61 Hours

The huts were raw lumber, bleached and faded a little, but not much. Not brand new, but not old either. On the left behind the first row of huts Reacher saw the roof of the old stone building. It was tall and peaked and made of slate. It was covered with a foot of snow. It had twin ornate chimneys. The huts themselves were roofed with tarpaper. They had stove pipe vents. There were power lines running from gable to gable. There were concrete paths running from door to door. All were swept clear of snow. What had not been removed completely was piled neatly left and right. In front of the huts was a long line of shapes under black tarpaulins, side by side, like dominoes. Motorcycles, presumably. Big ones. Maybe thirty of them. Harleys, probably, laid up for winter.

Reacher slowed and came to a stop fifty yards out. People had stopped working and were staring at his car. Gloved hands were stacked on shovel handles. Chins were resting on the hands. The salt throwers had paused. One after the other the pick-up trucks came to rest. Their idling exhaust was carried away on the wind.

Reacher took his foot off the brake and inched forward. Nobody moved. Reacher kept on coming, ten yards, then twenty. He stopped again. He was close enough. He didn’t switch off. The Crown Vic’s dash was showing the outside temperature at twelve degrees below zero. If he switched the engine off he might never get it started again. He had read a book set above the Arctic Circle where you had to thaw the engine block with blowlamps.

He jammed his watch cap down on his ears and pulled his hood up. Zipped his coat to his chin. Put his gloves on, left and then right.

He climbed out of the car.

Twenty yards ahead the crowd had gotten larger. Men, women, and children. Maybe a hundred people in total. As advertised. They were all shapeless and hidden in coats and hats and mufflers. Their breath was condensing around their heads, an unbroken cloud that hung motionless and then rose and whipped away in the wind. The cold was stunning. It was getting worse. It seemed to attack from the inside out. Reacher was shivering after five seconds of exposure. His face was numb after ten. He walked ten paces and stopped. Olive green pants, a tan coat, an obvious police car behind him, South Dakota plates. Not even remotely convincing.

Twenty yards ahead a guy threaded through the crowd. Sidestepping, shuffling, leading with his left shoulder, then his right. Black coat, hat, gloves. His body language was like every interrupted workman in the world. Irritated, but curious. He swiped his padded forearm across his brow and paused and thought and moved forward again. He stepped out of the ranks and stopped a yard in front of the crowd.

Reacher said, ‘Who the hell are you?’

The guy said, ‘Piss off.’

Reacher stepped forward. One pace, two, three.

‘You’re not very polite,’ he said.

‘Show me where it says I have to be.’

‘Well, you’re walking around on my property.’

‘How so?’

‘I’m from the army. I’m here to check on our real estate. A two-year maintenance inspection. Your tax dollars at work.’

‘That’s a joke.’

Reacher said, ‘Whatever, I need to take a look around.’

‘I told you to piss off.’

‘I know. But what are the odds I’m going to take you seriously?’

‘You can’t fight a hundred people.’

‘I won’t need to. Looks like two-thirds of you are women and children. That leaves maybe thirty guys. Or forty, say. But half of them look too fat to move. They pitch in, they’re going to get all kinds of coronaries. The others, maybe half of them are pussies. They’ll run away. That leaves maybe eight or ten guys, max. And one of me is worth eight or ten of you, easy.’

No answer.

‘Plus, I’m from the army. You mess with me, the next guy you see will be driving a tank.’

Silence for a beat. Just the scouring howl of the wind, and the rattle of ice particles against wood. The guy in front looked at Reacher, at his clothes, at his car, and came to some kind of a decision. He asked, ‘What do you need to see?’

Reacher said, ‘The stone building.’

‘That’s not ours.’

‘None of this is yours.’

‘I mean, we’re not using it.’

‘You shouldn’t be using anything.’

‘Squatters’ rights. It’s an abandoned facility. We know the law.’

Reacher said nothing. Just stepped left and skirted the crowd. They all stood still and let him by. No move to block him. A policy decision. He glanced at the corner hut. It was a plain, utilitarian structure. Maybe fifty feet long, its blank slab siding pierced only by two small square windows. It had a door in its narrow end. All around it the snow had been cleared away meticulously. Directly behind it was the stone building. There was no snow around it, either. Just clear, swept paths.

Reacher turned around.

He said, ‘If you’re not using it, why clear the snow?’

The same guy came out of the crowd again.

He said, ‘For the satisfaction of a job well done.’

The stone building was a strange little thing. It could have been copied from the plans for a small but fairly ornate and old-fashioned suburban house. It had all kinds of details and mouldings and curlicues and gables and rain gutters and eaves. Like a Gothic folly a rich man might put in his garden for guests.

But there were crucial differences, too. Where a guest house in a garden would have windows, the stone building had recesses only. Like an optical illusion. The right size and shape, but not filled with glass. Filled instead by unbroken expanses of stone, the same neat mortared blocks as the rest of the walls. There was a portico, but the front door under it made no attempt at illusion. It was just a meaty steel slab, completely plain. It had huge hinges. It would open outward, not inward. Like a blast door. A pressure wave outside would hold it shut, not burst it open. It had a handle and a keyhole. Reacher tried the handle. It didn’t move. The keyhole was large. Smaller than the hole for a church key, bigger than the hole for a house key. The steel around it was rimed with frost. Reacher rubbed it away with his gloved thumb, and saw no nicks or scratches in the metal. The lock was not in regular use. No key had been inserted and withdrawn, day in and day out.

He asked, ‘You know what this place is?’

The guy who had followed him said, ‘Don’t you?’

‘Of course I do. But I need to know how our security is holding up.’

The guy said, ‘We heard things.’

‘From who?’

‘The construction guys that were here before.’

‘What things?’

‘About atomic bombs.’

‘They said there were nuclear weapons in here?’

‘No. They said it was a clinic.’

‘What kind of a clinic?’

‘They said if we had been attacked in winter, in a city, like New York or Chicago, people would have been in coats and gloves, so only their faces would have been burned. You know, miles from the centre. Closer in, you would have been vaporized. But if you survived, you could come here and get a new face.’

‘Like plastic surgery?’

‘No, like prosthetics. Like masks. They said that’s what’s in there, thousands and thousands of plastic faces.’

Reacher walked on around the strange little structure. It was the same on all four sides. Heavy stone, fake windows, details, mouldings. A bizarre parody. Entertaining, but not instructive without getting inside. Which wasn’t going to happen.

He walked away. Then on a sudden whim he stopped at the nearest hut. The first in the back row, which was in line with the second in the front row. The crowd had followed him in a long untidy straggle that looped all the way back to where he had started. Like a thin question mark, curling through the gaps and the passages. Steam hung above it. Nearest to him was the guy who had done all the talking. He was about six feet away.

Reacher pushed the hut’s door. It swung halfway open.

The guy close to him said, ‘That’s not yours.’