Worth Dying For

THIRTY-FOUR

THE OLD CAPRICE’S REAR BENCH WAS CONTOURED LIKE TWO separate bucket seats, not by design but by age and relentless wear and tear. Mahmeini’s man settled into the right-hand pit, behind the front passenger seat, and cocked his head to the left so he could see out the windshield. He saw the blank back of a billboard in the headlight beams, and then he saw nothing. The road ahead was straight and empty. No oncoming lights, which was a disappointment. One drink on Asghar’s part might be overlooked. Or even two. Or three, followed by a prompt return. But a night of it would be considered desertion.

The wheezing old motor had the needle trembling over the sixty mark. A mile a minute. Nine more miles to go. Nine minutes.

Reacher said, ‘Exactly one hour and ten minutes from now, I want you to take a drive. In your little red sports car.’

Eleanor Duncan said, ‘A drive? Where?’

‘South on the two-lane,’ Reacher said. ‘Just drive. Eleven miles. As fast as you want. Then turn around and go home again.’

‘Eleven miles?’

‘Or twelve. Or more. But not less than ten.’

‘Why?’

‘Doesn’t matter why. Will you do it?’

‘Are you going to do something to the house? You want me out of the way?’

‘I won’t come near the house. I promise. No one will ever know. Will you do it?’

‘I can’t. Seth took my car key. I’m grounded.’

‘Is there a spare?’

‘He took that too.’

Reacher said, ‘He’s not carrying them around in his pocket. Not if he keeps his own key in a bowl in the kitchen.’

Eleanor said nothing.

Reacher asked, ‘Do you know where they are?’

‘Yes. They’re on his desk.’

‘On or in?’

‘On. Just sitting there. Like a test for me. He says obedience without temptation is meaningless.’

‘Why the hell are you still there?’

‘Where else could I go?’

‘Just take the damn keys, will you? Stand up for yourself.’

‘Will this hurt Seth?’

‘I don’t know how you want me to answer that question.’

‘I want you to answer it honestly.’

‘It might hurt him indirectly. And eventually. Possibly.’

There was a long pause. Then Eleanor said, ‘OK, I’ll do it. I’ll drive south eleven miles on the two-lane and come back again. An hour and ten minutes from now.’

‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘An hour and six minutes from now. We’ve just been talking for four minutes.’

He hung up and stepped back to the main public room. The barman was working like a good barman should, using fast efficient movements, thinking ahead, watching the room. He caught Reacher’s eye and Reacher detoured towards him and the guy said, ‘I should get you to sign a napkin or something. Like a memento. You’re the only guy who ever came in here to use a phone, not avoid one. You want a drink?’

Reacher scanned what the guy had to offer. Liquor of all kinds, beer on tap, beer in bottles, sodas. No sign of coffee. He said, ‘No thanks, I’m good. I should hit the road.’ He moved on, shuffling sideways between the tables, and he pushed out the door and walked back to his car. He got in, started up, backed out and drove away north.

Mahmeini’s man saw a glow in the air, far ahead on the left. Neon, green and red and blue. The driver kept his foot down for a minute more, and then he lifted off and coasted. The engine coughed and the exhaust popped and sputtered and the taxi slowed. Way far up the road in the distance were a pair of red tail lights. Very faint and far away. Almost not there at all. The taxi braked. Mahmeini’s man saw the bar. Just a simple wooden building. There were two weak spotlights under the eaves at the front. They threw two pools of token light into the lot. There were plenty of parked vehicles. But no yellow rental.

The taxi pulled in and stopped. The driver looked back over his shoulder. Mahmeini’s man said, ‘Wait for me.’

The driver said, ‘How long?’

‘A minute.’ Mahmeini’s man got out and stood still. The tail lights in the north had disappeared. Mahmeini’s man watched the darkness where they had been, just for a second. Then he walked to the wooden building’s door. He entered. He saw a large room, with chairs and tables on the left and a bar on the right. There were about twenty customers in the room, mostly men, none of them Asghar Arad Sepehr. There was a barman behind the bar, serving a customer, lining up the next, glancing over at the new arrival. Mahmeini’s man threaded between the tables towards him. He felt that everyone was watching him. A small man, foreign, unshaven, rumpled, and not very clean. The barman’s customer peeled away, holding two foaming glasses of beer. The barman moved on, to the next customer, serving him, but glancing beyond him for the next in line, as if he was planning two moves ahead.

Mahmeini’s man said, ‘I’m looking for someone.’

The barman said, ‘I guess we all are, sir. That’s the very essence of human nature, isn’t it? It’s an eternal quest.’

‘No, I’m looking for someone I know. A friend of mine.’

‘A lady or a gentleman?’

‘He looks like me.’

‘Then I haven’t seen him. I’m sorry.’

‘He has a yellow car.’

‘Cars are outside. I’m inside.’

Mahmeini’s man turned and scanned the room, and thought about the red tail lights in the north, and turned back and asked, ‘Are you sure?’

The barman said, ‘I don’t want to be rude, sir, but really, if two of you had been in here tonight, someone would have called Homeland Security already. Don’t you think?’

Mahmeini’s man said nothing.

‘Just saying,’ the barman said. ‘This is Nebraska. There are military installations here.’

Mahmeini’s man asked, ‘Then was someone else just here?’

‘This is a bar, my friend. People are in and out all night long. That’s kind of the point of the place.’

The barman turned back to his current customer. Interaction over. Mahmeini’s man turned and scanned the room, one more time. Then he gave it up and moved away, between the tables, back to the door. He stepped into the lot and took out his phone. No signal. He stood still for a second and glanced north at where the red lights had gone, and then he climbed back into the taxi. He closed the door against a yowling hinge and said, ‘Thank you for waiting.’

The driver looked back over his shoulder and asked, ‘Where to now?’

Mahmeini’s man said, ‘Let me think about that for a minute.’

Reacher kept the Malibu at a steady sixty. A mile a minute. Hypnotic. Power line poles flashed past, the tyres sang, the motor hummed. Reacher took the fresh bottle of water from the cup holder and opened it and drank from it one-handed. He switched his headlights to bright. Nothing to see ahead of him. A straight road, then mist, then darkness. He checked the mirror. Nothing to see behind him. He checked the dials and the gauges. All good.

Eleanor Duncan checked her watch. It was a small Rolex, a present from Seth, but probably real. She had counted ahead an hour and six minutes from when she had hung up the phone, and she had forty-five minutes still to go. She stepped out of the living room into the hallway, and stepped out of the hallway into her husband’s den. It was a small square space. She had no idea of its original purpose. Maybe a gun room. Now it was set up as a home office, but with an emphasis on gentlemanly style, not clerical function. There was a club chair made of leather. The desk was yew. It had a light with a green glass shade. There were bookshelves. There was a rug. The air in the room smelled like Seth.

There was a shallow glass bowl on the desk. From Murano, near Venice, in Italy. It was green. A souvenir. It had paperclips in it. And her car keys, just sitting there, two small serrated lances with big black heads. For her Mazda Miata. A tiny red two-seat convertible. A fun car. Carefree. Like the old British MGs and Lotuses used to be, but reliable.

She took one of the keys.

She stepped back to the hallway. Eleven miles. She thought she knew what Reacher had in mind. So she opened the coat closet and took out a silk headscarf. Pure white. She folded it into a triangle and tied it over her hair. She checked the mirror. Just like an old-fashioned movie star. Or an old-fashioned movie star after a knockout round with an old-fashioned heavyweight champion.

She left by the back door and walked through the cold to the garage, Seth’s empty bay to the right, hers in the middle, the doors all open. She got in her car and unlatched the clips above the windshield and dropped the top. She started up and backed out and turned and waited on the driveway, the motor running, the heater warming, her heart beating hard. She checked her watch. Twenty-nine minutes to go.

Reacher cruised onward, sixty miles an hour, three more minutes, and then he slowed down and put his lights back on bright. He watched the right shoulder. The old abandoned roadhouse loomed up at him, right on cue, pinned and stark in his headlight beams. The bad roof, the beer signs on the walls behind the mud, the bruised earth all around where cars had once parked. He pulled off the road and into the lot. Loose stones popped and crunched and slithered under his tyres. He drove a full circuit.

The building was long and low and plain, like a barn cut off at the knees. Rectangular, except for two separate square bump-outs added at the back, one at each end of the structure, the first for restrooms, probably, and the second for a kitchen. Efficient, in terms of plumbing lines. Between the bump-outs was a shallow U-shaped space, like a bay, empty apart from a little windblown trash, enclosed on three sides, open only to the dark empty fields to the east. It was maybe thirty feet long and twelve feet deep.

Perfect, for later.

Reacher came back around to the south gable wall and parked thirty feet from it, out of sight from the north, facing the road at a slight diagonal angle, like a cop on speed trap duty. He killed the lights and kept the motor running. He got out into the cold and looped around the hood and walked to the corner of the building. He leaned on the old boards. They felt thin and veined, frozen by a hundred winters, baked by a hundred summers. They smelled of dust and age. He watched the darkness in the north, where he knew the road must be.

He waited.