The Hard Way

Nobody talked. There was nothing to talk about, except the fact that the end of a kidnap was always the period of greatest risk. What was there that compelled kidnappers to keep their word? Honor? A sense of business ethics? Why risk a complex transfer when a shallow grave and a bullet in the victim’s head were a whole lot safer and simpler? Humanity? Decency? Reacher glanced at Kate Lane’s picture next to the phone and went a little cold. She was closer to dead now than at any point in the last three days, and he knew it. He guessed they all knew it.

“Time,” Burke said. “I’m going.”

“I’ll carry the bag for you,” Reacher said. “You know, down to the car.”

They rode down in the elevator. In the ground floor lobby a small dark woman in a long black coat swept past surrounded by tall men in suits, like staff or assistants or bodyguards.

“Was that Yoko?” Reacher said.

But Burke didn’t answer. He just walked past the doorman and out to the curb. The black BMW was waiting there. Burke opened the rear door.

“Stick the bag on the back seat,” he said. “Easier for me that way, for a seat-to-seat transfer.”

“I’m coming with you,” Reacher said.

“That’s stupid, man.”

“I’ll be on the floor in back. It’ll be safe enough.”

“What’s the point?”

“We have to do something. You know as well as I do there’s not going to be any cute little Checkpoint Charlie scene in this story. She’s not going to come tottering toward us through the mist and the fog, smiling bravely, with Jade holding her hand. That’s not going to happen. So we’re going to have to get proactive at some point.”

“What are you pla

“After you’ve switched the bag I’ll get out around the next corner. I’ll double back and see what I can see.”

“Who says you’ll see anything?”

“They’ll have four and a half million bucks sitting in an unlocked car. My guess is they won’t leave it there very long. So I’ll see something.”

“Will it help us?”

“A lot more than sitting upstairs doing nothing will help us.”

“Lane will kill me.”

“He doesn’t have to know anything about it. I’ll be back well after you. You’ll say you have no idea what happened to me. I’ll say I went for a walk.”

“Lane will kill you if you screw it up.”

“I’ll kill myself if I screw it up.”

“I’m serious. He’ll kill you.”

“My risk.”

“Kate’s risk.”

“You still banking on the Checkpoint Charlie scenario?”

Burke paused. Ten seconds. Fifteen.

“Get in,” he said.

CHAPTER 14

BURKE STUCK LANE’S cell phone in a hands-free cradle mounted on the BMW’s dash and Reacher crawled into the rear footwell on his hands and knees. There was grit on the carpet. It was a rear-drive car and the transmission hump made it an uncomfortable location. Burke started up and waited for a hole in the traffic and then U-turned and headed south on Central Park West. Reacher squirmed around until the transmission tu

“Don’t hit any big bumps,” he said.

“We’re not supposed to talk,” Burke said.

“Only after they call.”

“Believe it,” Burke said. “You see this?”

Reacher struggled a little more upright and saw Burke pointing at a small black bud on the driver’s-side A-pillar up near the sun visor.

“Microphone,” Burke said. “For the cell. Real sensitive. You sneeze back there, they’ll hear you.”

“Will I hear them? On a speaker?”

“On ten speakers,” Burke said. “The phone is wired through the audio system. It cuts in automatically.”

Reacher lay down and Burke drove on, slowly. Then he made a tight right turn.

“Where are we now?” Reacher asked.

“Fifty-seventh Street,” Burke said. “Traffic is murder. I’m going to get on the West Side Highway and head south. My guess is they’ll want us downtown somewhere. That’s where they’ve got to be. Street parking for the Jaguar would be impossible anyplace else right now. I can come back north on the East River Drive if they don’t call before we get to the Battery.”

Reacher felt the car stop and start, stop and start. Above him the money bag rolled one way and then the other.

“You serious that this could be just one guy?” Burke asked.

“Minimum of one,” Reacher said.

“Everything’s a minimum of one.”

“Therefore it’s possible.”

“Therefore we should take him down. Make him talk. Solve the whole problem right there.”

“But suppose it’s not just one guy.”

“Maybe we should gamble.”

“What were you?” Reacher asked. “Back in the day?”

“Delta,” Burke said.

“Did you know Lane in the service?”

“I’ve known him forever.”

“How would you have done the thing outside Bloomingdale’s?”

“Quick and dirty inside the car. As soon as Taylor stopped.”

“That’s what Groom said.”

“Groom’s a smart guy, for a jarhead. You disagree with him?”

“No.”

“It would be the only way. This isn’t Mexico City or Bogotá or Rio de Janeiro. This is New York. You couldn’t survive a fuss on the sidewalk. You’ve got eight beat cops right there, two on each corner, armed and dangerous, worried about terrorists. No, quick and dirty inside the car would be the only way at Bloomingdale’s.”

“But why would you have been at Bloomingdale’s at all?”

“It’s the obvious place. It’s Mrs. Lane’s favorite store. She gets all her stuff there. She loves that big brown bag.”

“But who would have known that?”

Burke was quiet for a spell.

“That’s a very good question,” he said.

Then the phone rang.

CHAPTER 15

THE RING TONE sounded weird, coming in over ten high-quality automobile speakers. It filled the whole car. It sounded very loud and rich and full and precise. The cellular network’s harsh electronic edge was taken right off it. It purred.

“Shut up now,” Burke said.

He leaned to his right and hit a button on the Samsung.

“Hello?” he said.

“Good evening,” a voice said back, so slowly and carefully and mechanically that it made four separate words out of two. Like: Good-Eve-Ven-Ing.

It was a hell of a voice. It was completely amazing. It was so heavily processed that there would be no chance of recognizing it again without the electronic machine. The machines were commercial items sold in spy stores. Reacher had seen them. They clamped over the telephone mouthpiece. On one side was a microphone, which was backed by circuit boards, and then came a small crude loudspeaker. Battery powered. There were rotary dials that shaped the sound. Zero to ten, for various different parameters. The dials on this machine must have been cranked all the way to eleven. The high frequencies were entirely missing. The low tones had been scooped out and turned around and reconstituted. They boomed and thumped like an irregular heartbeat. There was a phase effect that hissed and roared on every drawn breath and made the voice sound like it was hurtling through outer space. There was a metallic pulse that came and went. It sounded like a sheet of heavy steel being hit with a hammer. The volume was set very high. Over the BMW’s ten speakers the voice sounded huge and alien. Gigantic. Like a direct co

“Who am I speaking with?” it asked, slowly.

“The driver,” Burke said. “The guy with the money.”

“I want your name,” the voice said.

Burke said, “My name is Burke.”

The nightmare voice asked, “Who’s that in the car with you?”

“There’s nobody in the car with me,” Burke said. “I’m all alone.”

“Are you lying?”

“No, I’m not lying,” Burke said.

Reacher figured there might be a lie detector hooked up to the other end of the phone. Probably a simple device sold in the same kind of spy stores as the distortion machines. Plastic boxes, green lights and red lights. They were supposed to be able to detect the kind of voice stress that comes with lying. Reacher replayed Burke’s answers in his head and figured they would pass muster. It would be a crude machine and Delta soldiers were taught to beat better tests than a person could buy retail on Madison Avenue. And after a second it was clear that the box had indeed lit up green because the nightmare voice just went ahead calmly and asked, “Where are you now, Mr. Burke?”