Blue Moon

FORTY-TWO

Reacher and Abby rode the elevator up to the Shevicks’ floor, which was low to medium by New York or Chicago standards, but by local standards it was probably the highest point for a hundred miles around. They found the right door. Maria Shevick looked at them through the peephole, and let them in. The room was a suite. It had a separate living room. It was bright and fresh and new and clean. There were two huge floor to ceiling windows, set at a right angle in the corner. It was early afternoon and the sun was high and the air was clear. The view was spectacular. The city lay spread out below. Like the hotel map Reacher had studied, now come to life.

Abby unveiled the money. The banded ten grand from the charnel house in back of the lumber yard, and close to eight from the moneylending bar. So much it thumped and bounced on the table, and some of it fluttered to the floor. The Shevicks practically laughed with joy. Today’s problem solved. Aaron decided he would pay it in at the bank, and then send a wire to the hospital in the normal businesslike way. A last shred of dignity. Abby offered to walk with him, to the downtown branch. Just for the company. No other reason. No need for one. By that point Aaron was walking much better, and east of Center was now safe as houses. So just for fun. They left together, and Reacher went back to the windows. Back to the view. Maria sat on a narrow sofa behind him.

She said, ‘Do you have children?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Reacher said. ‘None that I know of, anyway.’

He was looking at the city below him. The fat part of the pear shape. The corner windows showed him the whole of the northwest quadrant. From about nine on a clock face, to twelve. He could see Center Street more or less directly below. Close by beyond it, to his half left, were two office towers and another high-rise hotel. They looked brand new. They speared bravely upward from a uniform and spreading carpet of three- and four-storey buildings, mostly old, mostly brick, mostly dowdy. They had flat roofs, patched and painted silver. Most had air conditioning units sitting on angle-iron frames. There were metal exhaust chimneys coming up from restaurant kitchens, and satellite dishes the size of trampolines, and parking garages with open top decks. The streets were narrow, in some places choked with traffic, in others empty and quiet. There were tiny people walking, turning left, turning right, going in and coming out of doorways. The vista continued into the hazy distance.

Could be any basement in town, Vantresca had said.

Maria asked, ‘Are you married?’

‘No,’ Reacher said.

‘Don’t you want to be?’

‘The decision is only fifty per cent mine,’ he said. ‘I guess that would explain it.’

He turned back and looked at the view. Like he had looked at the map. Where would a competent commander hide a secret satellite operation? What kind of place? Security, accommodations, power, internet, isolation, easy supply and resupply. He looked for possibilities. The carpet of small brown buildings. The winking roofs. The traffic.

‘Abby likes you,’ Maria said.

‘Maybe,’ Reacher said.

‘You don’t want to admit it?’

‘I agree she’s putting in some hard time here. I assume there’s a reason.’

‘You don’t think you’re it?’

Reacher smiled.

He said, ‘What are you, my mother?’

No answer. Reacher kept on looking. As always the answer depended. If the southwest quadrant was the same as the northwest, then there were either fewer than ten or more than a hundred possible places. It depended on standards. It depended on what part of security, accommodations, power, internet, isolation, and easy supply a person didn’t understand.

He said, ‘What’s the news on Meg?’

She said, ‘The mood is still good. The scan tomorrow should confirm it. Everyone thinks so. Personally I feel like we’re gambling. Surely now this has to be it. It’s either a huge, huge win, or it’s a devastating loss.’

‘I would take those odds. Win or lose. I like the simplicity.’

‘It’s brutal.’

‘Only if you lose.’

‘Do you always win?’

‘So far.’

‘How can you?’

‘I can’t,’ Reacher said. ‘I can’t always win. One day I’m going to lose. I know that. But not today. I know that too.’

‘I wish you were a doctor.’

‘I don’t even have a postgraduate degree.’

She paused a beat, and said, ‘You told me you could find him.’

‘I will,’ Reacher said. ‘Today. Before the close of business.’

They all met back at Frank Barton’s house, deep in what used to be Albanian territory. There was still smoke in the sky, from the lumber yard fire. Barton and Hogan were back from their gig, and Vantresca was hanging out, and Reacher and Abby were fresh from their visit with the Shevicks. They all crowded in the front parlour. Once again it was full of gear. It couldn’t stay in the van. It would get stolen.

Hogan said, ‘The key to this thing is first you got to figure out are you second-guessing a smart guy, or a really smart guy, or a genius? Because that’s three different locations, right there.’

‘Gregory seems smart enough,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m sure he has a certain degree of rat-like cunning. But I doubt that this was his decision. Not if it was an official contract, worth tens of millions of dollars, with the government of a foreign country. I would guess that’s pretty much a seller’s market. I bet there were all kinds of clauses and conditions and inspections and approvals. Moscow would have wanted the very best. And they ain’t dumb over there. They know a bad idea when they see one. So in terms of location, I suggest we start second-guessing at the genius level.’

Vantresca said, ‘Security, accommodations, power, internet, isolation, ease of supply.’

‘Start at the end,’ Reacher said. ‘Ease of supply. How many blocks from their office is easy?’

‘More about what kind of block,’ Hogan said. ‘I would guess the whole of downtown. The business district. Anywhere with commercial zoning. Weird things come and go all the time. No one pays attention. Not like in a residential neighbourhood. I would say the edge of downtown is the natural limit. West of Center Street.’

‘That’s not isolated,’ Barton said. ‘It’s right in the hustle and the bustle.’

‘It’s like hiding in plain sight. Maybe not physically isolated, but very anonymous, all the same. There are all kinds of comings and goings, and no one sees a thing. No one knows anyone else’s name.’

Reacher asked, ‘What do they need for the internet?’

Vantresca said, ‘A mechanically robust connection to a cable ISP or a satellite, probably the satellite, because it would be harder to trace.’

‘There are plenty of satellite dishes in town.’

‘Lots of people use them.’

‘What do they need for power?’

‘A recent installation, up to code, with excess capacity as a safety margin, and automatic generator back-up in case of an outage on the grid. They can’t afford interruptions. Might screw up their gear.’

‘What about accommodations?’

‘Bedrooms, bathrooms, a mess hall, maybe a TV room, maybe a rec room. Table tennis, or something.’

‘Sounds like federal prison.’

‘I think windows,’ Abby said. ‘Not a basement. This could be a long contract. Trulenko is a superstar. Maybe down on his luck right now, but even so, he has standards. He’ll want to live close to normal. He’ll demand it.’

‘OK, windows,’ Reacher said. ‘Which brings us to security.’

‘Iron bars on the windows,’ Barton said.

‘Or anonymity,’ Hogan said. ‘There are a million windows. Sometimes the lights are on, sometimes they’re off. No one cares.’

Vantresca said, ‘They need a single controllable point of entry, probably with an advance screen some way upstream, and a last-chance back-up a little ways downstream. Maybe you have to come in through a basement, and then go up the back stairs. Something like that. Under scrutiny all the way. Like passing through a long tunnel. Metaphorically, if not literally.’

‘So where?’

‘There are a thousand buildings like that. You’ve seen them.’

‘I don’t like them,’ Reacher said. ‘Because they’re all joined together. Because of the Navy SEALs. Hogan laid it all out, back at the beginning. They would look for emergency exits, and delivery bays, and ventilation shafts and water pipes and sewers and so on, but most of all they would look for places where they could gain access by demolishing walls between adjacent structures. You know how that goes down. They wake up some old geezer in the city plans department, and he finds a dusty old blueprint, that shows this guy’s cellar connects to that guy’s cellar, except some other guy bricked it up in 1920, but only single skin, and poor quality mortar. You could breathe on it and it would fall down. Or they could come in sideways, through a first-floor wall. Or window. Or the top floor. Or they could rappel off the roof. Don’t forget, the Moscow government made this decision. It was big business. Maybe the contract would run for years. Therefore they wanted exactly the right location. Which they are more than qualified to judge. They know all our tricks. They know our special forces train all the time in urban environments exactly like this one.’

‘But out of town is not easy to supply. Impossible to have both at once.’

‘No such thing as impossible. Merely a failure of planning. I think they got what they wanted. Very close at hand, so it’s no problem to drop by with a cup of sugar. But also seriously isolated. Potentially hundreds of feet from the nearest other person. Rock solid infrastructure in terms of wires and cables and automatic generators and mechanically robust connections. Luxurious accommodations flooded with sunshine and natural daylight. Categorically impossible to penetrate from the sides. Or even approach. Or from below. Or from above. Zero significant penetration by water pipes or ventilation shafts. A single controllable entry, plenty of opportunity for upstream early warning, and as many defensive back-ups as they want. I think Moscow specified the place of their dreams, and I think they found it.’

‘Where?’ Abby said.

‘I was looking right at it, through the hotel window. With Maria Shevick. When she asked me if I wanted to get married.’

‘To her?’

‘I think generically.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said it takes two to tango.’

‘Where is Trulenko?’

‘It’s a nest, not a hive or a burrow. It’s up in the air. They rented three high floors in one of those new office towers. There are two of them west of Center. They use the top and bottom floors as buffer zones, and they live and work on the middle floor. Can’t get to them up or down or side to side.’