The Hard Way

"Burke has a theory. He thinks we’re being visited by ghosts from the past."

"What ghosts?"

"You know what ghosts," Kowalski said. "Because Burke told you first."

"Knight and Hobart," Reacher said.

"The very same."

"Waste of time," Reacher said. "They died in Africa."

"Not true," Kowalski said. "A friend of a friend of a friend called a VA clerk. Only one of them died in Africa."

"Which one?"

"We don’t know yet. But we’ll find out. You know what a VA clerk makes?"

"Not very much, I guess."

"Everyone has a price. And a VA clerk’s is pretty low."

They moved through the foyer to the deserted living room. Kate Lane’s picture still had pride of place on the table. There was a recessed light fixture in the ceiling that put a subtle glow on it.

"Did you know them?" Reacher asked. "Knight and Hobart?"

"Sure," Kowalski said.

"Did you go to Africa?"

"Sure."

"So whose side are you on? Theirs or Lane’s?"

"Lane pays me. They don’t."

"So you have a price, too."

"Only a bullshitter doesn’t."

"What were you, back in the day?"

"Navy SEAL."

"So you can swim."

Reacher stepped into the interior hallway and headed for the master bedroom. Kowalski kept close behind him.

"You going to follow me everywhere?" Reacher asked.

"Probably," Kowalski said. "Where are you going anyway?"

"To count the money."

"Is that OK with Lane?"

"He wouldn’t have given me the combination if it wasn’t."

"He gave you the combination?"

I hope so, Reacher thought. Left hand. Index finger, curled. Ring finger, straight. Middle finger, straight. Middle finger, curled. 3785. I hope.

He pulled the closet door and entered 3785 on the security keypad. There was an agonizing second’s wait and then it beeped and the inner door’s latch clicked.

"He never gave me the combination," Kowalski said.

"But I bet he lets you be the lifeguard out in the Hamptons."

Reacher opened the inner door and pulled the chain for the light. The closet was about six feet deep and three wide. A narrow walk space on the left, money on the right. Bales of it. All of them were intact except for one that was opened and half-empty. That was the one Lane had thrown around the room and then repacked. Reacher dragged it out. Carried it to the bed and dumped it down. Kowalski stayed at his shoulder.

"You know how to count?" Reacher asked.

"Funny man," Kowalski said.

"So count that."

Reacher stepped back to the closet and eased in sideways and crouched. Hefted an intact plastic bale off the top of the pile and turned it over and over in his hands and checked all six sides. On one face under the legend Banque Centrale there was smaller print that said Gouvernement National, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Under that was printed: USD 1,000,000. The plastic was old and thick and grimy. Reacher licked the ball of his thumb and rubbed a small circle and saw Ben Franklin’s face. Hundred-dollar bills. Ten thousand of them in the bale. The heat shrink was original and untouched. A million bucks, unless the gentlemen bankers of Burkina Faso’s national government in O-Town had been cheating, which they probably hadn’t.

A million bucks, in a package about as heavy as a loaded carry-on suitcase.

Altogether there were ten intact bales. And ten empty wrappers.

A total of twenty million dollars, once upon a time.

"Fifty packets," Kowalski called from the bed. "Ten thousand dollars each."

"So how much is that?" Reacher called back.

Silence.

"What, you were out sick the day they taught multiplication?"

"It’s a lot of money."

You got that right, Reacher thought. It’s five hundred grand. Half a million. Total of ten and a half million still here, total of ten and a half million gone.

Original grand total, back in the day, twenty-one million dollars.

The whole of the Burkina Faso payment, Lane’s capital, untouched for five years. Untouched until three days ago.

Kowalski appeared in the closet doorway with the torn wrapper. He had repacked the remaining money neatly into two equal stacks with one extra brick sideways across the top. Then he had bundled and folded the heavy plastic into a tidy package that was about half the original size and almost opaque.

Reacher said, "Were you out sick the day they taught numbers, too?"

Kowalski said nothing.

"Because I wasn’t," Reacher said. "I showed up that day."

Silence.

"See, there are even numbers and there are odd numbers. An even number would make two stacks the same size. I guess that’s why they call them even. But with an odd number, you’d have to lay the extra one sideways across the top."

Kowalski said nothing.

"Fifty is an even number," Reacher said. "Whereas, for instance, forty-nine is an odd number."

"So what?"

"So take the ten grand you stole out of your pocket and give it to me."

Kowalski stood still.

"Make a choice," Reacher said. "You want to keep that ten grand, you’ll have to beat me in a fistfight. If you do, then you’ll want to take more, and you will take more, and then you’ll run. And then you’ll be on the outside, and Lane and his guys will come and shake the trees for you. You want it to be that way?"

Kowalski said nothing.

"You wouldn’t beat me anyway," Reacher said.

"You think?"

"Demi Moore could kick your ass."

"I’m a trained man."

"Trained to do what? Swim? You see any water here?"

Kowalski said nothing.

"The first punch will decide it," Reacher said. "It always does. So who are you going to back? The runt or the big guy?"

"You don’t want me for an enemy," Kowalski said.

"I wouldn’t want you for a friend," Reacher said. "That’s for damn sure. I wouldn’t want to go with you to Africa. I wouldn’t want to crawl up to a forward OP with you watching my back. I wouldn’t want to turn around and see you driving off into the sunset."

"You don’t know how it was."

"I know exactly how it was. You left two men three hundred yards up the line. You’re disgusting."

"You weren’t there."

"You’re a disgrace to the uniform you once wore."

Kowalski said nothing.

"But you know which side your bread is buttered," Reacher said. "Don’t you? And you don’t want to get caught biting the hand that feeds you. Do you?"

Kowalski held still for a long moment and then dropped the bundled package and reached behind him to his hip pocket and came back with a banded sheaf of hundred-dollar bills. It was folded in half. He dropped it on the floor and it resumed its former flat shape like a flower opening its petals. Reacher tucked it back in the open bale and heaved the bale onto the top of the stack. Pulled the chain and killed the light and closed the door. The electronic lock clicked and beeped.

"OK?" Kowalski said. "No harm, no foul, right?"

"Whatever," Reacher said.

He led Kowalski back to the living room and then detoured to the kitchen and glanced in at the office. At the computer. At the file drawers. Something about them nagged at him. He stood in the empty silence for a second. Then a new thought struck him. Like an ice cube dropped down the back of his neck.