Personal (Jack Reacher, #19)- Lee Child Page 0,133
was no kind of a hardship, because it all worked well together, especially the nylons and the skirt, and then she stepped out of the last pool of light and the darkness swallowed her up. I heard her heels a minute more, and then Casey Nice pushed the red door open and stepped inside.
The buffet room was empty. No pastries, no coffee. All cleared away, at the end of the day, pending new deliveries in the morning. We walked upstairs, fast and easy on the standard dimensions. Shoemaker’s office was empty. The conference room was empty. But O’Day had his light on.
He was at his desk, in his blazer, with the sweater under it. He was leaning forward, on his elbows, reading. His head was down, and he looked up at us without moving it.
He said, ‘We’ll do the debrief in the morning.’
We waited.
He said, ‘I have one preliminary question, however. Why did you fly back with the RAF? Our own plane was standing by.’
I sat down, on the navy-issue chair. Casey Nice sat down next to me. I said, ‘Do we get to ask a preliminary question?’
‘I suppose a fair exchange is no robbery.’
‘We flew back with the RAF just for the fun of it. We wanted to see how the other half lives.’
‘Is that all?’
‘We wanted to make Bennett work for what he was getting.’
I saw him relax.
I said, ‘Our question is, why can’t either the NSA or GCHQ see the money?’
I saw him unrelax.
He didn’t answer.
I said, ‘It was a year of Kott’s rent, and his living expenses, and his fee, and the rifle itself, and all that practice ammunition, and the neighbour, and the private jet to Paris, and whatever the Vietnamese cost, and the two gangs in London, and presumably some kind of homeward transportation. That’s not tens of millions of dollars, but it’s more than nine-eleven cost. Therefore I’m sure their computers wouldn’t ignore it. And they’re smart people. And motivated, because whatever happens, they’ll get blamed too. Because everything starts with money. So why can’t they see it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Because it was never there.’
‘It had to be there. No money, no operation.’
‘Exactly. There was no operation.’
‘Did you get hit in the head? You were just in the operation. You just found Kott three miles from the scene.’
I said, ‘The first bullet was supposed to break the glass. The second bullet was supposed to kill the guy. But there was no second bullet.’
‘Because the glass didn’t break.’
‘But that didn’t matter. You’re not thinking like the second bullet. The glass breaking or not breaking was a future event. You saw the video from Paris. How long was it between the bullet hitting the screen and the security guys getting to the president?’
O’Day said, ‘A couple of seconds. They were very good.’
‘Now think about the range. Three-quarters of a mile. The bullet is in the air three whole seconds. Which means you can’t wait. Because what happens if you do? You pull the trigger, you wait three whole seconds, and wow, the glass breaks, so you pull the trigger again, and you wait three more seconds, and the new bullet arrives. But by then the president is buried under secret service agents. You missed your chance. The only way to get the guy is to make the second bullet chase the first bullet through the air. It has to follow on, about half a second later. So both bullets are flying together, one after the other. In fact they travel together for more than two whole seconds before the first bullet even arrives at the glass. Whereupon the second bullet passes through the newly airborne debris and hits the president before anyone has time to react, including the president himself, who is after all closest.’
O’Day said nothing.
‘Or alternatively if the glass doesn’t break, then the second bullet hits it too, half a second later, and the scientists get two little chips to look at, not one.’
O’Day said nothing.
‘There never was a second bullet. There was never going to be a second bullet. Someone sent Kott to Paris to fire one single round. At a bulletproof shield. Which was pointless. The glass either breaks or it doesn’t, but if it does, then the bullet that breaks it will always shatter or deflect and be of no further use. You fire either two bullets or zero bullets. The only way you fire one bullet is if you know for sure the shield will work.’