Maybe she had disobeyed him.
Which of course she had. He launched against the first two, using the bat like a fist, one, two, forehand, backhand, thinking ahead, lining up for the third guy, executing the pivot with speed and grace and economy, but even so the fourth guy came pressing in way too early, as predicted, just half a step behind, by blind luck timed to arrive just before the bat could start moving again.
But then the fourth guy disappeared. Like he had run full speed into a clothes rope. Like a special effect in a movie. One frame he was there, and the next he was gone. The third guy went down and behind him Reacher saw Neagley, following through from what looked like a roundhouse rabbit punch to the fourth guy’s throat.
The decoy from the doorway raised his hands.
Reacher said, “Thank you, sergeant.”
Neagley said, “You should have picked up the bottle. Better than the bat.”
Reacher walked over to the decoy and said, “Tell your boss to stop wasting my time. Tell him to come see me himself. One on one. I’ll walk him around the block. We’ll have an exchange of views.”
Then they left, back down the alley to the street, first Neagley, then Reacher. They stood in the sun and shrugged and straightened, and then they hustled back to the hotel.
Chapter 28
They were late back to the hotel. The others were waiting. Bishop had sent a little bus. Like an airport shuttle. They were all in their seats, all watching out their windows. Waterman, Landry, White, and Vanderbilt. And Sinclair. Reacher and Neagley got in, and the door hissed shut behind them, and the bus took off. Not a long ride, around the Ausenalster lake, to a large and imposing but slightly odd building. It looked like a copy of the White House done purely from memory by a builder who had visited once as a kid. Inside, Bishop greeted them and showed them their room. Mostly desks and phones and fax machines and copy machines and telex machines and printers and bulky computer terminals with dirty beige keyboards. Bishop said the phones were set up as a replica of the McLean switchboard. Locally only Griezman had been given the numbers, in his case without being told their location.
It was Griezman who called first.
With a problem.
Reacher picked up and Griezman said, “Don’t put me on speaker.”
“Why not?”
“I screwed up. Or my department did. Which is the same thing.”
“What happened?”
“I think we lost Wiley. Somehow he was in a hit-and-run accident about two hours after you and I left. He was driving a car and he hit a bicycle. He was full of champagne, no doubt. A witness described him perfectly. She was shown Helmut Klopp’s sketch and made a positive ID. It’s all right there in the traffic division’s log.”
“So your guy missed him coming out.”
“At one point he was talking to a traffic cop. It might have happened then.”
“But either way you don’t know where Wiley is.”
“Not with an acceptable degree of certainty.”
“Is that something they teach you to say?”
“It sounds sober and mature, and burdened down with technicalities.”
Reacher said, “Shit happens, get over it.”
Griezman said, “I’m sorry we missed him.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’ll maintain the surveillance as long as I can.”
“Thank you.”
Reacher hung up and told the story and Sinclair asked everyone’s first question for them, when she said, “Was that the delivery? Did we miss it? Was he so stressed he knocked a bicycle over?”
“Too soon, surely,” Vanderbilt said. “It was the middle of the first night. He can’t have been paid yet. So he won’t have delivered yet. Not unless he’s really dumb.”
“Worst case, he was going to the airport,” Landry said. “For the early flight to Zurich. Maybe he’d rather wait a day or two there than here. In which case he took the delivery with him. If it’s small. To swap in the banker’s office, like Reacher said.”
“We should be watching the airports,” Waterman said.
“We are,” Sinclair said. “Both airports have closed-circuit television. CIA arranged temporary feeds. Unofficial, so they won’t last long, but so far Wiley has not passed through.”
“And he didn’t come home either,” Reacher said. “Not unless Griezman’s guy missed him twice. So where is he now?”
“Out and about,” Neagley said. “Somewhere in Germany. The phase before delivery. Like the dealer inspection when you buy a new car. Ahead of the big reveal.”
—