Never Go Back

SIXTY-FIVE

First on meant first off, too, and the official door at the end of the jet bridge was still closed when they got there. Time zones meant it was very late on the East Coast. Reacher pushed the door and scanned ahead. There was a thin crowd at the gate. Not as bad as Long Beach. Maybe only ten undercover MPs and ten FBI agents inside the first thirty feet alone. Reacher held the door and let Espin go first, and he watched him very carefully. But Espin looked for no one in particular, and he made no eye contact with anyone, and he made no furtive signs or gestures. He just moved through the crowd like a regular person. Reacher and Turner followed after him, and a minute later they all regrouped in a yard of clear space, in the corridor under the baggage claim sign, and Reacher said, ‘You go on ahead. We’re going to stay here.’

Espin said, ‘Why?’

‘In case you put your guys the other side of security.’

‘There are no guys.’

‘We’ll stay here anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘Tactical considerations.’

‘I’ll give you twenty-four hours.’

‘You’ll never find us.’

‘I found you in LA. And there’s bait here too. I’ll know where to look.’

‘You should concentrate on Morgan.’

‘Twenty-four hours,’ Espin said, and then he walked away.

Reacher and Turner watched him go, and Reacher said, ‘Let’s get coffee.’

Turner said, ‘Are we staying here?’

Reacher looked at the arrivals board, and said, ‘It would make some kind of sense. Next in is American, in about two hours. Shrago’s bound to be on it. And from the airplane door to the other side of security, he’s bound to be unarmed. So this would be the place to hit him.’

‘Are we going to?’

‘No, but I wanted to put the idea in Espin’s head. In case he gets cold feet an hour from now. He’ll assume we’re still here. But we won’t be. We’ll get the coffee to go. We’ll be right behind him.’

In Reacher’s experience every successful venture in Washington D.C. had one indispensable thing in common, which was a sound base of operations. But such a place could not be bought with cash. Any kind of a decent hotel was going to need a credit card. Which meant either Margaret Vega was going to pay, or they were going to tell Gabriel Montague where they were staying. Turner was in favour of telling him, so Shrago would show up, so they could deal with him. Reacher disagreed.

She said, ‘Why?’

‘If they send Shrago to our location, and he disappears, they’re going to know what happened to him.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I don’t want them to know what happened to him. I want them uncertain. For as long as humanly possible. I want them not knowing. I want them staring into the void, hoping for a sign.’

‘This is why we need more women officers. For us it’s enough to win. For you, the other guy has to know he lost.’

‘I want them to keep their cell phones switched on. That’s all. It might be the only way we prove this for sure. It might be the only way we find them in the first place. Shrago needs to disappear somewhere unknown, and we have to get the numbers out of his phone, and then Sergeant Leach needs to hit up a whole different bunch of friends, and we need to find those phones before they finally give up on Shrago and switch them off.’

So Margaret Vega paid for a night on the twelfth floor of a very nice hotel with a view of the White House, in a room that had everything they needed, and plenty they didn’t. Turner wanted to get clothes, but it was midnight and nothing was open. So they showered long and slow and wrapped up in robes about two inches thick, and then they sat and ticked away the time until they figured it was twenty minutes before Shrago’s plane would go wheels-down across the river. At which point they got dressed again, and went out.

Romeo called Juliet and said, ‘I kept a flag on the Margaret Vega card, just in case Turner went shopping on her own, and it just bought a night in a hotel here in town.’

Juliet said, ‘Shrago’s phone will be on again about two minutes from now.’

‘Tell him not to take a cab straight there.’

They saw Shrago come out of the terminal. They were in a cab, twenty yards away. The cab was sixteen feet long and six feet wide, but it was invisible. It was a cab at an airport. Shrago didn’t see it. He just waited in line behind one other person, and got in a cab of his own.

‘That’s the guy,’ Reacher said.

‘I see him,’ the driver said. The meter was still running from the ride from the hotel. Plus a hundred-dollar tip. Plus another hundred for the fun of it. That was the deal. It wasn’t their money.

The driver eased off the kerb and stayed about fifty yards behind Shrago’s cab. Which headed for the heart of town, over the bridge and straight on to 14th Street, and across the Mall and through the Federal Triangle. Then it crossed New York Avenue and stopped.

Shrago got out.

The cab drove away.

They were about level with Lafayette Square, which was right in front of the White House, but they were two blocks east, still on 14th Street. Turner said, ‘What’s here?’

‘Nothing, apparently,’ Reacher said, because Shrago had started walking, north on 14th, to the corner with H Street.

He turned left.

Reacher paid the driver with Billy Bob’s money, three hundred keep-the-change dollars, and they got out and hustled up to the same corner. Shrago was already into his second block. He was moving fast. He was about to pass the corner of Lafayette Square, which would give him nothing to look at on his left. Not in the dark. And only one thing to look at on his right, basically.

‘He’s going to our hotel,’ Turner said. ‘An approach on foot, so the cab driver doesn’t remember. Montague has the Vega card too.’

‘From the first flight. Smart guy. He kept on tracking it.’

‘This derails your strategy a little.’

‘No plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.’

They hung back, but Shrago didn’t. He went straight in the hotel door, full speed. Like a busy man with important issues to resolve. Getting himself into the role.

Turner said, ‘Got a new plan?’

Reacher said, ‘We’re not in there. He’ll figure that out eventually. Then he’ll come out again.’

‘And?’

‘Did you like the first plan, with the cell phones?’

‘It was pretty good.’

‘Shrago might rescue it for us. Soon as he figures out we’re not in there, he might call his boss immediately. Like a real-time update. Maybe his boss demands it. In which case what happens after that is nothing to do with you and me. We weren’t there. He just told them that. They’re back in the unknown.’

‘If he calls.’

‘Fifty-fifty. Either he does, or he doesn’t.’

‘If we know that he’s called.’

‘He might be on the phone as he walks out.’

‘He might have called from our empty room.’

‘Fifty-fifty. Either we see it, or we don’t. Either we know, or we guess.’

They hung back in the park’s outer shadows, and waited. It was almost two o’clock in the morning. The weather had not changed. It was cold and damp. Reacher thought about the girl’s laceless sneakers. Not fifty-state shoes. Then he thought about hotel security, the night watch, checking a bogus ID, opening the register, placing a call to the room, heading upstairs with a pass key. Ten minutes, maybe.

It was nine minutes.

Shrago came back out through the door.

There was no phone in his hand.

Turner said, ‘Heads or tails, Reacher.’

Reacher stepped out of the shadows and said, ‘Sergeant Shrago, I need you over here. I have some urgent news.’