Then the city went silent and took a breath and shiny darkness owned the streets. That was Reacher’s time. He liked to picture the sleeping people stacked twelve, thirty, fifty stories high, often head to head with perfect strangers on opposite sides of thin apartment walls, deep in slumber, unaware of the tall quiet man striding beneath them in the shadows.
Two choices, as always: fight or flight. We were on 56th Street’s southern sidewalk. I could have run straight across the road and tried to get away. But Leonid and his pal were probably faster than me. The law of averages. Most humans are faster than me. The old lady in the summer dress was probably faster than me. Her old gray mutt was probably faster than me.
No particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there.
Being ex-military is like being a lapsed Catholic. Even though they’re way in the back of your mind, the old rituals still exert a powerful pull.
They went in, and the guy behind the counter looked up. He was about forty, tall and well built, not fat but certainly fleshed out, with a full head of hair, and a guileless face.
There was a small wire-mesh holder on the counter, full of business cards supplied by the MoneyGram franchise. A side benefit, presumably, along with the commission. Reacher took a card and read it. The guy’s name was not Maloney. Reacher asked him, “You got a local phone book?” “What for?” “I want to balance it on my head to improve my deportment.” “What?” “I want to look up a number. What else is a phone book for?
The guy said, “We don’t know if the somebody is a Chinaman. That information would have helped, I guess.
The wild frontier was many blocks away. The street life changed as they walked, from occasional busy workers heading home briskly, to a stoop culture with knots of people hanging out in doorways doing not very much of anything. Some of the stores had been shuttered at the close of business, and some looked like they had been boarded up for years, but others were still open and doing a trade. Food, soda, loose cigarettes.
Reacher was led through the door on the left and onward to an interview room. Which had no windows. Just four blank walls, and a table bolted to the floor, with two chairs on one side and one on the other. The room had not been designed by the dining room guy. That was clear. There was no blond wood or carpet. Just scuffed white paint on cinder block, and a cracked concrete floor, and a fluorescent bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling.
OK,” Reacher said. He found a ten and a five in his pocket, and paid for the phone. His change came in coins, expertly reckoned and deftly dispensed.
State Department. If it’s the Brit or the Russian or the Israeli, then sure, we’ll let State take the victory lap, but until we know that for certain, this remains a closely held project.” “Is that what you call it now?” “Top secret was already taken.
The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don’t like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly.
He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.
They approached the motel’s horseshoe from the south, so the first thing they saw was the wing with the office in it. There were three things on the sidewalk under its window. The first was the plastic lawn chair, unoccupied, but still in its overnight position. The second thing was Keever’s battered valise, last seen in room 215, now repacked and waiting, all bulging and forlorn. The third thing was Chang’s own suitcase, zipped up, its handle raised, also repacked and waiting.
Below us the young guy was talking through the door seal again. His body language was placatory. He was squirming and patting the air and glancing hopefully toward the road. They’re coming, I promise. And then they came.
Echo was a young girl in love with Narcissus. But he loved himself, not her, so she pined away until just her voice was left.
Lowell’s an odd duck,” Peterson said. “He’s a loner. He reads books.
Turner eased to a stop, third car in line, in a narrowing lane, with the guard shack ahead on her left, and an unbroken row of concrete dragons’ teeth on her right, each one of them a squat, truncated pyramid about three feet tall, each one of them no doubt built on a rebar armature and socketed deep below grade.
A real coin flipped by a real human trended closer to 51-49 in favor of whichever side was uppermost at the outset. No one could explain exactly why, but the phenomenon was easily observed in experiments. Something to do with multiple axes of spin, and wobble, and aerodynamics, and the general difference between theory and practice.
Reacher hadn’t seen the guy before. Big hands, broad shoulders, a seamed face, clothes all covered with dirt. Chosen in some way, presumably, to be the point man. To be the spokesperson. The pick of the local litter, no doubt, according to popular acclaim.