White said, “You think data?”
“What else can be bought and sold unobtrusively and is worth that much? Diamonds, maybe, but they’re in Antwerp, not Hamburg. Drugs, maybe, but no American has a hundred million dollars’ worth ready to ship. That’s South and Central America. And Afghanistan has poppies of its own.”
“What’s the worst case scenario?”
“That’s above my pay grade. Ask Ratcliffe. Or the president.”
“In your own personal opinion?”
“What’s yours?”
“I’m a Middle East specialist. It’s all worst case to me.”
“Smallpox germs,” Waterman said. “That’s my worst case. Or something like that. A plague. A biological weapon. Or Ebola. Or an antidote. Or a vaccine. Which would mean they already have the germs.”
Reacher stared at the ceiling.
Things that might not end well.
You don’t sound happy. But you should.
As long as it takes.
Garber was like a crossword puzzle.
White looked at him and said, “What are you thinking about?”
He said, “The contradiction between rule one and the rest of it. We mustn’t burn the Iranian. Which means we can’t go anywhere near the messenger. We can’t even stake out a location the messenger leads us to. Because we don’t know the messenger exists. Not unless we got an inside whisper.”
“That’s an impediment,” Waterman said. “Not a contradiction. We’ll find a way to work around it. They need that guy.”
“It’s a question of efficiency. They need to know who these guys are ahead of time. They need to trace networks and build databases. Therefore they should focus on the messengers, surely. Verbal questions and verbal answers in their heads, back and forth, continent to continent, question, answer, question, answer. They know everything. They’re like audiotape. They’re worth a hundred inside men. Because they have the big picture. What has the Iranian got? Nothing but four walls in Hamburg and nothing to do.”
“He can’t just be sacrificed.”
“They could pull him out the same moment they hit the messenger. They could give him a house in Florida.”
White said, “The messenger wouldn’t talk. This is a tribal thing, going back a thousand years. They wouldn’t rat each other out. Not after the little we’re allowed to do to them, anyway. So it’s a smart play to keep the inside man where he is. They genuinely don’t know what’s coming. An early hint would be nice. Even part of a clue.”
Reacher said, “Do you know what’s coming?”
“Something unhinged. This is not the same as it used to be.”
“Have you worked with Ratcliffe before? Or Sinclair?”
“Never. Have you?”
Waterman said, “They didn’t choose us because they know us. They chose us because we weren’t in Hamburg at the critical time. We were engaged elsewhere. Therefore we can’t be the wrong people to talk to.”
A quarantined unit, Sinclair had said, and it felt like it. Three guys in a room, shut away from the outside world, because they were all infected, with an alibi.
—
At seven o’clock Reacher got his bags from the car and hauled them up to his bedroom, which was at the far end of three in a line, in a corridor that looked like an office corridor, and might have been the day before. The room was spacious and had a bathroom attached. An executive’s suite. Designed for a desk, not a bed, but it worked.
Eating was a case of firing up the old Caprice and cruising McLean, turning by instinct into the kind of streets that might have the kind of eventual edge-of-town lots that might have the kind of restaurants he was looking for. Not everyone’s choice. His metabolism helped. He saw neon up ahead, and shiny aluminum, next to a gas station, next to a highway ramp. A diner, old enough to be nearly authentic. Some dents and tarnish. Some miles on the clock.
He pulled in and parked, and heaved open the chromium door, and stepped inside. The air was cold and bright with fluorescent light. The first person he saw was a woman he knew. All alone in a booth. From his last-but-one command. The best soldier he had ever worked with. His best friend, possibly, in a guarded way, if friendship was permission to leave things unsaid.
At first he thought it was a not-very-amazing coincidence. It was a small world, and close to the Pentagon it got smaller still. Then he reassessed. She had been his top sergeant during the 110th MP’s glory years. She had played as big a part as anyone, and bigger than some. Bigger than most. Bigger than him, probably.
By being very smart.
Way too smart to be a coincidence.
He stepped up to her table. She didn’t move. She was watching him in the back of an upturned spoon. He slid in opposite and said, “Hello, Neagley.”
Chapter 4
Sergeant Frances Neagley looked up from her spoon and said, “Of all the diners in all the towns. What were the odds?”