Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,57
the wall.
He said, “How many people saw?”
The guy said, “Saw what?”
“You with a gun to your head.”
“A few, I guess.”
“How many came to help you out?”
The guy didn’t answer.
“Yeah, none of them,” Reacher said. “No one likes you. No one would piss on you if you were on fire. So it’s just you and me now. No one is going to ride to the rescue. Are we clear on that?”
“What do you want?”
“Where is Max Trulenko?”
“No one knows.”
“Someone must.”
“Not me,” the guy said. “I promise. I swear on my sister’s life.”
“Where is your sister right now?”
“Kiev.”
“Which makes your promise kind of theoretical. Don’t you think? Try again.”
“On my life,” the guy said.
“Which is not so theoretical,” Reacher said. He pressed harder with the H&K. Through the steel he felt the guy’s eyeball squash. He felt the jelly.
The guy gasped and said, “I swear I don’t know where Trulenko is.”
“But you heard of him.”
“Of course.”
“Does he work for Gregory now?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Where?”
“No one knows,” the guy said. “It’s a big secret.”
“You sure?”
“On my mother’s grave.”
“Which is where?”
“You got to believe me. Maybe six people know where Trulenko is. I ain’t one of them. Please, sir. I’m just a doorman.”
Reacher took the gun away. He stepped back. The guy blinked and rubbed his eye and stared through the gloom. Reacher kicked him hard in the nuts, and left him there, doubled over, making all kinds of retching and puking sounds.
* * *
—
Reacher got back to Center Street with no trouble anywhere. His problems started immediately after that. When he was east of Center, which he didn’t understand at all. Wrong faction, surely. But right away he felt eyes on him. He felt people watching him. No benevolence in their gaze. He knew that absolutely. He got a chill on his neck. Some kind of an ancient instinct. A sixth sense. A survival mechanism, baked deep in the back of his brain by evolution. How not to get eaten. Millions of years of practice. His hundred-thousand-times-great-great-grandmother, stiffening, changing course, looking for the trees and the shadows. Living to fight another day. Living to have a kid, who a hundred thousand generations later had a descendant also looking for the shadows, not on the verdant savannah but on the gray nighttime streets, as he slid by lit-up clubs and bars and storefront restaurants.
It was the men in suits who were watching him. Organized guys. Made men, and the soon-to-be. Why? He didn’t know. Had he upset the Albanians too? He didn’t see how. Mostly he had done them a favor, surely, according to their own crude calculus. They should be giving him a parade.
He moved on.
He heard a footstep far behind him.
He kept on walking. The glow of Center Street was long gone, both literally and figuratively. The streets ahead were narrow and dark, and got shabbier with every step. There were parked cars and alleys and deep doorways. Two out of three street lights were busted. There were no pedestrians.
His kind of place.
He stopped walking.
More than one way not to get eaten. Grandma’s instinct worked for today. A hundred thousand generations later her descendant’s instinct worked for tomorrow, too. And forever. More efficient. Natural selection, right there. He stood in the half gloom for a minute, and then backed away into deep shadow, and listened.
He heard the diamond scrape of a leather sole on the sidewalk. Maybe forty feet back. Some kind of hastily arranged surveillance. Some guy, suddenly ordered off his stool and out into the night. To follow. But for how long? That was the critical question. All the way home, or only as far as a hastily arranged up-ahead ambush?
Reacher waited. He heard the leather sole again. Or its opposite number, on the other foot, taking a cautious step, moving forward. He pressed deeper into the shadows. Into a doorway. He leaned up against ribs of carved stone. A fancy entrance. Some long-forgotten enterprise. No doubt rewarding while it lasted.
He heard the scrape of the shoe again. Now maybe twenty feet back. Making progress. He heard nothing from the other direction. Just city quiet, and old air, and the faint smell of soot and bricks.
He heard the shoe again. Now ten feet back. Still making progress. He waited. The guy was already within range. But another couple of steps would make the whole thing more comfortable. He sketched out the geometry in his head. He put his hand in his pocket and found the H&K he