Persuader Part 24

"Why?"

"I thought you might want me to. I thought it might be traceable."

He nodded. "It isn't. But that was good thinking."

I gave him the H&K, too. He stepped back to the Cadillac and I watched him zip both pieces into his bag. Then he turned around. Clenched both hands and looked up at the black sky. Then at me.

"See any faces?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Too dark. But we hit one of them. He dropped this."

I handed him the PSM. It was like punching him in the gut. He turned pale and put out a hand and steadied himself against the Lincoln's roof.

"What?" I said.

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 sh.e.l.l 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 gla.s.ses of fine French wine and toast b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gla.s.s. 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 h.e.l.l 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.