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.
Chapter 25
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.”