When Will arrived at the depository the next morning, he found that the second shift had motored through the night. Apparently, the cogs continued to turn the wheels fine without Lukather and Baldani cranking on them. The two vault doors that had been open yesterday were locked tight. The ribbons had been re-hung. The pages with the serial numbers dangled in their plastic envelopes. Two new doors were wide open. Two layers of gold bars were already on one of the pallets.
Lukather had been right about one thing. They could finish today if they established a good pace.
Will heard a familiar clink of gold hitting gold from inside the far vault. Reacher was already at work, which was not wholly unexpected. Something had told Will that despite the events of the previous evening, Reacher was not the type of man who left a job unfinished.
He didn’t have a lot of quit in him.
“Morning,” Will said.
Reacher gave him a nod as he placed gold onto the pallet. Left to his own devices, he had tripled up the bars, three in each hand, which was a humiliating data point for Will, who needed both hands to barbell curl 175 pounds. And that was on a good day.
Reacher silently stacked the bars, then turned back into the vault for more.
Will winced as he pulled on his cotton gloves. His knuckles were shredded. Black bruises dotted his skin like ink spots. If the prosecutor needed an impression of Colonel Stephanie Lukather’s teeth, Will would be able to supply them. His never hit a woman policy had gone to hell the second she had smacked him in the ear and driven a surprisingly sharp elbow into his kidney.
He waited for Reacher to kneel by the pallet, then went into the vault and grabbed two bars with both hands. When he turned, he saw Reacher’s toothbrush sticking out of his back pocket.
The bristles. The handle. The plastic. As good as a buccal swab from a DNA testing kit.
Reacher stood up. He stepped into the vault. Will stacked his two bars. They went back and forth, stretching and grabbing and kneeling and stacking, synchronized like a timing belt turning the crank and cam.
Will mentally ran through what had happened at the bar last night. He tried to see all of the angles. Why would Reacher involve himself in something like that? He had risked his life, his health, but for what? Not for the money or for the USB drive. Will had been incapable of stopping him from taking both and leaving the bar. But Reacher had not only stuck around, he had voluntarily given a statement.
That wasn’t the behavior of a criminal. That was more like a cop. And Reacher had been a cop, but he had just as clearly turned his back on the law.
Will had seldom felt so conflicted.
Here was the problem with Jack Reacher: he was a bad guy who sometimes did good things. Given his itinerant lifestyle, Will thought of him as an American James Bond—not the Bond from the movies but the Bond from the books who was one level up from a street fighter. There was no M to temper his feralness. Reacher did not have a legal license to kill. Or maim. Or shoot people in their knees, which was a really mean thing to do, even to a stone-cold gangster.
To Will’s thinking, Reacher was the worst kind of criminal. This wasn’t because he was the size of a Mack truck, but because he was smart. Street smart, obviously educated, also methodical and strategic in a way that put him at the top of the top one percent of the criminal class. In most cases, the only thing that cops had going for them was that bad guys tended to be really, really stupid.
Jack Reacher was not stupid.
Will turned away.
“Did you call your people?” Reacher asked.
Will turned back.
“About what?” he said.
“The USB drive,” Reacher said. “It’s in the system now. It’s evidence.”
“No,” Will said.
“I called CID. Through USACIDC.” Reacher was still inside the vault. His mask was pulled down. He leaned against the doorjamb, folded his arms over his engine block of a chest. “That’s the Criminal Investigation Division, Captain Wolfe.”
“And?”
“Social security numbers,” Reacher said. “Turns out Major Baldani’s wife works in HR Command. Right here on the base. What they used to call Personnel. She downloads the service numbers of dead soldiers. At least two thousand so far.”
“Baldani was married to a human woman?”
“She didn’t report the deaths, so the new owners of the service numbers would be eligible for all kinds of benefits.”
Will wasn’t going to try to pretend he knew what a service number was.
Reacher gave him another assist. “It’s the military’s version of a social security number. Every soldier is assigned one. Your time of service is attached to the number, and benefits are based on time of service. We’re talking pension, disability, exchange privileges, small business loans, VA home loans, GI Bill, life insurance, TRICARE—that’s healthcare. You get one of those numbers, you’re set for life.”
Will felt his stomach turn. Lukather hadn’t just tried to sell these soldiers’ identities. She had tried to sell their service.
“I’m guessing the contents of that USB drive could bring in tens of millions on the black market. There was only two million in the suitcases. Lukather sold herself short.”
Will was glad the woman was going to spend some serious time behind bars. There was not enough money to go around for veterans in the first place. For one of their own to exploit the system felt like treason.
Reacher started to push his mask back up, but Will stopped him with a question.
“Why’d you leave the job?”
Reacher waited.
“You were an MP. I know you quit the Army, but the job gets in your lungs. You can’t breathe it out. Why haven’t you ever put yourself back on the right side of a badge?”
“‘One can’t be out in the cold all of the time.’”
He was quoting le Carré. “Don’t make me love you.”
Reacher said, “I don’t like being stuck behind a desk.”
“There are a lot of ways to be a cop without sitting behind a desk.”
Reacher said, “Like going undercover inside Fort Knox?”
No answer.
Reacher said, “You were never a soldier. You’re not here for Baldani or Lukather. You’re here for someone else. You’re from Georgia, I’m guessing. Maybe some local police department.”
“GBI,” Will said. “Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A cold case.”
“You should tell me what’s on your mind.”
Will debated his options, which boiled down to two. One: try to snag the toothbrush fast, and get his face broken into exactly one trillion pieces. Two: come clean and hope for the best.
He asked Reacher, “You ever hear of a town called Margrave?”
“South of Atlanta.”
Will waited. When Reacher didn’t volunteer anything further, he prompted, “April 16, 1997.”
Reacher kept on waiting.
“Deputy Phillip Michael Deacon was shot twice in the head outside the Margrave public library. An eyewitness puts a stranger behind the trigger. A stranger whose description matches yours exactly.”
Reacher said, “I was not in Margrave on that date.”
“I’ve got DNA on a library book that proves otherwise.”
Reacher didn’t seem worried. “What library book?”
“A Guide to Birds of the Southeastern United States.”
Reacher’s mouth twisted into something that could have been a smile.
Will asked, “Do hummingbirds mean anything to you?”
“They can be ferocious. You get a bully at the feeder, he’ll scare off the other birds or try to stab them with his beak.” Reacher added, “It’s best to take out the bully as soon as possible. Protect the weaker birds before he starves them all.”
Will got the point, but said, “Forensics pulled DNA from three drops of dried sweat on the pages of the hummingbird chapter.”
“The toothbrush,” Reacher said. “I was wondering why you kept staring at my ass.”
Will figured it was his turn to wait for more information.
Reacher asked, “Did you talk to the eyewitness?”
“Died in her sleep two years ago. Natural causes.”
Reacher nodded, like that was how it should be. “What do you know about Phillip Deacon?”
“Family man. Spent twenty-one years of his life in uniform, then another twenty-two in a hospital gown.” Will explained, “He survived the gunshots, but he was in a coma until two months ago. He died of pneumonia.”
“I see,” Reacher said. “Thereby converting the charge of attempted murder of a peace officer into murder with aggravating circumstances. A State of Georgia case.”
“A death penalty case.”
Reacher started pulling off his tattered gloves. “You ever hear of Blind Blake?”
“The blues singer?”
Reacher nodded. “My brother told me that Blake died in Margrave. Actually, he died in Wisconsin, but I never got the chance to tell him.”
Will slowly edged back against the wall. He had the fleeting thought that maybe Reacher was taking off his gloves so he could beat Will to death with his bare hands.
Reacher said, “The eyewitness to the shooting. Her name was Beatrice Collins. She was violently raped by Deacon. And badly beaten. Twice. And he made it clear he was going to do it to her again. He told her he really enjoyed it. He told her it got his motor running in a real special way.”
Will felt gut-punched.
… a wife and teenage boy at home, a married daughter with his first grandchild on the way … a violent rapist who had terrorized a woman, probably not just one woman, because Deacon had a badge and a squad car and a boss who always made the point to look the other way …
Reacher said, “The first time he raped her, Beatrice was dumb enough to file a report direct with the sheriff. The second time, she was doubly dumb enough to go back to the sheriff again. He told Deacon to take care of the problem. Best all around just to shut her up.”
Will’s teeth started to ache from clenching his jaw.
… Deacon’s grandchild was lucky his grandfather had never held him. His son was lucky he had never seen his father in the stands. His wife was lucky that Deacon had never kissed her again, or forced himself on her or preyed on another woman ever again …
Reacher said, “I found all this out later. My friend Neagley was starting up a detective agency. It was her first case. She filed a very comprehensive report. As it happened, my brother was in Margrave at that time. He was working. He looked just like me. Actually an inch taller and a tick lighter, but you’d have to see us side by side. He was ex-Army too. He looked like a squared-away guy. Like the Lone Ranger come to town. Beatrice Collins went to him for help. She didn’t want to cause trouble. She just wanted it to stop. They were going to meet at the library. Public place. Neutral territory. She was scared. Scratch that. She was terrified. She was a small-town girl with no money and nowhere to turn. The police weren’t going to help her. The sheriff once told her he would rape her himself if she told another living soul.”
Will knew the crooked bastard of a sheriff was exactly the kind of man who would keep a sexual predator on his payroll. “I’m assuming the sheriff made Beatrice lie in her statement about the shooting. But we’re two decades past that. Her partner didn’t mention any of this. They were together for fifteen years.”
“Victims don’t talk about that stuff sometimes, even to their partners. They want to put it behind them. They don’t want people to feel sorry for them, or worse, to be blamed.” Reacher painted the picture, “Hero cop accused of rape by a grocery store cashier who has a juvenile record for stealing her uncle’s car. Whose side do you think the town would’ve been on?”
Will couldn’t argue. People were assholes. “April 16, 1997.”
Reacher shoved the cotton gloves into his back pocket. “Beatrice was late getting to the library. She was nervous. Understandably. My brother was waiting outside when she arrived. Deacon pulled up on the librarian’s 9-1-1 call. He grabbed Beatrice and tried to force her into the back of his squad car. My brother didn’t like that.”
“He shot Deacon in the head.”
“Beatrice told Neagley the gun went off by accident.”
“Twice,” Will said. “That’s some accident.”
Reacher did not address the inconsistency.
This was where Will and Reacher parted philosophical ways. He said, “Most of the people who get murdered aren’t good people. There’s a reason they’re in a bad situation.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
Will said, “Murder is still murder. ‘He deserved to die’ is not a valid defense in the state of Georgia.”
“I hear it still holds up in Texas.”
“What if your brother was wrong about Deacon? What if Beatrice lied?”
“He wasn’t and she didn’t.”
Will wasn’t going to lecture a vigilante on the arrogant immorality of vigilantism. “Your brother killed a man in cold blood.”
“There’s no such thing as cold blood,” Reacher said. “Blood is always warm, to a degree. A police officer was stopped from raping a woman for the third time. Maybe worse than that. And exponentially onward, into the future.”
Will said nothing.
“My brother is dead anyway,” Reacher said. “He was murdered a month later. Also in Margrave, as a matter of fact. No doubt connected to his business there a month before. So you’re not going to get your man, however hard you try.”
“I didn’t find any record—”
“The Margrave sheriff’s department didn’t keep records of their own crimes,” Reacher said. “At that point my brother was working for Treasury. He was a heavyweight figure by then. They took the body away and cleaned up the mess. A week later it was like nothing had ever happened.”
Will studied Reacher’s face for any signs of deception, but it didn’t matter. They both knew he would check out the story.
Reacher said, “Familial DNA.”
The guy didn’t have a cellphone, but he knew that the similarities in the Y chromosomes of two different males could be used to establish a blood relationship.
Reacher said, “I’m the only one left in my family. I know that my brother was a good man. I don’t want to see his name dragged through the mud. But you’ve made it pretty clear you’re not going to drop this case. And I’m not going to get in the way of an honest copper doing his work. Not my thing. So, here.”
Reacher had the toothbrush in his hand.
The bristles were crushed from being in his back pocket. Will stared at the tiny sliver of handle sticking out of Reacher’s massive paw.
The right thing to do was to collect the evidence, see the investigation through to its logical end, then close the case. Will knew his boss would say the same thing. Just like he knew that she would also say it was a waste of resources working a case where the suspect was dead and the victim was equally dead, and also a brutal rapist.
There was a reason why Bond needed an M.
Will crossed his arms over his chest, leaving the toothbrush hanging. “Don’t you think it’s unsanitary to keep a toothbrush in your pocket all day?”
Reacher returned the toothbrush to its place.
“This one’s a mistake,” he said. “Usually they come with a cover. Or hotels have them free at the front desk. Like, every day, you can have a new one straight out of the wrapper. Don’t worry about my personal standards.”
“Sure.” Will was suddenly mindful he was lecturing a guy about hygiene when, just this morning, he had eaten the sweat-melted wad of Lukather’s Skittles in his pocket.
Reacher began the Sisyphean task of putting on his cotton gloves.
Will leaned down and grabbed two bars of gold. “What do you think is going to happen to Lukather?”
Reacher grabbed six bars, three and three, and waited for Will to stack his. “That’s a great question. I heard she’s already flipped on Baldani. I heard they’re going to give her a deal to testify about the whole scheme.”
“Why? They don’t need her to make the case. They’ve got them both dead to rights. They’ve got the USB and the cash and the bad guy from the bar.” Will tried not to groan as he lifted two bars of gold. He thought about Baldani’s habit of flicking cigarettes on the ground. The butts were teeming with his DNA. He could take that back to Georgia. And if CODIS returned a hit on Baldani, all the better.
Suddenly he stopped lifting.
He asked Reacher, “How long have you been working here?”
“Twelve days.” Reacher disappeared into the vault. “Why?”
“And you work fast.”
“I try to give value.”
“Therefore you’ve seen a lot of gold.” Will got going again, and stacked his bars on top of the others. They were all stamped with the same seal of the United States Treasury, their individual numbers likely matching the numbers in the plastic envelopes hanging from the ribbons on the doors.
Numbers that hadn’t been checked against the gold bars inside.
Gold bars that had been weighed with stray cotton fuzz and strands of hair that would throw the number on the scale over by a few ounces every time.
“It’s weird,” Will said. “But the thing is, I could swear I’ve seen these serial numbers before. As in yesterday in the other vault.”
“You’ve seen a lot of numbers,” Reacher said. He stacked his bars on top of Will’s. “Sixteen digits each. You and I have stacked and re-stacked 38,492 bars of gold so far. That’s 615,872 separate integers. Literally trillions of potential combinations.”
Will had to take him at his word. He was pretty good at math, but he wasn’t a quantum computer. Though, he did have an incredibly good memory for numbers, and his memory was telling him that the numbers on the bars looked damn familiar.
“I could swear,” he said again.
“You good with numbers?”
“In a weird way.”
“What was on the second-last bar you just stacked?”
Will recited sixteen digits from memory. Fast and confident. And exactly correct.
Reacher was clearly silently checking him, also from memory. Apparently, he was good with numbers too, in a weird way. He said, “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“What?” Will said.
“Are you a good reader?”
Will didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “It often doesn’t go together. I knew a few guys. I knew one guy who could tell you the square root of the distance to the sun, but he couldn’t read a lick.”
“Can you?” Will asked.
Reacher nodded. “I was fortunate. I can read pretty good.”
Will didn’t answer.
“I agree about the numbers,” Reacher said. “They got me thinking. First of all, about how you got here.”
“My boss pulled strings.”
“How did he know where I was?”
“She.”
“How?”
“I put your name in the system,” Will said. “A cold case report.”
“The GBI system, right? Proudly local. Right now we’re in Kentucky.”
“Someone made a match.”
Reacher nodded.
“Now I’m wondering who,” he said. “I’m thinking maybe a kid in a suit. From where the true power is. Which might not be the three-letter agencies anymore. These days it might be the congressional staffs. With seats on all kinds of intelligence subcommittees. Maybe there’s a congressman from Georgia. The local half of his brain wants to see the GBI do well, so he lends a helping hand, with information out of the federal half of his brain.”
“Which begs a huge question,” Will said.
“Exactly. Why send you here in person? A Kentucky SWAT team could have done the job. I could have been extradited. What’s another couple months? Your case is already twenty-two years old. Or the MPs could have got me. Why is your actual presence necessary, doing this dumb job as cover?”
Will didn’t answer, but he was beginning to think he knew.
“Exactly,” Reacher said again. “Because you’re good with numbers. Maybe you try to hide it, but you can’t. They know. Same with me. They didn’t write their program to look for a strong guy. They looked for a guy good with numbers.”
Will was quiet a long moment. Then he said, “Did you know that the vault has only been opened to the public one time?”
“1974,” Reacher said. “As a matter of fact, the kid in the suit talked about it. A DC attorney named Peter David Beter circulated the theory that the gold had been removed by the Deep State.”
“Right, the Deep State. Those guys really get around.”
“Do the math,” Reacher said. “There’s $350 billion worth of precious metals stored here, but the national debt is over twenty trillion. That’s already less than two cents on the dollar.” Reacher stacked his bars. “This gold is just a symbol. Apparently good enough of a symbol right now. Based on folk memories of 1974. But if people thought even half of these vaults had been emptied out since then, the entire US economy—the world economy—would go into free fall. There’d be rioting in the streets. The banks would fail.”
Will passed Reacher on his way to the pallet. They were back on the timing belt. “What I’d do is set up a domino effect.”
Reacher caught his meaning. “Night crew moves the gold two doors down. Then we move it two doors down the next day. Same gold. Double-blind. Neither crew knows the other crew is doing it.”
Will stood up from the pallet. His kidney screamed around an elbow-sized bruise. Sweat formed a river down his back. They had at least another six hours to go.
He said, “We were sent here to find out.”
“I agree,” Reacher said. “An obscure congressman from Georgia went to a lot of trouble to bring us here, so we would … know, I guess … that the nation’s gold reserves are terminally depleted, and that fact is being actively hidden by a game of three-card monte. I guess for some reason the guy wants at least one person out there in the world, with that knowledge.”
“Two people.”
“Only one of us was supposed to survive. Either you would bust me, or I would kill you and escape. He didn’t care which, by the way. He was hedging his bets.”
“Plus Lukather,” Will said. “She must know. She was in charge. Probably she gamed out the way the dominos have to fall so no one person can put together the truth. That’s how she’s getting her deal. She’s trading her silence for her freedom.”
“I guess,” Reacher said. “So now there are three of us who know.”
“The question is why?” Will said. “I mean, okay, we’re out there in the world, with the knowledge. So what? What are we supposed to do with it?”
Neither one of them knew.