The Hard Way

"I have absolutely no idea."

Chapter 48

THEY STARTED IN Lauren Pauling’s apartment. She lived in a small co-op on Barrow Street, near West 4th. The building had once been a factory and had vaulted brick ceilings and walls two feet thick. Her apartment was painted mostly yellow and felt warm and friendly. There was an alcove bedroom with no window, and a bathroom, and a kitchen, and a room with a sofa and a chair and a television set and a lot of books. There were muted rugs and soft textures and dark woods. It was a single woman’s place. That was clear. One mind had conceived it and decorated it. There were small framed photographs of children, but Reacher knew without asking that they were nephews and nieces.

He sat on the sofa and rested his head back on the cushion and stared up at the vaulted brick above. He believed that anything could be reverse-engineered. If one human or group of humans put something together, then another human or group of humans could take it apart again. It was a basic principle. All that was required was empathy and thought and imagination. And he liked pressure. He liked deadlines. He liked a short and finite time to crack a problem. He liked a quiet space to work in. And he liked a similar mind to work with. He started out with no doubt at all that he and Pauling could get the whole thing figured before morning.

That feeling lasted about thirty minutes.

Pauling dimmed the lights and lit a candle and called out for Indian food. The clock in Reacher’s head crawled around to nine-thirty. The sky outside the window turned from navy blue to black and the city lights burned bright. Barrow Street itself was quiet but the cabs on West 4th used their horns a lot. Occasionally an ambulance would scream by a couple of blocks over, heading up to Saint Vincent’s. The room felt like part of the city but a little detached, too. A little insulated. A partial sanctuary.

"Do that thing again," Reacher said.

"What thing?"

"The brainstorming thing. Ask me questions."

"OK, what have we got?"

"We’ve got an impossible takedown and a guy that can’t speak."

"And the tongue thing is culturally unrelated to Africa."

"But the money is related to Africa, because it’s exactly half."

Silence in the room. Nothing but a faraway siren burning past, going south on Seventh Avenue.

"Start at the very beginning," Pauling said. "What was the very first false note? The first red flag? Anything at all, however trivial or random."

So Reacher closed his eyes and recalled the beginning: the granular feel of the foam espresso cup in his hand, textured, temperature-neutral, neither warm nor cold. He recalled Gregory’s walk in from the curb, alert, economical. His manner while questioning the waiter, watchful, aware, like the elite veteran he was. His direct approach to the sidewalk table.

Reacher said, "Gregory asked me about the car I had seen the night before and I told him it drove away before eleven forty-five, and he said no, it must have been closer to midnight."

"A dispute about timing?"

"Not really a dispute. Just a trivial thing, like you said."

"What would it mean?"

"That I was wrong or he was."

Pauling said, "You don’t wear a watch."

"I used to. I broke it. I threw it away."

"So he was more likely to be right."

"Except I’m usually pretty sure what time it is."

"Keep your eyes closed, OK?"

"OK."

"What time is it now?"

"Nine thirty-six."

"Not bad," Pauling said. "My watch says nine thirty-eight."

"Your watch is fast."

"Are you serious?"

Reacher opened his eyes. "Absolutely."

Pauling rooted around on her coffee table and came up with the TV remote. Turned on the Weather Channel. The time was displayed in the corner of the screen, piped in from some official meteorological source, accurate to the second. Pauling checked her watch again.

"You’re right," she said. "I’m two minutes fast."

Reacher said nothing.

"How do you do that?"

"I don’t know."

"But it was twenty-four hours after the event that Gregory asked you about it. How precise could you have been?"

"I’m not sure."

"What would it mean if Gregory was wrong and you were right?"

"Something," Reacher said. "But I’m not sure what exactly."

"What was the next thing?"

Right now more likely death than life, Gregory had said. That had been the next thing. Reacher had checked his cup again and seen less than a lukewarm eighth-inch of espresso left, all thick and scummy. He had put it down and said OK, so let’s go.

He said, "Something about getting into Gregory’s car. The blue BMW. Something rang a bell. Not right then, but afterward. In retrospect."

"You don’t know what?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"Then we arrived at the Dakota and it was off to the races." The photograph, Reacher thought. After that, everything was about the photograph.

Pauling said, "We need to take a break. We can’t force these things."

"You got beer in the refrigerator?"

"I’ve got white wine. You want some?"

"I’m being selfish. You didn’t blow it five years ago. You did everything right. We should take a minute to celebrate that."

Pauling was quiet for a moment. Then she smiled.

"We should," she said. "Because to be honest it feels really good."

Reacher went with her to the kitchen and she took a bottle out of the refrigerator and he opened it with a corkscrew from a drawer. She took two glasses from a cupboard and set them side by side on the counter. He filled them. They picked them up and clinked them together.

"Living well is the best revenge," he said.

They each took a sip and moved back to the sofa. Sat close together. He asked, "Did you quit because of Anne Lane?"

She said, "Not directly. I mean, not right away. But ultimately, yes. You know how these things are. It’s like a naval convoy where one of the battleships gets holed below the waterline. No visible damage, but it falls a little behind, and then a little more, and it drifts a little off course, and then when the next big engagement comes along it’s completely out of sight. That was me."

He said nothing.

She said, "But maybe I was maxed out anyway. I love the city and I didn’t want to move, and head of the New York office is an Assistant Director’s job. It was always a long shot."

She took another sip of wine and pulled her legs up under her and turned a little sideways so she could see him better. He turned a little too, until they were more or less facing each other from a foot away.

"Why did you quit?" she asked him.

He said, "Because they told me I could."

"You were looking to get out?"

"No, I was looking to stay in. But as soon as they said that leaving was an option it kind of broke the spell. Made me realize I wasn’t personally essential to their plans. I guess they’d have been happy enough if I stayed, but clearly it wasn’t going to break their hearts if I went."

"You need to be needed?"

"Not really. It just broke the spell, is all. I can’t really explain it." He stopped talking and watched her, silent. She looked great in the candlelight. Liquid eyes, soft skin. Reacher liked women as much as any guy and more than most but he was always ready to find something wrong with them. The shape of an ear, the thickness of an ankle, height, size, weight. Any random thing could ruin it for him. But there was nothing wrong with Lauren Pauling. Nothing at all. That was for sure.