The Sentinel

FIFTEEN

There were two bedrooms in Mitch’s apartment, and two other occupants that night alongside Reacher. Although Reacher felt that describing the sleeping areas as bedrooms was going a little far. They had no doors. No windows. No walls to speak of. The only things separating them from the rest of the apartment were the wooden dividers, and they only came up to Reacher’s chin. He knew without looking that the beds would be too short so he figured his best bet was to let Sands and Rutherford use them. He could sleep on the couch. He’d have to forgo his usual practice of pressing his clothes under the mattress. But it would be better from a security perspective. It meant that if anyone found out where they were billeted he would be the first one they came to if they got through the door.

Reacher woke himself at 7:00 a.m. He could hear slow peaceful breathing plus the occasional grunt and snort from the other side of the dividers so he lay still for another half hour and ran a few of his favourite guitar riffs through his head. Then he got up, coaxed Mitch’s complicated coffee machine into action, and while it gurgled and hissed he took a shower. He emerged from the bathroom fourteen minutes later, still unshaved and with his hair still damp, and found Sands perched on a stool at the kitchen counter. She was wrapped in the same robe as the day before and was sipping coffee from a plain white mug. She stood when she saw Reacher and poured a mug for him, and then poured another as Rutherford stumbled out from behind the dividers, rubbing his eyes.

Sands was in favour of calling ahead to set up an appointment at the Spy House. She felt it was the polite thing to do. And also the practical thing. They could make sure someone was home. Avoid the risk of a wasted journey. And the risk that the sight of Reacher arriving unannounced could lead a panicked homeowner to call the police. Reacher didn’t agree. Experience told him that surprise was his friend. He’d prefer to be knocking on the door at 4:00 a.m., the way the KGB had done back in the day. And if no one was home, all would not be lost. It’s easier to search a house when the owners aren’t there.

Rutherford was still too dopey to voice a coherent argument either way so they decided that Reacher would go unannounced and Sands would stay at the apartment and find out what the town did with its discarded computer equipment. She was clinging to the hope that they could find the servers Rutherford had trashed and keep the dream of making their fortune alive. Reacher drained one more mug of coffee then stood up to leave.

‘Wait.’ Rutherford slid down from his stool. ‘I’ll come with you. Give me two minutes to get dressed.’

‘You don’t want to stay and help Sarah?’ Reacher said.

Rutherford shook his head. ‘There’s no point. No one would talk to me. Sarah’s far more persuasive, anyway. And I always wanted to see inside the Spy House.’

‘Why? It’s not going to be full of spies in disguises practising secret codes with invisible ink. It’ll just be a normal house.’

‘I know. I still want to see it.’

Reacher sat back down and drank another mug of coffee while Rutherford rustled and rummaged behind the divider. He returned wearing the same pants as the day before and the same kind of polo shirt, only in a different colour. Reacher stood and picked up the key to Marty’s car.

‘You know what?’ Rutherford said. ‘Why don’t we take my car?’

Reacher smiled to himself. ‘I get it now. You don’t want to see the Spy House at all. You just want to find out if I brought your Beetle back in one piece.’

‘Can you blame me?’ Rutherford said. ‘I love that car. It’s irreplaceable.’

In the garage Reacher waited for Rutherford to walk around the VW and inspect every inch of paintwork. Then he got down on his knees on the passenger side and peered underneath.

‘What are you doing?’ Rutherford said. ‘Did you drive over something? Tell me you didn’t hit a deer.’

‘I’m looking for tracking devices,’ Reacher said. ‘You do your side. Underneath the car. Along the running boards. Inside the fenders. Anywhere a magnet could stick.’

‘But you checked yesterday. You found a tracker. You said you ditched it.’

‘I was in the army for thirteen years, Rusty. We check. And then we check again. It’s what we do.’

Rutherford shrugged and then worked his way from the front to the back. He came up empty-handed. ‘Nothing on my side. You find anything?’

Reacher leaned across the hood and held out his hand. ‘Another tracker. The same kind. In the same place. And there was this.’ He showed Rutherford a scrap of paper. ‘It was held in place by the magnet.’

Rutherford took the paper and read it out loud. ‘Romeo, Juliet. A bunch of numbers. Eight bells. What does it mean?’

‘Romeo Juliet is R J in the NATO phonetic alphabet. My initials, military style. Reacher, Jack.’

‘I get it,’ Rutherford said. ‘And the numbers? They could be a grid reference. What about eight bells?’

‘That’s noon in Navy time.’

‘Maybe someone wants you to go to this place at noon? But why write it like that?’

‘To show they know my background? To gain my trust? Or intrigue me, perhaps.’

‘What if it’s a trap? You shouldn’t go.’

‘Have you got your phone? Can you figure out where this place is?’

Rutherford tapped his screen then made some swiping and pinching movements. ‘Reacher? Don’t go.’

‘Why not?’

‘I know about this place. It’s an old factory. Just outside town. It’s been abandoned for years. Growing up, there were all kinds of rumours. No one who went in was ever seen again. I never dared go.’

The Spy House was hidden behind a wall. The wall was built of stone, eight feet high, and topped with broken glass. The driveway was blocked by a gate. Made of iron. Also eight feet high. The kind that slides to the side so there are no hinges. No join in the centre, either. No weak spots at all. This particular one was plain. No nonsense. No ornamentation. Just thick vertical bars. It reminded Reacher of a grate covering a giant drain or a sewer. You’d need a tank to knock it down. The bars were too close together for anyone but a child to squeeze through. Not a welcoming proposition. And there was a sign mounted at eye level to complete the effect. It read No Photographs. No Trespassing. No Interviews without an Appointment.

Rutherford pointed to the sign. ‘Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe we should have called ahead.’ Then he wound down his window and pressed a call button on a keypad set on a pole.

‘Yes?’ A woman’s voice answered after half a minute. It was quiet and cold like a whisper from a tomb.

‘Good morning. My name’s Rusty Rutherford. Is Mr Klostermann available?’

‘Can you read, Mr Rutherford?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No.’

‘Then you should already know that Mr Klostermann is not available.’

Reacher leaned towards the open window. ‘Actually we don’t know that. Your sign says you need an appointment for an interview. We’re not here for an interview. So we don’t need an appointment.’

There was a pause. ‘Then what are you here for? There are no maintenance visits scheduled for today.’

‘We’re following up on something that will be of interest to Mr Klostermann. Considerable interest. To do with some correspondence from a journalist. About property records for his house.’

‘Please wait.’ A faint electronic buzz told them they hadn’t been disconnected, then after three minutes the woman’s voice returned. ‘Mr Klostermann will see you. When the gate opens drive directly to the front of the house.’

Beyond the gate the site was divided by a line of mature trees. Cypresses and sycamores. The area to the left of them was rough. Unfinished. There were no structures, and no plants taller than stalks of coarse, scrubby grass. The house was to the right. It had an attached two-car garage. Next to that was a covered porch. It was raised up on a stone base and plain white pillars stretched up to support its roof. The rest of the building was finished with wood siding. Long horizontal strips. Painted olive green. There were four windows on the ground floor. Four on the first. Each had shutters. All were open, pinned back against the wall, finished in a darker shade of green. The roof was covered in cream-coloured shingles. A chimney extended six feet above the ridge on the far left.

Rutherford followed the driveway towards the garage, then pulled into a parking area in front of the house and killed the engine. Reacher climbed out. Rutherford followed him and together they climbed the three steps and crossed the porch. Reacher rapped on the door. A woman answered. She was in her late twenties, wearing a knee-length black dress with a white apron. Her blonde hair was tied up in a bun. She was thin, almost malnourished, but she moved with effortless grace, like a ballerina.

‘Please come in,’ she said. Hers was the voice they’d heard on the intercom. Quiet and cold. There was no question about that. ‘Can I offer you gentlemen some refreshment? Iced tea?’

They declined and the woman led the way along a narrow hallway. There was tile on the floor. Family portraits on the walls. Four doors. A pair on each side. Plain, pale wood. No panels. Narrow architraves. The woman paused outside the second door on the right, knocked, then opened it and stood aside to let Rutherford and Reacher enter. She didn’t follow.

There was one person already in the room. A man, slim, rangy, with a mane of white hair. Like Einstein if he’d worked in a bank, Reacher thought. He looked around seventy. Probably born around the time the house was built. Maybe born right there in the house. The man put down his newspaper, hauled himself out of his armchair, and offered his hand.

‘Mr Rutherford, I’m Henry Klostermann. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I know you by reputation, of course. And I don’t envy the position you’re in. I’ve done work for the town in the past. I’m essentially retired now but I make sure my company doesn’t even bid for municipal contracts any more. The penny-pinching. The endless finger-pointing. It drove me up the wall. Made it impossible to do a job properly. I can only imagine what it was like to work there permanently. And your friend?’

‘Reacher.’ Reacher didn’t offer his hand. ‘Jack. I’m Mr Rutherford’s life coach.’

‘Really?’ Klostermann said. ‘How interesting. Now please. Gentlemen. Take a seat.’

Klostermann lowered himself into his chair. Rutherford perched on the edge of a couch with thin tweed cushions and a slender wood frame. Reacher joined him, hoping it would take his weight.

‘Now that you’re here, how can we help each other?’ Klostermann said.

‘Well,’ Rutherford said. ‘As you can imagine, I have some time on my hands right now. I’m trying to put it to good use, following up on things that fell by the wayside when I was working around the clock after the computer system was attacked. One of them is an email. Actually an email and a voicemail. I received them from a journalist. She was asking about property records to do with your home.’

Klostermann steepled his fingers. ‘The journalist. That would be Toni Garza, I presume. You heard she was killed? Such a tragedy.’

‘We heard.’ Rutherford paused. ‘It sounds awful, what happened.’

‘It was. Toni was such a lovely girl. She had so much talent. So much integrity.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Of course I knew her. She was working for me. In fact, it was me who suggested she should contact you. I was hoping you could help with some research she was doing.’

‘To do with your home?’ Reacher said. ‘Its unusual history?’

‘Goodness, no.’ Klostermann frowned. ‘There’s no need. What little there is of that stupid story has been done to death.’

‘Living in a nest of Cold War spies? That sounds like a great story. If the problem is you’re tired of telling it, why not have someone write a book about it? A journalist would be an obvious choice. Specially one with talent and integrity.’

‘It wouldn’t be a book. More like a haiku. There’s not enough material. And this place was hardly a nest. There were only two of them. They were brothers. They only owned the place for eighteen months. And they didn’t even do any spying while they lived here. They wrote a textbook. On math. I wish that was the angle the public latched on to. Imagine if this place was known as the Math House. Then I wouldn’t be swamped with tourists every time a new Bond movie comes out.’

‘If not your house, what was she researching?’

‘Parts of my family history. My father fled to the States from Germany in the 1930s. He could see the way things were going politically, and somehow of all the places in the world he settled here in Tennessee. He founded a business. Started a family. Did all kinds of things. But the details of his early years in the States are sketchy. I felt it was time to find out as much as I could and record it before it was too late. Where he lived before he moved here. When exactly he bought this house. I think someone else owned it between him and the spies, but I’d like to be sure. I want as much detail as I can get. Including the human aspect, you know? There’s a story that when he bought his first house he had no money and credit was hard to come by so he used a painting he brought with him from Germany to back the purchase. These are the little quirks that are so easily lost. I want to know all of them. I want my son to know. And his son, if he ever has one.’

‘That sounds like a wholesome family project,’ Reacher said. ‘But it’s not the kind of thing anyone should get killed over. Are you sure there’s not more to it? Buried treasure? The location of the Lost Ark?’

Klostermann’s face was blank. ‘Someone was killed over my project? Who?’

‘Toni Garza.’

‘No. That’s crazy. Why would her death have anything to do with my project? Toni was a hard worker. She was driven. She wasn’t working for me exclusively. She had a dozen projects on the go. Some she got paid for, like mine. Others she was doing off her own bat. She was digging into all sorts of unsavoury things. She dreamed of becoming an investigative reporter for one of the big papers, although that was always unrealistic. There are so few of those left now.’

‘What kind of unsavoury things? Did she tell you?’

‘Not chapter and verse. But Toni did confide some things. She wanted to root out crime and corruption. I think she saw me as a kind of father figure. She looked to me for advice from time to time. I warned her to be careful. More than once.’

‘This seems like a nice town. Is crime and corruption a big problem here?’

‘No. But she was based out of Nashville. She did most of her work there.’

‘How did you find her if she’s not local?’

‘I came across her name online. She was recommended by someone on an ancestry forum.’

‘Are you going to replace her? Or had she finished her work?’

‘I guess I will have to replace her. I haven’t had the stomach for it yet. Toni had completed the broad outline but there’s plenty left to do. The biggest problem is confirming all the dates. That’s why she wanted access to the town’s records. And why she contacted you, Mr Rutherford.’

‘I can see why you would want access,’ Rutherford said. ‘But not why Toni reached out to me. Why did she think I could get my hands on the papers you need? I was the IT manager. Not the archivist.’

‘As far as I understand, it worked like this,’ Klostermann said. ‘Toni was in touch with the archivist. There was a project running to digitize all the records. The archivist told Toni there’d been a kind of false start. The computer memory thing they tried to use was too small so halfway through the process they raised some extra money and got a bigger one. They copied everything, then you as the IT manager took the old one into storage until it was needed for something else. So it’s possible the records I want are still on it.’

Rutherford thought for a moment. ‘I know the equipment you’re talking about. I did take it. I thought it might be useful for … something else.’

‘Do you know where it is now?’

‘Not exactly. But I’m trying to find it. I need it for … something.’

‘If you do find it, would you let me see if my father’s records are there?’

‘I’m not sure if I could,’ Rutherford said. ‘It’s town property. I’m not sure if—’

‘We’re talking about seventy-year-old documents,’ Klostermann said. ‘Maybe older. Whose confidence could possibly get betrayed? And it’s all theoretically public domain stuff anyway. It was in the physical archive before the fire. So come on. What do you say?’

Rutherford didn’t reply.

‘I can make it worth your while if compensation is an issue?’ Klostermann said. ‘Very much worth your while if I can get the first look. Patience is not a virtue of mine. And I’m not getting any younger.’

Rutherford squirmed on the edge of the cushion. ‘It’s not about—’

‘Time is the issue,’ Reacher said. ‘Rusty has a lot to do to prepare for the next chapter in his life and as I’m sure you know, an IT manager’s time is expensive.’

‘How expensive?’ Klostermann said.

‘Ten thousand dollars should cover it. Cash.’

Klostermann struggled to his feet and held out his hand. ‘You’re a life coach, you say, Mr Reacher? I’m beginning to think I might need one of those myself. How long to find the records?’

‘That’s hard to predict. We’re working on it. I’ll let you know.’

Reacher walked back to the car in silence. His gut was telling him that he’d met Klostermann before. In barracks rooms. Bars. Jail cells. Offices. Back streets. All kinds of places. All over the world. Or that he’d met guys just like Klostermann, anyway. Guys with something to hide but who imagine they’re smart enough to think on their feet. To cover their trails. Reacher didn’t think every word Klostermann had spoken was a lie. His father’s immigration, for example. His businesses. There were too many things that would be easy to check on, and only a fool would be dishonest about details that could be disproved in a matter of seconds. It was the family history aspect that didn’t pass the smell test. Writing it for his son. Tying it up in a pretty bow. No. It was more likely that there was some kind of skeleton in the family closet. Something illegal. Something embarrassing. Something Klostermann wanted to bury. Or spin. Something worth ten thousand dollars just to see a record of. But a sack of cash was one thing. Was it also worth Toni Garza’s life? Was it worth Rutherford’s?