Gone Tomorrow

doctors.

I paused on the stairwell side of the door and took a deep breath. Then another. I put my gloved hand on the handle. I took the slack out of the MP5’s trigger,

I pulled the door.

I held it at forty-five degrees with my foot. Cradled the MP5’s barrel in my glove. Looked and listened. No sound. Nothing to see. I stepped into the corridor. Whipped one way. Whipped the other.

No one there.

No sentries, no guards, no nothing. Just a length of dirty matted carpet and dim yellow light and two rows of closed doors. Nothing to hear, except the subliminal hum and shudder of the city and muted faraway sirens.

I closed the stairwell door behind me.

I checked numbers and walked quickly to Lila’s door. Put my ear on the crack and listened hard.

I heard nothing.

I waited. Five whole minutes. Ten. No sound. No one can stay still and silent longer than me.

I dipped the porter’s pass card into the slot. A tiny light flashed red. Then green. There was a click. I smashed the handle down and was inside a split second later.

The room was empty.

The bathroom was empty.

There were signs of recent occupation. The toilet roll was loose and ragged. The sink was wet. A towel was used. The bed was rucked. The chairs were out of position.

I checked the other four rooms. All empty. All abandoned. Nothing left behind. No evidence pointing towards an imminent return.

Lila Hoth, one step ahead.

Jack Reacher, one step behind.

* * *

I took my glove off and zipped up again and rode down to the lobby. I hauled the night porter into a sitting position against the back of his counter and tore the tape off his mouth.

He said, ‘Don’t hit me again.’

I said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Not my fault,’ he said. ‘I told you the truth. You asked what rooms I put them in. Past tense.’

‘When did they leave?’

‘About ten minutes after you came the first time.’

‘You called them?’

‘I had to, man.’

‘Where did they go?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What did they pay you?’

‘A thousand,’ he said.

‘Not bad.’

‘Per room.’

‘Insane,’ I said. Which it was. For that kind of money they could have gone back to the Four Seasons. Except they couldn’t. Which was the point.

* * *

I paused in the shadows on the Seventh Avenue sidewalk. Where did they go? But first, how did they go? Not in cars. On the way in they had fifteen people. They would have needed three cars, minimum. And faded old piles with night porters working alone don’t have valet parking.

Taxis? Possible, on the way in, late in the evening from midtown. Going out again, at three in the morning on Seventh Avenue? Eight people would have required at least two simultaneous empty cabs.

Unlikely.

Subway? Possible. Probable, even. There were three lines within a block’s walk. Night-time schedules, a maximum twenty-minute wait on the platform, but then escape either uptown or downtown. But to where? Nowhere that needed a long walk at the other end. A gaggle of eight people hustling hard on the sidewalk was very noticeable. There were six hundred agents on the streets. The only other hotel option I knew was way west of even the Eighth Avenue line. A fifteen-minute walk, maybe more. Too big a risk of exposure.

So, the subway, but to where?

New York City. Three hundred and twenty square miles. Two hundred and five thousand acres. Eight million separate addresses. I stood there and sorted possibilities like a machine.

I drew a blank.

Then I smiled.

You talk too much, Lila.

I heard her voice in my head again. From the tea room at the Four Seasons. She was talking about the old Afghan fighters. Complaining about them, from her pretended perspective. In reality she was boasting about her own people, and the Red Army’s fruitless back-and-forth skirmishing against them. She had said: The mujahideen were intelligent. They had a habit of doubling back to positions we had previously written off as abandoned.

I set off back to Herald Square. To the R train. I could get out at Fifth and 59th. From there it was a short walk to the old buildings on 58th Street.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

The old buildings on 58th Street were all dark and quiet. Four thirty in the morning, in a neighbourhood that does little business before ten. I was watching from fifty yards away. From a shadowed doorway on the far sidewalk across Madison Avenue. There was crime scene tape across the door with the single bell push. The left- hand building of the three. The one with the abandoned restaurant on the ground floor.

No lights in the windows.

No signs of activity.

The crime scene tape looked unbroken. And inevitably it would have been accompanied by an official NYPD seal. A small rectangle of paper, glued across the gap between door and jamb, at keyhole height. It was probably still there, untorn.

Which meant there was a back door.

Which was likely, with a restaurant on the premises. Restaurants generate all kinds of unpleasant garbage. All day long. It smells, and it attracts rats. Not acceptable to pile it on the sidewalk. Better to dump it in sealed cans outside the kitchen door, and then wheel the cans to the kerb for the night-time pick-up.

I moved twenty yards south to widen my angle. Saw no open alleys. The buildings were all cheek-by-jowl, all along the block. Next to the door with the crime scene tape was the old restaurant’s window. But next to that was another door. Architecturally it was part of the restaurant building’s neighbour. It was set into the ground floor of the next building along. But it was plain, it was black, it was unlabelled, it was a little scarred, it had no step, and it was a lot wider than a normal door. It had no handle on the outside. Just a keyhole. Without a key it opened only from the inside. I made a bet with myself that it let out of a covered alley. I figured that the restaurant’s neighbour was two rooms wide on the ground floor, and three rooms wide above. At the second-floor level the block was solid. But below that, at street level, there were passageways leading to rear entrances, all of them discreetly boxed in and built over. Air rights in Manhattan are worth a fortune. The city sells itself up and down, as well as side to side.

I moved back to my shadowed doorway. I was counting time in my head. Forty-four minutes from the time Lila’s guys had been due to grab me up. Maybe thirty-four from the time Lila had expected their mission- accomplished call. Maybe twenty-four from the time she had finally accepted that things had not gone well. Maybe fourteen from the time she had first been tempted to call me.