Linsky could hear the Zec's voice from the living room, calling him. He went straight in without knocking. The Zec was in an armchair with a glass of tea clamped between his palms. Chenko was sprawled on a sofa. Vladimir pushed in behind Linsky and sat down next to Chenko. Linsky stood still and waited.
"Sit, Grigor," the Zec said. "Nobody's upset at you. It was the boy's failure."
Linsky nodded and sat down in an armchair, a little closer to the Zec than Chenko was. That maintained the hierarchy in the proper order. The Zec was eighty, and Linsky himself was more than sixty. Chenko and Vladimir were both in their forties, important men for sure, but comparative youngsters. They didn't have the history that the Zec and Linsky shared. Not even close.
"Tea?" the Zec asked in Russian.
"Please," Linsky said.
"Chenko," the Zec said. "Bring Grigor a glass of tea."
Linsky smiled inside. Chenko being made to serve him tea was a statement of the greatest importance. And he noted that Chenko did it with no unwillingness. He just got up out of his slouch and went out to the kitchen and came back in with a glass of tea on a small silver tray. Chenko was a very small man, short, wiry, no bulk at all. He had coarse black hair that stuck up in all directions even though he kept it cropped short. Vladimir was different. Vladimir was very tall and heavy and blond. Unbelievably strong. It was entirely possible that Vladimir had German genes somewhere in his background. Perhaps his grandmother had picked them up back in 1941, like germs.
"We've been talking," the Zec said.
"And?" Linsky said.
"We have to confront the fact that we made a mistake. Just one, but it could prove irksome."
"The cone," Linsky said.
"Obviously Barr isn't on tape placing it," the Zec said.
"Obviously."
"But will it be a problem?"
"Your opinion?" Linsky asked politely.
"Significance is in the eye of the beholder," the Zec said. "The detective Emerson and the DA Rodin won't care about it. It's a minor detail, one they won't feel inclined to pursue. Why would they? They're not looking to trip themselves up. And no case is ever a hundred percent perfect. They know that. So they'll write it off as an inexplicable loose end. They might even convince themselves that Barr used a different vehicle."
"But?"
"But it's still a loose end. If the soldier tugs on it, something might unravel."
"The evidence against Barr is indisputable."
The Zec nodded. "That's true."
"So won't that be enough for them?"
"Certainly it would have been. But it's possible that Barr no longer exists. Not in the sense that he's a legal entity accessible to their jurisprudence. He has permanent retrograde amnesia. It's possible that Rodin won't be able to put him on trial. If so, Rodin will be extremely frustrated about that. He'll be expected to seek a consolation prize. And if the consolation prize were eventually to assume a higher profile than Barr himself, how could Rodin turn it down?"
Linsky sipped his tea. It was hot and sweet.
"All this from a videotape?" he said.
"It depends entirely on the soldier," the Zec said. "It depends on his tenacity and his imagination."
"He was a military cop," Chenko said in English. "Did you know that?"
Linsky glanced at Chenko. Chenko rarely spoke English in the house. He had a perfect American accent, and sometimes Linsky thought he was ashamed of it.
"That doesn't necessarily impress me," Linsky said in Russian.
"Or me," the Zec said. "But it's a factor we must weigh in the balance."
"Silencing him now would draw attention," Linsky said. "Wouldn't it?"
"It would depend on how it was done."
"How many ways are there?"
"We could use the redheaded girl again," the Zec said.
"She would be no use against the soldier. He's a giant, and almost certainly extensively trained in self-defense."
"But he already has an established issue with her. Several people know she tried to set him up for a beating. Perhaps she could be found severely injured. If she was, the soldier would be the obvious prime suspect. We could let the police department silence him for us."
"She would know who attacked her," Vladimir said. "She would know it wasn't the soldier."
The Zec nodded appreciatively. Linsky watched him. He was accustomed to the Zec's methods. The Zec liked to tease solutions out of people, like Socrates of old.
"Then perhaps she should be left unable to tell anyone anything," the Zec said.
"Dead?"
"We've always found that the safest way, haven't we?"
"But it's possible she has many enemies," Vladimir said. "Not just him. Maybe she's a big-time prick-teaser."
"Then we should firm up the link. Possibly she should be found somewhere suggestive. Maybe he invited her out to renew their acquaintance."
"In his hotel?"
"No, outside his hotel, I think. But close by. Where she can be discovered by someone other than the soldier himself. Someone who can call the police while the soldier is still asleep. That way he's a sitting duck."
"Why would her body be outside his hotel?"
"Evidently he hit her and she staggered away and collapsed before she got very far."
"The Metropole Palace," Linsky said. "That's where he is."
"When?" Chenko asked.
"Whenever you like," the Zec said.
The Astros beat the Cardinals 10-7 after a limp defensive performance by both franchises. Plenty of cheap hits, plenty of errors. A bad way to win, and a worse way to lose. Reacher had stopped paying attention halfway through. He had started thinking about Eileen Hutton instead. She was part of his mosaic. He had seen her once in the States before the Gulf War, just briefly across a crowded courtroom, just long enough to register her head-turning quality, and he had assumed he would never see her again, which he figured was a pity. But then she had showed up in Saudi as part of the long, ponderous Desert Shield buildup. Reacher had been there pretty much from the start, as a recently demoted captain. The first stage of any clean-sheet foreign deployment always resembled gang warfare between the MPs and the troops they were sent out with, but after six weeks or so the situation usually settled down some, and Desert Shield wasn't any different. After six weeks there was a structure in place, and in terms of military law enforcement, a structure demanded in-country personnel all the way up from jailers to judges, and Hutton had shown up as one of the prosecutors they shipped in. Reacher had assumed it was volunteer duty for her, which he was happy about, because that made it likely she was unmarried.
She was unmarried. First time their paths crossed, he checked her left hand and saw no ring. Then he checked her collar and saw a major's oak leaves. That would make it a challenge, he figured, for a recently demoted captain. Then he checked her eyes and saw that the challenge would be worth it. Her eyes were blue and full of intelligence and mischief. And promise, he figured. And adventure. He had just turned thirty-one years old, and he was up for anything.
The desert heat helped. Most of the time the temperature was above a hundred and twenty degrees, and apart from regular gas-attack practices, standard on-post dress devolved down to shorts and sleeveless undershirts. And in Reacher's experience the close proximity of hot and nearly naked men and women always led somewhere good. Better than serving out November in Minnesota, that was for damn sure.