TWENTY-SIX

REACHER SAID, 'I'VE GOT AT LEAST AN HOUR'S DRIVE AHEAD OF ME. I could use something more comfortable than a truck. And the doctor should keep the truck, anyway. He might need it around here. For his job.'

Eleanor Duncan said, 'You won't get away with it. You'll be driving a stolen car straight through where the county police are based.'

'They won't know it's stolen. Not if Seth doesn't tell them.'

'But he will.'

'Tell him not to. Tell him if he does, I'll come back here and break his arms. Tell him to keep quiet and pick it up tomorrow. I'll leave it somewhere along the way.'

'He won't listen.'

'He will.'

'He doesn't listen to anyone.'

'He listens to those two out-of-towners.'

'Because he's scared of them.'

'He's scared of me, too. He's scared of everybody. Believe me, that's how Seth is.'

Nobody spoke. Reacher took the Cadillac key from the bowl, and gave the pick-up key to the doctor, and headed for the door.

Seth Duncan was at his father's kitchen table, opposite the old man himself, elbow to elbow with his uncle Jonas on one side and his uncle Jasper on the other. The four men were still and subdued, because they weren't alone in the room. Roberto Cassano was there, leaning on the sink, and Angelo Mancini was there, leaning on the door. Cassano had made a point of smoothing his shirt into the waistband of his pants, even though it was already immaculate, and Mancini had opened his coat and pressed the heels of his hands into the small of his back, as if it was aching from driving, but really both men's gestures had been designed to show off their pistols in their shoulder holsters. The pistols were Colt Double Eagles. Stainless steel semi-automatics. A matched pair. The Duncans had seen the weapons and gotten the point, and so they were sitting quiet and saying nothing.

Cassano said, 'Tell me again. Explain it to me. Convince me. How is this stranger disrupting the shipment?'

Jacob Duncan said, 'Do I tell your boss how to run his business?'

'I guess not.'

'Because it's his business. Presumably it has a thousand subtleties that I don't fully understand. So I stay well out of it.'

'And Mr Rossi stays well out of your business. Until he gets inconvenienced.'

'He's welcome to find an alternative source.'

'I'm sure he will. But right now there's a live contract.'

'We'll deliver.'

'When?'

'As soon as this stranger is out of our hair.'

Cassano just shook his head in frustration.

Mancini said, 'You guys need to change your tactics. The stranger was in the fields, OK, no question, but now he's not any more. He's back in the truck he took from those two donkeys last night. He had it stashed somewhere. You should be looking for it. You should be checking the roads again.'

* * *

Seth Duncan's Cadillac was new enough to have all the bells and whistles, but old enough to be a straight-up turnpike cruiser. It wasn't competing against BMW and Mercedes Benz for yuppie money, like the current models were. It was competing against planes and trains for long-distance comfort, like traditional full-boat Caddies always had. Reacher liked it a lot. It was a fine automobile. It was long and wide and weighed about two tons. It was smooth and silent. It was relaxed. It was a one-finger, one-toe kind of car, designed for sprawling. It had black paint and black leather and black glass. And a warm-toned radio and a three-quarters-full tank of gas.

Reacher had got in it and racked its seat back and eased it out of the garage and K-turned it behind the house and nosed it cautiously back to the two-lane. He had turned left, south, and wafted on down the road in a rolling cocoon of calm and quiet. The landscape didn't change at all. Straight road ahead, dirt to the right, dirt to the left, clouds overhead. He saw no other traffic. Ten miles south of where he started there was an old roadhouse standing alone in the weedy remnant of a beaten-earth parking lot. It was closed down and boarded up, with a bad roof and ancient Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life signs on the walls, barely visible behind layers of mud. After that there was nothing, all the way to the horizon.

Roberto Cassano stepped out of Jacob Duncan's back door and walked across weedy gravel to where he couldn't be overheard. A thin plume of black smoke rose far to the north. The burned-out truck, still smouldering. The stranger's work.

Cassano dialled his cell and got Rossi after three rings. He said, 'They're sticking to their story, boss. We're not going to get the shipment until they get the stranger.'

Rossi said, 'That makes no sense.'

'Tell me about it. It's Alice in Wonderland.'

'How much pressure have you applied?'

'To the Duncans themselves? That's my next question. How much pressure do you want us to apply?'

There was a long pause, with a breath, like a sigh, resigned. Rossi said, 'The problem is, they sell great stuff. I won't find better. I won't find anything half as good. So I can't burn them. Because I'm going to need them again, in the future. Over and over. No question about that.'

'So?'

'So play their game. Find the damn stranger.'

The doctor stepped out of Eleanor Duncan's door and stared hard at the pick-up truck. He didn't want to get in it. Didn't want to drive it. Didn't want to be seen with it. Didn't want to be anywhere near it. It was a Duncan vehicle. It had been misappropriated, and the manner of its misappropriation had been a major humiliation for the Duncans. Two Cornhuskers, tossed aside, contemptuously. Therefore to be involved with the truck in any way at all would be an outrageous provocation. Insane. He would be punished, severely and for ever.

But he was a doctor.

And sober, unfortunately.

Therefore clear-headed.

He had patients. He had responsibilities. To Vincent at the motel, for one. To Dorothy the housekeeper, for another. Both were shaken up. And he was a married man. His wife was eight miles away, scared and alone.

He looked at the key in his hand and the truck on the driveway. He mapped out a route in his head. He could park behind Dorothy's house and keep the truck out of sight. He could park on the wrong side of the motel office and achieve the same result. Then he could dump the truck to the north and hike across the fields to home.

Total exposure, maybe two miles on minor tracks, and four on the two-lane road.

Ten minutes.

That was all.

Safe enough.

Maybe.

He climbed in the cab and started the engine.

* * *

The anonymous white van was still on Route 3, still in Canada, but it had left British Columbia behind and had entered Alberta. It was making steady progress, heading east, completely unnoticed. Its driver was making no calls. His phone was switched off. The assumption was that cell towers close to the 49th Parallel were monitored for activity. Perhaps conversations were recorded and analysed. Homeland Security departments on both sides of the border had computer programs with sophisticated software. Individual words could trigger alerts. And even without compromising language, an electronic record of where a guy had been, and when, was always best avoided. For the same reason, all gas purchases were made with cash, in the local currency, and at every stop the driver turned his collar up and pulled his hat down low, in case there were cameras connected to digital recorders or distant control rooms.

The van rolled on, making steady progress, heading east.

Rossi clicked off the call with Cassano and thought hard for five minutes, and then he dialled Safir, six blocks away. He took a breath and held it and asked, 'Have you ever seen better merchandise?'

Safir said, 'You don't have to play the salesman. I already fell for your pitch.'

'And you've always been satisfied, right?'

'I'm not satisfied now.'

'I understand,' Rossi said. 'But I want to discuss something with you.'

'Equals discuss,' Safir said. 'We're not equals. I tell, you ask.'

'OK, I want to ask you something. I want to ask you to take a step back and consider something.'

'For example?'

'I need this shipment, you need this shipment, everyone needs this shipment. So I want to ask you to put our differences aside and make common cause. Just for a day or two.'

'How?'

'My contacts in Nebraska have a bug up their ass.'

'I know all about that,' Safir said. 'My men gave me a full report.'

'I want you to send them up there to help.'

'Send who? Up where?'

'Your men. To Nebraska. There's no point in having them here in my office. Your interests are my interests, and I'm already working as hard as I can on this. So I'm thinking your guys could go help my guys and between us we could solve this problem.'

The doctor made it to Dorothy's farmhouse unobserved and parked in the yard behind it, nose to tail with Dorothy's own pick-up. He found her in her kitchen, washing dishes. Breakfast dishes, presumably. Hers and Reacher's. Which had been a crazy risk.

He asked, 'How are you holding up?'

She said, 'I'm OK. You look worse than me.'

'I'll survive.'

'You're in a Duncan truck.'

'I know.'

'That's dumb.'

'Like cooking breakfast for the guy was dumb.'

'He was hungry.'

The doctor asked, 'You need anything?'

'I need to know how this is going to end.'

'Not well, probably. He's one guy, on his own. And there's no guarantee he'll even stick around.'

'You know where he is right now?'

'Yes. More or less.'

'Don't tell me.'

'I won't.'

Dorothy said, 'You should go check on Mr Vincent. He was hurt pretty bad.'

'That's where I'm headed next,' the doctor said.

Safir clicked off the call with Rossi and thought hard for ten long minutes, and then he dialled his customer Mahmeini, eight blocks across town. He took a breath and held it and asked, 'Have you ever seen better merchandise?'

Mahmeini said, 'Get to the damn point.'

'There's a kink in the chain.'

'Chains don't have kinks. Hoses have kinks. Chains have weak links. Are you confessing? You're the weak link?'

'I'm just saying. There's a speed bump. A Catch-22. It's crazy, but it's there.'

'And?'

'We all have a common goal. We all want that shipment. And we're not going to get it until the speed bump disappears. That's a fact, unfortunately. There's nothing any of us can do about it. We're all victims here. So I'm asking you to put our differences aside and make common cause, just for a day or two.'

'How?'

'I want you to take your guys out of my office and send them up to Nebraska. I'm sending my guys. We could all work together and solve this problem.'

Mahmeini went quiet. Truth was, he was nothing more than a link in a chain, too, the same as Safir, the same as Rossi, who he knew all about, the same as the Duncans, who he knew all about too, and Vancouver. He knew the lie of the land. He had exercised due diligence. He had done the research. They were all links in a chain, except that he was the penultimate link, the second to last, and therefore he was under the greatest strain. Because right next to him at the top were Saudis, unbelievably rich and beyond vicious. A bad combination.

Mahmeini said, 'Ten per cent discount.'

Safir said, 'Of course.'

Mahmeini said, 'Call me back with the arrangements.'

The doctor parked to the rear of the motel lounge, between its curved wall and a circular stockade that hid the trash cans and the propane tanks, nose to tail with Vincent's own car, which was an old Pontiac sedan. Not a perfect spot. The truck would be clearly visible from certain angles, both north and south. But it was the best he could do. He got out and paused in the chill and checked the road. Nothing coming.

He found Vincent in the lounge, just sitting there in one of his red velvet armchairs, doing absolutely nothing at all. He had a black eye and a split lip and a swelling the size of a hen's egg on his cheek. Exactly like the doctor himself, in fact. They were a matched pair. Like looking in a mirror.

The doctor asked, 'You need anything?'

Vincent said, 'I have a terrible headache.'

'Want painkillers?'

'Painkillers won't help. I want this to be over. That's what I want. I want that guy to finish what he started.'

'He's on his way to Virginia.'

'Great.'

'He said he's going to check in with the county cops along the way. He said he's going to come back if there's something wrong with the case file from twenty-five years ago.'

'Ancient history. They'll have junked the file.'

'He says not.'

'Then they won't let him see it.'

'He says they will.'

'But what can he find now, that they didn't find then? Saying all that just means he's never coming back. He's softening the blow, that's all he's doing. He's slipping away, with an excuse. He's leaving us in the lurch.'

The strange round room went quiet.

'You need anything?' the doctor asked again.

'Do you?' Vincent asked back. 'You want a drink?'

'Are you allowed to serve me?'

'It's a little late to worry about that kind of thing, don't you think? You want one?'

'No,' the doctor said. 'I better not.' Then he paused and said, 'Well, maybe just one, for the road.'

Safir called Rossi back and said, 'I want a twenty per cent discount.'

Rossi said, 'In exchange for what?'

'Helping you. Sending my boys up there.'

'Fifteen per cent. Because you'll be helping yourself too.'

'Twenty,' Safir said. 'Because I'm talking about sending more boys than just mine.'

'How so?'

'I've got guys babysitting me too. Two of them. Right here, right now. I told you that, didn't I? So you think I'm taking my guys out of your office while I've still got guys in my own office? Well, dream on. That's not going to happen any time soon, believe me. So I got my customer to agree to send his guys, too. Like a shared sacrifice. And anyway, a thing like this, we'll all want our fingers in the pie.'

Rossi paused.

'OK,' he said. 'That's good. That's real good. Between us we'll have six men up there. We can take care of this thing real fast. We'll be out of the woods in no time at all.'

'Arrangements?'

Rossi said, 'The nearest civilization is sixty miles south. Where the county offices are. The only accommodation is a Courtyard Marriott. My guys are based there. I'll tell them to pull back there right now and I'll book a couple more rooms. Then everyone can meet up as soon as possible, and then they can all get going.'

The two-lane road stayed arrow-straight the whole way. Reacher kept the Cadillac rolling along at a steady sixty per, covering a mile a minute, no stress at all. Fifty minutes from where he started he passed a lonely bar on the right shoulder. It was a small hunched building made of wood, with dirty windows with beer signs in them, and three cars in its lot, and a name board that said Cell Block. Which was marginally appropriate. Reacher figured that if he squinted the place might look like a jail from an old Western movie. He blew past it and a mile later the far horizon changed. A water tower and a Texaco sign loomed up out of the afternoon gloom. Civilization. But not much of it. The place looked small. It was just a chequerboard of a dozen low-rise blocks dumped down on the dirt in the middle of nowhere.

Eight hundred yards out there was a Chamber of Commerce billboard that listed five different ways a traveller could spend his money. If he wanted to eat, there were two restaurants. One was a diner, and one wasn't. Reacher recognized neither name. Not chains. If a traveller needed to fix his car, there was a service station and a tyre shop. If he wanted to sleep, the only choice was a Courtyard Marriott.