Blue Moon

FORTY-SEVEN

Five minutes later Barton left the coffee shop for an imaginary dental appointment. Reacher and the others stayed where they were. It was a convenient base. Close by. No doubt the counterman was a west side informant, but there was no one left to inform. Reacher saw him make a couple of calls. Apparently they weren’t answered. The guy stared at his phone, puzzled.

Then Hogan and Vantresca left for an imaginary discussion about commercial real estate. Reacher and Abby stayed at the table. Theirs were the only faces on Ukrainian phones. They figured they better not start the party too early.

The counterman tried a third call.

It wasn’t answered.

Abby said, ‘I guess this means we can go back to my place tonight.’

‘No reason why not,’ Reacher said.

‘Unless you leave before tonight.’

‘Depends what happens. All five of us might be running.’

‘Suppose we aren’t.’

‘Then we’ll go back to your place tonight.’

‘For how long?’

He said, ‘What would be your answer to that question?’

She said, ‘I guess not for ever.’

‘That’s my answer too. Except my for ever horizon is closer than most. Full disclosure.’

‘How close?’

He looked out the window, at the street, at the brick, at the afternoon shadows. He said, ‘I already feel like I’ve been here for ever.’

‘So you’ll leave anyway.’

‘Come with me.’

‘What’s wrong with sticking around?’

‘What’s wrong with not?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m not complaining. I just want to know.’

‘Know what?’

‘How long we’ve got. So I can make the most of it.’

‘You don’t want to come with me?’

‘Seems to me I have a choice of two things. Either a good memory with a beginning and an end, or a long slow fizzle, where I get tired of motels and hitchhiking and walking. I choose the memory. Of a successful experiment. Much rarer than you think. We did good, Reacher.’

‘We’re not at the end yet. Don’t count your chickens.’

‘You worried?’

‘Professionally concerned.’

‘Maria told me what you said to her. One day you’re going to lose. Just not today.’

‘I was trying to cheer her up. That was all. She was really feeling it. I would have said anything.’

‘I think you meant it.’

‘It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred per cent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.’

‘Sounds empowering.’

‘It’s the army. What they really mean is, if you fail today, it’s completely your own fault.’

‘We’ve done OK so far.’

‘But now the game has changed. Now we’re fighting Moscow. Not just a bunch of pimps and thieves.’

‘Same actual people.’

‘But a better system, guaranteed. Better planning. The pick of the litter. Fewer weaknesses. Fewer mistakes.’

‘Sounds bad.’

‘I’m guessing about fifty-fifty. Win or lose. Which is OK. I like the simplicity.’

‘How do we do it?’

‘Intelligence, planning, execution. First we think like them. Which isn’t difficult. We studied them endlessly. Vantresca could tell you. They’re smart people, organized, bureaucratic, cautious, careful, scientific, and painfully rational.’

‘So how can we win?’

‘We can exploit the rational part of their natures,’ Reacher said. ‘We can do something a rational person would never even consider. Something completely unhinged.’

Then the first intelligence report came back. Barton stepped in, and nodded a greeting, and headed to the counter. He got coffee, and walked over to the table. He sat down, but before he could say anything the second report arrived. Hogan and Vantresca, stepping in together. They came straight to the table. They jostled for space and squeezed themselves in. Five people at a four-top.

Barton said, ‘The front wall of the lobby is all glass. You go in a revolving door. The back wall of the lobby is the front face of the building’s core. There are five openings in it. A fire stair door, three elevators, and another fire stair door. Between you and them are security turnstiles and a security desk. Behind the security desk is what looks to me like a regular civilian rent-a-cop.’

‘Is that all?’ Reacher said.

‘I guess it’s all that the building provides,’ Barton said. ‘But there are also four men in suits and ties. I guess provided by someone else. Two of them were waiting just inside the revolving door. They asked my business. I said the dentist. They stepped aside and waved me forward, towards the security desk. Where the rent-a-cop asked my business all over again.’

Reacher looked at Hogan and Vantresca.

‘Same for you?’ he asked.

‘Exactly the same,’ Vantresca said. ‘It’s a pretty good upstream screen. Then it gets even better. The other two guys are on the other side of the security turnstiles. By the elevators. Which have been upgraded, with a new control panel. Like you see in really tall buildings with thousands of people. You punch in the floor you want, and the screen tells you which car to go wait for. Then the car takes you where you said. There are no buttons inside. It’s a very efficient system. But totally unnecessary for a building that small. Obviously there for a reason. Which is, the two guys won’t let you punch in your floor yourself. They have to do it for you. They ask where you’re going, you tell them, they press the buttons, they show you where to wait. Then you get in the elevator car, and you get out again when the doors open. No other option.’

‘Were there cameras in the lobby?’

‘There’s a little glass pip in the elevator panel. Almost certainly a fisheye lens, feeding straight upstairs.’

Reacher nodded.

He looked at Barton.

He asked, ‘How was the dentist?’

‘The third floor was all small suites, all of them off a rectangular inner corridor that ran around the building core. The core was blank on three sides. I went up to four on the fire stairs, and it was the same. Five had two larger suites in back. I couldn’t get all the way around the core. I guess the blank face becomes a wall inside the suite.’

Hogan said, ‘We ran up to six and started from there. The suites get bigger the higher you go. It’s safe to assume nineteen is a whole-floor extravaganza. The elevators come up in the centre. That’s all the architect gave them. I’m sure they built the rest out exactly the way they wanted it.’

‘Starting with the cage,’ Reacher said.

‘Guaranteed,’ Vantresca said. ‘It’s even simpler than we thought. Because the building is tall, but not large. There is only one service core, with only five structural openings per floor, and they’re all in a line. One cage could control them all. No need to weld anything shut. You could build a cage maybe six feet deep, maybe eight feet tall, starting from just before the first fire door, and running the whole width to just beyond the last. Every door opens into it. Elevators and fire stairs alike. It would be like a long rectangular reception area. Kind of shallow. You would have to wait there a minute, with armed men looking in at you through the wire. With more armed men on the gate to let you out. The mechanism might be electronic. Maybe there are two gates, like an airlock.’

‘Floors and ceilings?’

‘Concrete slab. No significant penetration. All the big-diameter risers run up and down inside the core, with the elevator shafts.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘OK what?’

‘Cautious, careful, scientific, and rational. That’s what I told Abby.’

‘Plus paranoid. You can bet they did the exact same things on eighteen and twenty. Which would make their buffer zones virtually impregnable.’

Reacher nodded.

‘It’s a thing of beauty,’ he said. ‘There’s no way in.’

‘So how do we do it?’

‘When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.’

‘Where?’

‘Hardware store.’

The nearest place was a national franchise, full of earnest slogans about doing things together and doing them now. Moscow would have approved. It was large enough to have what they wanted, but not large enough to offer a choice. Which hustled things along. A linoleum knife was a linoleum knife. A crosscut saw was a crosscut saw. And so on, and so forth. They bought a tool bag each. The store’s name was on them, but they looked professional. The hospitalized Gezim Hoxha paid for everything, via his potato-shaped wallet.

They packed their bags carefully, and slung them over their shoulders. Then they set out walking, back the way they had come, but this time not stopping at the coffee shop. This time heading straight on, the extra half block, to the office tower’s street-level door.