‘Cricket players need to be. To understand the rules.’
‘They were very bad people.’
‘I believe you.’
‘I mean, really bad. You don’t want to know.’
‘How many?’
‘Two.’
‘And I guess they had brothers and cousins and so on, who moved to Sydney, and never forgot, because of their tribal culture.’
‘Which is why I’m here,’ I said. ‘People shouldn’t bottle things up. Much healthier to let it all out. I wanted to give them the chance.’
‘You’re taking a risk.’
‘I don’t like being on a list. A thing like that, I take it as a challenge. No doubt a flaw in my character, but it is what it is.’
Peterson did something with his phone. Some kind of encrypted communication.
He said, ‘The Sydney police department has the name Dragan in its database.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a she. Maybe not a brother or a cousin. Maybe a sister. The Sydney police department thinks she’s a bad person in her own right. They think she runs drugs and prostitution and payday loans. But they can’t prove it.’
Then he went quiet.
Meaningfully quiet.
I said, ‘I’m going to go take a drive.’
‘Where?’
‘To see the sights,’ I said.
I got up and strolled back to the big brown sedan. It had a parking ticket under the wiper. I got in and fired it up. I headed for the beaches.
I parked in a municipal lot and took out the captured cell phone. I looked at the log again. I called Dragan back. The first time ever, from that particular phone. I was breaking the rules. A woman answered. She sounded surprised. Even affronted.
She said, ‘Why are you calling me?’
Her accent was obviously foreign, but fairly neutral. Not good enough for the movies.
I said, ‘This is not who you think it is.’
No reply.
I said, ‘Or maybe it should be. If you had thought harder in the first place. The boy you sent fell down on the job.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You tell me first. Tell me your name.’
‘My name is Dragan.’
‘And mine is Reacher. I’m the fourth man.’
‘You killed my brother.’
‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’
‘Now I’m going to kill you.’
‘Which one was your brother? What rank?’
‘He was a colonel.’
‘He ordered his men to rape an eight-year-old to death. And her mother. Are you defending that?’
‘You’re a liar.’
‘I put my gun to his head and he cried like a baby. He begged and pleaded and wet his pants.’
‘You’re a liar.’
‘You should be glad he’s dead.’
‘You’re the last. I’m going to kill you.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Have it your way.’
I told her where I was. The beach, the municipal lot, the brown sedan.
By that point it was a few minutes after noon, so we all knew there was plenty of daylight ahead. We all knew we could take an hour to make a plan. They would assume I wouldn’t stay in the car. Maybe they would end up sending a guy to make sure, but most of their early energy would get spent figuring out where I would go next. Which they would recognize was a decision largely made by the terrain. The lot was served by a narrow road in. They would assume I would hide somewhere just outside the gate. Because then, as soon as they arrived, I would be instantly behind them. They wouldn’t be hunting me. I would be hunting them.
So they would park a hundred yards up the road, tickets be damned, and they would come in on foot. From what they would think was behind me.
So I would start two hundred yards up the road.
No, I thought. Three hundred. Their command post was all I was interested in. I was sure it would stay well to the rear. Command posts usually do.
I locked up the brown sedan and set out walking.
Just shy of three hundred yards up the road I found a café with a sandy patio covered in young people sitting cross-legged and playing guitars and bongo drums. I sat on the ground against a low wall with a bunch of other aficionados. Safe enough, I thought. I was below eye level, and a dull part of a colourful crowd. I could see down the road pretty well. Certainly I would see if anyone parked and got out.
I waited. The musicians seemed to have plenty of energy, which I was glad about. I figured I could be waiting a long time. Dragan would guess I would guess an hour, so she would make it two, except she would guess I would guess that too, so she would make it three. Or more. Or less.
I waited. I had waited for her brother. I broke into his house and sat in the dark. Not true that he cried and begged. I didn’t give him the chance. I put a double tap low in the back of his skull as soon as he stepped in the room.
I waited.
Then two ugly sedans rolled by. High-spec versions of the brown heap I had left in the lot. I watched them. They slowed down. They stopped. They parked a hundred yards ahead of me. Two hundred yards short of the beach lot gate.
Four men got out of the first car. Short black nylon jackets, black jeans, sunglasses. All kind of obvious. Decoys, I thought. Presumably the idea was I would wheel around, this way and that, always keeping them in sight, until I accidentally blundered backward into the guy who had really come for me.
Who got out of the second car.
He was a fat guy in a loud shirt and tattered shorts. The four obvious gangsters set out walking towards the beach, and the fat guy followed not far behind.
Nothing else happened.
I waited. Then I got up and started walking. I was a hundred yards behind the second car, and closing. I was about a hundred and fifty yards behind the five guys, and not closing, because they were walking too, same speed, same direction.
From forty yards out I saw there were still two people in the second car. One behind the wheel, and one in the back. The command post. Cell phone at the ready, no doubt. Ready to issue instructions if necessary. But mostly hoping to hear they got me. Alive. I figured that would have been her instruction.
Be careful what you wish for, I thought.
I walked on. Twenty yards out it was obvious the driver was a man, and the back-seat passenger was a woman. Black hair. Small, but not tiny. She was watching over the driver’s shoulder, staring out the windshield, trying to see what was happening up ahead. Her guys were almost to the parking lot.
I was almost to her back bumper.
I came down the driver’s side and tore open the driver’s door, at which point everything became a simple gamble, as to whether I could subdue and disarm the driver before the woman in the back could react, which was a bet I was pretty sure I could win, having done similar things before, with routine real-world manoeuvres, moves I had made a million times, not thinking or getting worked up, just grabbing the driver by the collar, and hauling him half out, and clubbing him in the face, and pulling his jacket up over his head, which would show me his belt, which had nothing stuck in it, and which would tell me if there was weight in his pocket, which there wasn’t, but I saw straps across his back, so I slammed him against the seat and took his gun from a shoulder holster, and knelt in on top of him and pointed the gun at the woman in the back. Who had her hand in her purse.
I said, ‘Keep still.’
I hit the driver again, just a maintenance dose, and reversed out of his compartment and got in the back.
I said, ‘Take your hand out your purse. If there’s a gun in it I’ll shoot you as soon as I see it. In the gut. So you die slow.’
She took her hand out. No gun.
I said, ‘Your brother did bad things. I think you know that. I think you were there. You must have been living under his protection. Which is why you had to flee when I killed him. I think you approved of what he did. I think you enjoyed it. I think you’re just as bad as him.’