Blue Moon

“I wanted a Ukrainian phone. Apparently they text each other a lot. I figured I could look back and see where they’re up to with this. Maybe they mention Trulenko. Maybe I could make them panic, and make them move him. That would be the time of maximum opportunity.”

Abby came down the stairs. Still dressed.

She said, “Hey.”

Reacher said, “Hey back.”

“I heard all that. Good plan. Except won’t they just kill the phone remotely? You won’t hear from them, and they won’t hear from you.”

“I chose the guy I took it from pretty carefully. He was relatively competent. Therefore relatively trusted. Maybe relatively senior. Therefore relatively reluctant to fess up that I took his lunch money. I left him a little embarrassed. He won’t report anything in a hurry. It’s a pride thing. I think I have a few hours, at least.”

“OK, good plan, except nothing.”

“Except I’m not great with phones. There might be menus. All kinds of buttons to press. I might delete something by mistake.”

“OK, show me.”

“And even if I don’t delete them by mistake, the texts are probably in Ukrainian. Which I can’t read without the internet. And I’m really not great with computers.”

“That would be the second step. We would need to start with the phone. Show me.”

“I didn’t bring it here,” Reacher said. “The guy in the Lincoln claimed they could be traced. I don’t want someone knocking on the door five minutes from now.”

“So where is it?”

“I hid it three blocks from here. I figured that was safe enough. Pi times the radius squared. They would have to search nearly a thirty-block circle. They wouldn’t even try.”

Abby said, “OK, let’s go take a look.”

“I also got an Albanian phone. Kind of accidentally. But in the end the same kind of deal. I want to read it. Maybe I can figure out what they’re mad with me about.”

“Are they mad with you?”

“They sent a guy after me. They want to know who I am.”

“That could be normal. You’re a new face in town. They like to know things.”

“Maybe.”

Hogan said, “There’s a guy you should talk to.”

Reacher said, “What guy?”

“He comes to gigs sometimes. A dogface, just like you.”

“Army?”

“Stands for, aren’t really Marines yet.”

“Like Marine stands for muscles are requested, intelligence not expected.”

“This guy I’m talking about speaks a bunch of old Commie languages. He was a company commander late on in the Cold War. Also he knows what’s going on here in town. He could be helpful. Or at least useful. With the languages especially. You can’t rely on a computer translation. Not for a thing like this. I could call him, if you like.”

“You know him well?”

“He’s solid. Good taste in music.”

“Do you trust him?”

“As much as I trust any dogface who doesn’t play the drums.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Call him. Can’t hurt.”

He and Abby stepped out to the nighttime stillness, and Hogan stayed behind, in the half-lit hallway, dialing his phone.

Chapter 25

Reacher and Abby covered the three block distance via a roundabout route. Obviously if the phones were truly traceable, they might have already been discovered, in what was clearly a temporary stash, in which case surveillance might have been set up against their eventual retrieval. Better to play it safe. Or as safe as possible, which wasn’t very. There were shadows and alleys and deep doorways and two out of every three street lights were busted. There was plenty of habitat for hidden nighttime watchers.

Reacher saw the rusty mailbox up ahead. The middle of the next block. He said, “Pretend we’re having some kind of a deep conversation, and when we get level with the mailbox we stop to make an especially big point.”

“OK,” Abby said. “Then what?”

“Then we ignore the mailbox completely and we move on. But at that point very quietly. We glide away.”

“An actual pretend conversation? Or just moving our lips, like a silent movie?”

“Maybe whispered. Like we’re dealing with secret information.”

“Starting when?”

“Now,” Reacher said. “Keep on walking. Don’t slow down.”

“What do you want to whisper about?”

“I guess whatever is on your mind.”

“Are you serious? We could be walking into a dangerous situation here. That’s what’s on my mind.”

“You said you want to do one thing every day that scares you.”

“I’m already way over quota.”

“And you survived every time.”

“We could be walking into a hail of gunfire.”

“They won’t shoot me. They want to ask me questions.”

“You absolutely sure?”

“It’s a psychological dynamic. Like in the theater. It’s not necessarily the kind of thing that has a yes or no answer.”

The mailbox was coming up.

“Get ready to stop,” Reacher whispered.

“And give them a stationary target?”

“Only as long as it takes to make a big imaginary statement. Then we move on again. But very quietly, OK?”

Reacher stopped.

Abby stopped.

She said, “What kind of big imaginary statement?”

“Whatever is on your mind.”

She was quiet a beat.

Then she said, “No. What’s on my mind is I don’t want to make a statement about what’s on my mind. Not yet. That’s my statement.”

“Go,” he said.

They moved on. As quiet as they could. Three paces. Four.

“OK,” Reacher said.