Vantresca clicked Abby’s phone and started the video. At first he let it spool at the same speed she had recorded it. On the screen the shadow of her fingertip was visible on the right side of the image, scooting up, up, up. Then Vantresca paused and restarted and paused again, until he found the bubble he wanted. It contained a photograph above the text. Aaron and Maria Shevick, and Abigail Gibson, in the hallway of the Shevicks’ home, looking startled and a little uneasy. Reacher remembered the sound he heard from behind the kitchen door. The quiet, scratchy click. The cell phone, imitating a camera.
Vantresca said, “The text below the image says the people in the picture are Jack, Joanna, and Abigail Reacher.”
He played and paused, played and paused, through four more bubbles. He stopped on a fifth. He said, “Right here they’ve already figured out it’s Abby Gibson, not Abigail Reacher. Next message down, they’re sending a guy to her place of work, to get her home address.”
He moved the video on.
“And here they have her home address, and now they’re sending a car to her house, with orders to bring her in if they find her.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Reacher said.
“It gets worse,” Vantresca said. He moved the video on again, to a fat green bubble from later in the day, which had the same photograph in it again, above a dense block of Cyrillic writing. Vantresca read out loud, “It has been reported that the old woman named Joanna Reacher in the picture above was in our pawn shop where she signed her name Maria Shevick.”
“Shit,” Reacher said. “That was their shop?”
“She should have expected it. Most everything is theirs, on the west side. Problem is, she gave them her real name. Which makes it at least somewhat likely she gave them her real address and her real Social Security number, too. Which puts them one step away from finding out she’s Aaron Shevick’s legal wife. From that point on it’s not going to be rocket science to figure out who’s really who. Whereupon they can act as fast as they like. They’re already waiting outside the house.”
“They’ll be plunged into an existential crisis. Do they want Aaron Shevick the name, or Aaron Shevick the physical human being who borrowed their money and is apparently covertly stirring them up? What, after all, is the nature of identity? It’s a question they’ll have to wrestle with.”
“Are you a West Pointer?”
“How could you tell?”
“The level of bullshit. This could get very serious. Obviously they want the right physical human being, but however they set about getting him, you got to figure a little china will get broken along the way. Starting right inside that house.”
Reacher nodded.
“I know,” he said. “Believe me. It’s already very serious. They’re seventy years old. But I don’t see what I can do about their physical safety. Not around the clock. The only rational response would be evacuate them to a safe location. But where? I don’t have the resources.” He paused a beat. Then he said, “Normally with this kind of thing, I would say, go stay with your daughter. I’m sure they would love to.”
Vantresca moved the video to a fat bubble from late the night before. He said, “This is where you say the name Trulenko to the doorman where Abby worked. From here the conversation spins off in two different directions. First, about you. They can’t understand why a downmarket applicant for credit would ask that question. Two different worlds. From there they develop the theory you’re a provocateur paid by an outside organization.”
“And the second direction is about Trulenko himself,” Abby said. “There are two separate mentions. First a status check and a threat assessment. Which comes back negative. All secure. But an hour later, they start to worry.”
“Because I got away,” Reacher said. “When you hauled me in your door. They knew I was still on the loose.”
Vantresca said, “They pulled four crews off their regular assignments and told them to report for extra guard duty. They told the existing guards to fall back and form up again as Trulenko’s personal detail. They call it Situation B, which we think is a kind of Defcon level. It’s clearly pre-planned, probably rehearsed, maybe even used before.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “A crew is what, two guys in a car?”
“You would know.”
“Therefore eight guys in total. Reinforcing how many to start with? How many do they deploy on an everyday zero-threat basis? Not more than four, probably, if they can also seamlessly change into a personal detail afterward. So four fall back and eight take over the perimeter.”
“You against twelve guys.”
“Not if I pick the right spot on the perimeter. I could sneak in a gap.”
“Best case, four guys.”
“Moot point, unless the phone tells the eight guys exactly where to report, for their extra guard duty. A street address would be helpful.”
Vantresca didn’t answer.
Reacher looked at Abby.
She said, “It does say exactly where.”
“But?”
“It’s an incredibly difficult word. I looked it up all over the place. Originally it seemed to mean either a hive or a nest or a burrow. Or all three. Or somewhere in between. For something that might have hummed or buzzed or thrashed around. Like a lot of ancient words it was biologically inexact. Now it seems to be used exclusively as a metaphor. Like in the movies, when you see the mad scientist in his lab, full of lit-up machines and crackling energy. That’s how the word is used now.”
“Like a nerve center.”
“Exactly.”
“So all the phone says is, report to the nerve center.”
“Obviously they know where it is.”
“The guys I spoke to didn’t,” Reacher said. “I asked them, and I believed them. It’s classified information. Which means the crews they just hauled off their regular duties were senior people. In the know.”
“Makes sense,” Vantresca said. “The pick of the litter. Only the best for Situation B.”
“Told you so,” Hogan said. “The only route is straight through the top levels.”
Barton said, “Crazy.”
—
Vantresca and Abby started work on the Albanian messages, using the same system as before, side by side at the kitchen table. Vantresca was less familiar with the language, but the texts themselves were more formal and grammatical than their Ukrainian counterparts, so altogether the work went faster. And there was much less to do. All the relevant stuff came during the last few hours. Some of it was familiar. Reacher was once again taken to be a provocateur paid by outside forces. Some of it was new. The white Toyota had been seen driving in. Reacher and Abby had been seen getting out together, after parking way out in the wastelands. A small, slender woman with short dark hair, and a big ugly man with short fair hair. Be on the lookout.
“Technically I think it means plain-featured,” Abby said. “Or handsome in a rugged kind of way. Not ugly as such.”
Reacher said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
“These might,” Vantresca said. He was at the end of the video. The last Albanian text. He said, “They’re actively looking for you. They’re giving an estimate of your current position. They’re guessing you’re somewhere inside a particular twelve-block rectangle.”
“And are we?”
“Not far from its exact geographic center.”
“That’s not good,” Reacher said. “They seem to have plenty of information.”
“They have a lot of local knowledge. They have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and a lot of eyes behind a lot of windows, and a lot of cars on a lot of streets.”
“Sounds like you’ve been studying up on them.”
“Like I said, I hear things. Everyone has a story. Because everyone comes up against them, sooner or later. Whatever you’re into, it’s the cost of doing business, east of Center Street. People get used to it. Ultimately they see it as reasonable. Ten percent, like the church used to take, back in the olden days. Like taxes. Nothing to be done about it. That part becomes quite civilized. As long as you pay. Which everyone does, by the way. These are scary people.”