Reacher shuffled over and grabbed a pack of bags, and then he shuffled after Plato, hobbled, restricted, constrained, humiliated, following the little man like a giant caged ape.
Plato was in the right corridor. He was doing what Holland had done. He was playing his flashlight beam the length of the shelf and back again, over the gold and the silver and the platinum, and the diamonds and the rubies and the sapphires and the emeralds, and the clocks and the paintings and the platters and the candlesticks. But not with greed or wonderment in his face. He was assessing the size of the packaging task, that was all.
He said, ‘You can start bagging this shit up. But first show me the powder.’
Reacher led him across the chamber, heels and knuckles and ass, low and deferential, all the way to the third of the three tunnels packed with meth. Still a staggering sight. Bricks stacked ten high, ten deep, a whole solid wall of them a hundred feet long, undisturbed for fifty years, old yellowing glassine glowing dull in the flashlight beams. Fifteen thousand packs. More than thirteen tons.
‘Is this all of it?’ Plato asked.
‘A third of it,’ Reacher said.
The feet on the staircase grew louder. The fuel guy was hustling.
Plato said, ‘We’ll take what’s here. Plus more. Until the plane is full.’
Reacher said, ‘I thought you sold it to the Russian.’
Plato said, ‘I did.’
‘But you’re going to take it anyway?’
‘Only some of it.’
‘That’s a double-cross.’
Plato laughed. ‘You killed three people for me and now you’re upset that I’m stealing? From some dumb Russian you never met?’
‘I would prefer you to be true to your word, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want my daughter to be OK.’
‘She’s with those guys out of choice. And ten hours from now I’ll have no further use for her, anyway. I’m never doing business here again.’
‘You’ll have no further use for me, either,’ Reacher said.
‘I’ll let you live,’ Plato said. ‘You did well for me. Slow, but you got there in the end.’
Reacher said nothing.
‘I am true to my word,’ Plato said. ‘Just not with Russians.’
Behind them they heard the last loud footstep on the last metal stair and then the first quiet footstep on the concrete floor. They turned and saw one of Plato’s men arrive, like all of them about five seven in height, therefore stooped but not too much. He had his gun on his chest and a flashlight in his hand. He was looking all around. Not curious. Just a guy getting the job done. He found the fuel line and picked it up one-handed and pulled it out straight and jerked it and heaved serpentine waves into it to work out the kinks. He asked in Spanish where the tank was and Reacher waited until Plato translated the question and then he pointed his flashlight beam at the relevant corridor. The guy hauled the heavy hose after him and disappeared.
Plato said, ‘Go start bagging the jewellery.’
Reacher left him communing with his stock in trade and shuffled the long way around. Five thousand gallons in a homemade tank. He wanted to be sure the connection was secure. He was going to be down there until Plato died, which was a minimum of a few more minutes and a maximum of ten more hours, and he preferred one thing to worry about at a time.
He found Plato’s guy finishing up. The brass end of the hose was neatly socketed into a matching brass fitment brazed into the end wall of the tank. The guy was nudging it one way, nudging it the other, feeling for looseness or play. He seemed to find none, so he opened a tap on the tank side of the joint. Reacher heard the fuel flow into the hose. Not much of it. Three gallons, maybe four. That was all. Gravity only, into the length of hose that lay on the floor at a lower level than the tank itself. For the rest, the pump would have to prime itself and then suck hard and haul it all up and out.
Reacher watched the joint. A single fat drop of kerosene formed where two fibre washers were compressed. It beaded large and waited and then fell to the floor and made a tiny wet stain.
That was all.
No more.
Safe enough.
Plato’s guy crouched a little and duck-walked back to the stairs and headed upward. Reacher shuffled on around the perimeter of the circular chamber and disappeared into a corridor far from the jewellery and far from the meth.
FORTY-FIVE
D O IT. SHORT SIMPLE WORDS, A SHORT SIMPLE COMMAND. OR A short simple plea, or a short simple request. Or a short simple half of a bargain. A very attractive bargain. Do it, and get extremely rich, and live happily for ever with respect and veneration from your whole community. They would be the men who took down Plato. Saints. Heroes. Songs would be sung, tales would be told.
The guy from seat 4A looked at the guy from seat 4B. They both swallowed hard. They were getting very close to doing it. Dangerously close. A hundred feet south a new sentry had just rotated into position. He was facing away, alert and on guard. Way far beyond him the flares still burned at the distant end of the runway. Fifty yards the other side of the Boeing’s tail the third flare still burned. Fifty yards beyond the de-icer truck in the other direction the fourth flare was still a bright crimson puffball. Blue moon, white snow, red flame.
The other three guys were working in the plane. Opening the doors, setting the ladders, working out a system for hauling the stuff hand-to-hand along a human chain and then getting it up into the plane and stacking it safely on the floor of the old economy section.
The guy from seat 4A hoisted the end of the second hose on his shoulder. The guy from seat 4B hit the switch and the drum began to unwind.
Sixteen minutes to four in the morning.
Eleven minutes to go.
Reacher heard Plato moving about. Heard him step out of the corridor into the round chamber. Reacher was sitting on the floor in the first of the curved connecting tunnels. In what he was calling the B-ring. Like a miniature Pentagon, but round and underground. The central chamber was the A-ring. Then came the B-ring, and then the C-ring, and around the outside was the D-ring. All partially interconnected by the eight straight spokes. More than seventeen hundred linear feet of tunnel. Twenty-four separate junctions. Twelve random left turns, twelve random right turns. Plus a total of ten hollowed-out bathrooms and kitchens and storage chambers.
A warren.
A maze.
Reacher had been in it before, and Plato hadn’t.
No cell signal, his guys all busy on the surface, no possibility of reinforcement.
Reacher waited.
Plato called, ‘Holland?’
The sound of the word boomed and echoed and took unpredictable paths and seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Reacher waited.
Plato called, ‘Holland? Get your ass over here. Our deal isn’t finished yet. Remember, I’ll cripple her and mutilate her and let her live for a year before I finish her off.’
Reacher said nothing.
Plato called, ‘Holland?’
No response from Reacher. Five seconds. Ten.
‘Holland?’
Reacher said nothing. The big gamble came right then. Right at that exact moment in time. Fifty-fifty. Live or die. A smart guy with a dawning problem would hustle straight up the stairs and send foot soldiers down in his place. A dumb guy would stay to fight it out.
But so might a smart guy overcome by ego, and arrogance, and a sense of superiority, and a need never to appear weak because he was only four feet eleven inches tall.
Fifty-fifty.
Live or die.
Plato stayed.
He called, ‘Holland? Where are you?’
A trace of worry in his voice.
Reacher put his mouth close to the curved concrete and said, ‘Holland’s dead.’
The sound rode the walls and went all around and came back to him, a quiet-spoken sentence, everywhere and nowhere, conversational, but full of menace. Reacher heard Plato’s feet scuffling on the concrete floor. He was spinning in place, trying to locate the voice.
Plato’s feet went quiet and he called out, ‘What did you say?’
Reacher moved along an empty spoke into the C-ring. A slow, silent shuffle. No sound at all, except the whisper of fabric when the seat of his pants hit the floor. Which didn’t matter anyway. All sounds were everywhere. They hissed and sang and branched and travelled.
Reacher put his mouth to the wall and said, ‘I shot Holland in the head. Now I’m coming for you.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Tell me.’
‘I was a friend of Janet Salter’s.’
‘Who?’
‘The witness. Didn’t you even know her name?’
‘Are you the military cop?’
‘You’re about to find out who I am.’
