—
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.”