He walked to the far corner of the floor, smelling cold gasoline, cold diesel, cold rubber, and cold cement dust. He picked out a silver BMW. Six cylinder, gasoline. An older model. It had the look of a car parked a long time. The windshield was dull. The paint was filmed with neglect. He squatted in front of its radiator grill. He took a cross-head screwdriver from his duffel. He unfastened the front license plate and stored it in his bag. He moved around and squatted behind the trunk. He unscrewed the rear plate and put it in his bag.
He took out a single-burner camp stove. Bought new for the occasion. It was about eight inches square, made of pressed steel, with a rubber tube and a knurled brass valve. He took out a head-sized canister of propane. Bright blue, cheap, easy, and convenient. He attached the valve. He turned the knob and heard a hiss of gas. He shut it off.
He lay down on the cold concrete and slid the burner two feet under the rear of the car. He took six wooden blocks from his bag. Children’s toys. From Sweden, he thought. Each one was about six inches long and an inch square. Each one was lacquered a different bright color. He built them into a tower on top of the burner. Where a coffee pot or a tea kettle would go. He put two one way, then two the other, and finally the third layer the same way as the first. Like a little camp fire. He took out a silver foil dish, the size and shape of a roast chicken. He balanced it on the tower of wooden blocks.
He took out a box of nine-millimeter Parabellum ammunition. A hundred rounds. One of two bought with the M9 from the chuckleheads in the bar. He threaded his hand through the space under the BMW’s suspension and laid the box gently in the silver foil dish.
Finished. Good to go. The propane, the tube, the burner, the short stack of wood, the roasting dish, the handgun rounds.
The BMW’s gas tank, directly above.
He checked his position and rehearsed the backward scoot. Then he took out a Zippo lighter. He checked the knurled brass knob. He turned on the burner. He heard the hiss of gas. He flicked the lighter and brought the flame to the burner’s rose. The gas caught with a thump. He dialed it back to a lower setting. A click below medium. Like a fast simmer.
Then he slid out backward and stood up and grabbed his bag and hustled.
—
A mile away Dremmler came out of his fourth-floor office, and spent twenty seconds in the elevator, which was thirty-three pairs of Brazilian shoes, and then Muller fell in step with him on the sidewalk, and said, “You’ve heard, I expect.”
“About Wolfgang Schlupp?” Dremmler said. “I’ve heard about nothing else. The police have been all over that bar. My members there are very upset. My phone has been ringing off the hook.”
“Was it Wiley?”
“I thought he was out of town.”
“So did everybody. They were all focused outward. No one even looked the other way. So I did, just to be sure. Two cameras on traffic lights. For flow, supposedly, but recorded all the same. And there he is. Driving the other way. Toward St. Georg. He never left town. He’s in town right now.”
“Where?”
“It’s a large white vehicle. Every traffic cop on the force is looking for it.”
Dremmler walked a couple of steps in silence.
Then he said, “Herr Muller, in your professional opinion, concerning Wolfgang Schlupp, how serious will the investigation be?”
“Extremely. His head was bashed in.”
“They’ll make a list of people he spoke to today. I’ll be on it.”
“Naturally. Chief of Detectives Griezman likes lists. He likes paperwork in general.”
“I can’t afford to be implicated. It would be politically inconvenient.”
“Just make up a story. You’re a businessman, he’s a businessman. You were talking about the stock market. It’s not like he can contradict you.”
“Will that be enough?”
“It was just a weird coincidence. Maybe you saw him at a business dinner. He was a nodding acquaintance. You were merely saying hello. A professional courtesy. You hardly knew the fellow.”
—
Griezman drove Reacher back to the consulate, and let him out on the same curb he had got in from before. Then Griezman drove away and Reacher went inside, where he discovered Neagley had won her five-dollar bet. She had a sheet of telex paper to prove it. Low single digits, she had predicted, and she had scored with the lowest digit of all.