Night School

Chapter 26

When they woke up Reacher went back to his own room and showered, and dressed again. He took the stairs down to breakfast, alone. The four guys from McLean were in there already, after their overnight flight. Waterman, White, Landry, and Vanderbilt. Neagley was with them. They looked tired. She didn’t. Landry said he had traced the great-uncles. But the news was not good. Most were long dead and none had lived near the kid growing up. There was no evidence of contact. Not even circumstantial. They were not necessarily the visiting type. Two had done prison time. Extended influence was thought unlikely.

But Waterman had better news. He said Wiley’s mother had been located, and had agreed to an interview about her old boyfriends. She was living in New Orleans, on welfare. The local field office had been alerted. Agents would be dispatched. First results were expected in seven or eight hours. Because of the time zones.

White didn’t look happy to be there. The CIA guy. His hair looked longer than ever. He looked thinner. He was twitching and writhing. And wringing his hands, and squinting.

Reacher said, “What?”

White said, “They really need to get the Iranian out.”

“None of this comes from the messenger. We missed her completely.”

“Ratcliffe thinks too narrowly. If something bad happens to them in the city of Hamburg, their inquisition will range far and wide. Everybody will be a suspect. They aren’t dumb. They’ll deduce the facts. How many variables are there? Two different messengers, but only one house. The Iranian will last less than five minutes.”

“You should talk to Bishop.”

“Bishop runs the kid, but he doesn’t have the authority to pull him out.”

“He must have.”

“Not for big-picture reasons. Imminent danger only.”

“Which you think is now.”

“It will start the same minute you get your hands on Wiley. The minute their deal falls apart. Which will be when?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“Exactly.”

“You should talk to Bishop,” Reacher said again.

Then Sinclair came in. Black dress, pearls, nylons, shoes. Her hair was damp. Landry and Vanderbilt made a space and she sat down. She said, “I talked to Mr. Ratcliffe. We’re assuming the negotiation phase is over and the delivery phase is about to begin. So we need to know what, where, and when.”

“The messenger could be home already,” Neagley said. “She might have flown direct. Or nearly. Then they’ll send a messenger to Switzerland. Because they don’t trust the phones. With the account details and the passwords. The transaction might take an hour or two. Could happen tomorrow.”

“Or a year from now,” Vanderbilt said. “Are they ready to act? Do they have the money?”

“Wiley can’t wait another year,” Waterman said. “He’s already been on the run four months. Not easy. A lot of stress, and a lot of risk. He needs to get settled. I think this will happen fast now. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. I’m sure the money is lined up and ready to go. Probably in the same bank. Different blips in the same computer.”

“OK,” Sinclair said. “So it’s what, where, and soon.”

“The where depends on the what,” Reacher said. “If it’s intelligence or a document, they might do the handover right there in the banker’s office. If it’s a big thing, right now it must be stored or hidden somewhere in Germany, so they’ll have to send a crew over to haul it away.”

“We should watch the bank,” Waterman said.

“Don’t know which one. They have hundreds.”

“The airports, then. Here and Zurich.”

Landry said, “The easiest way would be to figure out what he’s selling.”

“No shit,” Neagley said.

“Must be something.”

“But what? He can’t go get it now. He would be arrested immediately. Therefore it was stolen or otherwise obtained more than four months ago. Except nothing was reported missing.”

White said, “We need to get the Iranian out.”

“Not yet,” Sinclair said.

“Then when?”

“Talk to Mr. Bishop. We’re heading for the consulate now. He set up an office for us. Be in the lobby in ten minutes.”

–

Muller walked up the fire stairs to Griezman’s floor. It was still early. Before eight o’clock. No one was in. The secretarial stations were still deserted. Griezman’s secretary’s in-tray looked like it had before. Muller had replaced the papers carefully. Nothing suspicious. But where was the sketch? Presumably the American investigators had taken as many copies as they wanted. Griezman himself might have taken a couple more, to start a cover-your-ass file of his own. He would have stored the original somewhere safe. In a special drawer, perhaps. He might have dozens of sketches. A whole category. It was a detective bureau, after all.

But where? There was a side-to-side line of drawers behind the secretary’s ergonomic typing chair. They formed the base of a wall unit, with shelves above. Muller slipped in behind her desk and bent down to take a look. None of the drawers was labeled. He backed out and glanced through Griezman’s door. The inner sanctum. There were identical drawers inside, but with no shelves above. Like a credenza, with framed photographs on it, of a woman and two children. Griezman’s wife and kids, no doubt. Plus a statuette trophy for something or other. Probably nothing athletic, given the size of the guy. There was another line of file cabinets on the wall opposite. A total of twenty drawers inside the room, and four outside.

An inconvenient ratio.

Muller made a deal with himself. A one in five chance of success was better than a four in five chance of losing his job. He was useful where he was, in the long term. In the big picture. That fact had to be weighed in the balance. Therefore he would search the secretarial station, but not Griezman’s office itself. A sensible compromise. He slid in again behind the secretary’s desk. He would go left to right, he figured. A quick look. A sketch should be easy to spot. Probably done on thick paper, from an art store. Possibly a non-standard size. Probably cased in a plastic page protector.

He bent down.

A woman’s voice behind him said, “Hello?”

Surprised, and a little quizzical.

Muller straightened up and turned around.

Griezman’s secretary.

He said nothing.

The woman dumped her purse on her desk and shucked off her coat. She hung it on a hook and bustled back. She said, “Can I help you, Deputy Chief Muller?”

Deputy Chief Muller didn’t answer.

The woman said, “Are you looking for something?”

“A sketch,” Muller said.

“Of what?”

Muller paused a beat.

Thinking.

Then he said, “There was a traffic accident late last night. My division is handling it, naturally. A cyclist was knocked down. Hit and run. The driver didn’t stop. The cyclist’s companion gave us a pretty good description. A distinctive face, and an unusual hairstyle.”

“How can we help you?”

“By a coincidence my officer had just seen one of Chief Griezman’s officers, about an hour before. My officer thought it was illegal parking, but it was actually a stakeout. Chief Griezman’s officer had a sketch in his car. Of an American named Wiley. Later my officer remembered it and realized it was exactly the same face as was being described to him there and then by the cyclist’s companion.”

Griezman’s secretary said, “I see.”

“Therefore I need to show your sketch to our witness. For confirmation.”

“I would be happy to give you a copy.”

Muller said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“None at all.”

“Thank you very much.”

The woman ducked into the inner sanctum and Muller heard a drawer roll open. Then she came out again, with a sheet of thick paper in a plastic page protector. She switched on her Xerox machine. Muller heard clicking and ticking and smelled hot toner. He heard the elevator door thump open. He saw two more secretaries step out. Purses, coats, brisk morning motion. Both walked past, smiling and polite, ready to get to work.

Griezman’s secretary raised the Xerox machine’s lid and placed the sketch face down. She touched a button. The machine whirred. A copy came out.

The elevator door opened again. Not Griezman. Just a man in a suit. Muller knew him vaguely. The man nodded good morning and walked on by.

Griezman’s secretary handed the copy to Muller. It was done with colored pencils. A scrawny man, with a prominent brow, and prominent cheek bones, and deep-set eyes, and long yellow hair.

Muller said, “Thank you,” and walked away, down the hallway, to the fire door, and down the fire stairs, to his own floor, and his own hallway, and his own office, where he immediately set about creating a phony log entry about an injured cyclist and a hit-and-run driver. Just in case Griezman checked.

–

Reacher and Neagley went straight to the lobby. Neagley said, “We need to get Wiley’s movement orders. All of them. That’s the key to this thing. He’s been in-country a little over two years, and AWOL the last four months. Which gives us a critical period of a little under two years of active service. During which envelope of time he saw something, and planned, and then stole it. So we need to know exactly where he’s been. Day to day, from first to last. Because at least one day he was right next to it. Whatever it is. Maybe even touching it. Physically adjacent.”

“Minimum of one day,” Reacher said. “The day he was stealing it.”

“I think two days minimum,” Neagley said. “First he saw it, and then he figured it out, and then he came back to steal it.”

“Except he didn’t see it. Not exactly. He found it. He located it. This is a long game. He came to Germany to get it. He knew about it ahead of time.”

“Either way. Maybe more so. There was a physical encounter.”

“I want to know how he’s paying his rent,” Reacher said. “He’s a private soldier. He doesn’t have a savings plan. See if the movement orders overlap with any kind of cold-case property crimes. He got his seed money somehow.”

And then the clerk at the desk answered a ringing telephone, and pressed the receiver to her bosom, and called out, “Major Reacher, it’s for you.”

It was Orozco, calling from a cellar somewhere, judging by the sound.

Orozco said, “Are we in trouble?”

“We’re good,” Reacher said. “Currently saving the world.”

“Until we don’t.”

“In which case it won’t matter anyway.”

“I just got through talking with Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee. They confirm they could pick any name they wanted for the phony ID. But it had to be German. In case there was a random check inside the division. It was felt foreign names would stand out. But any German name was OK. Whatever they wanted. Whatever sounded good or meant something to them.”

“OK, thanks,” Reacher said. “Got to go.”

His back was against the counter, and he could see out through the glass part of the front door.

There was a guy in a doorway.

Across the street.

Reacher hung up the phone. He caught Neagley’s eye and pointed. She lined herself up with the sliver of view. She said, “I see him. Hard not to.”

“Let’s step out for some air.”

Neagley went first, and then Reacher, and the guy in the doorway startled, and then made an elaborate show of yawning and stretching and sauntering away, on the opposite sidewalk, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world.

Neagley said, “Shall we see where he’s going?”

They kept pace, ten feet behind, two lanes of morning traffic between, as the guy strolled along. He had a wool coat and no hat. He was solidly built. He was bigger than Neagley and smaller than Reacher. He turned right at the four-way. Reacher and Neagley crossed at the light and caught up again, to ten feet behind.

The guy turned right again.

Into an alley, between buildings.

“A trap, obviously,” Neagley said. “Probably a closed courtyard. No wonder the guy was easy to see. His job was to bring you here.”

“Me?”

“The guy wasn’t Griezman’s and he wasn’t Bishop’s. So who was he? Orozco just told us this place is mobbed up. I’m sure Helmut Klopp is a founding member. He knows what we look like and he knows our names. You made four of their foot soldiers cry. When we were here the first time. Now they want a do-over.”

“You think they’re still mad about that?”

“Probably.”

“How big do you think the courtyard is?”

“I’m no architect, but maybe thirty by thirty. Like a large room.”

“How many guys do you think they brought?”

“Six, minimum. Seven, with the guy who led you here.”

“Led us here.”

“Until I halted the advance. A sergeant’s first duty is to keep her officer safe.”

“Is that what they teach you?”

“Between the lines.”

“Works for me,” Reacher said.

“We should head back.”

“Maybe you’re wrong.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong.”

“Maybe it’s a residential courtyard. Low-income housing. Some kind of an inner-city thing. Rooms without a view. The kind of place you live if you’re out of work. Which at least leaves you free all morning to stand in a doorway across the street from a hotel.”

“You think he was going home?”

“I think I should go find out.”

“It’s a trap, Reacher.”

“I know it is. But we need to make them worried about us. We need to keep the pressure on. We might need to make them give up the passport seller. I’m sure he’s one of them. We need Wiley’s new name. That might be the only way of getting it. Give me two minutes exactly. If I’m not out already, feel free to come on in and lend a hand.”