“So evidently what Klopp saw was a very important meeting. They questioned him for hours. He says they showed him two hundred photographs, but he recognized none of them. So they made a sketch, from the description he gave them.”
“That’s a lot of work.”
“Exactly,” Dremmler said. “Therefore something is going on. Of great importance to the Americans. One of their own is talking to an Arab. We’d like to know what about. Is one buying and the other selling? We need you to see if Griezman wrote anything down.”
“Why?” Muller said. “Why help either Griezman or the Americans?”
“We’ll be helping ourselves,” Dremmler said. “Don’t you see? We could get in the middle of this. There will be money going one way and something else going the other. Either of which we could use. Or both. And we could use them better than they could. Even part of it could help us make a statement. They’ve got their cause, and we’ve got ours. May the best man win.”
“We’re planning a hijack?”
“We should at least consider it.”
“OK,” Muller said. “I’ll see what I can find.”
A waiter in a short jacket took their plates away.
Dremmler said, “One more thing.”
“Yes?” Muller said.
“We have four youth members who were beaten up outside a bar. They were quite badly hurt. They say their attacker was a very big man. An American, holding to a pro-occupation position. He was with a dark-haired woman.”
“And?”
“According to Helmut Klopp, those were the secret investigators from America. The descriptions match exactly.”
“OK.”
“I can’t let such a thing go unpunished. Klopp says the man’s name is Reacher and the woman’s name is Neagley. I would like to find them. I’m sure your chief of detectives knows where they’re staying. I need you to see if he wrote it down.”
“OK,” Muller said again. “I’ll see what I can find.”
—
At ten o’clock in the evening Hamburg time Ratcliffe approved plan B. At eleven o’clock Reacher gave up on it. The messenger had not come home. She was never planning to. That was clear by then. Griezman said she could have taken any one of twenty or more international flights in the last few hours. Or flown domestic to Berlin, where the whole world was a hop and a skip away. Or driven to Amsterdam. Or taken a train to Paris. Or gone to another safe house in the city, which was a separate nightmare all by itself.
Reacher and Sinclair were in Sinclair’s room, all showered and dressed long ago. Neagley was back. They had brought her up to speed with the whole sorry mess. The missed cues, the wrong assumptions, the late connections. Which led inevitably to a debate about next steps. Which led inevitably to a debate about the fingerprint. Sinclair said, “Wiley has Sixth Amendment rights to a speedy trial for the homicide. Which he wouldn’t get, because we would tie him up for years about the other thing. And we can’t let the Germans have him first, because we might never get him back again.”
Neagley said, “We could negotiate that ahead of time.”
“We can’t be in a position where we have to ask the Germans for permission to run our own national security the way we want to.”
“We’d be giving up all kinds of capabilities. The clock is really ticking now. It’s getting loud.”
Sinclair said, “Reacher?”
He said, “I think it’s fifty-fifty. A physical search of the city would be a waste of time. Even if they could eyeball a thousand faces a day, it would take nearly five years to cover the whole population. But their records could be useful. Wiley came to town not more than four months ago. We know that for sure. So we have a hard start date. Obviously he rented a place, because he killed the hooker in her apartment, not a hotel room. So he has a lease somewhere. And then a new name, probably German, to go with his new passport, probably also German. He has utility bills. Probably a telephone. We have no access to those databases. That’s where Griezman could help us.”
“Yes or no?”
“I’m biased,” Reacher said. “I owe the guy.”
“He did nothing for you. He didn’t find Wiley, and he didn’t find the messenger.”
“He tried.”
“What did you think of Mr. Bishop, from the consulate?”
“The head of station?”
“The CIA veteran.”
“He’s not bad for an old guy.”
“Obviously our older German-speakers were trained under the previous system. For duty in East Germany, not the civilized west. They like to know everything about everybody. For recruitment, back then, and for blackmail, and for a better understanding of the local inside stories. They have extensive files. Not all of them in the official cabinets.”
“And?”
“Chief of Detectives Griezman was the dead hooker’s client about a year ago. Four times. We know this for sure. He spent his kids’ college fund. Therefore my guess is he wants to close the case so no one goes poking and prying too far back. My guess is his noble quest for justice is not so noble after all.”
Reacher paused a beat.
“OK,” he said.
“So yes or no?”
“Wiley still walks on the homicide.”
“We can’t hang him twice.”