Persuader

I left the rest of the water in the kitchen and headed out toward the garage block. Dusk was gathering on the ocean horizon, a hundred miles away in the east. The wind was blowing hard and the waves were pounding. I stopped walking and turned a casual circle. Saw nobody else out and about. So I ducked out of sight down the side of the courtyard wall. Found my hidden bundle and laid the phony plates and the screwdriver on the rocks and unwrapped both guns. Duffy's Glock went into my right-hand coat pocket. Doll's PSM went into my left. I put the spare Glock mags in my socks. Stowed the rag and picked up the plates and the screwdriver and backtracked to the courtyard entrance.

The mechanic was busy in the third garage. The empty one. He had the doors wide open and was oiling the hinges. The space behind him was even cleaner than when I had seen it in the night. It was immaculate. The floor had been hosed. I could see it drying in patches. I nodded to the guy and he nodded back. I opened up the left-hand garage. Squatted down and unscrewed the Maine plate off the Cadillac's trunk lid and replaced it with the New York number. Did the same at the front. Left the old plates and the screwdriver on the floor and got in and fired it up. Backed it out and headed around to the carriage circle. The mechanic watched me go.

Beck was waiting there for me. He opened the rear door himself and dropped his sports bag on the back seat. I heard the guns shifting inside. Then he closed the rear door again and slid in the front beside me.

"Go," he said. "Use I-95 south as far as Boston."

"We need gas," I said.

"OK, first place you see," he said.

Paulie was waiting at the gate. His face was all twisted up with anger. He was a problem that wouldn't keep much longer. He glared in at me. Turned his head left and right and kept his eyes on me the whole time he was opening the gate. I ignored him and drove on through. I didn't look back at him. Out of sight, out of mind was the way I wanted to play it, as far as he was concerned.

The coast road west was empty. We were on the highway twelve minutes after we left the house. I was getting used to the way the Cadillac drove. It was a nice car. Smooth, and quiet. But it was heavy on gas. That was for sure. The needle was getting seriously low. I could almost see it moving. The way I recalled it the first gas stop was the one south of Kennebunk. The place where I had met with Duffy and Eliot on the way down to New London. We reached it within fifteen minutes. It felt very familiar to me. I drove past the parking lot where we had broken into the van and headed down to the pumps. Beck said nothing. I got out and filled the tank. It took a long time. Eighteen gallons. I screwed the cap back on and Beck buzzed his window down and gave me a wad of cash.

"Always buy gas with cash," he said. "Safer that way."

I kept the change, which was a little over fifteen bucks. I figured I was entitled. I hadn't been paid yet. I got back on the road and settled in for the trip. I was tired. Nothing worse than mile after mile of lonely highway when you're tired. Beck was quiet beside me. At first I thought he was just morose. Or shy, or inhibited. Then I realized he was nervous. I guessed he wasn't entirely comfortable heading into battle. I was. Especially because I knew for sure we weren't going to find anybody to fight.

"How's Richard?" I asked him.

"He's fine," he said. "He's got inner strength. He's a good son."

"Is he?" I said, because I needed to say something. I needed him to talk to keep me awake.

"He's very loyal. A father can't ask for more."

Then he went quiet again, and I fought to stay awake. Five miles, ten.

"Have you ever dealt with small-time dope dealers?" he asked me.

"No," I said.

"There's something unique about them," he said.

He didn't say anything more for twenty miles. Then he picked it up again like he had spent the entire time chasing an elusive thought.

"They're completely dominated by fashion," he said.

"Are they?" I said, like I was interested. I wasn't, but I still needed him to talk.

"Of course lab drugs are fashion items anyway," he said. "Really their customers are just as bad as they are. I can't even keep track of the stuff they sell. Some different weird name every week."

"What's a lab drug?" I asked.

"A drug made in a lab," he said. "You know, something manufactured, something chemical. Not the same as something that grows naturally in the ground."

"Like marijuana."

"Or heroin. Or cocaine. Those are natural products. Organic. They're refined, obviously, but they aren't created in a beaker."

I said nothing. Just fought to keep my eyes open. The car was way too warm. You need cold air when you're tired. I bit my bottom lip to stay awake.

"The fashion thing infects everything they do," he said. "Every single thing. Shoes, for instance. These guys we're looking for tonight, every time I've seen them they've had different shoes."

"What, like sneakers?"

"Sure, like they play basketball for a living. One time they've got two-hundred-dollar Reeboks, brand new out of the box. Next time I see them, Reeboks are completely unacceptable and it's got to be Nikes or something. Air-this, air-that. Or it's suddenly Caterpillar boots, or Timberlands. Leather, then Gore-Tex, then leather again. Black, then that yellow color like a work boot. Always with the laces undone. Then it's back to the running shoes again, only this time it's Adidas, with the little stripes. Two, three hundred dollars a pop. For no reason. It's insane."

I said nothing. Just drove, with my eyelids locked open and my eyeballs stinging.

"You know why it is?" he said. "Because of the money. They've got so much money they don't know what to do with it. Like jackets. Have you seen the jackets they wear? One week it's got to be North Face, all shiny and puffy, full of goose feathers, doesn't matter whether it's winter or summer because these guys are only out at night. The next week, shiny is yesterday's news. Maybe North Face is still OK, but now it's got to be microfiber. Then it's letter jackets, wool with leather sleeves. Two, three hundred dollars a pop. Each style lasts about a week."

"Crazy," I said, because I had to say something.

"It's the money," he said again. "They don't know what to do with it, so they get into change for change's sake. It infects everything. Guns, too, of course. Like these particular guys, they liked Heckler and Koch MP5Ks. Now they have Uzis, according to you. You see what I mean? With these guys, even their weapons are fashion items, the same as their sneakers, or their jackets. Or their actual product, which brings everything full circle. Their demands change all the time, in every arena. Cars, even. They like Japanese mostly, which is about fashions coming in from the West Coast, I guess. But one week it's Toyotas, next week it's Hondas. Then it's Nissans. The Nissan Maxima was a big favorite, two, three years ago. Like the one you stole. Then it's Lexuses. It's a mania. Watches, too. They're wearing Swatches, then they're wearing Rolexes. They don't see a difference. Complete madness. Of course, being in the market, speaking as a supplier, I'm not complaining. Market obsolescence is what we aim for, but it gets a little rapid at times. Gets hard to keep up."

"So you're in the market?"

"What's your guess?" he said. "You thought I was an accountant?"

"I thought you were a rug importer."

"I am," he said. "I import a lot of rugs."

"OK."

"But that's fundamentally a cover," he said. Then he laughed. "You think you don't have to take precautions these days, selling athletic shoes to people like that?"

He kept on laughing. There was a lot of nervous tension in there. I drove on. He calmed down. Looked through the side window, looked through the windshield. Started talking again, like it served his own purpose as much as it served mine.

"Do you ever wear sneakers?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Because I'm looking for somebody to explain it to me. There's no rational difference between a Reebok and a Nike, is there?"

"I wouldn't know."

"I mean, they're probably made in the same factory. Out in Vietnam somewhere. They're probably the same shoe until they put the logo on."

"Maybe," I said. "I really wouldn't know. I was never an athlete. Never wore that type of footwear."

"Is there a difference between a Toyota and a Honda?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Why not?"

"Because I never had a POV."

"What's a POV?"

"A privately owned vehicle," I said. "What the army would call a Toyota or a Honda. Or a Nissan or a Lexus."

"So what do you know?"

"I know the difference between a Swatch and a Rolex."

"OK, what's the difference?"

"There isn't one," I said. "They both tell the time."

"That's no answer."

"I know the difference between an Uzi and a Heckler and Koch."

He turned on his seat. "Good. Great. Explain it to me. Why would these guys junk their Heckler and Kochs in favor of Uzis?"

The Cadillac hummed onward. I shrugged at the wheel. Fought a yawn. It was a nonsense question, of course. The Hartford guys hadn't junked their MP5Ks in favor of Uzis. Not in reality. Eliot and Duffy hadn't been aware of Hartford's weapon du jour and they hadn't been aware that Beck knew anything about Hartford, that's all, so they had given their guys Uzis, probably because they were lying around closest to hand.

But theoretically it was a very good question. An Uzi is a fine, fine weapon. A little heavy, maybe. Not the world's fastest cyclic rate, which might matter to some people. Not much rifling inside the barrel, which compromises accuracy a little bit. On the other hand, it's very reliable, very simple, totally proven, and you can get a forty-round magazine for it. A fine weapon. But any Heckler amp; Koch MP5 derivative is a better weapon. They fire the same ammunition faster and harder. They're very, very accurate. As accurate as a good rifle, in some hands. Very reliable. Flat-out better. A great 1970s design up against a great 1950s design. Doesn't hold true in all fields, but with military ordnance, modern is better, every time.

"There's no reason," I said. "Makes no sense to me."

"Exactly," Beck said. "It's about fashion. It's an arbitrary whim. It's a compulsion. Keeps everybody in business, but drives everybody nuts, too."

His cell phone rang. He juggled it up out of his pocket and answered it by saying his name, short and sharp. And a little nervously. Beck. It sounded like a cough. He listened for a long time. Made his caller repeat an address and directions and then clicked off and put the phone back in his pocket.

"That was Duke," he said. "He made some calls. Our boys aren't anywhere in Hartford. But they're supposed to have some country place a little ways south and east. Duke figures that's where they're holed up. So that's where we're going."

"What are we going to do when we get there?"

"Nothing spectacular," Beck said. "We don't need to make a big deal out of it. Nothing neat, nothing fancy. Situation like this, I favor just mowing them down. An impression of inevitability, you know? But casual. Like you mess with me, then punishment is definitely swift and certain, but not like I'm in a sweat about it."

"You lose customers that way."

"I can replace them. I've got people lining up around the block. That's the truly great thing about this business. Supply and demand is tilted way in favor of demand."

"You going to do this yourself?"

He shook his head. "That's what you and Duke are for."

"Me? I thought I was just driving."

"You already wasted two of them. Couple more shouldn't bother you."

I turned the heater down a click and worked on keeping my eyes open. Bloody wars, I said to myself.

We looped halfway around Boston and then he told me to strike out south and west on the Mass Pike and then I-84. We did sixty more miles, which took about an hour. He didn't want me to drive too fast. He didn't want to be conspicuous. Phony plates, a bag full of automatic weapons on the back seat, he didn't want the Highway Patrol to get involved. I could see the sense in that. I drove like an automaton. I hadn't slept in forty hours. But I wasn't regretting passing up the chance of a nap in Duffy's motel. I was very happy with the way I had spent my time there, even if she wasn't.

"Next exit," he said.

Right then I-84 was spearing straight through the city of Hartford. There was low cloud and the city lights made it orange. The exit led to a wide road that narrowed after a mile and headed south and east into open country. There was blackness ahead. There were a few closed country stores, bait and tackle, beer on ice, motorcycle parts, and then nothing at all except the dark shape of trees.

"Make the next right," he said, eight minutes later.

I turned onto a smaller road. The surface was bad and there were random curves. Darkness everywhere. I had to concentrate. I wasn't looking forward to driving back.

"Keep going," he said.

We did eight or nine more miles. I had no idea where we were.

"OK," he said. "Pretty soon we should see Duke waiting up ahead."

A mile and a half later my headlight beams picked out Duke's rear plate. He was parked on the shoulder. His car was canted over where the grade fell away into a ditch.

"Stop behind him."

I pulled up nose-to-tail with the Lincoln and jammed the selector into Park. I wanted to go to sleep. Five minutes would have made a lot of difference to me. But Duke swung out of his seat as soon as he identified us and hurried around to Beck's window. Beck buzzed the glass down and Duke squatted and leaned his face inside.

"Their place is about two miles ahead," he said. "Long curved driveway on the left. Not much more than a dirt path. We can make it about halfway up in the cars, if we do it quiet and slow, no lights. We'll have to walk the rest of the way."

Beck said nothing. Just buzzed his window up again. Duke went back to his car. It bounced off the shoulder and straightened up. I followed him through the two miles. We killed our lights a hundred yards short of the driveway and made the turn. Took it slow. There was some moonlight. The Lincoln ahead of me lurched and rolled as it crawled over ruts. The Cadillac did the same thing, out of phase, up where the Lincoln was down, corkscrewing right where the Lincoln was twisting left. We slowed to a crawl. Used idle speed to inch us closer. Then Duke's brake lights flared bright and he stopped dead. I stopped behind him. Beck twisted around in his seat and hauled the sports bag through the gap between us and unzipped it on his knee. Handed me one of the MP5Ks from it, with two spare thirty-round magazines.

"Get the job done," he said.

"You waiting here?"

He nodded. I broke the gun down and checked it. Put it back together and jacked a round into the chamber and clicked the safety on. Then I put the spare mags in my pockets very carefully so they wouldn't rattle against the Glock and the PSM. Eased myself out of the car. Stood and breathed the cold night air. It was a relief. It woke me up. I could smell a lake nearby, and trees, and leaf mold on the ground. I could hear a small waterfall in the distance, and the mufflers on the cars ticking gently as they cooled. There was a gentle breeze in the trees. Other than that there was nothing to hear. Just absolute silence.

Duke was waiting for me. I could see tension and impatience in the way he was holding himself. He had done this stuff before. That was clear. He looked exactly like a veteran cop before a major bust. Some degree of routine familiarity, mixed in with an acute awareness that no two situations are ever quite alike. He had his Steyr in his hand, with the long thirty-round magazine in it. It protruded way down out of the grip. Made the gun look bigger and uglier than ever.

"Let's go, asshole," he whispered.

I stayed five feet behind him and walked on the opposite side of the driveway, like an infantryman would. I had to be convincing, like I was worried about presenting a grouped target. I knew the place was going to be empty, but he didn't.

We walked on around a bend and saw the house in front of us. There was a light burning in a window. On a security timer, probably. Duke slowed and stopped.

"See a door?" he whispered.

I peered into the gloom. Saw a small porch. Pointed at it.

"You wait at the entrance," I whispered back. "I'll check the lighted window."

He was happy enough to agree to that. We made it to the porch. He stopped there and waited and I peeled off and looped around toward the window. Dropped to the ground and crawled the last ten feet in the dirt. Raised my head at the sill and peered inside. There was a low-wattage bulb burning in a table lamp with a yellow plastic shade. There were battered sofas and armchairs. Cold ash from an old fire in the hearth. Pine paneling on the walls. No people.

I crawled backward until the light spill let Duke see me and held two forked fingers below my eyes. Standard sniper-spotter visual code for I see. Then I held my hand palm out, all my fingers extended. I see five people. Then I went into a complicated series of gestures that might have indicated their disposition and their weaponry. I knew Duke wouldn't understand them. I didn't understand them either. As far as I knew they were entirely meaningless. I had never been a sniper-spotter. But the whole thing looked real good. It looked professional and clandestine and urgent.

I crawled back ten more feet and then stood up and walked quietly back to join him at the door.

"They're out of it," I whispered. "Drunk or stoned. We get a good jump, we'll be home and dry."

"Weapons?"

"Plenty, but nothing within reach." I pointed at the porch. "Looks like there's going to be a short hallway on the other side. Outer door, inner door, then the hallway. You take left, I'll take right. We'll wait there in the hallway. Take them down when they come out of the room to see what the noise is all about."

"You giving the orders now?"

"I did the recon."

"Just don't screw up, asshole."

"You either."

"I never do," he said.

"OK," I said.

"I mean it," he said. "You get in my way, I'll be more than happy to put you down with the rest of them, no hesitation."

"We're on the same side here."

"Are we?" he said. "I think we're about to find out."

"Relax," I said.

He paused. Tensed. Nodded in the dark. "I'll hit the outer door, you hit the inner. Like leapfrog."

"OK," I said again. I turned away and smiled. Just like a veteran cop. If I hit the inner door, he would leapfrog through it first and I would go second, and the second guy is the guy who usually gets shot, given normal reaction times from the enemy.

"Safeties off," I whispered.

I clicked the H amp;K to single-round fire and he clicked the catch on his Steyr to the right. I nodded and he nodded and kicked in the outer door. I was right there on his shoulder and slid past him and kicked in the inner door without breaking stride. He slid past me and jumped left and I followed him and went right. He was good enough. We made a pretty good team. We were crouched in perfect position even before the shattered doors had stopped swinging on their hinges. He was staring ahead at the entry to the room in front of us. He had the Steyr in a fixed two-handed grip, arms straight out, eyes wide open. He was breathing hard. Almost panting. Getting himself through a long moment of danger, the best way he could. I pulled Angel Doll's PSM out of my pocket. Held it left-handed and snicked the safety off and scrambled across the floor and jammed it in his ear.

"Keep very quiet," I said to him. "And make a choice. I'm going to ask you one question. Just one. If you lie, or if you refuse to answer, I'm going to shoot you in the head. You understand?"

He held perfectly still, five seconds, six, eight, ten. Stared desperately at the door in front of him.

"Don't worry, asshole," I said. "There's nobody here. They were all arrested last week. By the government."

He was motionless.

"You understand what I said before? About the question?"

He nodded, hesitantly, awkwardly, with the gun still jammed hard in his ear.

"You answer it, or I shoot you in the head. Got it?"

He nodded again.

"OK, here it comes," I said. "You ready?"

He nodded, just once.

"Where is Teresa Daniel?" I asked.

There was a long pause. He turned half toward me. I tracked my hand around to keep the PSM's muzzle in place. Realization dawned slowly in his eyes.

"In your dreams," he said.

I shot him in the head. Just jerked the muzzle out of his ear and fired once left-handed into his right temple. The sound was shattering in the dark. Blood and brain and bone chips hit the far wall. The muzzle flash burned his hair. Then I fired a double-tap from the H amp;K right-handed into the ceiling and fired another from the PSM left-handed into the floor. Switched the H amp;K to automatic fire and stood up and emptied it point-blank into his body. Picked up his Steyr from where it had fallen and blasted the ceiling with it, again and again, fifteen fast shots, bam bam bam bam, half the magazine. The hallway was instantly full of bitter smoke and chips of wood and plaster were flying everywhere. I switched magazines on the H amp;K and sprayed the walls, all around. The noise was deafening. Spent shell cases were spitting out and bouncing around and raining down everywhere. The H amp;K clicked empty and I fired the rest of the PSM's ammo into the hallway wall and kicked open the door to the lighted room and blew up the table lamp with the Steyr. I found a side table and tossed it through the window and used up the second spare magazine for the H amp;K by spraying the trees in the distance while I fired the Steyr left-handed into the floor until it clicked empty. Then I piled the Steyr and the H amp;K and the PSM together in my arms and ran for it with my head ringing like a bell. I had fired a hundred and twenty-eight rounds in about fifteen seconds. They had deafened me. They must have sounded like World War Three to Beck.

I ran straight down the driveway. I was coughing and trailing gunsmoke like a cloud. I headed for the cars. Beck had already scrambled across into the Cadillac's driver's seat. He saw me coming and opened his door an inch. Faster than using the window.

"Ambush," I said. I was out of breath and I could hear my own voice loud inside my head. "There were at least eight of them."

"Where's Duke?"

"Dead. We got to go. Right now, Beck."

He froze for a second. Then he moved.

"Take his car," he said.

He already had the Cadillac rolling. He jammed his foot down and slammed his door and reversed down the driveway and out of sight. I jumped into the Lincoln. Fired it up. Stuck the selector in Reverse and got one elbow up on the back of the seat and stared through the rear window and hit the gas. We shot out backward onto the road one after the other and slewed around and took off again north, side by side like a stoplight drag race. We howled around the curves and fought the camber and stayed up around seventy miles an hour. Didn't slow until we reached the turn that would take us back toward Hartford. Beck edged ahead of me and I fell in behind him and followed. He drove five fast miles and turned in at a closed package store and parked at the back of the lot. I parked ten feet from him and just lay back in the seat and let him come to me. I was too tired to get out. He ran around the Cadillac's hood and pulled my door open.

"It was an ambush?" he said.

I nodded. "They were waiting for us. Eight of them. Maybe more. It was a massacre."

He said nothing. There was nothing for him to say. I picked up Duke's Steyr from the seat beside me and handed it over.

"I recovered it," I said.

"Why?"

"I thought you might want me to. I thought it might be traceable."

He nodded. "It isn't. But that was good thinking."

I gave him the H amp;K, too. He stepped back to the Cadillac and I watched him zip both pieces into his bag. Then he turned around. Clenched both hands and looked up at the black sky. Then at me.

"See any faces?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Too dark. But we hit one of them. He dropped this."

I handed him the PSM. It was like punching him in the gut. He turned pale and put out a hand and steadied himself against the Lincoln's roof.

"What?" I said.

He looked away. "I don't believe it."

"What?"

"You hit somebody and he dropped this?"

"I think Duke hit him."

"You saw it happen?"

"Just shapes," I said. "It was dark. Lots of muzzle flashes. Duke was firing and he hit a shape and this was on the floor when I came out."

"This is Angel Doll's gun."

"Are you sure?"

"Million to one it isn't. You know what it is?"

"Never saw one like it."

"It's a special KGB pistol," he said. "From the old Soviet Union. Very rare in this country."

Then he stepped away into the darkness of the lot. I closed my eyes. I wanted to sleep. Even five seconds would have made a difference.

"Reacher," he called. "What evidence did you leave?"

I opened my eyes.

"Duke's body," I said.

"That won't lead anybody anywhere. Ballistics?"

I smiled in the dark. Imagined Hartford PD forensic scientists trying to make sense of the trajectories. Walls, floors, ceilings. They would conclude the hallway had been full of heavily-armed disco dancers.

"A lot of bullets and shell cases," I said.

"Untraceable," he said.

He moved deeper into the dark. I closed my eyes again. I had left no fingerprints. No part of me had touched any part of the house except for the soles of my shoes. And I hadn't fired Duffy's Glock. I had heard something about a central registry somewhere that stored data on rifling marks. Maybe her Glock was a part of it. But I hadn't used it.

"Reacher," Beck called. "Drive me home."

I opened my eyes.

"What about this car?" I called back.

"Abandon it here."

I yawned and forced myself to move and used the tail of my coat to wipe the wheel and all the controls I had touched. The unused Glock nearly fell out of my pocket. Beck didn't notice. He was so preoccupied I could have taken it out and twirled it around my finger like the Sundance Kid and he wouldn't have noticed. I wiped the door handle and then leaned in and pulled the keys and wiped them and tossed them into the scrub at the edge of the lot.

"Let's go," Beck said.

He was silent until we were thirty miles north and east of Hartford. Then he started talking. He had spent the time getting it all worked out in his mind.

"The phone call yesterday," he said. "They were laying their plans. Doll was working with them all along."

"From when?"

"From the start."

"Doesn't make sense," I said. "Duke went south and got the Toyota's plate number for you. Then you gave it to Doll and told him to trace it. But why would Doll tell you the truth about the trace? If they were his buddies, he'd have dead-ended it, surely. Led you away from them. Left you in the dark."

Beck smiled a superior smile.

"No," he said. "They were setting up the ambush. That was the point of the phone call. It was good improvisation on their part. The kidnap gambit failed, so they switched tactics. They let Doll point us in the right direction. So that what happened tonight could happen."

I nodded slowly, like I was deferring to his point of view. The best way to clinch a pending promotion is to let them think you're just a little dumber than they are. It had worked for me before, three straight times, in the military.

"Did Doll actually know what you were planning for tonight?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "We were all discussing it, yesterday. In detail. When you saw us talking, in the office."

"So he set you up."

"Yes," he said again. "He locked up last night and then left Portland and drove all the way down to wait with them. Told them all who was coming, and when, and why."

I said nothing. Just thought about Doll's car. It was about a mile away from Beck's office. I began to wish I had hidden it better.

"But there's one big question," Beck said. "Was it just Doll?"

"Or?"

He went quiet. Then he shrugged.

"Or any of the others that work with him," he said.

The ones you don't control, I thought. Quinn's people.

"Or all of them together," he said.

He started thinking again, another thirty, forty miles. He didn't speak another word until we were back on I-95, heading north around Boston.

"Duke is dead," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Here it comes, I thought.

"I knew him a long time," he said.

I said nothing.

"You're going to have to take over," he said. "I need somebody right now. Somebody I can trust. And you've done well for me so far."

"Promotion?" I said.

"You're qualified."

"Head of security?"

"At least temporarily," he said. "Permanently, if you'd like."

"I don't know," I said.

"Just remember what I know," he said. "I own you."

I was quiet for a mile. "You going to pay me anytime soon?"

"You'll get your five grand plus what Duke got on top."

"I'll need some background," I said. "I can't help you without it."

He nodded.

"Tomorrow," he said. "We'll talk tomorrow."

Then he went quiet again. Next time I looked, he was fast asleep beside me. Some kind of a shock reaction. He thought his world was falling apart. I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast bloody wars and dread diseases, because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.

I made it back to the Maine coast purely on autopilot. I couldn't recall a single mile of the drive. I was numb with exhaustion. Every part of me ached. Paulie was slow about opening the gate. I guess we got him out of bed. He made a big point about staring in at me. I dropped Beck at the front door and put the car in the garage. Stashed the Glock and the spare magazines just for safety's sake and went in through the back door. The metal detector beeped at the car keys. I dropped them on the kitchen table. I was hungry, but I was too tired to eat. I climbed all the stairs and fell down on my bed and went to sleep, fully dressed, overcoat and shoes and all.

The weather woke me six hours later. Horizontal rain was battering my window. It sounded like gravel on the glass. I rolled off the bed and checked the view. The sky was iron gray and thick with cloud and the sea was raging. It was laced with angry foam a half-mile out. The waves were swamping the rocks. No birds. It was nine in the morning. Day fourteen, a Friday. I lay down on the bed again and stared at the ceiling and tracked back seventy-two hours to the morning of day eleven, when Duffy gave me her seven-point plan. One, two, and three, take a lot of care. I was doing OK under that heading. I was still alive, anyway. Four, find Teresa Daniel. No real progress there. Five, nail down some evidence against Beck. I didn't have any. Not a thing. I hadn't even seen him do anything wrong, except maybe operate a vehicle with phony license plates and carry a bag full of submachine guns that were probably illegal in all four states he'd been in. Six, find Quinn. No progress there, either. Seven, get the hell out. That item was going to have to wait. Then Duffy had kissed me on the cheek. Left doughnut sugar on my face.

I got up again and locked myself in my bathroom to check for e-mail. My bedroom door wasn't locked anymore. I guessed Richard Beck wouldn't presume to walk in on me. Or his mother. But his father might. He owned me. I was promoted, but I was still walking a tightrope. I sat on the floor and took my shoe off. Opened the heel and switched the machine on. You've Got Mail! It was a message from Duffy: Beck's containers unloaded and trucked to warehouse. Not inspected by Customs. Total of five. Largest shipment for some time.

I hit reply and typed: Are you maintaining surveillance?

Ninety seconds later she answered: Yes.

I sent: I got promoted.

She sent: Exploit it.

I sent: I enjoyed yesterday.

She sent: Save your battery.

I smiled and switched the unit off and put it back in my heel. I needed a shower, but first I needed breakfast, and then I needed to find clean clothes. I unlocked the bathroom and walked through my room and downstairs to the kitchen. The cook was back in business. She was serving toast and tea to the Irish girl and dictating a long shopping list. The Saab keys were on the table. The Cadillac keys weren't. I scratched around and ate everything I could find and then went looking for Beck. He wasn't around. Neither was Elizabeth or Richard. I went back to the kitchen.

"Where's the family?" I asked.

The maid looked up and said nothing. She had put a raincoat on, ready to go out shopping.

"Where's Mr. Duke?" the cook asked.

"Indisposed," I said. "I'm replacing him. Where are the Becks?"

"They went out."

"Where to?"

"I don't know."

I looked out at the weather. "Who drove?"

The cook looked down at the floor.

"Paulie," she said.

"When?"

"An hour ago."

"OK," I said. I was still wearing my coat. I had put it on when I left Duffy's motel and I hadn't taken it off since. I went straight out the back door and into the gale. The rain was lashing and it tasted of salt. It was mixed with sea spray. The waves were hitting the rocks like bombs. White foam was bursting thirty feet in the air. I ducked my face into my collar and ran around to the garage block. Into the walled courtyard. It was sheltered in there. The first garage was empty. The doors were standing open. The Cadillac was gone. The mechanic was inside the third garage, doing something by himself. The maid ran into the courtyard. I watched her haul open the fourth garage's doors. She was getting soaked. She went in and a moment later backed the old Saab out. It rocked in the wind. The rain turned the dust on it to a thin film of gray mud that ran down the sides like rivers. She drove away, off to market. I listened to the waves. Started worrying about how high they might be getting. So I hugged the courtyard wall and looped all the way around it to the seaward side. Found my little dip in the rocks. The weed stalks around it were wet and bedraggled. The dip was full of water. It was rainwater. Not seawater. It was safely above the tide. The waves hadn't reached it. But rainwater was all it was full of. Apart from the water, it was completely empty. No bundle. No rag, no Glock. The spare magazines were gone, Doll's keys were gone, the bradawl was gone, and the chisel was gone.