Reacher put his tote bag on the table. He said, “Tell Mr. Klopp there are a lot of photographs. He should feel free to take a break whenever he needs to. Tell him to bear in mind everything he told us about the man’s face, all those details, and to use them as a mental checklist for when he’s deciding. Tell him hair can change, but eyes and ears never do. Tell him it’s OK not to be sure. He can make a pile of possibles and check them again later. But tell him not to make mistakes.”
Neagley unpacked the bag. Two hundred cards. She separated them into five equal stacks of forty each. Less daunting that way. She slid the first stack over to Klopp. He got to work, without visible enthusiasm, but with a degree of efficiency. Like a clerical supervisor. Reacher watched his eyes. He seemed to be following the checklist suggestion. One item after another. Eyes, nose, cheek bones, mouth, chin. Every step of the way was a separate yes or no decision. Most candidates failed early. The discard pile grew large. Fat faces, round faces, dark eyes, full lips. No one in the first stack of forty made the cut. Not even as possibles.
Neagley slid the second stack into position. She caught Reacher’s eye and winked. He nodded. The Hamburg expat was top of the pile. The counterculture guy, with the shock of hair. Klopp rejected him immediately. Reacher saw why. No cheek bones, and pouty rosebud lips, not a thin unsmiling slash.
The discard pile grew tall.
There was no possibles pile.
Neagley slid the third stack into position. Klopp got to work. The translator sat quiet. Griezman went out and came back and a minute later a man came in with a pot of coffee and five cups. Klopp didn’t pause. He took cards off Neagley’s stack, one at a time, left thumb and index finger, and brought them closer to him, and looked at them, and slapped them down, one after the other.
The discard pile grew taller.
There was still no possibles pile.
Klopp said something in German, and the translator said, “He apologizes for not being more helpful.”
Reacher said, “Ask him how sure he is about his discards.”
She did, and said, “A hundred percent.”
“That’s impressive.”
“He says he has that kind of mind.” Then she paused. She glanced at Reacher, who had told her to tell him everything, and then at Griezman, as if for permission to do so. She said, “Mr. Klopp trained as an auditor, in East Germany, and was second-in-command at a very large factory near the Polish border. He wishes us to understand he is overqualified for his current position. But all the better jobs here in the west are prohibited to ethnic Germans and given instead to people from Turkey.”
“Does he want to take a break? He’s got about eighty more to look at.”
She asked, and he answered, and she said, “He is happy to continue. He has the American’s face fixed firmly in his mind. Either it is here or it is not. He invites you to check his work against the sketch he will produce with our artist. He thinks you will find his conclusions to be accurate.”
“OK, tell him to get it done.”
There was nothing in the fourth stack. Not even a possible. A hundred and sixty gone by. Neagley slid the final forty into place. Reacher watched Klopp. One card at a time, left thumb and index finger, held easy, not near and not far. Decent vision, with his glasses on. Genuine concentration. Not a bored blank stare or an impatient sneer. A calm focus. He was interrogating the photographs, one by one, point by point. Eyes, cheek bones, mouth. Yes or no.
No, time after time. Always no. The cards slapped down. By that point Reacher had seen more than a hundred and seventy versions of what the guy wasn’t. Which started to define what he was. Which was what Klopp had said. Deep-set blue eyes, prominent cheek bones, a thin nose, an unsmiling mouth, a firm chin. There were no other variants left. All under hair currently the color of straw, currently normal on the sides and long on the top. Like a style.
Reacher watched.
The discard pile grew taller.
There was still no possibles pile.
Then Klopp scrabbled up the last card, and looked at it, the same focus as every other card, and he put it on the discard pile.
—
Reacher called from Griezman’s office. He got Landry, who got Vanderbilt, who got White, who sounded sleepy. It was five o’clock in the morning in Virginia. Reacher said, “The guy saw the rendezvous. No doubt about it. The choreography was exactly right. The odds against the same type of thing happening in the same neighborhood at the same time are astronomical.”
“Did he ID the American?”
“No,” Reacher said. “Ratcliffe is wrong. This is not about computers. He put two whispers together, for no reason at all. There’s no connection. They’re separate. Just random.”
“OK, we better tell him. You better get back here.”
“No,” Reacher said. “We’re staying.”
Chapter 12