A Wanted Man (46 page)

Karen Delfuenso.

Chapter 80

Delfuenso had driven Bale’s Crown Vic all the way inside
and parked it in the garage. McQueen was already in the front passenger seat. Delfuenso said it was her that Reacher had seen on the two-lane, driving back and forth, with her bright lights on. At first she had meant it just as moral support, but later she had realized the backlight might be useful. Hence the triple trip. She had seen Reacher’s muzzle flash on the roof. She had buzzed her windows down and heard the shots. When the subsequent long delay became unbearable she had found her way inside.

Reacher said, “Thank you.”

She said, “You’re welcome.”

She got a first-aid kit out of the trunk. Bureau issue. She said every unmarked car had one. Standard practice. A matter of policy. She cleaned the cut on his hand and bound it up. Then they got in the car. She backed up and turned around and rolled through into the entrance tunnel. Reacher got out again and hit the red button. The inner door started to close, to allow the outer door to open. The ancient fail-safe circuits, still obedient. Then they came out of the tunnel into the sweet night air, and they bumped across the dirt, where the farmer’s grandson had torn out the DoD’s old approach road. They made it back to the two-lane, and turned right, and right again, and they
parked sideways across three bays in Lacey’s front lot, exactly where they had started.

Reacher asked her, “Do you have an ETA for Quantico?”

She said, “There was a delay. They’re still about three hours out.”

“Would you drive me back to the cloverleaf?”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Why?”

“I want to get to Virginia.”

“Quantico will want to talk to you.”

“I don’t have time for that.”

“They’ll need to know what you know.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Is that going to be your official position?”

“It always is.”

“And what’s your unofficial position?”

“Same thing. I don’t know anything.”

“Bullshit,” McQueen said to her. “He told me he had it all worked out.”

“I don’t believe him,” Delfuenso said. “I don’t have it all worked out. Not yet. Not all of it, anyway. Obviously I saw the nuclear waste. So I assume they were planning a strike somewhere. Maybe soon. Maybe into Nebraska’s aquifers.”

“Not possible,” Reacher said. “Those trailers aren’t going anywhere. Not now, not soon, not ever. They haven’t moved for twenty years. Their tires are rotted and I bet their axles are rusted solid. It would take the Corps of Engineers a year just to get them out of the tunnel.”

“Why are they in there at all? That place wasn’t built to house that kind of stuff.”

“They had to put it somewhere. No one wants it in their own back yard. It was probably just temporary. But they never figured out a permanent solution. So I guess they just forgot about it. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“But why would Wadiah want it, if it can’t be moved? If it can’t be moved, it can’t be used.”

“They were never going to use it. It’s strictly window dressing. It’s purely for show.”

“What show?”

“I’m not saying another word,” Reacher said. “Quantico will say I’m not allowed to know. They’ll call me a security risk. They’ll try to keep me in that motel in Kansas for the rest of my life. Which would drive me crazy. Which would give everyone a problem.”

“Privately, then,” Delfuenso said. “Strictly between us.”

Reacher said nothing.

“You owe me,” Delfuenso said.

“Then I get a ride to the cloverleaf?”

“Deal.”

“It’s the law of unintended consequences,” Reacher said.

“In what way?”

“It’s a bank,” Reacher said.

“Wadiah is a
banking organization,” Reacher said. “The United States has done a pretty good job of shutting down terrorist banking, all over the world. The bad guys can’t move money anywhere, and they can’t keep money anywhere. So they had to invent an alternative. A parallel system. I guess a bunch of entrepreneurs spotted an opening. Some Americans, some Syrians.
Wadiah
is the Arabic word for safekeeping. It also means a type of Islamic bank account. As in, you put money in it, and they keep that money safe for you.”

“There’s money in that building?” Delfuenso said. “Where?”

“There’s no money in any bank. Not in yours, not in mine. Not really, apart from a few bucks in a drawer. Most money is purely theoretical. It’s all in computers, backed by trust and confidence. Sometimes they have gold in a vault downstairs, to make themselves look serious. You know, to suggest capital reserves, like in the Fed in New York, or Fort Knox.”

“The nuclear waste?” Delfuenso said. “It’s a capital reserve? Their version of the gold in Fort Knox? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Exactly,” Reacher said. “It sits there and backs their currency. Which they invented. They don’t deal in dollars or pounds or euros or
yen. Remember the on-line chatter? They were talking about gallons. That’s what they call their currency unit. They buy and sell in gallons. This bomb costs a hundred gallons, that bomb costs five hundred gallons. Wadiah keeps track of the deals. They take deposits, they process payments, they shuffle balances from one account to another, they make a profit from their fees. Like any bank. Except they don’t use computers, because we can hack computers. It’s all on paper. Which is why McQueen wouldn’t let me burn the place down. Because you guys need names and addresses. It’s like a regular terrorist encyclopedia in there.”

Delfuenso looked at McQueen. She said, “Is he right?”

McQueen said, “Apart from one minor point.”

“Which is?”

“Those tanks are empty. They’re completely harmless. They were built but never used. They’re surplus. That’s why they’re in there. Surplus equipment in a surplus building.”

“Did Wadiah know they were empty?”

“Sure,” McQueen said. “Not that they ever admitted it to their clients.”

Delfuenso smiled, just briefly.

“I’m living the dream,” she said. “I just shot a couple of crooked bankers.”

Delfuenso started
the car again and rolled slowly south. Reacher sprawled in the back. Delfuenso and McQueen talked in the front, professionally, one agent to another, assessing the operation, evaluating the result. They ran through all the details, from the inside perspective, and from the outside. She told him about Sorenson. They agreed her fate was the only item in the debit column. Other than that they agreed the outcome was more than satisfactory. Spectacular, even. A major score. A treasure trove of information, and a complex system dismantled. Then McQueen told her the only remaining loose end was the identity of the big boss. Not Peter King, as previously thought. Delfuenso blinked and stopped the car on a lonely curb in the middle of nowhere.

She said, “I got some news from Quantico. When I called them about Whiteman. We heard from the State Department again. But not from their PR people this time. I think this one is genuine.”

“What did they say?”

“They have no staffer named Lester L. Lester, Jr. Never did. They never heard of him.”

“CIA?”

“Likewise. Never heard of him. And we can believe them. Because right now all their cards are on the table. They’re depending on us to keep quiet about the guy in the old pumping station.”

“Who was he?”

“He had worked in Pakistan and all over the Middle East. Except he wasn’t running agents. They were running him. He had gone native. He was Wadiah’s mole inside Langley.”

Delfuenso moved off the curb and started south again.

McQueen said, “Why did he attack us?”

“He attacked you personally. He had your name. Kansas City’s security is poor, and the CIA watches what we do. They knew we had a mole inside Wadiah. Their mole reported back. The big boss told him to deal with you. So he lured you to a remote location for a meaningless meeting. Simple as that.”

“You did well,” Reacher said, from the back seat. “Fast reactions. The smart money would have been on the other guy.”

McQueen said, “Thank you.”

“The forehead thing was a bit retro, though.”

“It was the way it came out. That’s all. I bent his arm and grabbed the knife, and the blade ended up pretty high, so I thought, why the hell not? Just for old times’ sake.”

They came off
Route 65 where it turned east, onto the small rural road, ready to cut the corner back to the Interstate exit. They passed the Civil War battlefield site, where Americans had fired cannons at Americans for nine long hours. McQueen turned in his seat and looked at Reacher and said, “One last thing.”

Reacher said, “What?”

“Tell me how you talk for a minute without using the letter
A
.”

Delfuenso said, “You were asleep.”

McQueen said, “I haven’t slept for seven months.”

Reacher said, “Easy. Just start counting. One, two, three, four, five, six. And so on. You don’t hit a letter
A
until you get to a hundred and one. You can even do it real fast and still get nowhere near ninety-nine inside a minute.”

Delfuenso eased to a stop next to a ragged grassy shoulder. No one spoke. No doubt the FBI had appropriate banter for the occasion. The army sure did. But private jokes are private. So they all sat quiet for a minute. Then Reacher got out and walked away, without looking back, past the first ramp west toward Independence and Kansas City, and onward over the bridge to the eastbound ramp. He put one foot on the shoulder and one in the traffic lane, and he stuck out his thumb, and he smiled and tried to look friendly.

For Jane
,

standing by the major oak

BY LEE CHILD

Die Trying

Tripwire

Running Blind

Echo Burning

Without Fail

Persuader

The Enemy

One Shot

The Hard Way

Bad Luck and Trouble

Nothing to Lose

Gone Tomorrow

61 Hours

Worth Dying For

The Affair

A Wanted Man

eBooks

“Second Son”

“Deep Down”

About the Author

LEE CHILD is the author of seventeen Jack Reacher thrillers, including the
New York Times
bestsellers
Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot
, and
The Hard Way
, and the #1 bestsellers
The Affair, Worth Dying For, 61 Hours, Gone Tomorrow, Bad Luck and Trouble
, and
Nothing to Lose
, as well as the short stories “Second Son” and “Deep Down.” His debut,
Killing Floor
, won both the Anthony and the Barry awards for Best First Mystery, and
The Enemy
won both the Barry and Nero awards for Best Novel. Foreign rights in the Reacher series have sold in more than forty territories. All titles have been optioned for major motion pictures, and
Jack Reacher
, based on the novel
One Shot
and starring Tom Cruise, will be released in December 2012. A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City, where he is at work on his next thriller,
Never Go Back
.

www.leechild.com

LEE CHILD is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Random House Speakers Bureau at 212-572-2013 or
[email protected]
.