Lee Child

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The guy who put together the video evidence highlight reel was a nerdy young timeserver named Skelton. Every day, rain or shine, warm or cold, he wore a checked flannel shirt and a knit tie. No one liked him. But pedantry and exactitude were required in his role. Juries still regarded video evidence as vulnerable, especially when it got blurry and out of focus. And the recent algorithmic add-ons were mostly seen as woo-woo filmflam, without a serious guy in a knit tie to explain them all. Facial recognition, gait analysis, and so on and so forth. Very complicated, down at the scientific level. Skelton had his uses.

He started out by saying, “Obviously we're lucky because this is London, and this is its main long-haul airport, which means we have at our disposal more cameras than literally anywhere else in the world. We can follow along, in real time, virtually every step of the way. Ready?”

Nominally in charge of the investigation was a Detective Chief Superintendent named Glover, but all morning he had been accompanied by three unknown associates, all with visitor tags around their necks, all younger than himself, two of them women, one believed to be from the Foreign Office, and the other from MI6. The third unknown associate was me, believed to be from the American CIA. Whatever, the women and I seemed to make all the final decisions. As in right then, when Skelton asked Glover, and Glover looked at the women, who looked at each other, and then at me, and I nodded, whereupon Glover said to Skelton, “Yes, ready.”

A uniformed officer closed the door. The room went quiet. We were in the basement underneath New Scotland Yard. Skelton started the highlight reel. The first shot was a downward angled view along three drop-off bays at the first-class end of BA departures. The picture was huge, on a monitor bigger than most home TVs. It was in bright colour. It was crisp and detailed. Nothing like the old days.

On the screen a car pulled into the furthest-away bay. A late-model Bentley Flying Spur sedan. Not quite black. Some kind of dark gunmetal grey. Both rich and sinister.

“Looking for attention,” a detective said. “Or he would have come in a black S-class Mercedes, like everyone else.”

On the screen two men got out the front of the Bentley. The driver walked around to the trunk. The passenger stood for a second, glancing all around, and then he opened the rear door and stood back, respectfully, but still glancing all around.

“Bodyguard,” the detective said. “Somewhat superfluous. That's the safest location in England.”

On the screen a big bulky man in a dark wool overcoat got out the back of the Bentley. He stood for a second, half turned away, facing his bodyguard, adjusting the fit of his coat on his shoulders. Then he turned toward the rear of his car and looked down, as if at something low to the ground about ten feet away, and then he turned more and looked up, as if checking on his driver's progress, hauling luggage out the trunk. For a steady second, his face was clearly visible.

Skelton froze the playback.

“That's Anenko,” he said.

“Are we absolutely sure?” Glover asked. “We'd look like fools if we misidentified the chap right from the beginning.”

“Watch this,” Skelton said. He rolled the action back, frame by frame, to where the guy in the coat was once again turned mostly away, looking down low. He froze the picture like that and said, “Heathrow is thick with cameras, but what you need to remember is, for every one you can see, there are probably fifty more you can't. Because they're hidden. They're disguised as other things, or built into things. Lots of them are waist-high, looking up, so a wide-brimmed hat doesn't work so well anymore. Some of them are knee-high, looking up.”

He clicked a mouse and the picture changed to a new view of the same instant. Now the camera was head-on to the guy, low down, so that the more he hunched away from his car, the more he leaned in toward the new lens, as if welcoming it, as if embracing it.

Skelton clicked again on a couple of options, and powerful software froze the picture and rotated it up a little, and left a little, until it was like a head-on mug shot of the guy. All kinds of fine pulsating lines darted here and there, as if pointing out areas of interest, and then finally a graph appeared, printed in glowing green, above a caption that said Level Of Confidence 100%.

“It's Anenko,” Skelton said. “No doubt about it. We ran it through three separate facial recognition systems and they all agreed. Between them they had more than a hundred images to compare against. Some of them dated back to the Soviet era. Most are recent and undeniably authentic.”

“Good enough,” Glover said. “I suppose.”

On the screen the scene picked up again from the original high angle. The driver pulled a suitcase out and set it upright and extended its handle. He followed it with a briefcase. The bodyguard took charge of both pieces. Anenko led the way, and the bodyguard followed, like a porter. They walked to the edge of the frame.

“Now watch,” Skelton said.

On the screen a black S-class Mercedes sedan pulled into the bay behind the Bentley. At the top of the picture the terminal doors opened for Anenko and his bodyguard. At the bottom of the picture the rear passenger door opened on the Mercedes. At the top Anenko and his bodyguard stepped into the building. At the bottom the passenger stepped out to the sidewalk.

Skelton froze the image. He chopped the screen into three separate panels and loaded each one with a different angle, the first being Anenko and his bodyguard walking down the approach corridor, which led from the street to the main departures hall itself. They were walking head-on toward a camera, which was also bright and in colour and crisply detailed. Insanely detailed, in fact. Beyond the bodyguard, back out through the glass door to the street, tiny figures were clearly visible, moving about. Who they were was made clear by the centre panel of Skelton's array. It showed the same high-angle scene as before, now with the driver getting back in the Bentley, and in the bay behind it the passenger from the Mercedes closing his door and stepping toward the terminal. He took nothing with him except a small canvas messenger bag on a leather strap. He walked with his shoulders back, his head up and his eyes front. He wore no hat or glasses.

“He knows there are cameras,” the detective said. “He's been well briefed. He's been told he can't beat them. So he's not even trying.”

On the third panel Skelton froze a suitable head-on shot of the guy's face.

“Now they all walk for quite a long while,” he said. “It's an airport terminal, after all. That's the longest most folks walk all year. We might as well use the time.”

He clicked his mouse. The frozen image on the third panel tilted and rotated and arranged itself into a mug shot, and the same thin pulsating lines darted about, followed by a graph identical to the first, with the same caption: Level Of Confidence 100%.

“Who is he?” Glover asked.

Skelton said, “First I need to make clear this conclusion is based on only five known images. Statistically that's enough for the algorithm. But a jury wouldn't understand the arithmetic. The numbers are too far apart. A hundred per cent but only five pictures.”

“Who is he?” Glover asked again.

“He's an American citizen.”

Glover glanced at the Foreign Office woman, who glanced at the MI6 woman, and then they both glanced at me, and I shrugged and nodded, both at the same time, as if to say, what did I care?

Glover asked, “Does he have a name?”

“Jack Reacher,” Skelton said. “Jack not a diminutive for John, and no middle name. He's a West Point graduate. He was in the U.S. Army for thirteen years. There are two military ID photographs in the system. Plus two passport photographs. The fifth known image is from French intelligence. They photographed him at his mother's funeral, in Paris.”

On the screen Anenko and his bodyguard were about to walk under the camera recording them. Jack Reacher was about twenty paces behind them. He was a big guy. Not a circus freak, but enough for a double take. Skelton changed the angle to a new camera set well to the side of dead ahead, so that the walking figures seemed likely to pass out of the frame, until they changed direction, in a long curve, homing in on the camera itself, as if it was their exact destination. Which it was, in the short term, because Skelton's next change showed it to be high above the perfumed air of the dedicated first-class check-in area. Anenko stepped past the concierge at the velvet rope, without showing paperwork, as if obviously entitled. Reacher followed. He showed his printed-out itinerary. The woman smiled and waved him in.

Anenko's bodyguard put the suitcase on the check-in scale and handed the briefcase to his boss. Then he stood back a pace, respectfully.

“Not going with him,” the detective said. “Operationally a no-brainer, I suppose. I'm sure he has regional specialists waiting at his destination. And as soon as he's through security, he's in a sterile area anyway, by definition. He doesn't need anyone now. And air fares for the help add up, you know, whoever you are.”

The hidden cameras in the check-in desks had microphones with them. Anenko was headed to New York. All was in order. He was in plenty of time. Two desks away Reacher was checking in for San Francisco. All was equally in order, but he had much less time. The West Coast flight left much earlier than the East Coast.

Skelton hopped sources again, to a head-on camera above the entrance to the dedicated and very genteel first-class security line. The bodyguard stood back and watched his boss walk on without him. He stayed in position, motionless, like a wistful relative. Reacher stepped around him and followed Anenko, about ten feet behind.

Skelton paused the playback.

He said, “With all due respect to whoever you all really are, surely we need to admit the first mistake has already been made.”

Glover said, “Careful, now.”

“What mistake?” the detective said.

“This man is flying from London to San Francisco with nothing but a tiny little messenger bag. That should have been profiled.”

The woman from MI6 whispered to Glover.

Who said, “We used to, but we had to abandon it. All we caught was billionaires. Tech people with homes in both cities, and sleeping pills in their bags to get them back and forth.”

“No sleeping pills in this bag,” Skelton said. He clicked a couple things and an X-ray photograph of a bag came up. Taken from directly above. All green and orange, like the agents saw. There were three rectangular shapes inside.

“A hardcover book, a boarding card, and a passport,” Skelton said. He called up a second image, of ghostly items in a dog-bowl container. “Plus a clip-together toothbrush, a credit card of some sort, a wad of paper money, which seems to be about half pounds and half dollars, plus what looks like twenty-nine cents in American change, and thirty-three pence in English money. Altogether not much for a long journey. And he isn't a tech guy. He's a retired military cop, currently under the radar.”

Skelton switched back to a moving picture. A guy one ahead of Anenko and two ahead of Reacher was holding things up at the metal detector hoop. Something beeped. The guy tried again. It still beeped. Anenko's briefcase was already out the far end of the X-ray tunnel. It rattled down the rollers and came to rest among a small but growing pile. Then Reacher's canvas bag came out and jammed up behind it.

In the end the guy got through the hoop with his shoes off, and after that it was plain sailing first for Anenko, and then Reacher. Anenko stepped ahead and shook his briefcase loose from a minor tangle of straps and handles and walked away with it into a glamorous corridor, which according to a discreet little sign led to the first-class lounge. Reacher stepped around the guy putting his shoes back on, picked up his own bag and followed Anenko.

Skelton switched from angle to angle, accounting for every second and every step, like a prosecutor building his case. Anenko entered the first-class lounge. Reacher entered the first-class lounge. Anenko sat down. Reacher sat down, far enough away to be in the background, but close enough to watch what was going on. Which for a long time wasn't much. Attentive waiters took orders. Tea for Anenko, coffee for Reacher. That was about it.

Skelton watched the clock in the corner of the picture, and he said, “The San Francisco flight is taking off right about. now.”

On the screen Anenko drank tea, and Reacher drank coffee.

“Watch now,” Skelton said.

Anenko stood up and glanced around. Looking for something. His bearings, possibly, or a discreet little sign. To the men's room. He saw it and set off. In the background Reacher also stood up. He chose a direct and nimble route through the chairs. He arrived at the bathroom just a step behind Anenko. Anenko went in. Reacher went in.

“This is where we run out of luck,” Skelton said. “There are no cameras in the bathrooms. I mean, we could do it. No one would ever know. But if they ever found out, obviously there would be a huge scandal. Especially the women's bathroom. So we've never done it. Right now they're both in a dead zone.”

One of the detectives laughed.

“Careful, now,” Glover said. “Show some respect.”

On the screen the shot stayed static on the outside of the men's room door. Time ticked by. A guy came out, a guy went in. Then Reacher came out. A total of almost five minutes inside.

“OK, spoiler alert,” the detective said. “Anenko doesn't come out again, never ever. In fact about four hours from now he is discovered dead on the floor of a cubicle locked from the inside. Dead with a broken neck. Discovered by an ear-witness who at the crucial time was facing the opposite direction, taking a leak, but who heard a sound he describes as exactly like a fat man falling off a chair, and he turned around to see the dead guy's face jammed in the gap at the bottom of the door. Kind of leering out at him. Naturally the gentleman made a considerable fuss about it. We were called in. The initial assumption was Anenko had died there and then. Maybe a heart attack, and a post-mortem break of the neck in the subsequent fall.”

Another detective said, “But then they worked out he had missed his flight by hours and had checked in much earlier in the day, so the doctors took a closer look, and they figured he had died right back at the beginning. Mostly because the toilets are automatic. They count the flushes. That stall saw no action all day long, because Anenko was dead in there.”

“Of what?” Glover asked.

“Could still have been a heart attack, just four hours earlier than initially assumed. Maybe it came on peacefully, and then hours later the gases swelled up and tipped him off the throne and bust his neck for him.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“You know how it is, sir. They'll say whatever we tell them to say.”

“Would a neck break that way, post-mortem?”

“Medical opinion says it's very unlikely.”

“Then what really happened?”

“No one liked Anenko,” the guy said. “Even his friends didn't like him. Certainly not his enemies or his customers. We didn't like him. I'm sure no one in this room liked him. But there was nothing much we could do. Too many rules. But those don't apply to everyone. Maybe Anenko made the wrong kind of enemy. Maybe someone hired a contractor.”

“This Reacher guy?”

“The timing is exactly right. Reacher follows Anenko into the bathroom, wrestles him into a stall, breaks his neck, props his body on the can, leans over from the outside and locks the door, then leaves. The airport is the one place in the world they don't take their bodyguards, and the one place in the airport with guaranteed no cameras is the bathroom. This was planned. Reacher was recruited. He's not a first-class kind of guy. The airline never heard of him. He's not a frequent flier. He's an old bruiser. His army record shows he did this stuff for a living.”

“Circumstantial,” Glover said.

“He was right behind Anenko, going in the men's room. An arm's length away. He wanted to be there. He made up a lot of ground. He took a direct route through the seating arrangements.”

“Still circumstantial.”

“At least he's the last person to see Anenko alive. We should talk to him.”

“He has an alibi,” Skelton said.

“What alibi? How could he?”

“He was en route to San Francisco.”

“Bullshit. You showed us when that flight took off. He was sitting right there, drinking coffee. He missed it.”

“He didn't miss it. He was on the plane. His passport, his boarding card, both checked by competent officials at the departure gate. Which is a rocksolid government-backed alibi.”

“How is that possible?”

“Watch this,” Skelton said.

He clicked around and came up with a completely new picture. Passengers, getting on a plane. On the right of the screen was inlaid a read-out of what the scanning machine was saying. The competent official was matching names on boarding passes with names on passports. But not passports with faces.

A man in a blue suit stepped up. The agent checked his names and dabbed his boarding card against the reader. The right of the screen flashed in green: REACHER, JACK.

The guy walked into the jet bridge.

“Watch this,” Skelton said again.

He switched back to the first-class lounge and rewound the timeline all the way to the security line. All the way to the guy who had to take his shoes off. He was wearing a blue suit. Skelton stopped the action and put a still frame through the tilting and rotating software until the view seemed to be from directly above the far end of the X-ray belt. Where the small but growing pile of hand luggage was accumulating. Which contained Anenko's handsome leather briefcase, and two identical canvas messenger bags, with leather straps.

“He swapped them here,” Skelton said. “Reacher took the other guy's bag. The other guy took Reacher's bag, which had his passport and boarding card inside. No doubt the reverse was also true. The other guy got on Reacher's plane, and no doubt Reacher got on the other guy's plane. It's incriminating behaviour in itself. And it's all easy enough to prove.”

Glover looked at the Foreign Office woman, who looked at the MI6 woman, who shook her head very slightly, and then they all three looked at me, and I shook my head very slightly.

Glover said, “No, I think Anenko had a heart attack. Then later the thing with the gases toppled him over. Natural causes. He was certainly overweight.”

“Sir, the evidence allows for other possibilities.”

“There are always wild rumours. Generally better to ignore them.”

“Just because no one in this room liked Anenko? Does the end justify the means?”

Glover shook his head.

“I don't like loose cannon,” he said. “Usually they're a royal pain in the neck. I would be happy to find Mr Reacher and have a word. But we can't prove a case without busting his alibi, which we can't do without telling the world we let people get on planes here in London with the wrong boarding card and the wrong passport and the wrong face. In the wider picture it's probably better we don't do that. In the sense of possible damage to an important economic sector. And as you mentioned, no one liked Anenko anyway. So, all things considered, I think we'll let it slide.”

Skelton was quiet a beat.

Then he said, “Reacher knew you would, right? He knew you would think the thing about getting on the plane was more important. That's why he didn't care about the cameras.”

Glover looked at the MI6 woman, who nodded, so he nodded too.

“Reacher took a couple of intelligent chances,” he said. “But overall it was beautifully executed. By which I mean, how the aftermath was handled. The deed itself was routine. What came next was perfectly predicted. But also manipulated. He's daring us to help him. Just this one instance.”

“Will we?”

“Probably better the world doesn't know we let the wrong people on planes.”

“Plus we didn't like Anenko anyway.”

“There's that.”

“And Reacher predicted all this?”

“Apparently.”

“Is it us, paying him?”

“Good lord, no,” Glover said. “We don't do things like that.”

Skelton sought me out. The American.

“We don't either,” I said.

“But you're going to help him.”

I said, “Kid, you need to learn, this whole business is about choosing between a very bad thing and an even worse thing. There are no good answers.”

“OK,” Skelton said. “Anenko died on the toilet.”

“Like Elvis.”

“There's that. All I'm saying is, the evidence could be used against you.”

“Delete it,” Glover said. “We had no need for it in the first place. Anenko died of purely natural causes.”

“Including his neck?”

“He was a big heavy man. He suddenly pitches forward, literally a dead weight, purely naturally his neck breaks on impact. It's simple physics. We don't need hours and hours of recordings. It's a routine event. We just mentioned Elvis. I'm sure there were thousands more.”

“OK,” Skelton said, and he deleted it all right then and there, which is how Anenko stayed dead, and Reacher stayed free. Later he mailed short and cryptic thank-you notes to both Skelton and Glover. Neither officer turned over the notes to the investigation. Both kept them private.

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Lee Child
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