The American’s bedtime routine had not changed in several days. He started with ten minutes of pleasure, and then he did twenty minutes of work. The pleasure came from a map of Argentina. Large scale, fine lines, a lot of detail. The ranch he was going to buy was right in the middle. It was a huge square parcel, fully thirty miles on a side. An hour’s drive, at city speed limits, from corner to corner. A total of nine hundred square miles. Nearly six hundred thousand acres. Practically visible from outer space. But not, truthfully, bigger than Rhode Island, which was about twelve hundred square miles. But it was bigger than the largest single contiguous property in Texas, which was only eight hundred square miles. Both were dwarfed by the Anna Creek sheep station in Australia, which was more than nine thousand square miles. Nearly six million acres. About the size of Massachusetts. He had read a story about its owner. The guy had put a hundred thousand miles on his truck without ever once leaving his own property. But still, the new place in Argentina would be in the top ten in the world. It was a big-ass spread. No doubt about that. His house would be fifteen miles behind his own fences. Which was the kind of isolation he would need, in the new world he was helping to create.
He folded his map and started his twenty minutes of work, which was all about improving his Spanish, by listening to language tapes. He was going to need workers, and he couldn’t expect them to learn English. So he lay in bed with foam headphones clamped to his ears, listening, repeating, learning, until his brain got tired and he fell asleep.
—
Neagley knocked on Reacher’s door at eight o’clock the next morning. He was awake. He had showered and dressed. He was ready for coffee. The elevator was like a gilded birdcage on a chain, inside a shaft made of filigreed wrought iron. They heard it coming up to meet them. They stepped in. There was a credit card on the floor. Or a driver’s license. Or something. Face down. Dropped by accident, presumably. Not a Bundesrepublik Deutschland identity card. Wrong color.
Neagley bent down and picked it up.
She looked at it.
She said, “You owe me ten dollars.”
It was American ID. A Virginia driver’s license. The photo was sharp. A woman. An open, honest face. Blonde hair, medium length, an unaffected style, no doubt combed with her fingers. Marian Sinclair. She was forty-four years old, and her home address was Alexandria. A suburban house, judging by the street number.
Reacher pulled cash from his pocket. He separated two American fives, and handed them over. He said, “She must have just checked in. After the night flight. I’m losing my touch. I didn’t think she would come. And I especially didn’t think she was the type of person who would lose her driver’s license in an elevator. She’s number two at the NSC, for God’s sake. The future of the world depends on her.”
The elevator arrived at the ground floor. They stepped out. Breakfast was in the basement. They followed a winding stair and came out in a pretty room with double glass doors standing open, with a sunken courtyard beyond. Sinclair was right there, at an outdoor table in the morning sun. Drinking coffee. Eating a pastry. Wearing a black dress. They walked over, and said, “Good morning.”
Sinclair looked up.
She said, “To you, too. Please join me.”
They sat down, and Reacher asked her, “Why are you here?”
She looked straight at him and said, “Slim is better than none.”
“You dropped your driver’s license in the elevator.”
“Did I?”
He handed it over. She put it on the table next to her cup. She said, “Thank you. Very careless of me. Very lucky you found it. I’m not using my real name here. They wouldn’t have known who to return it to. You just saved me a bunch of DMV paperwork.”
“Why aren’t you using your real name?”
“Hotels report to the police. My name would trigger a diplomatic alert. And I’m not here officially.”
“You have an alternate identity?”
“Several. We have a document creation division. Just like the Germans. I spoke to Major Orozco this morning and got the whole story. Naturally we were watching your friends. You disobeyed me. I told you only me, Mr. Ratcliffe, or the president.”
“It was private business.”
“No business is private. Not in this matter. But please don’t blame your friend for ratting you out. He had no choice. And don’t feel too bad, either, because both Mr. White and Special Agent Waterman have already done the same kind of thing. With their friends. Not unexpected. We were briefed about your backgrounds.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“It was, because of the ID. That changes everything. ID for sale good enough to get through multiple foreign borders is very rare. We didn’t include it as a factor. Now we must, which reduces our chances to less than zero. Our American will be one of ten million anonymous people going to one of ten thousand different places.”
“Our chances are better than zero,” Reacher said. “He’ll want a place where he feels at home and the messenger doesn’t. Which means a big Western city. With direct connections by air. He won’t want to travel more than he has to. And he’s already familiar with Hamburg. He might come back. Our chances are one in ten, maybe.”
“You’re pushing to watch the safe house.”
“I think we need to.”
“They might have more than one.”
Reacher nodded. “They might have ten in every town on earth. It’s a percentage game. We have to start somewhere.”
Sinclair nodded in turn. “We’re taking it under consideration. In either case we’ll be alerted as soon as the messenger arrives. If he ever does. Then we’ll take it from there. Last time the wait before the rendezvous was forty-eight hours. We’ll have time for a decision.”