Gone Tomorrow (27 page)

FIFTY-SEVEN

MADISON SQUARE PARK WAS SEVEN BLOCKS NORTH. I had the best part of four hours to kill. I spent the time shopping and eating on Park Avenue South. Not because I had things to buy. Not because I was especially hungry. But because it’s always best to give pursuers what they don’t expect. Fugitives are supposed to run far and fast. They’re not supposed to dawdle through the immediate neighbourhood, in and out of stores and cafés.

It was just after six in the morning. Delis and supermarkets and diners and coffee shops were all that was open. I started in a Food Emporium that had an entrance on 14th Street and an exit on 15th. I spent forty-five minutes in there. I took a basket and wandered the aisles and pretended to choose stuff. Less conspicuous than just hanging out. Less conspicuous than wandering the aisles without a basket. I didn’t want an alert manager to call anything in. I developed a fantasy where I had an apartment nearby. I stocked its imaginary kitchen with enough stuff to last two whole days. Coffee, of course. Plus pancake mix, eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread, butter, some jam, a pack of salami, a quarter-pound of cheese. When I got bored and the basket got heavy I left it in a deserted aisle and slipped out the back of the store.

Next stop was a diner four blocks north. I walked on the right-hand sidewalk with my back to the traffic. In the diner I ate pancakes and bacon that someone else had shopped and cooked. More my style. I spent another forty minutes in there. Then I moved on half a block to a French brasserie. More coffee, and a croissant. Someone had left a
New York Times
on the chair across from me. I read it from end to end. No mention of a manhunt in the city. No mention of Sansom’s Senate race in the national section.

I split the final two hours four separate ways. I moved from supermarket on the corner of Park and 22nd to a Duane Reade drugstore opposite and then to a CVS pharmacy on Park and 3rd. Visible evidence suggested that the nation spent more on hair care than food. Then at twenty-five minutes to ten I stopped shopping and stepped out to the bright new morning and looped around and took a good long careful look at my destination from the mouth of 24th Street, which was a shadowed anonymous canyon between two huge buildings. I saw nothing that worried me. No unexplained cars, no parked vans, no pairs or trios of dressed-down people with wires in their ears.

So at ten o’clock exactly I stepped into Madison Square Park.

I found Theresa Lee and Jacob Mark side by side on a bench near a dog run. They looked rested but nervous, and stressed, each in their own way. Each for their own reasons, presumably. They were two of maybe a hundred people sitting peacefully in the sun. The park was a rectangle of trees and lawns and paths. It was a small oasis, one block wide and three tall, fenced, surrounded by four busy sidewalks. Parks are reasonably good places for a clandestine rendezvous. Most hunters are attracted by moving targets. Most believe that fugitives stay in motion. Three of a hundred people sitting still while the city swirls around them attract less attention than three of a hundred hustling hard down the street.

Not perfect, but an acceptable risk.

I checked all around one last time and sat down next to Lee. She handed me a newspaper. One of the tabloids I had already seen. The HUNT headline. She said, ‘It claims we shot three federal agents.’

‘We shot four,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget the medical guy.’

‘But they make it sound like we used real guns. They make ii sound like the guys died.’

‘They want to sell papers.’

‘We’re in trouble.’

‘We knew that already. We didn’t need a journalist to tell us.’

She said, ‘Docherty came through again. He was texting messages to me all night long, while the phone was off.’

She lifted up off the bench and took a sheaf of paper out of her back pocket. Three sheets of yellowed hotel stationery, folded four ways.

I said, ‘You took notes?’

She said, ‘They were long messages. I didn’t want to keep the phone on, if there were things I needed to review.’

‘So what do we know?’

‘The 17th Precinct checked transportation gateways. Standard procedure, after a major crime. Four men left the country three hours after the likely time of death. Through JFK. The 17th is calling them potential suspects. It’s a plausible scenario.’

I nodded.

‘The 17th Precinct is right,’ I said. ‘Lila Hoth told me so.’

‘You met with her?’

‘She called me.’

‘On what?’

‘Another phone I took from Leonid, He and a pal found me. It didn’t work out exactly how I wanted, but I made some limited contact.’

‘She confessed?’

‘More or less.’

‘So where is she now?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I’m guessing somewhere east of Fifth, south of 59th.’

‘Why?’

‘She used the Four Seasons as a front. Why travel?’

Lee said, ‘There was a burned-out rental car in Queens. The 17th thinks the four guys used it to get out of Manhattan. Then they ditched it and used that elevated train thing to get to the airport.’

I nodded again. ‘Lila said the car they used no longer exists.’

‘But here’s the thing,’ Lee said. ‘The four guys didn’t head back to London or Ukraine or Russia. They were routed through Tajikistan.’

‘Which is where?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Those new places confuse me.’

‘Tajikistan is right next to Afghanistan. They share a border. Also with Pakistan.’

‘You can fly direct to Pakistan.’

‘Correct. Therefore either those guys were from Tajikistan, or from Afghanistan itself. Tajikistan is where you go to get into Afghanistan without being too obvious about it. You cross the border in a pick-up truck. Roads are bad, but Kabul is not too far away.’

‘OK.’

‘And here’s the other thing. Homeland Security has a protocol. Some kind of computer algorithm. They can trace groups of people through similar itineraries and linked bookings. Turns it those four guys entered the country three months ago from

Tajikistan, along with some other folks, including two women with passports from Turkmenistan. One was sixty, and the other was twenty-six. They came through immigration together and claimed to be mother and daughter. And Homeland Security is prepared to swear their passports were genuine.’

‘So the Hoths were not Ukrainian. Everything they told us was a lie.’

We all chewed on that for twenty long seconds, in silence. I went through all the stuff Lila had told us and deleted it, item by item.

Like pulling files from a drawer, and leafing through them, and then pitching them in the trash.

I said, ‘We saw their passports at the Four Seasons. They looked Ukrainian to me.’

Lee said, ‘They were phony. Or they would have used them at immigration.’

I said, ‘Lila had blue eyes.’ Lee said, ‘I noticed.’

‘Where exactly is Turkmenistan?’

‘Also next to Afghanistan. A longer border. Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, clockwise from the Gulf.’

‘Easier when it was all the Soviet Union.’

‘Unless you lived there.’

‘Are Turkmenistan and Afghanistan ethnically similar?’

‘Probably. All those borders are completely arbitrary. They’re accidents of history. What matters are the tribal divisions. Lines on a map have got nothing to do with it.’

‘Are you an expert?’

‘The NYPD knows more about that region than the CIA. We have to. We’ve got people over there. We’ve got better intelligence than anyone.’

‘Could a person from Afghanistan get a passport from Turkmenistan?’

‘By relocating?’

‘By asking for help and getting it.’

‘From an ethnic sympathizer?’

I nodded. ‘Maybe under the counter.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Some Afghan people have bright blue eyes. Especially the women. Some weird genetic strand in the population.’

‘You think the Hoths are from Afghanistan?’

‘They knew a hell of a lot about the conflict with the Soviets. A little dressed up, but they got most of the details right.’

‘Maybe they read books.’

‘No, they got the feelings right. And the atmosphere. Like the ancient greatcoats. Details like that are not widely available. That’s insider information. In public the Red Army made out it was superbly equipped, for obvious reasons. Our propaganda said the same thing about them, for equally obvious reasons. But it wasn’t true. The Red Army was falling apart. A lot of what the Hoths said sounded like first-hand information to me.’

‘So?’

‘Maybe Svetlana really did fight there. But on the other side.’

Lee paused a beat. ‘You think the Hoths are Afghan tribeswomen?’

‘If Svetlana fought there, but not for the Soviets, then they must be.’

Lee paused again. ‘In which case Svetlana was telling the whole story from the other side. Everything was inverted. Including the atrocities.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She didn’t suffer them. She committed them.’

We all went quiet again, another twenty seconds. I kept my eyes moving all around the park.
Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear
.
The more you engage, the longer you survive
. But nothing jumped out at me. Nothing untoward was happening. People were coming and going, people were taking dogs to the run, a line was forming at a hamburger stand. Early, but every hour of the day or night is lunch time for someone. It depends on when the day starts. Lee was going through her notes. Jacob Mark was staring at the ground, but his gaze was focused somewhere far below the surface. Finally he leaned forward and turned his head and looked at me. I thought:
Here it comes
. The big question. The bump in the road.

He asked, ‘When Lila Hoth called you, did she mention Peter?’

I nodded. ‘She picked him up in the bar.’

‘Why spend four hours doing that?’

‘Tradecraft. And for fun and finesse. Because she could.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘She said he’s here in the city.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Do you think he’s OK?’ I didn’t answer.

He said, ‘Talk to me, Reacher.’ I said, ‘No.’

‘No you won’t talk to me?’

‘No, I don’t think he’s OK.’

‘But he might be.’

‘I could be wrong.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘I said I wasn’t scared of her, and she said that’s what Peter Molina had said, too. I asked if he was OK, and she said I should come over and find out for myself.’

‘So he could be OK.’

‘It’s possible. But I think you should be realistic.’

‘About what? Why would two Afghan tribeswomen want to mess with Peter?’

‘To get to Susan, of course.’

‘For what? The Pentagon is supposed to be helping Afghanistan.’

I said, ‘If Svetlana was a fighting tribeswoman, then she was one of the mujahideen. And when the Russians went home, the mujahideen did not go back to tending their goats. They moved right along. Some of them became the Taliban, and the rest of them became al-Qaeda.’

FIFTY-EIGHT

JACOB MARK SAID, ‘I HAVE TO GO TO THE COPS ABOUT PETER.’

He got halfway off the bench before I leaned across Theresa Lee and put my hand on his arm.

‘Think hard,’ I said.

‘What’s to think about? My nephew is a kidnapping victim. He’s a hostage. The woman confessed.’

‘Think about what the cops will do. They’ll call the feds immediately. The feds will lock you up again and put Peter on the back burner, because they’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

‘I have to try.’

‘Peter’s dead, Jake. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to face it.’

‘There’s still a chance.’

‘Then the fastest way to find him is to find Lila. And we can do that better than those feds.’

‘You think?’

‘Look at their track record. They missed her once, and they let us break out of jail. I wouldn’t send them to look for a book in the library.’

‘How the hell do we find her on our own?’

I looked at Theresa Lee. ‘Did you speak to Sansom?’

She shrugged, like she had good news and bad. She said, ‘I spoke to him briefly. He said he might want to come up here personally. He said he would call me back to coordinate the where and the when. I said he couldn’t do that, because I was keeping the phone switched off. So he said he would call Docherty’s cell instead, and I should call Docherty and pick up the message. So I did, and Docherty didn’t answer. So I tried the precinct switchboard. The dispatcher said Docherty was unavailable.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I think it means he just got arrested.’

Which changed everything. I understood that even before Lee got around to spelling it out. She handed me her folded notes. I took them, like receiving the baton in a relay race. I was to go onward, as fast as I could. She was spilling off the track, her race finished. She said, ‘You understand, right? I have to turn myself in now. He’s my partner. I can’t let him face this madness alone.’

I said, ‘You thought he would ditch you in a heartbeat.’

‘But he didn’t. And I have my own standards, anyway.’

‘It won’t do any good.’

‘Maybe not. But I won’t turn my back on my partner.’

‘You’re just taking yourself off the board. You can’t help any one from a jail cell. Outside is always better than inside.’

‘It’s different for you. You can be gone tomorrow. I can’t. I live here.’

‘What about Sansom? I need a time and a place.’

‘I don’t have that information. And you should take care with Sansom, anyway. He sounded weird on the phone. I couldn’t tell whether he was real mad or real worried. It’s hard to say whose side he’s going to be on, when and if he gets here.’

Then she gave me Leonid’s first cell phone, and the emergency charger. She put her hand on my arm and squeezed, just briefly, just a little. An all-purpose substitute for a hug and a good-luck gesture. And right alter that our temporary three way partnership fell apart completely. Jacob Mark was on his feet even before Lee had started to get up. He said, ‘I owe it to Peter. OK, they might put me back in a cell, but at least they’ll be out looking for him.’

‘We could look for him,’ I said.

‘We have no resources.’

I looked at them both and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’

They were sure about it. They walked away from me, out of the park, to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, where they stood and craned their necks, looking for a police car, the same way people stand when they are trying to hail a cab. I sat alone for a minute, and then I got up and walked the other way.

Next stop, somewhere east of Fifth and south of 59th.