Gone Tomorrow

SEVENTY

I backed up against a building on the corner of 55th Street and pulled the phone out of my pocket. Restricted Call. I opened the phone and raised it to my ear.

Lila Hoth said, ‘Reacher?’

I said, ‘Yes?’

‘I’m still standing out in the road. I’m still waiting for the truck to hit me.’

‘It’s coming.’

‘But when will it arrive?’

‘You can sweat a spell. I’ll be with you inside a couple of days.’

‘I can’t wait.’

‘I know where you are.’

‘Good. That will simplify things.’

‘And I know where the memory stick is, too.’

‘Again, good. We’ll keep you alive long enough for you to tell us. And then maybe a few more hours, just for the fun of it.’

‘You’re a babe in the woods, Lila. You should have stayed home and tended your goats. You’re going to die and that photograph is going all around the world.’

‘We have a fresh blank DVD,’ she said. ‘The camera is charged up and ready for your starring role.

‘You talk too much, Lila.’

She didn’t answer.

I closed the phone and headed back through the gathering evening darkness to the hotel. I went up in the elevator and unlocked my room and sat down on the bed to wait. I waited for a long time. Close to four hours. I thought I was waiting for Springfield. But in the end it was Theresa Lee who showed up.

She knocked on the door eight minutes before midnight. I did the thing with the chain and the mirror again and let her in. She was dressed in a version of the first outfit I had ever seen her in. Pants, and a silk short-sleeved shirt. Untucked. Dark grey, not mid-grey. Less silvery. More serious.

She was carrying a black gymnasium bag. Ballistic nylon. The way it hung from her hand I guessed it held heavy items. The way the heavy items moved and clinked I guessed they were made of metal. She put the bag on the floor near the bathroom and asked, ‘Are you OK?’

‘Are you?’

She nodded. ‘It’s like nothing ever happened. We’re all back on the job.’

‘What’s in the bag?’

‘I have no idea. A man I never saw before delivered it to the precinct.’

‘Springfield?’

‘No, the name he gave was Browning. He gave me the bag and said in the interests of crime prevention I should make sure you never got your hands on it.’

‘But you brought it anyway?’

‘I’m guarding it personally. Safer than leaving it around.’

‘OK.’

‘You would have to overpower me. And assaulting police officers is against the law.’

‘True.’

She sat down on the bed. A yard from me. Maybe less.

She said, ‘We raided those three old buildings on 58th Street.’

‘Springfield told you about them?’

‘He said his name was Browning. Our counterterrorism people went in two hours ago. The Hoths aren’t there.’

‘I know.’

‘They were, but they aren’t any more.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘They turned in Leonid and his buddy. Therefore they’ve moved somewhere Leonid and his buddy don’t know. Layers upon layers.’

‘Why did they turn in Leonid and his buddy?’

‘To encourage the other thirteen. And to feed the machine. We’ll rough them up a little, the Arab media will call it torture, they’ll get ten new recruits. Net gain of eight. And Leonid and his pal are no big loss, anyway. They were hopeless.’

‘Will the other thirteen be better?’

‘Law of averages says yes.’

‘Thirteen is an insane number.’

‘Fifteen, including the Hoths themselves.’

‘You shouldn’t do it.’

‘Especially unarmed.’

She glanced at the bag. Then she looked back at me. ‘Can you find them?’

‘What are they doing for money?

‘We can’t trace them that way. They stopped using credit cards and ATMs six days ago.’

‘Which makes sense.’

‘Which makes them hard to find.’

I asked, ‘Is Jacob Mark safely back in Jersey?’

‘You think he shouldn’t be involved?’

‘But I should?’

‘You are,’ I said. ‘You brought me the bag.’

‘I’m guarding it.’

‘What else are your counterterrorism people doing?’

‘Searching,’ she said. ‘With the FBI and the Department of Defense. There are six hundred people on the street right now.’

‘Where are they looking?’

‘Anywhere bought or rented inside the last three months. The city is cooperating. Plus they’re inspecting hotel registers and business apartment leases and warehouse operations, across all five boroughs.’

‘OK.’

‘Word on the street is it’s all about a Pentagon file on a USB memory stick.’

‘Close enough.’

‘Do you know where it is?’

‘Close enough.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Nowhere between Ninth Avenue and Park and 30th Street and 45th.’

‘I suppose I deserve that.’

‘You’ll figure it out.’

‘Do you really know? Docherty figures you don’t. He figures you’re trying to bluff your way out of trouble.’

‘Docherty is clearly a very cynical man.’

‘Cynical or right?’

‘I know where it is.’

‘So go get it. Leave the Hoths for someone else.’

I didn’t answer that. Instead I said, ‘Do you spend time in the gym?’

‘Not much,’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘I’m wondering how hard it would be to overpower you.’

‘Not very,’ she said. I didn’t answer.

She asked, ‘When are you planning on setting out?’

‘Two hours,’ I said. ‘Then another two hours to find them, and attack at four in the morning. My favourite time. Something we learned from the Soviets. They had doctors working on it. People hit a low at four in the morning. It’s a universal truth.’

‘You’re making that up.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You won’t find them in two hours.’

‘I think I will.’

‘The missing file is about Sansom, right?’

‘Partially.’

‘Does he know you’ve got it?’

‘I haven’t got it. But I know where it is.’

‘Does he know that?’

I nodded.

Lee said, ‘So you made a bargain with him. Get me and Docherty and Jacob Mark out of trouble, and you’ll lead him to it.’

‘The bargain was designed to get myself out of trouble, first and foremost.’

‘Didn’t work for you. You’re still on the hook with the feds.’

‘It worked for me as far as the NYPD is concerned.’

‘And it worked for the rest of us all around. For which I thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

She asked, ‘How are the Hoths planning to get out of the country?’

‘I don’t think they are. I think that option disappeared a few days ago. I think they expected things to go more smoothly than they have. Now it’s about finishing the job, do or die.’

‘Like a suicide mission?’

‘That’s what they’re good at.’

‘Which makes it worse for you.’

‘If they like suicide, I’m happy to help.’

Lee moved on the bed and the tail of her shirt got trapped underneath her and the silk pulled tight over the shape of the gun on her hip. A Glock 17, I figured, in a pancake holster.

I asked her, ‘Who knows you’re here?’

‘Docherty,’ she said.

‘When is he expecting you back?’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said.

I said nothing.

She said, ‘What do you want to do right now?

‘Honest answer?

‘Please.’

‘I want to unbutton your shirt.’

‘You say that to a lot of police officers?’

‘I used to. Police officers were all the people I knew.’

‘Danger makes you horny?’

‘Women make me horny.’

‘All women?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not all women.’

She was quiet for a long moment and then she said, ‘Not a good idea.’

I said, ‘OK.’

‘You’re taking no for an answer?’

‘Aren’t I supposed to?’

She was quiet for another long moment and then she said, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘About what?’

‘About it not being a good idea.’

‘Excellent.’

‘But I worked Vice for a year. Entrapment stings. We needed proof that the guy had a reasonable expectation of what he thought he was going to get. So we made him take his shirt off first. As proof of intent.’

‘I could do that,’ I said.

‘I think you should.’

‘You going to arrest me?’

‘No.’

I peeled my new T-shirt off. Tossed it across the room. It landed on the table. Lee spent a moment staring at my scar, the same way Susan Mark had on the train. The awful raised tracery of stitches from the shrapnel from the truck bomb at the Beirut barracks. I let her look for a minute and then I said, ‘Your turn. With the shirt.’

She said, ‘I’m a traditional kind of girl.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You would have to kiss me first.’

‘I could do that,’ I said. And I did. Slowly and gently and a little tentatively at first, in a way that felt exploratory, and in a way that gave me time to savour the new month, the new taste, the new teeth, the new tongue. It was all good. Then we passed some kind of a threshold and got into it harder. A short minute later we were completely out of control.

Afterwards she showered, and then I showered. She dressed, and I dressed. She kissed me one more time, and told me to call her if I needed her, and wished me luck, and walked out through the door. She left the black bag on the floor near the bathroom.