“You could do that for free.”

“I wanted to test him,” Reacher said. “I still need proof it’s for real this time. If it wasn’t, he’d have backed off. He’d have said the money was off the table because I was too late. But he didn’t. He wants the guy. Therefore there is a guy.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s a meaningless test. Like Patti Joseph said, Lane’s gambling. He’s putting on a show for his men and gambling that he’s smarter than you are.”

“But he had just found out that he’s not smarter than I am. I found Hobart before he did.”

“Whatever, this is about the money, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Reacher said. “It is.”

“At least you might try to deny it.”

Reacher smiled and kept on walking.

“You ever seen a million dollars in cash?” he asked. “Ever held a million dollars in your hands? I did, today. It’s a hell of a feeling. The weight, the density. The power. It felt warm. Like a little atom bomb.”

“I’m sure it was very impressive.”

“I wanted it, Pauling. I really did. And I can get it. I’m going to find the guy anyway. For Kate and Jade. I might as well sell his name to Lane. Doesn’t change the basic proposition.”

“It does. It makes you a mercenary. Just like them.”

“Money is a great enabler.”

“What are you going to do with a million dollars anyway? Buy a house? A car? A new shirt? I just don’t see it.”

“I’m often misunderstood,” he said.

“The misunderstanding was all mine. I liked you. I thought you were better than this.”

“You work for money.”

“But I choose who I work for, very carefully.”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“It’s dirty money.”

“It’ll spend just the same.”

“Well, enjoy it.”

“I will.”

She said nothing.

He said, “Pauling, give me a break.”

“Why would I?”

“Because first I’m going to pay you for your time and your services and your expenses, and then I’m going to send Hobart down to Birmingham or Nashville and get him fixed up right. I’m going to buy him a lifetime’s supply of spare parts and I’m going to rent him a place to live and I’m going to give him some walking-around money because my guess is he’s not very employable right now. At least not in his old trade. And then if there’s anything left, then sure, I’ll buy myself a new shirt.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course. I need a new shirt.”

“No, about Hobart?”

“Dead serious. He needs it. He deserves it. That’s for damn sure. And it’s only right that Lane should pay for it.”

Pauling stopped walking. Grabbed Reacher’s arm and stopped him, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I apologize.”

“Then make it up to me.”

“How?”

“Work with me. We’ve got a lot to do.”

“You told Lane you’d give him a name tomorrow.”

“I had to say something. I had to get him out of there.”

“Can we do it by tomorrow?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Where are we going to start?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

CHAPTER 48

THEY STARTED IN Lauren Pauling’s apartment. She lived in a small co-op on Barrow Street, near West 4th. The building had once been a factory and had vaulted brick ceilings and walls two feet thick. Her apartment was painted mostly yellow and felt warm and friendly. There was an alcove bedroom with no window, and a bathroom, and a kitchen, and a room with a sofa and a chair and a television set and a lot of books. There were muted rugs and soft textures and dark woods. It was a single woman’s place. That was clear. One mind had conceived it and decorated it. There were small framed photographs of children, but Reacher knew without asking that they were nephews and nieces.

He sat on the sofa and rested his head back on the cushion and stared up at the vaulted brick above. He believed that anything could be reverse-engineered. If one human or group of humans put something together, then another human or group of humans could take it apart again. It was a basic principle. All that was required was empathy and thought and imagination. And he liked pressure. He liked deadlines. He liked a short and finite time to crack a problem. He liked a quiet space to work in. And he liked a similar mind to work with. He started out with no doubt at all that he and Pauling could get the whole thing figured before morning.

That feeling lasted about thirty minutes.

Pauling dimmed the lights and lit a candle and called out for Indian food. The clock in Reacher’s head crawled around to nine-thirty. The sky outside the window turned from navy blue to black and the city lights burned bright. Barrow Street itself was quiet but the cabs on West 4th used their horns a lot. Occasionally an ambulance would scream by a couple of blocks over, heading up to Saint Vincent’s. The room felt like part of the city but a little detached, too. A little insulated. A partial sanctuary.

“Do that thing again,” Reacher said.

“What thing?”

“The brainstorming thing. Ask me questions.”

“OK, what have we got?”

“We’ve got an impossible takedown and a guy that can’t speak.”

“And the tongue thing is culturally unrelated to Africa.”

“But the money is related to Africa, because it’s exactly half.”

Silence in the room. Nothing but a faraway siren burning past, going south on Seventh Avenue.

“Start at the very beginning,” Pauling said. “What was the very first false note? The first red flag? Anything at all, however trivial or random.”

So Reacher closed his eyes and recalled the beginning: the granular feel of the foam espresso cup in his hand, textured, temperature-neutral, neither warm nor cold. He recalled Gregory’s walk in from the curb, alert, economical. His manner while questioning the waiter, watchful, aware, like the elite veteran he was. His direct approach to the sidewalk table.

Reacher said, “Gregory asked me about the car I had seen the night before and I told him it drove away before eleven forty-five, and he said no, it must have been closer to midnight.”

“A dispute about timing?”

“Not really a dispute. Just a trivial thing, like you said.”

“What would it mean?”

“That I was wrong or he was.”

Pauling said, “You don’t wear a watch.”

“I used to. I broke it. I threw it away.”

“So he was more likely to be right.”

“Except I’m usually pretty sure what time it is.”

“Keep your eyes closed, OK?”

“OK.”

“What time is it now?”

“Nine thirty-six.”

“Not bad,” Pauling said. “My watch says nine thirty-eight.”

“Your watch is fast.”

“Are you serious?”

Reacher opened his eyes. “Absolutely.”

Pauling rooted around on her coffee table and came up with the TV remote. Turned on the Weather Channel. The time was displayed in the corner of the screen, piped in from some official meteorological source, accurate to the second. Pauling checked her watch again.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m two minutes fast.”

Reacher said nothing.

“How do you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it was twenty-four hours after the event that Gregory asked you about it. How precise could you have been?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What would it mean if Gregory was wrong and you were right?”

“Something,” Reacher said. “But I’m not sure what exactly.”

“What was the next thing?”

Right now more likely death than life, Gregory had said. That had been the next thing. Reacher had checked his cup again and seen less than a lukewarm eighth-inch of espresso left, all thick and scummy. He had put it down and said OK, so let’s go.

He said, “Something about getting into Gregory’s car. The blue BMW. Something rang a bell. Not right then, but afterward. In retrospect.”

“You don’t know what?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Then we arrived at the Dakota and it was off to the races.” The photograph, Reacher thought. After that, everything was about the photograph.