Past Tense

Chapter 27

Amos was in plain clothes, obviously, being a detective, but more than that she was acting a part. She wasn’t a cop, creeping in slow, forewarned and forearmed. She was a regular person, breezing in fast, without a care in the world. She was coming in undercover. No doubt she had volunteered. Or even insisted. Why not? Someone had to clean up someone else’s mess. She had been an MP. What else was she good for? She was carrying a purse. It looked expensive. Probably a knockoff seized from a market. In it would be her badge and her gun. Maybe a spare magazine. But on the outside there was no suggestion. She was just a lady who lunched, come in to borrow a book. She was bright, and vague, and cheerful.

Then she wasn’t.

She stopped.

Reacher said, “I guess this seems like a coincidence.”

She looked at the guys on the floor.

Then at him.

She didn’t speak. He knew why. She didn’t know which feeling was uppermost. Was she mad or glad? Both, of course. She was mad at him, for sure, one hundred percent, but also her problems were solved now, because under the new relative circumstances her inadequate four-man crew was suddenly as good as an armored division. All they had to do was put cuffs on three groaning and dizzy men. Which made her glad. With exactly equal intensity. A full-on hundred percent. Which made her mad all over again, this time at herself, for being glad about such a terrible thing.

“I apologize,” Reacher said. “I needed to find out about a bird. I’m going now.”

“You need to,” she said.

“Apologize?”

“To go now,” she said. “This was nice, but dangerous. They’ll react.”

“Because they have a code?”

“Next time they’ll send someone better.”

“I would hope.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Not good for you, not good for me.”

“I got what I need,” he said. “I’m out of here.”

“How?”

“In the Subaru. It’s waiting for me. At least it was five minutes ago. You might have scared it away. Like last time.”

Amos took a radio from her bag and called in the question. A second later a voice that could have been Davison’s cut in on a blast of static and said, yes, the Subaru was still at the curb, engine off, driver behind the wheel. She thanked him and clicked off. She looked at the guys on the floor again.

She said, “Why did they come in here?”

“I’m hoping it was to find a bathroom where they could strip off their jump suits. Then they could have scattered three different directions, looking normal in civilian clothes. They might have sown some confusion. That was the percentage play. But in case they had something worse in mind, I figured it would be safer all around if I got my retaliation in first.”

Amos said nothing. He knew why. Mad or glad, still not sure. Then she got back on the radio and ordered all four of the street cops to head for the library. As fast as possible. Repeat, abandon current positions, hustle straight inside the building.

Then to Reacher she said, “And you go get in the Subaru, right now this minute.”

“And get out of town?”

“By the fastest possible route.”

“And never come back?”

She paused.

“Not soon,” she said.

He stepped over an arm and a leg and went out the door he had come in through. He walked the same paved path, past people strolling, and sitting on benches, and lying flat on the grass. He went out the gate and crossed the sidewalk to the Subaru. He tapped on the glass, politely, and then he opened the door and got in.

Burke asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“It was a rough-legged hawk,” Reacher said.

“I’m glad you know now.”

“Thank you.”

“I saw cops in the gardens. Just now. First time ever. Guys running in from all sides. Just when I told you it never happens.”

“Maybe there was a big emergency. Maybe there was an unpaid fine.”

“I’ll drive you to the highway now, if you like.”

“No,” Reacher said. “I’m going back to Ryantown. One last look. You shouldn’t come with me. You can let me out at the end of the road. You shouldn’t be involved.”

“Neither should you. Not there, of all places. They’ll be waiting.”

“I would hope,” Reacher said again. “I more or less promised I would come. I like to be taken as a man of his word.”

“The highway would be better.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t always think so. A couple times, at least. Maybe more. At various points in your life. Starting maybe forty years ago.”

Burke didn’t answer. He started the car and pulled out in the traffic. He made a turn that Reacher thought was right for Ryantown. He settled in. He felt the snap of new paper in his back pants pocket. The note from the librarian. The ornithologist. His name and number. From the university, down in Durham.

He fished around and pulled it out.

He said, “Do you have a cell phone?”

“It’s an old one,” Burke said.

“Does it work?”

“Most of the time.”

“May I borrow it?”

Burke found it in his pocket, and handed it over, blind, his eyes on the road. Reacher took it. It was an old one for sure. Not like a tiny flat screen TV. It had real buttons. It was shaped like a miniature coffin, and it was as thick as a candy bar. He got it working. The signal was good. They were still in town. He dialed the ornithologist’s number. Down in Durham. It rang and rang, and then an assistant answered. The guy was in a meeting. Couldn’t be disturbed. Reacher left a message. Ryantown, the hawk, the rat poison theory, and how the S. of S. and W. Reacher was his father. He said the number he was on might be good for another hour or two. After that, maybe they could catch up some other time.

He clicked off, and gave the phone back to Burke.

Who said, “It might have been tin causing the problem, you know, not rat poison.”

“The birds came back at the height of production. During the war. When the mill was running full blast night and day.”

“Exactly. When the government was the customer. Quality was carefully monitored. Impurities were not allowed. The process was cleaned up considerably. And efficiency was encouraged, too. There was much less waste.”

“I think it was the rat poison.”

“Because your dad wrote it.”

“Because it makes sense.”

“Why would the government take all the rat poison in the first place?”

“I know the end of the movie,” Reacher said. “The military foresaw sooner or later it would require immense storage facilities, literally hundreds of square miles in hundreds of countries, full of food and bales of clothing, all the things that rodents like, so someone ordered ahead, plus hundreds of thousands of other weird items they thought they could or might possibly, conceivably one day need. That’s what the military does. That’s what it’s good at. Some of that stuff is still there today, all around the world.”

They drove on, out of the woods, past the first of the horse fields.

The fourth arrival was as complex as the second. Once again it involved private air transportation. Which at a certain level was still as anonymous as hailing a cab. Ironically not at the top, with the glossy Gulfstreams and Learjets and executive airports, but down on the grimy bottom rung, with grass fields and short-hop prop-driven puddle-jumpers, as battered as city taxis, resprayed just as many times, but which flew below a certain altitude, literally, where there were no logs or reports or flight plans or manifests. Everything was visual. No reason to talk to a tower. No requirement to have a radio, even.

Two or three or four such rides could be daisy-chained together, to cover unfeasible distances in total secrecy. Which was the strategy the fourth arrival had employed. He landed for the last time at a flying club near Plymouth, New Hampshire. From where originally, no one knew. Steven had tried to trace his home ISP. But he couldn’t. One moment it seemed to be inside NASA, in Houston, Texas, and then the next moment inside the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia. And then Buckingham Palace, in London, England. An ingenious piece of software, made for a guy who valued his privacy, and could pay the price for the very best. Which obviously this guy could. Steven drove out to meet him, and the first thing he saw was the bag with his money.

It was a soft leather duffel. Maybe not the best quality. Certainly not monogrammed. It was anonymous. Therefore disposable. Steven figured there would be two main ways to do it. He figured some guys would prefer to count it out, one solid brick of bills after another, handed over, one by one, more real that way. Others would just drop a bag and leave it there. A dull dusty thump, and then they would walk away. Without a word. Without a backward glance. Playing it cool. Hence disposable bags.

The guy had two more pieces of soft luggage, matching, better quality, and then two hard cases. Steven helped him unload. The guy insisted on moving the big pieces himself. He was a rangy character, tall and solid, maybe sixty years old, with snow white hair and a brick-red face. He was in jeans and battered boots. From somewhere out west, Steven thought. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado. For sure. Not Houston or Moscow or London.

They packed the stuff in the Mercedes, and Steven drove south, on a road that stayed mostly in the trees. The guy didn’t talk. Thirty minutes later they turned in at the mouth of the track. Between the frost-heaved posts, minus their signs. They ran over the bell wire. They drove on through the tunnel. Two miles and ten minutes later the guy was putting his bags in his room. Then he stepped back out, to the boardwalk, to the parking lot, to cast an eye over a small group of other guys, who seemed to be gathering nearby, forming up like a welcome committee, shuffling closer, casually, getting ready to say hi. The first guys in. The early birds.

There were three of them so far. First they all nodded, by way of introduction. Then they started talking. Initially about how they got there. A neutral subject. They shared some details. They were partly secretive and partly what-the-hell friendly. One said he had driven down in a Volvo wagon. He turned and pointed at it, parked outside his room. He implied most of the year he lived in a house in the woods. He was a pale, wiry man, in a red plaid shirt. Maybe seventy years old. Not naturally a talker, by the look of him, but right then buoyed up with suppressed excitement. He looked a little feverish. A little damp around the mouth.

He was from Maine, the fourth arrival thought. He said drove down, which meant south, which meant he lived to the north. His car said Vermont, but it was sure to be phony. The other big state. A house in the woods.

The second guy didn’t say where he was from, but he offered a long story about charter flights and phony licenses. A long enough story to include just about every kind of vocal sound necessary to prove the guy had lived a long time in the south of Texas. Not a native. He was about fifty. He was a solid guy, restrained by natural country courtesy, as polite as a salesman. But excited, too. The same kind of fever. The same kind of tremor.

The third guy was handsome as a movie star, and built like an athlete. Like a tennis player, maybe, loose and rangy. The kind of guy who was great in college and got no worse for twenty years. He had a certain kind of confidence. Like he belonged. Like he was accustomed to admiration. He said he drove up in a car that didn’t exist, and did the last lap in a van. He pointed to it. Persian carpets. He was from western New York or Pennsylvania, the fourth man thought, given his voice and his manner, and the route implied, and the distances, and the way he said drove up.

The fourth man asked, “Have you seen them yet?”

The second guy said, “Their blind is up. But right now they’re hiding in the bathroom.”

“What are they like?”

“They look great.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I think they’re going to be real interesting.”

The man from Maine took over and said, “They’re both twenty-five years old. They’re both strong and healthy. They seem to have a close emotional relationship. We looked at some tapes. She gets impatient with him from time to time. But he catches up in the end. They solve problems together.”

The second guy said, “She’s the brains, no question.”

“Are they good looking?”

“Plain,” the good-looking guy said. “Not ugly. They both have muscles. He’s a farmer and she’s a sawmill worker. They’re Canadian, so they had healthcare growing up. You could call her strapping. That might be the right word for the woman. For him, not so much. His name is Shorty for a reason. He’s compact. But high quality. I have to say, I was very pleased when I saw them.”

“Me too,” said the man from Maine.

“I told you,” the second man said. “They look great.”

“How many more players will there be?”

“Two more,” the guy said. “For a total of six. If they make it.”

The fourth man nodded. Rules were rules. If you got there late, you got there never. Room Ten Is Occupied. The clock was ticking from the get-go. There was a cut-off point. No excuses. No exceptions. Hence the air taxis, daisy-chained together. Unfeasible distances.

He said, “Why is there no window in their bathroom?”

“Don’t need one,” the second man said. “There are cameras in there. Go over to the house and take a look.”