Night School (17 page)

Interesting.

Reacher’s hotel was not named, but the switchboard number Griezman had called was recorded. The traffic division had access to a standard reverse phone directory, so Muller started his computer and looked up the number.

And got the hotel’s name.

He knew the place very well. A bijou establishment on a side street, in a good but not-quite-best neighborhood. Sometimes the manager called to complain about people parking right in front. Because that ruined the image. They had a guy with a top hat. Where was he supposed to stand? Muller himself had been out there twice. Nothing he could do. Not without two years of due process to get the curb changed. Which the city’s lawyers would never allow. Suppose all the small hotels wanted the same treatment? Chaos. It was already bad enough with the big brands.

Muller picked up his desk phone and dialed Dremmler at home.

Reacher stepped around the guy
with the top hat and set out walking. It was midnight local time. The streets were lit by lamps on poles, and by the soft light of storefronts dimmed to a nighttime glow, and by the blue flicker of late shows on television sets behind undraped apartment windows. He walked a figure-of-eight around two random blocks and saw no one behind him. Or ahead of him. Or in the shadows. Just a routine precaution. A habit. He was thirty-five years old and still alive. Had to mean something.

He found the street with the bar in it. Where Klopp had seen Wiley the first time. Where Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee had sold their scrap Berettas. Where German ID was for sale. He stopped forty yards short and eyeballed the place from an angle. The ground floor of the stone building, the center door, the planked wood façade, varnished and shiny. The small windows, with their lace curtains, and their paper flags. The lights were on inside. By night they looked warm and welcoming.

Reacher crossed the street and went in through the door. Inside it was smoky and loud. It was late, but there were maybe sixty people still in there, mostly men, in tight private groups of three or four. Some were at tables, and some were standing, cramped and back-to-back with other huddles. There were upholstered benches under the windows. All were full, like seats on a rush-hour subway. Reacher eased through the crowd, gently but firmly, like a police horse at a riot. Most folks got out of his way fast enough. They looked like business people, or clerical workers. Some of them senior, some of them doing well. Reacher didn’t see Wiley. He didn’t expect to. He was a lucky man, but not that lucky. He sensed people looking at him from behind. Delayed reaction.
Weren’t we warned about a man like that?

He made it to the bar after a roundabout route, and he wedged himself in, and waited to be served. Both bartenders were men. Both had heavy canvas aprons tied around their waists. One glanced his way. Reacher asked for a cup of black coffee. The guy set an espresso machine going, and ducked back for his money. Reacher asked him no questions. Life wasn’t like the television shows. Bartenders never spilled the beans. Why would they? Who came first, the sixty people they had to live with every night of their lives, or the lone guy they had never seen before?

Instead he carried his coffee into the crowd and sat down in the spare seat where three guys were at a four-top table. They looked at him like he had committed an embarrassing faux pas, and then they looked away, and a lot of coughing and false starts indicated they were changing the subject. And commenting. Reacher heard the word
arschloch,
which he knew from many in-country arguments meant
asshole
. But he didn’t react. Instead he drained his cup and headed for the pay phone on the opposite wall. He got a coin ready and dialed Orozco.

Orozco said, “Are we in trouble?”

Reacher said, “No, we’re good. If I get the guy.”

“I thought you almost had him.”

“I screwed up. I didn’t expect a woman messenger. Live and learn.”

“So what now?”

“Did Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee tell you who sold them the ID?”

“They won’t. They’re scared. This is some kind of big mobbed-up thing. But not Italian. Nostalgic Germans instead. They have members and chapters and rules and all kinds of things. Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee are more afraid of them than me.”

“And the bar is where these guys meet?”

“It’s their unofficial HQ.”

“And what are they exactly?”

“The biggest far-right faction. So far all talk, but that can’t last forever.”

“OK, tell Billy Bob and Jimmy Lee we don’t care who they bought their ID from. Tell them we won’t ask again, in exchange for an answer to one simple question. They gave the impression they picked out their new names themselves. One of them said because he liked the sound of it. Ask them if that’s true. Could they really get any name they wanted?”

“OK,” Orozco said. “I’ll ask them. Anything else?”

“Not right now.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“Don’t worry. We’re golden.”

“If you get the guy.”

“How hard can it be?”

Reacher hung up the phone and turned to face the room. By that point lots of people were looking at him. Word had gotten around. There was a huddle at the street door, and another at the back door. Both sets of guys were watching him. Waiting for him. Which meant the fight would be outside. He would leave, and they would follow. If there was a fight. Which was not certain. These were mostly above average people. Above average age, above average weight. Heart attacks just waiting to happen. Discretion would be the better part of valor for most of them. The exceptions were of no real concern. They were younger and a little fitter, but they were desk workers. Nothing to worry about. Reacher was a good street fighter. Mostly because he enjoyed it.

He pushed off the wall and parted the crowd, chest out, as straight and slow as a funeral march. No one blocked him. He made it to the street door. In front of it was a tight knot of six men. In their thirties, probably, and none of them slender. But desk workers. Their suits were shiny on the ass and the elbow. He could read their body language. They were set to let him pass, and then they would about-turn fast and spill out behind him, on the damp and shiny cobblestones.

Reacher said, “You speak English?”

One guy said, “Yes.”

“You ever wonder why? Why you speak my language and I don’t speak yours?”

“What?”

“Never mind. What are your orders?”

“Orders?”

“If I wanted a parrot I’d go to a pet store. Someone just told you to do something. Tell me what it was.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to evaluate a large number of theoretical possibilities. One of which is you want a rumble on the sidewalk. Maybe that’s not true at all. Maybe I’ve misjudged you terribly. But I’ll have to err on the side of caution. You see that, right? It’s my only sensible course of action. So don’t follow me out the door. Maybe all you want is a breath of air. But erring on the side of caution means I’ll have to interpret it as a hostile act. Current NATO doctrine requires an immediate reaction with overwhelming force. I know you have a welfare state, but a hospital is still a hospital, no matter who pays for it. No fun at all. So my advice is to sit this one out.”

“You’re afraid of us.”

“Sadly, no. I’m trying to be fair, is all. No reason for you to get hurt. If one of your bosses has a beef with me, send him out alone. I’ll walk him around the block. We’ll have an exchange of views. That way everyone’s a winner.”

No answer.

Reacher pushed his way between the first guy and the second, and pulled the door. He slid out around its swing and took two fast paces to the curb and turned around.

No one followed.

He waited in the gutter a whole minute, but no one came out. He turned his collar up against the nighttime mist and set out walking back to the hotel. From the corner he saw the guy with the top hat was gone. The evening shift had ended, and the night shift had started. He slowed down and scanned ahead. Habit.

There was a guy in a doorway on the other side of the street. Barely visible. He was lit from the side, softly, in green, by a pharmacy sign two units further away. He was wearing a dark parka and a little Bavarian hat. Probably had a feather in the band. He was watching the hotel. No doubt about that. He was face-on to it, wedged in the doorway corner. White, and a little stout. Maybe six feet and two-ten. Hard to say how old.

Reacher walked on. Maybe part of a diplomatic protection team. A courtesy from the German government. Maybe they had found out Sinclair was in town. Or maybe Bishop had sent a guy. From the consulate. A third under-deputy for cultural affairs, with brass knuckles in his pocket. Trained under the previous system.

Reacher walked on, looking at nothing in particular, with the guy in the corner of his eye. But then a car turned in from the four-way up ahead, and bright headlights came straight at him, fast and dazzling, a big vehicle pattering over the cobblestones.

The car stopped alongside him. A Mercedes. A department Mercedes. Griezman. Who buzzed the passenger window down and said, “Get in. I’ve been calling you. I thought you must be asleep with the phone turned off. I was coming to wake you up.”

Reacher said, “Why?”

“We saw Wiley.”

Reacher glanced up.

The man in the doorway was gone.

“Get in,” Griezman said.

Reacher did.

Griezman took off fast, his
seat back yielding and
groaning under the sudden acceleration. He said one of the cops in one of the unmarked cars parked at the bar earlier in the evening had been a night-shift guy, brought in early on overtime rates of pay, and therefore still on duty, still on his regular watch. Still with the sketch of Wiley on the seat beside him. He had been cruising the western edge of St. Pauli, and he had seen a guy he swore matched the sketch. Carrying a bottle-shaped carrier bag from an all-night wine store. Walking south toward the water.

Reacher said, “When?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

“How sure is he?”

“I believe him. He’s a good cop.”

Traffic was light, but the road surface was slick, and most other drivers were heading home from bars, so Griezman wasn’t as fast as he might have been. But even so they got where they were going within ten minutes. They stopped between high buildings, twenty yards short of a crossroads. Griezman said the possible Wiley had been seen crossing the street, up ahead, walking right to left from the cop’s point of view. Now thirty minutes ago, in total. In that direction lay huge new apartment blocks. A brand-new residential development. Immense. On reclaimed land, from when the docks moved downriver, in search of more space. There were thousands and thousands of separate addresses.

Reacher said, “Rentals, right?”

Griezman said, “You think he lives there?”

“He was carrying a bottle of wine. Conceivably taking it to a party, but more likely taking it home. Given the late hour.” Reacher looked the other way, to his right. He said, “I bet I know what he bought. Let’s go find the store.”

The store was
a clean, well lit place, with what looked like a fine selection of wines, red, white, rosé, and sparkling, including a shelf of lower-priced items, for folks who didn’t live in brand-new residential developments. The clerk was an amiable old guy of about sixty-something. Reacher took his copy of Wiley’s sketch from his pocket and the old guy confirmed it immediately. The man in the sketch had been in the store about forty minutes previously. He had bought a bottle of chilled champagne.

“He’s celebrating,” Reacher said.

“Credit card?” Griezman asked.

“He paid cash,” the clerk said.

Reacher looked at a plastic bubble on the ceiling above the clerk’s head. He said, “Is that a security camera?”

The clerk said it was, and it fed a VHS recorder in the back room. Griezman knew how to work it. It gave a decent black-and-white picture, looking down from behind the clerk’s shoulder. The angle was wide. It was a dual-purpose installation. Customers were clearly visible, but so was the register drawer. In case the clerk was skimming.

Griezman wound the tape back forty minutes and Wiley came in right on cue. No doubt about it. The hair, the brow, the cheek bones. The deep-set eyes. He looked dead-on average height, but scrawny, in a hardscrabble kind of a way. He moved with energy and purpose. And confidence. Almost a swagger. Physically he looked athletic. Not bouncy like a kid, but trained and mature. He was thirty-five years old, like Reacher himself. All grown up.

On the tape Wiley stepped over to a chiller and opened the glass door and took out a dark bottle with a thin neck.

“Dom Perignon,” Griezman said. “Not so cheap.”

Wiley carried the bottle to the register and took crumpled bills from his pocket. He counted them out and the clerk made change with coins. Then the clerk put the bottle in a bottle-shaped bag and Wiley carried it away. Thirty-seven seconds, beginning to end.

They watched it again.

The same things happened.

“Now show me the neighborhood,” Reacher said.

They got back in the car and Griezman drove south, pattering slowly over the cobblestones, following what must have been Wiley’s earlier route, past where the cop had seen him, between scarred brick warehouses, and eventually to a brand-new traffic circle that led left or right or straight ahead into the new development’s feeder roads.

Griezman stopped the car. The engine idled, and the wiper flopped back and forth about once a minute. Reacher looked ahead. He could see a hundred thousand windows. Most were dark, but a few were lit.

He said, “Are these places expensive?”

Griezman said, “All of Hamburg is expensive.”

“I’m wondering how Wiley pays the rent.”

“He doesn’t. No one named Wiley is registered here. We already checked.”

“We think he’s using a German name.”

“That would make a difference.”

“Possibly one he chose himself.”

“Does he offend you?”

“He’s betraying his country. Which is also mine.”

“Do you love your country, Mr. Reacher?”

“Major Reacher.”

“Perhaps that answers my question.”

“I prefer to think of it as healthy yet skeptical respect.”

“Not very patriotic.”

“Exactly patriotic. My country, right or wrong. Which means nothing, unless you admit your country is wrong sometimes. Loving a country that was right all the time would be common sense, not patriotism.”

Griezman said, “I’m sorry your country is having these troubles.”

Reacher said, “Do you love your country?”

“It’s too early to say. It was only fifty years ago. We changed more than any other country has ever changed. I think we were doing OK. But the people from the east have set us back. Economically, of course. And politically. We’re seeing things we haven’t seen before.”

“Like the bar Helmut Klopp called you from.”

“We have to bide our time. We can’t arrest them for thought crimes. We need actual crimes.”

Reacher said, “There was a guy watching my hotel. He left when you showed up.”

“Not one of mine,” Griezman said.

“Federal?”

“No reason. I haven’t reported Dr. Sinclair’s visit. Not yet. No one knows she’s here. She’s registered under a different name.”

Reacher said nothing.

Griezman said, “Did you run the fingerprint?”

Reacher said, “Yes, I did.”

“And?”

“You can call it a cold case now. It will never be solved.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I know who it was, and I won’t tell anyone.”

“But I helped you.”

“I know you did. And I thank you.”

“Do I get nothing in return?”

“She was a very expensive hooker. Her client list was therefore of interest. But I won’t tell anyone about that, either.”

Griezman was quiet a beat.

Then he said, “The CIA? I was of interest?”

Reacher nodded. “To the part that was trained under the previous system.”

“You’re going to blackmail me.”

“Not my style. I already said I won’t tell anyone. No strings attached. Whether you choose to keep on helping me is entirely up to you. If you do, I’ll take it as two simple detectives getting along, nothing more.”

Griezman paused again.

“I wish to apologize,” he said. “I’m not the man you thought I was.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Reacher said.

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“I’m not your shrink.”

“But I would like to know why.”

“Was she cute?”

“Incredible.”

“There you go.”

“You think it’s that simple?”

“I’m a military cop.”

Griezman said, “I’ll help you if I can.”

“Thank you.”

“What do you need?”

“You could tell your night-shift guy to spend the rest of his watch right here. It’s a bottleneck. Wiley might come through again. If so, arrest him for walking while foreign. Keep him in the car until I get here.”

“There are many other ways out of the complex. There are cycle paths and footbridges at the back. And a big bridge to the bus stop on the main road.”

“We might get lucky. He might want more champagne.”

“Tell me one thing, about the man whose identity you are concealing. Will he be punished?”

“Yes,” Reacher said. “He will.”

“That’s good.”

“You liked her, right?”

Griezman said, “I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

Wiley gave the
champagne thirty more minutes in the refrigerator, and then he peeled off the foil wrap and eased out the cork, with his thumbs, slowly and gently, until it made a polite little
pock
and fell to the floor.

He poured a glass, which had also gotten thirty minutes in the refrigerator, and he carried it to his table, where his map of Argentina was spread out. The outline of his ranch was rubbed greasy by his fingertips. Truly his ranch now. Or soon, when the money reached Zurich and left again. Or more precisely when some of it left again. Not all of it. He had liked the girl they sent with the message.
Sir, what I am permitted to know is, we accept your price
. She was polite. Kind of deferential. Like when she popped the third button. There would be girls like that in Argentina. Dark, like her. Shy, but with no other choice.

He got up and refilled his glass. He held it high, as if toasting a cheering crowd of thousands. Horace Wiley, from Sugar Land, Texas. King of the world.

Reacher listened at
Sinclair’s door and heard talking, so he knocked, and she said, “Come in.” Neagley was there, and Bishop, from the consulate. The head of station. Sinclair was sitting on the bed, and Bishop and Neagley were in the green velvet armchairs. Neagley had handwritten notes in her lap.

Reacher said, “Progress?”

“You?”

“I think he lives in an apartment complex near the waterfront. One of Griezman’s guys got a glimpse of him. He was out buying champagne.”

“Celebrating,” Bishop said.

Reacher nodded. “We should assume the negotiation is over. We should assume they agreed to the price. The wheels are in motion.”

“How big is the apartment complex?”

“Huge.”

“Paper trail?”

“Nothing in the name of Wiley.”

“Is he in there now?”

“Almost certainly.”

“We should lock the place down.”

“There’s an unmarked car at the main exit. That’s the best Griezman can do. He was already paying overtime earlier in the day.”

Neagley said, “It appears Wiley has no uncles. The witness who mentioned one has been ordered here for further questioning. Landry is working on possible great-uncles and the mother’s possible boyfriends. The latter could take some time.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“And I spoke to his COs from Benning and Sill. The guy from Benning doesn’t remember him at all. The guy from Sill does. He said it was clear Wiley wanted to do his tour in Germany. He was fixated on it. He aimed for it. Every qualification he took narrowed his choices.”

“The guy remembers all that, three years later?”

“Because they had a long conversation at the time. The CO pointed out the consequences of the drawdown. A dead end, a black hole, and so on and so forth. Wiley said he wanted to go anyway. He wanted to serve in Germany.”

“So it was a long game,” Sinclair said, from the bed. “Now we’re trying to figure out what.”

Reacher said, “There was a guy watching this hotel. An hour ago. He disappeared when Griezman showed up.”

“Not one of mine,” Bishop said.

Muller called Dremmler
at home again, and woke him up. It was very late. Or very early, depending on which direction a person was facing. Dremmler composed himself and Muller said, “Reacher got back to the hotel just before one in the morning. But Griezman came by and picked him up before he went inside. I got out of there real quick, in case Griezman recognized me.”

“What did Griezman want?”

“One of my traffic cars heard it on the radio. The American they’re looking for was seen in St. Pauli. His name is Wiley. Griezman’s men have Klopp’s police sketch in their cars.”

“Any other details?”

“One of my guys just checked a car in a no-parking zone near the water. Near some new apartments. It was one of Griezman’s detectives, in an unmarked unit, watching for Wiley. My guy asked why, and they talked for a minute. Just blue-to-blue gossip. Griezman’s guy didn’t know the details, but he said it was obviously some heavy duty thing. His orders came through flagged red.”

“What does that mean?”

“It used to mean organized crime, but now it means terrorism. The guy wasn’t clear whether it was supposed to be an old red or a new red. There’s some confusion at the moment. But I think it was a new red, because they were also watching an apartment near Reacher’s hotel. Earlier in the day. There was supposed to be a Saudi guy coming out. But it didn’t happen. I checked the city records and there’s an apartment in that building with three Saudis and an Iranian. All young men. I think this is some kind of Middle East thing.”

“Is Wiley in the city records?”

“No trace.”

“Klopp says he saw him in the bar more than once. Maybe someone there knows him.”

“Maybe,” Muller said.

Dremmler said, “We need you to get us a copy of Klopp’s police sketch.”

Neagley left, and
then Bishop. Reacher took an armchair. Sinclair stayed on the bed. She said, “Waterman and White will be here tomorrow morning. And Landry and Vanderbilt. I relocated the whole operation. This is where the action is. We’ll work out of the consulate.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Work life or personal life?”

“You can think about both at once?”

“Most of the time.”

“OK, work first.”

“Wiley’s hair.”

“What about it?”

“It’s a way in. Possibly. He didn’t cut it. He let it grow.”

“Maybe he was worried a barber would remember.”

“He could have done it himself. He shaved the sides every day. He could have shaved it all and started over. But he didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I think there’s a vanity to him. A kind of flamboyance. He likes Davy Crockett. Maybe he’s growing his hair long so he can buy a fringed suede jacket and be the king of the wild frontier. The way he moved on the tape was interesting. He’s a small guy, but he swaggers. He’s got it going on. And he bought expensive champagne. I think he likes grand gestures. Which combined with the hundred million dollars doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel like something huge is coming.”