Gone Tomorrow

He asked, ‘When Lila Hoth called you, did she mention Peter?’

I nodded. ‘She picked him up in the bar.’

‘Why spend four hours doing that?’

‘Tradecraft. And for fun and finesse. Because she could.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘She said he’s here in the city.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Do you think he’s OK?’ I didn’t answer.

He said, ‘Talk to me, Reacher.’ I said, ‘No.’

‘No you won’t talk to me?’

‘No, I don’t think he’s OK.’

‘But he might be.’

‘I could be wrong.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘I said I wasn’t scared of her, and she said that’s what Peter Molina had said, too. I asked if he was OK, and she said I should come over and find out for myself.’

‘So he could be OK.’

‘It’s possible. But I think you should be realistic.’

‘About what? Why would two Afghan tribeswomen want to mess with Peter?’

‘To get to Susan, of course.’

‘For what? The Pentagon is supposed to be helping Afghanistan.’

I said, ‘If Svetlana was a fighting tribeswoman, then she was one of the mujahideen. And when the Russians went home, the mujahideen did not go back to tending their goats. They moved right along. Some of them became the Taliban, and the rest of them became al-Qaeda.’

FIFTY-EIGHT

JACOB MARK SAID, ‘I HAVE TO GO TO THE COPS ABOUT PETER.’

He got halfway off the bench before I leaned across Theresa Lee and put my hand on his arm.

‘Think hard,’ I said.

‘What’s to think about? My nephew is a kidnapping victim. He’s a hostage. The woman confessed.’

‘Think about what the cops will do. They’ll call the feds immediately. The feds will lock you up again and put Peter on the back burner, because they’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

‘I have to try.’

‘Peter’s dead, Jake. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to face it.’

‘There’s still a chance.’

‘Then the fastest way to find him is to find Lila. And we can do that better than those feds.’

‘You think?’

‘Look at their track record. They missed her once, and they let us break out of jail. I wouldn’t send them to look for a book in the library.’

‘How the hell do we find her on our own?’

I looked at Theresa Lee. ‘Did you speak to Sansom?’

She shrugged, like she had good news and bad. She said, ‘I spoke to him briefly. He said he might want to come up here personally. He said he would call me back to coordinate the where and the when. I said he couldn’t do that, because I was keeping the phone switched off. So he said he would call Docherty’s cell instead, and I should call Docherty and pick up the message. So I did, and Docherty didn’t answer. So I tried the precinct switchboard. The dispatcher said Docherty was unavailable.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I think it means he just got arrested.’

Which changed everything. I understood that even before Lee got around to spelling it out. She handed me her folded notes. I took them, like receiving the baton in a relay race. I was to go onward, as fast as I could. She was spilling off the track, her race finished. She said, ‘You understand, right? I have to turn myself in now. He’s my partner. I can’t let him face this madness alone.’

I said, ‘You thought he would ditch you in a heartbeat.’

‘But he didn’t. And I have my own standards, anyway.’

‘It won’t do any good.’

‘Maybe not. But I won’t turn my back on my partner.’

‘You’re just taking yourself off the board. You can’t help any one from a jail cell. Outside is always better than inside.’

‘It’s different for you. You can be gone tomorrow. I can’t. I live here.’

‘What about Sansom? I need a time and a place.’

‘I don’t have that information. And you should take care with Sansom, anyway. He sounded weird on the phone. I couldn’t tell whether he was real mad or real worried. It’s hard to say whose side he’s going to be on, when and if he gets here.’

Then she gave me Leonid’s first cell phone, and the emergency charger. She put her hand on my arm and squeezed, just briefly, just a little. An all-purpose substitute for a hug and a good-luck gesture. And right alter that our temporary three way partnership fell apart completely. Jacob Mark was on his feet even before Lee had started to get up. He said, ‘I owe it to Peter. OK, they might put me back in a cell, but at least they’ll be out looking for him.’

‘We could look for him,’ I said.

‘We have no resources.’

I looked at them both and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’

They were sure about it. They walked away from me, out of the park, to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, where they stood and craned their necks, looking for a police car, the same way people stand when they are trying to hail a cab. I sat alone for a minute, and then I got up and walked the other way.

Next stop, somewhere east of Fifth and south of 59th.

FIFTY-NINE

MADISON SQUARE PARK NESTLES AGAINST THE SOUTH end of Madison Avenue, right where it starts at 23rd Street. Madison Avenue runs straight for 115 blocks, to the Madison Avenue Bridge, which leads to the Bronx. You can get to Yankee Stadium that way, although other routes are better. I pla

It was as good a place to start as any.

I took the bus, which was a slow, lumbering vehicle, which made it a counterintuitive choice for a wild-eyed fugitive, which made it perfect cover for me. Traffic was heavy and we passed plenty of cops, some on foot, some in cars. I looked out the window at them. None of them looked back in at me. A man on a bus is close to invisible.

I stopped being invisible when I got out at 59th Street. Prime retail territory, therefore prime tourist territory, therefore reassuring pairs of policemen on every corner. I took a cross street over to Fifth and found a line of vendors at the base of Central Park and bought a black T-shirt with New York City written on it, and a pair of counterfeit sunglasses, and a black baseball cap with a red apple on it. I changed shirts in a restroom in a hotel lobby and came back to Madison looking a little different. It was four hours since any on-duty cop had spoken to his watch commander. And people forget a lot in four hours. I figured that tall and khaki shirt would be all that anyone remembered. Nothing I could do about my height, but the new black upper body might let me slide by. Plus the writing on the shirt, and the shades, and the hat, all of which made me look like a regular out-of-town idiot.

Which I was, basically. I had no real clue as to what I was doing. Finding any concealed hideout is difficult. Finding one in a densely populated big city is close to impossible. I was just quartering random blocks, following a geographic hunch I hat could have been completely wrong to start with, trying to find reasons to narrow it further. The Four Seasons Hotel. Not adjacent, but comfortably proximate. Which meant what? A two-minute drive? A five-minute walk? In which direction? Not south, I thought. Not across 57th Street, which is a major cross-town thoroughfare. Two-way, six lanes. Always busy. In the micro-geography of Manhattan, 57th Street was like the Mississippi River. An obstacle. A boundary. Much more inviting to slip away to the north, to the quieter, darker blocks beyond.

I watched the traffic and thought: not a two-minute drive. Driving implied a lack of control, a lack of flexibility, and delays, and one-way streets and avenues, and parking difficulties, and potentially memorable vehicles waiting in loading zones, and licence plates that could be traced and checked.