotten inside. They were operating inside the United States, and the blocking didn’t work any more.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘But I got to thinking. Obviously there was nothing coming out of their embassy, because we would have known. We’re all over that place, electronically. And they didn’t move the whole project here, because it’s not just us they’re messing with. They’re hacking the world. So obviously they outsourced the American part of the project to someone who was already here. Like a straightforward business deal. Like a franchise. But who? The Russian mob in the U.S. isn’t good enough, and anyway, no way would the Russian government want to be in business with them. I tried to figure it out. I had some information. The geeks at the paper follow this stuff. They have league tables, like the NFL. All those old Soviet states are pretty good at technology. Estonia, for instance. And Ukraine, they figured. But Moscow and Kiev can’t talk. They’re at permanent loggerheads. But Moscow can talk to the Ukrainian mob in the U.S. Same people, same talent, but a different place. And it would be perfect cover. It’s a very unlikely link. And the geeks said the Ukrainians were just about good enough to do it, in a technology sense. So I figured that was what had happened. An annual contract, between the Russian government and Ukrainian organized crime in America, probably worth at least tens of millions of dollars. I have no proof, but I bet I’m right. Call it a journalist’s guess.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said again.

‘But then a couple months ago they suddenly got much better at doing it. They went way beyond just good enough. It happened more or less overnight. Suddenly they were doing really smart stuff. The geeks said they must have brought in new talent. No other way of doing it. Maybe a consultant from Moscow. So I went there to check. Naively I thought I might see a Russian walking around town, looking lost.’

‘So you already aimed to break the story.’

‘But I didn’t.’

‘Where would you have looked?’

‘I had no idea. That was going to be my next step. But I never got that far.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Is that enough?’

‘Credible person, credible reason. The boxes are checked.’

‘Thank you again, for the first part of the call. I do feel better.’

‘It’s a great feeling,’ Reacher said. ‘Isn’t it? You’re alive, and they ain’t.’

At the end of their hour Barton and Hogan came up to the street, damp with exertion, loaded with gear. Vantresca was helping them. He read the new text. The photograph, in the fat green bubble. He said, ‘This is absurd.’

Reacher said, ‘He took me by surprise.’

‘Not the photograph. The message is from Gregory himself. He says you’re the vanguard of an attack from a direction he can no longer reliably discern. It is even possible you are an agent of the Kiev government. You must therefore be captured at all costs. You must be brought to him alive.’

‘Better than the alternative, I suppose.’

‘Did the doorman tell you anything?’

‘Plenty,’ Reacher said. ‘But the journalist told me more.’

‘She talked to you?’

‘It’s about fake news on the internet. It was coming in from Russia. Now it’s inside the United States. We can’t block it any more. She figured Moscow hired the Ukrainians as a proxy. Then about two months ago the standard went way up. She said the geeks at the paper figured the Ukrainians must have brought in new talent. No other way to explain it.’

‘Trulenko went into hiding about two months ago.’

‘Exactly,’ Reacher said. ‘He’s smart with computers. He’s managing the contract. The Russian government is paying Gregory, and Gregory is paying Trulenko. After taking a healthy percentage for himself, I’m sure. Must feel like Christmas morning. The journalist said the contract could be worth tens of millions of dollars.’

‘What did the doorman tell you?’

‘It’s a secret satellite operation physically separate from the main office. He didn’t know where it is, or how big it is, or who works there, or how many.’

‘You call that telling you plenty?’

‘If we put the two things together, we can start to work out what they need. Security, accommodations, reliable power, reliable internet speed, isolated, but close enough for easy supply and resupply.’

‘Could be any basement in town. They could have run new wires and put in a couple of cots.’

‘More than cots,’ Reacher said. ‘This is an annual contract. No doubt renewable. Could be a long-term project.’

‘OK, as well as the wires, they also brought in wallboard and paint and put carpet on the floor. Maybe king size beds.’

‘We better start looking,’ Abby said.

‘Something else first,’ Reacher said. ‘That awful photograph reminded me. I want to go pay that guy a visit. It’s after twelve o’clock. I bet he’s holding a bunch of repayments. The Shevicks need money today. We’re still a grand short.’

This time Abby drove. Reacher could feel the weight in the back. The rear end of the car squatted and dragged. There were more than six hundred pounds in the trunk. Maybe never taken into account, during Lincoln’s design process.

They stopped short of the bar, in a side street. Did Situation C call for extra guards everywhere? Reacher guessed not everywhere. Insufficient manpower. They would consolidate their resources only where they mattered most. Their high-value targets. Did the moneylending operation qualify? He wasn’t sure. He got out and peered around the corner, one-eyed around the brick.

The street was empty. There was nothing parked outside the bar. There were no guys in suits, leaning on walls.

He got back in and they drove on, across the street with the bar, and around to the alley behind. It was the old part of town, built around the time Alexander Graham Bell was inventing the telephone, so anything newer was grafted on, as an afterthought. There were leaning poles carrying sagging thickets of wires and cables, looping here, looping there. There were water meters and gas meters and electricity meters, screwed randomly to the walls. There were head-high garbage receptacles.

There was a black Lincoln parked behind the bar. Empty. The pale guy’s ride, no doubt. Ready for the journey home, at the end of the day. Abby stopped behind it.

‘Can I help?’ she asked.

‘You want to?’ he asked back.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Walk around to the front. Come in the door like a regular person. Pause for a second. The guy sits in the rear right-hand corner. Walk towards the rear wall.’

‘Why?’

‘I want the guy distracted. He’ll watch you all the way. Partly because maybe you’re a new customer, but mostly because you’re the best-looking thing he’s seen all day. Maybe all his life. Ignore the barman, whatever he says. He’s an asshole.’

‘Got it,’ she said.

‘You want a gun?’

‘Should I?’

‘Can’t hurt,’ he said.

‘OK,’ she said.

He gave her the lounge doorman’s H&K. It looked dainty in his hand and huge in hers. She hefted it a couple of times, and stuck it in her pocket. She headed off down the alley. Reacher found the bar’s back door. It was a plain steel panel, dull and old, scarred and dented low down, by hand trucks wheeling kegs and crates. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. No doubt a city regulation. It was a fire exit too.

Reacher slipped inside. He was at the far end of a short corridor. Restrooms to the left and right. Then a door for employees only. An office, or a storeroom. Or both. Then the end of the corridor, and the room itself, seen in reverse. The square bar now in the near right corner, the worn central track leading away, between the long rows of four-top tables. The same as before. The light was still dim and the air still smelled of spilled beer and disinfectant. This time there were five customers, once again each of them alone at separate tables, defending their drinks, looking miserable. Behind the bar was the same fat guy, now with a six-day beard, but a fresh towel thrown over his shoulder.

The pale guy was at the back table on Reacher’s left. The same as before. Luminescent in the gloom. Glittering hair. Thick white wrists, big white hands, a thick black ledger. The same black suit, the same white shirt, the same black silk necktie. The same tattoo.

Abby stepped in the street door. She stood still as it closed behind her. Performance art. Every eye was on her. She was softly backlit by the dull neon in the windows. Petite and gamine, neat and slender, dressed all in black. Short dark hair, lively dark eyes. A shy but contagious smile. A stranger, dropping by, hoping for a welcome.

She didn’t get one. All five customers looked away. But the barman didn’t. Neither did the pale guy. She set out walking and they watched her all the way.

Reacher took a step. He was six feet behind the pale guy, and six feet to the side, no doubt in the corner of his eye, but hopefully Abby was filling all of it. She kept on coming, and he took another step.

The barman called out, ‘Hey.’

He had been in the corner of the barman’s eye, too. Six feet behind, six feet to the side. All kinds of things happened next. Like a complex ballet. Like a triple play in baseball. The pale guy glanced back, started to get up, Reacher stepped away, towards the bar, where he grabbed the barman’s fat head in both hands, and jumped up and thrust it down and smashed it on the mahogany, like dunking a basketball from way high in the air, and he used the bounce of his landing to pivot back to the pale guy, one step, two, and he hit him with a colossal straight right, all his moving mass behind it, centre of the guy’s face as he rose up from his chair, and the guy disappeared backward like he had been shot out of a cannon. He slid and sprawled on the floor, flat on his back, blood coming out of his nose and his mouth.

All five customers got up and hurried out the door. Maybe a traditional local response, in such situations. In which case Reacher applauded the habit. It left no witnesses. There were blood and teeth on the bar top, but the barman himself had fallen backward out of sight.

‘I guess he didn’t watch me all the way,’ Abby said.

‘I told you,’ Reacher said. ‘He’s an asshole.’

They crouched next to the pale guy and took his gun and his phone and his car key and what looked like about eight thousand dollars from his pockets. His nose was badly busted. He was breathing through his mouth. Flecks of blood were bubbling at the corners of his lips. Reacher remembered him tapping his glittering head with his bone-white finger. Some kind of a threatening implication. He thought, how the mighty are fallen.

He said, ‘Yes or no?’

Abby was quiet a beat.

Then she said, ‘Yes.’

Reacher clamped his palm over the guy’s mouth. Hard to keep it there, because it was slippery with blood. But he prevailed. The guy wasted time scrabbling for his pocket, looking for his gun, which was no longer there, and then he wasted the rest of his life drumming his heels and clawing uselessly at Reacher’s wrist. Eventually he went limp, and then still.

They took the pale guy’s Lincoln, because its trunk was empty. It rode much better. They drove downtown and parked on a hydrant around a corner from the Shevicks’ hotel. Abby checked the new phone. No new texts. Nothing since the conspiracy theory from Gregory.

‘Was it from his own number?’ Reacher asked.

Abby compared it with previous texts.

‘I guess,’ she said. ‘It isn’t the usual number.’

‘We should call him again. Keep him updated.’

Abby dabbed a shortcut from the text screen and put the phone on speaker. They heard it ring. They heard it answered. Gregory said a word, short and urgent, probably not hello. Probably shoot, or yes, or what.

‘Speak English,’ Reacher said.

‘You.’

‘You just lost two more. I’m coming for you, Gregory.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Not from Kiev.’

‘Then from where?’

‘The 110th Special MP.’

‘What is that?’

‘You’ll find out, pretty soon.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘You made a mistake.’

‘What mistake?’

‘You crossed a line. So get ready. Payback time is here.’

‘You’re American.’

‘As apple pie.’

Gregory paused a long moment. No doubt thinking. No doubt about his wide network of bribes paid, and palms greased, and backs scratched, and favours owed, and hair-trigger early warning tripwires carefully set in place. Any or all of which should have alerted him long ago. But he had heard nothing. From anywhere.

‘You’re not a cop,’ he said. ‘You’re not a government man. You’re on your own. Aren’t you?’

‘Which I’m sure will make it all the harder for you to take, when your organization is in ruins, and all your men are dead, except for you, because you’re the last one alive, and then I step in through the door.’

‘You won’t get near me.’

‘How am I doing so far?’

No answer.

‘Get ready,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m coming for you.’

Then he clicked off the call and threw the phone out the window. They drove on, around the corner, and they parked in a ten-minute bay outside the Shevicks’ hotel.