“OK,” Reacher said again.
“But then a couple months ago they suddenly got much better at doing it. They went way beyond just good enough. It happened more or less overnight. Suddenly they were doing really smart stuff. The geeks said they must have brought in new talent. No other way of doing it. Maybe a consultant from Moscow. So I went there to check. Naively I thought I might see a Russian walking around town, looking lost.”
“So you already aimed to break the story.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Where would you have looked?”
“I had no idea. That was going to be my next step. But I never got that far.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “Thank you.”
“Is that enough?”
“Credible person, credible reason. The boxes are checked.”
“Thank you again, for the first part of the call. I do feel better.”
“It’s a great feeling,” Reacher said. “Isn’t it? You’re alive, and they ain’t.”
* * *
—
At the end of their hour Barton and Hogan came up to the street, damp with exertion, loaded with gear. Vantresca was helping them. He read the new text. The photograph, in the fat green bubble. He said, “This is absurd.”
Reacher said, “He took me by surprise.”
“Not the photograph. The message is from Gregory himself. He says you’re the vanguard of an attack from a direction he can no longer reliably discern. It is even possible you are an agent of the Kiev government. You must therefore be captured at all costs. You must be brought to him alive.”
“Better than the alternative, I suppose.”
“Did the doorman tell you anything?”
“Plenty,” Reacher said. “But the journalist told me more.”
“She talked to you?”
“It’s about fake news on the internet. It was coming in from Russia. Now it’s inside the United States. We can’t block it anymore. She figured Moscow hired the Ukrainians as a proxy. Then about two months ago the standard went way up. She said the geeks at the paper figured the Ukrainians must have brought in new talent. No other way to explain it.”
“Trulenko went into hiding about two months ago.”
“Exactly,” Reacher said. “He’s smart with computers. He’s managing the contract. The Russian government is paying Gregory, and Gregory is paying Trulenko. After taking a healthy percentage for himself, I’m sure. Must feel like Christmas morning. The journalist said the contract could be worth tens of millions of dollars.”
“What did the doorman tell you?”
“It’s a secret satellite operation physically separate from the main office. He didn’t know where it is, or how big it is, or who works there, or how many.”
“You call that telling you plenty?”
“If we put the two things together, we can start to work out what they need. Security, accommodations, reliable power, reliable internet speed, isolated, but close enough for easy supply and resupply.”
“Could be any basement in town. They could have run new wires and put in a couple of cots.”
“More than cots,” Reacher said. “This is an annual contract. No doubt renewable. Could be a long-term project.”
“OK, as well as the wires, they also brought in wallboard and paint and put carpet on the floor. Maybe king-size beds.”
“We better start looking,” Abby said.
“Something else first,” Reacher said. “That awful photograph reminded me. I want to go pay that guy a visit. It’s after twelve o’clock. I bet he’s holding a bunch of repayments. The Shevicks need money today. We’re still a grand short.”
* * *
—
This time Abby drove. Reacher could feel the weight in the back. The rear end of the car squatted and dragged. There were more than six hundred pounds in the trunk. Maybe never taken into account, during Lincoln’s design process.
They stopped short of the bar, in a side street. Did Situation C call for extra guards everywhere? Reacher guessed not everywhere. Insufficient manpower. They would consolidate their resources only where they mattered most. Their high-value targets. Did the moneylending operation qualify? He wasn’t sure. He got out and peered around the corner, one-eyed around the brick.
The street was empty. There was nothing parked outside the bar. There were no guys in suits, leaning on walls.
He got back in and they drove on, across the street with the bar, and around to the alley behind. It was the old part of town, built around the time Alexander Graham Bell was inventing the telephone, so anything newer was grafted on, as an afterthought. There were leaning poles carrying sagging thickets of wires and cables, looping here, looping there. There were water meters and gas meters and electricity meters, screwed randomly to the walls. There were head-high garbage receptacles.
There was a black Lincoln parked behind the bar. Empty. The pale guy’s ride, no doubt. Ready for the journey home, at the end of the day. Abby stopped behind it.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“You want to?” he asked back.
“Yes,” she said.
“Walk around to the front. Come in the door like a regular person. Pause for a second. The guy sits in the rear right-hand corner. Walk toward the rear wall.”
“Why?”
“I want the guy distracted. He’ll watch you all the way. Partly because maybe you’re a new customer, but mostly because you’re the best-looking thing he’s seen all day. Maybe all his life. Ignore the barman, whatever he says. He’s an asshole.”
“Got it,” she said.
“You want a gun?”
“Should I?”
“Can’t hurt,” he said.
“OK,” she said.
He gave her the lounge doorman’s H&K. It looked dainty in his hand and huge in hers. She hefted it a couple of times, and stuck it in her pocket. She headed off down the alley. Reacher found the bar’s back door. It was a plain steel panel, dull and old, scarred and dented low down, by hand trucks wheeling kegs and crates. He tried the handle. It was unlocked. No doubt a city regulation. It was a fire exit, too.
Reacher slipped inside. He was at the far end of a short corridor. Restrooms to the left and right. Then a door for employees only. An office, or a storeroom. Or both. Then the end of the corridor, and the room itself, seen in reverse. The square bar now in the near right corner, the worn central track leading away, between the long rows of four-top tables. The same as before. The light was still dim and the air still smelled of spilled beer and disinfectant. This time there were five customers, once again each of them alone at separate tables, defending their drinks, looking miserable. Behind the bar was the same fat guy, now with a six-day beard, but a fresh towel thrown over his shoulder.