Persuader (25 page)

He looked away. “I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“You hit somebody and he dropped this?”

“I think Duke hit him.”

“You saw it happen?”

“Just shapes,” I said. “It was dark. Lots of muzzle flashes. Duke was firing and he hit a shape and this was on the floor when I came out.”

“This is Angel Doll’s gun.”

“Are you sure?”

“Million to one it isn’t. You know what it is?”

“Never saw one like it.”

“It’s a special KGB pistol,” he said. “From the old Soviet Union. Very rare in this country.”

Then he stepped away into the darkness of the lot. I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep.

Even five seconds would have made a difference.

“Reacher,” he called. “What evidence did you leave?”

I opened my eyes.

“Duke’s body,” I said.

“That won’t lead anybody anywhere. Ballistics?”

I smiled in the dark. Imagined Hartford PD forensic scientists trying to make sense of the trajectories. Walls, floors, ceilings. They would conclude the hallway had been full of heavily-armed disco dancers.

“A lot of bullets and shell cases,” I said.

“Untraceable,” he said.

He moved deeper into the dark. I closed my eyes again. I had left no fingerprints. No part of me had touched any part of the house except for the soles of my shoes. And I hadn’t fired Duffy’s Glock. I had heard something about a central registry somewhere that stored data on rifling marks. Maybe her Glock was a part of it. But I hadn’t used it.

“Reacher,” Beck called. “Drive me home.”

I opened my eyes.

“What about this car?” I called back.

“Abandon it here.”

I yawned and forced myself to move and used the tail of my coat to wipe the wheel and all the controls I had touched. The unused Glock nearly fell out of my pocket. Beck didn’t notice. He was so preoccupied I could have taken it out and twirled it around my finger like the Sundance Kid and he wouldn’t have noticed. I wiped the door handle and then leaned in and pulled the keys and wiped them and tossed them into the scrub at the edge of the lot.

“Let’s go,” Beck said.

He was silent until we were thirty miles north and east of Hartford. Then he started talking. He had spent the time getting it all worked out in his mind.

“The phone call yesterday,” he said. “They were laying their plans. Doll was working with them all along.”

“From when?”

“From the start.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Duke went south and got the Toyota’s plate number for you. Then you gave it to Doll and told him to trace it. But why would Doll tell you the truth about the trace? If they were his buddies, he’d have dead-ended it, surely. Led you away from them. Left you in the dark.”

Beck smiled a superior smile.

“No,” he said. “They were setting up the ambush. That was the point of the phone call. It was good improvisation on their part. The kidnap gambit failed, so they switched tactics.

They let Doll point us in the right direction. So that what happened tonight could happen.”

I nodded slowly, like I was deferring to his point of view. The best way to clinch a pending promotion is to let them think you’re just a little dumber than they are. It had worked for me before, three straight times, in the military.

“Did Doll actually know what you were planning for tonight?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We were all discussing it, yesterday. In detail. When you saw us talking, in the office.”

“So he set you up.”

“Yes,” he said again. “He locked up last night and then left Portland and drove all the way down to wait with them. Told them all who was coming, and when, and why.”

I said nothing. Just thought about Doll’s car. It was about a mile away from Beck’s office. I began to wish I had hidden it better.

“But there’s one big question,” Beck said. “Was it just Doll?”

“Or?”

He went quiet. Then he shrugged.

“Or any of the others that work with him,” he said.

The ones you don’t control, I thought. Quinn’s people.

“Or all of them together,” he said.

He started thinking again, another thirty, forty miles. He didn’t speak another word until we were back on I-95, heading north around Boston.

“Duke is dead,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Here it comes, I thought.

“I knew him a long time,” he said.

I said nothing.

“You’re going to have to take over,” he said. “I need somebody right now. Somebody I can trust. And you’ve done well for me so far.”

“Promotion?” I said.

“You’re qualified.”

“Head of security?”

“At least temporarily,” he said. “Permanently, if you’d like.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Just remember what I know,” he said. “I own you.”

I was quiet for a mile. “You going to pay me anytime soon?”

“You’ll get your five grand plus what Duke got on top.”

“I’ll need some background,” I said. “I can’t help you without it.”

He nodded.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

Then he went quiet again. Next time I looked, he was fast asleep beside me. Some kind of a shock reaction. He thought his world was falling apart. I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men’s shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast bloody wars and dread diseases, because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that’s how it’s always been, in the military.

I made it back to the Maine coast purely on autopilot. I couldn’t recall a single mile of the drive. I was numb with exhaustion. Every part of me ached. Paulie was slow about opening the gate. I guess we got him out of bed. He made a big point about staring in at me. I dropped Beck at the front door and put the car in the garage. Stashed the Glock and the spare magazines just for safety’s sake and went in through the back door. The metal detector beeped at the car keys. I dropped them on the kitchen table. I was hungry, but I was too tired to eat. I climbed all the stairs and fell down on my bed and went to sleep, fully dressed, overcoat and shoes and all.

The weather woke me six hours later. Horizontal rain was battering my window. It sounded like gravel on the glass. I rolled off the bed and checked the view. The sky was iron gray and thick with cloud and the sea was raging. It was laced with angry foam a half-mile out. The waves were swamping the rocks. No birds. It was nine in the morning.

Day fourteen, a Friday. I lay down on the bed again and stared at the ceiling and tracked back seventy-two hours to the morning of day eleven, when Duffy gave me her sevenpoint plan. One, two, and three, take a lot of care. I was doing OK under that heading. I was still alive, anyway. Four, find Teresa Daniel. No real progress there. Five, nail down some evidence against Beck. I didn’t have any. Not a thing. I hadn’t even seen him do anything wrong, except maybe operate a vehicle with phony license plates and carry a bag full of submachine guns that were probably illegal in all four states he’d been in. Six, find Quinn. No progress there, either. Seven, get the hell out. That item was going to have to wait. Then Duffy had kissed me on the cheek. Left doughnut sugar on my face.

I got up again and locked myself in my bathroom to check for e-mail. My bedroom door wasn’t locked anymore. I guessed Richard Beck wouldn’t presume to walk in on me. Or his mother. But his father might. He owned me. I was promoted, but I was still walking a tightrope. I sat on the floor and took my shoe off. Opened the heel and switched the machine on. You’ve Got Mail! It was a message from Duffy: Beck’s containers unloaded and trucked to warehouse. Not inspected by Customs. Total of five. Largest shipment for some time.

I hit reply and typed: Are you maintaining surveillance?

Ninety seconds later she answered: Yes.

I sent: I got promoted.

She sent: Exploit it.

I sent: I enjoyed yesterday.

She sent: Save your battery.

I smiled and switched the unit off and put it back in my heel. I needed a shower, but first I needed breakfast, and then I needed to find clean clothes. I unlocked the bathroom and walked through my room and downstairs to the kitchen. The cook was back in business.

She was serving toast and tea to the Irish girl and dictating a long shopping list. The Saab keys were on the table. The Cadillac keys weren’t. I scratched around and ate everything I could find and then went looking for Beck. He wasn’t around. Neither was Elizabeth or Richard. I went back to the kitchen.

“Where’s the family?” I asked.

The maid looked up and said nothing. She had put a raincoat on, ready to go out shopping.

“Where’s Mr. Duke?” the cook asked.

“Indisposed,” I said. “I’m replacing him. Where are the Becks?”

“They went out.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know.”

I looked out at the weather. “Who drove?”

The cook looked down at the floor.

“Paulie,” she said.

“When?”

“An hour ago.”

“OK,” I said. I was still wearing my coat. I had put it on when I left Duffy’s motel and I hadn’t taken it off since. I went straight out the back door and into the gale. The rain was lashing and it tasted of salt. It was mixed with sea spray. The waves were hitting the rocks like bombs. White foam was bursting thirty feet in the air. I ducked my face into my collar and ran around to the garage block. Into the walled courtyard. It was sheltered in there. The first garage was empty. The doors were standing open. The Cadillac was gone. The mechanic was inside the third garage, doing something by himself. The maid ran into the courtyard. I watched her haul open the fourth garage’s doors. She was getting soaked. She went in and a moment later backed the old Saab out. It rocked in the wind.

The rain turned the dust on it to a thin film of gray mud that ran down the sides like rivers. She drove away, off to market. I listened to the waves. Started worrying about how high they might be getting. So I hugged the courtyard wall and looped all the way around it to the seaward side. Found my little dip in the rocks. The weed stalks around it were wet and bedraggled. The dip was full of water. It was rainwater. Not seawater. It was safely above the tide. The waves hadn’t reached it. But rainwater was all it was full of. Apart from the water, it was completely empty. No bundle. No rag, no Glock. The spare magazines were gone, Doll’s keys were gone, the bradawl was gone, and the chisel was gone.

CHAPTER 8

I came around to the front of the house and faced west and stood in the lashing rain and stared at the high stone wall. Right at that moment I came as close as I ever got to bailing out. It would have been easy. The gate was wide open. I guessed the maid had left it that way. She had gotten out in the rain to open it and she hadn’t wanted to get out again to close it. Paulie wasn’t there to do it for her. He was out, driving the Cadillac. So the gate was open. And unguarded. The first time I had ever seen it that way. I could have slipped straight through it. But I didn’t. I stayed.

Time was part of the reason. Beyond the gate was at least twelve miles of empty road before the first significant turning. Twelve miles. And there were no cars to use. The Becks were out in the Cadillac and the maid was out in the Saab. We had abandoned the Lincoln in Connecticut. So I would be on foot. Three hours’ fast walk. I didn’t have three hours. Almost certainly the Cadillac would return within three hours. And there was nowhere to hide on the road. The shoulders were bare and rocky. It was an exposed situation. Beck would pass me head-on. I would be walking. He would be in a car. And he had a gun. And Paulie. I had nothing.

Therefore strategy was part of the reason, too. To be caught in the act of walking away would confirm whatever Beck might think he knew, assuming it was Beck who had discovered the stash. But if I stayed I had some kind of a chance. Staying would imply innocence. I could deflect suspicion onto Duke. I could say it must have been Duke’s stash. Beck might find that plausible. Maybe. Duke had enjoyed the freedom to go wherever he wanted, any time of night or day. I had been locked up and supervised the whole time. And Duke wasn’t around anymore to deny anything. But I would be right there in Beck’s face, talking loud and fast and persuasive. He might buy it.

Hope was part of the reason, too. Maybe it wasn’t Beck who had found the stash. Maybe it was Richard, walking the shoreline. His reaction would be unpredictable. I figured it at fifty-fifty whether he would approach me or his father first. Or maybe it was Elizabeth who had found it. She was familiar with the rocks out there. She knew them well. Knew their secrets. I guessed she had spent plenty of time on them, for one reason or another.

And her reaction would favor me. Probably.

The rain was part of the reason for staying, too. It was cold and hard and relentless. I was too tired to road march three hours in the rain. I knew it was just weakness. But I couldn’t move my feet. I wanted to go back inside the house. I wanted to get warm and eat again and rest.

Fear of failure was part of the reason, too. If I walked away now I would never come back. I knew that. And I had invested two weeks. I had made good progress. People were depending on me. I had been beaten many times. But I had never just quit. Not once. Not ever. If I quit now, it would eat me up the rest of my days. Jack Reacher, quitter. Walked away when the going got tough.

I stood there with the rain driving against my back. Time, strategy, hope, the weather, fear of failure. All parts of the reason for staying. All right there on the list.

But top of the list was a woman.

Not Susan Duffy, not Teresa Daniel. A woman from long ago, from another life. She was called Dominique Kohl. I was a captain in the army when I met her. I was one year away from my final promotion to major. I got to my office early one morning and found the usual stack of paperwork on my desk. Most of it was junk. But among it was a copy of an order assigning an E-7 Sergeant First Class Kohl, D.E. to my unit. Back then we were in a phase where all written references to personnel had to be gender-neutral. The name Kohl sounded German to me and I pictured some big ugly guy from Texas or Minnesota.

Big red hands, big red face, older than me, maybe thirty-five, with a whitewall haircut.

Later in the morning the clerk buzzed through to say the guy was reporting for duty. I made him wait ten minutes just for the fun of it and then called him in. But the him was a her and she wasn’t big and ugly. She was wearing a skirt. She was about twenty-nine years old. She wasn’t tall, but she was too athletic to be called petite. And she was too pretty to be called athletic. It was like she had been exquisitely molded from the stuff they make the inside of tennis balls out of. There was an elasticity about her. A firmness and a softness, all at the same time. She looked sculpted, but she had no hard edges. She stood rigidly at attention in front of my desk and snapped a smart salute. I didn’t return it, which was rude of me. I just stared at her for five whole seconds.

“At ease, Sergeant,” I said.

She handed me her copy of her orders and her personnel file. We called them service jackets. They contained everything anybody needed to know. I left her standing easy in front of me while I read hers through, which was rude of me too, but there was no other option. I didn’t have a visitor’s chair. Back then the army didn’t provide them below the rank of full colonel. She stood completely still, hands clasped behind her back, staring at a point in the air exactly a foot above my head.

Her jacket was impressive. She had done a little of everything and succeeded at it all in spectacular fashion. Expert marksman, specialist in a number of skills, tremendous arrest record, excellent clear-up percentage. She was a good leader and had been promoted fast.

She had killed two people, one with a firearm, one unarmed, both incidents rated righteous by the subsequent investigating panels. She was a rising star. That was clear. I realized that her transfer represented a substantial compliment to me, in some superior’s mind.

“Glad to have you aboard,” I said.

“Sir, thank you, sir,” she said, with her eyes fixed in space.

“I don’t do all that shit,” I said. “I’m not afraid I’m going to vaporize if you look at me and I don’t really like one sir in a sentence, let alone two, OK?”

“OK,” she said. She caught on fast. She never called me sir again, the whole rest of her life.

“Want to jump right in at the deep end?” I said.

She nodded. “Sure.”

I rattled open a drawer and slid a slim file out and passed it across to her. She didn’t look at it. Just held it one-handed down by her side and looked at me.

“Aberdeen, Maryland,” I said. “At the proving grounds. There’s a weapons designer acting weird. Confidential tip from a buddy who’s worried about espionage. But I think it’s more likely blackmail. Could be a long and sensitive investigation.”

“No problem,” she said.

She was the reason I didn’t walk out through the open and unguarded gate.

I went inside instead and took a long hot shower. Nobody likes to risk confrontation when they’re wet and naked, but I was way past caring. I guess I was feeling fatalistic.

Whatever, bring it on. Then I wrapped up in a towel and went down a flight and found Duke’s room. Stole another set of his clothes. I dressed in them and put my own shoes and jacket and coat on. Went back to the kitchen to wait. It was warm in there. The way the sea was pounding and the rain was beating on the windows made it feel warmer still.

It was like a sanctuary. The cook was in there, doing something with a chicken.

“Got coffee?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Caffeine,” she said.

I looked at the back of her head.

“Caffeine is the whole point of coffee,” I said. “Anyway, tea’s got caffeine, and I’ve seen you make that.”

“Tea has tannin,” she said.

“And caffeine,” I said.

“So drink tea instead,” she said.

I looked around the room. There was a wooden block standing vertically on a counter with black knife handles protruding at angles. There were bottles and glasses. I guessed under the sink there might be ammonia sprays. Maybe some chlorine bleach. Enough improvised weapons for a close-quarters fight. If Beck was even a little inhibited about shooting in a crowded room, I might be OK. I might be able to take him before he took me. All I would need was half a second.

“You want coffee?” the cook asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

“All you have to do is ask.”

“I did ask.”

“No, you asked if there was any,” she said. “Not the same thing.”

“So will you make me some? Please?”

“What happened to Mr. Duke?”

I paused. Maybe she was planning on marrying him, like in old movies where the cook marries the butler and they retire and live happily ever after.

“He was killed,” I said.

“Last night?”

I nodded. “In an ambush.”

“Where?”

“In Connecticut.”

“OK,” she said. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

She set the machine going. I watched where she got everything from. The filter papers were stored in a cupboard next to the paper napkins. The coffee itself was in the freezer.

The machine was old and slow. It made a loud ponderous gulping sound. Combined with the rain lashing on the windows and the waves pounding on the rocks it meant I didn’t hear the Cadillac come back. First I knew, the back door was thrown open and Elizabeth Beck burst in with Richard crowding after her and Beck himself bringing up the rear.

They were moving with the kind of exhilarated breathless urgency people show after a short fast dash through heavy rain.

“Hello,” Elizabeth said to me.

I nodded. Said nothing.

“Coffee,” Richard said. “Great.”

“We went out for breakfast,” Elizabeth said. “Old Orchard Beach. There’s a little diner there we like.”

“Paulie figured we shouldn’t wake you,” Beck said. “He figured you looked pretty tired last night. So he offered to drive us instead.”

“OK,” I said. Thought: Did Paulie find my stash? Did he tell them yet? “You want coffee?” Richard asked me. He was over by the machine, rattling cups in his hand.

“Black,” I said. “Thanks.”

He brought me a cup. Beck was peeling off his coat and shaking water off it onto the floor.

“Bring it through,” he called. “We need to talk.”

He headed out to the hallway and looked back like he expected me to follow him. I took my coffee with me. It was hot and steaming. I could toss it in his face if I had to. He led me toward the square paneled room we had used before. I was carrying my cup, which slowed me down a little. He got there well ahead of me. When I entered he was already all the way over by one of the windows with his back to me, looking out at the rain.

When he turned around he had a gun in his hand. I just stood still. I was too far away to use the coffee. Maybe fourteen feet. It would have looped up and curled and dispersed in the air and probably missed him altogether.

The gun was a Beretta M9 Special Edition, which was a civilian Beretta 92FS all dressed up to look exactly like a standard military-issue M9. It used nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition. It had a fifteen-round magazine and military dot-and-post sights. I remembered with bizarre clarity that the retail price had been $861. I had carried an M9 for thirteen years. I had fired many thousands of practice rounds with it and more than a few for real. Most of them had hit their targets, because it’s an accurate weapon. Most of the targets had been destroyed, because it’s a powerful weapon. It had served me well. I even remembered the original sales pitch from the ordnance people: It’s got manageable recoil and it’s easy to strip in the field. They had repeated it like a mantra. Over and over again. I guess there were contracts at stake. There was some controversy. Navy SEALs hated it. They claimed they’d had dozens blow up in their faces. They even made up a cadence song about it: No way are you a Navy Seal, until you eat some Italian steel. But the M9 always served me well. It was a fine weapon, in my opinion. Beck’s example looked like a brand-new gun. The finish was immaculate. Dewy with oil. There was luminescent paint on the sights. It glowed softly in the gloom.

I waited.

Beck just stood there, holding the gun. Then he moved. He slapped the barrel into his left palm and took his right hand away. Leaned over the oak table and held the thing out to me, butt-first, left-handed, politely, like he was a clerk in a store.

“Hope you like it,” he said. “I thought you might feel at home with it. Duke was into the exotics, like that Steyr he had. But I figured you’d be more comfortable with the Beretta, you know, given your background.”