LAUREN PAULING SAT forward in her chair and said, “Tell me.” So Reacher told her, everything, from the first night in the café, the first double espresso in its foam cup, the badly parked Mercedes Benz, the anonymous driver threading through the Sixth Avenue traffic on foot and then driving the Benz away. The second day, with Gregory scouting witnesses. The third day, with the unopened red door and the blue BMW. And then the nightmare electronic voice, guiding the black BMW back to the exact same fireplug.

“If that’s a charade it’s unbelievably elaborate,” Pauling said.

“My feeling exactly,” Reacher said.

“And insanely expensive.”

“Maybe not,” Reacher said.

“You mean because the money comes around in a big circle?”

“I haven’t actually seen any money. All I’ve seen are zippered bags.”

“Cut up newspaper?”

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “If it’s a charade.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“Exactly.”

“It feels real.”

“And if it isn’t real, I can’t imagine who’s doing it. He would need people he trusts, which means A-teamers, but there’s nobody AWOL.”

“Were they getting along? Man and wife?”

“Nobody says otherwise.”

“So it’s real.”

Reacher nodded. “There’s an internal consistency to it. The initial takedown must have depended on an inside tip, as to where Kate and Jade were going to be, and when. And we can prove that inside involvement two ways. First, these people know something about Lane’s operation. They know exactly what cars he’s got, for instance.”

“And second?”

“Something that was nagging at me. Something about cops. I asked Lane to repeat what was said during the first phone call. And he did, word for word. And the bad guys never said no cops. That’s kind of standard, isn’t it? Like, Don’t go to the cops. But that was never said. Which suggests these people knew the story from five years ago. They knew Lane wouldn’t go to the cops anyway. So it didn’t need saying.”

“That would suggest that five years ago was for real.”

“Not necessarily. It might only reflect what Lane put out there for public consumption.”

“If it’s real this time, does that make it more likely it was real last time?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But whatever, give yourself a break.”

“This is like a hall of fun house mirrors.”

Reacher nodded. “But there’s one thing I can’t make fit under any scenario. Which is the initial takedown itself. The only viable method would have been quick and dirty inside the car, as soon as it stopped. Everyone agrees on that. I asked a couple of Lane’s guys, theoretically, in case there was something I hadn’t thought of. But there wasn’t. And the problem is, Bloomingdale’s is a whole block long. How could anyone have predicted exactly what yard of Lexington Avenue Taylor’s Jaguar was going to stop on? And if they didn’t predict it exactly right, then the whole thing would have fallen apart immediately, there and then. Either Kate and Jade would have been out on the sidewalk already, or Taylor would have seen the takedown guy running up, in which case he would have reacted and taken off. Or at least hit the door locks.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying real or fake there’s something wrong with this whole thing. I’m saying I can’t get a handle on what happened. I can’t get traction. I’m saying for the first time in my life I just don’t know. Like Brewer said, I’ve been wrong plenty of times, but I’ve always known before.”

“You should talk to Brewer, officially.”

“No point. NYPD can’t do anything without a complaint from Lane. Or at least a missing person report from someone with an interest.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have to do it the hard way,” Reacher said.

“What way is that?”

“It’s what we called it in the service when we didn’t catch a break. When we actually had to work for a living. You know, start over at square one, re-examine everything, sweat the details, work the clues.”

“Kate and Jade are probably already dead.”

“Then I’ll make someone pay.”

“Can I help?”

“I need to know about two guys called Hobart and Knight.”

Pauling nodded. “Knight was the driver the day Anne was taken and Hobart was in Philadelphia. Now Patti Joseph talks about them. They died overseas.”

“Maybe they didn’t die overseas. They were abandoned wounded but alive. I need to know where, when, how, and what’s likely to have happened to them.”

“You think they’re alive? You think they’re back?”

“I don’t know what to think. But at least one of Lane’s guys wasn’t sleeping too well last night.”

“I met Hobart and Knight, you know. Five years ago. During the investigation.”

“Did either of them look like the guy I saw?”

“Medium-sized and ordinary-looking? Both of them, exactly.”

“That helps.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going back to the Dakota. Maybe we’ll get a call and this whole thing will be over. But more likely we won’t, and it’s just beginning.”

“Give me three hours,” Pauling said. “Then call my cell.”

BY THE TIME Reacher got back to the Dakota it was seven o’clock and dawn had given way to full morning. The sky was a pale hard blue. No cloud. Just a beautiful late-summer day in the capital of the world. But inside the fifth floor apartment the air was foul and hot and the drapes were still drawn. Reacher didn’t need to ask whether the phone had rung. Clearly it hadn’t. The tableau was the same as it had been nine hours earlier. Lane upright in his chair. Then Gregory, Groom, Burke, Perez, Addison, Kowalski, all silent, all morose, all arrayed here and there, eyes closed, eyes open, staring into space, breathing low.

Medals not approved.

General discharges.

Bad guys.

Lane turned his head slowly and looked straight at Reacher and asked, “Where the hell have you been?”

“Breakfast,” Reacher said.

“Long breakfast. What was it, five courses at the Four Seasons?”

“A diner,” Reacher said. “Bad choice. Slow service.”

“I pay you to work. I don’t pay you to be out stuffing your face.”

“You don’t pay me at all,” Reacher said. “I haven’t seen dime one yet.”

Lane kept his body facing forward and his head turned ninety degrees to the side. Like a querulous sea bird. His eyes were dark and wet and glittering.

“Is that your problem?” he asked. “Money?”

Reacher said nothing.

“That’s easily solved,” Lane said.

He kept his eyes on Reacher’s face and put his hands on the chair arms, palms down, pale parchment skin ridged with tendons and veins ghostly in the yellow light. He levered himself upright, with an effort, like it was the first time he had moved in nine hours, which it probably was. He stood unsteadily and walked toward the lobby, stiffly, shuffling like he was old and infirm.

“Come,” he said. Like a command. Like the colonel he had been. Reacher followed him to the master bedroom suite. The pencil post bed, the armoire, the desk. The silence. The photograph. Lane opened his closet. The narrower of the two doors. Inside was a shallow recess, and then another door. To the left of the inner door was a security keypad. It was the same type of three-by-three-plus-zero matrix as Lauren Pauling had used at her office. Lane used his left hand. Index finger, curled. Ring finger, straight. Middle finger, straight. Middle finger, curled. 3785, Reacher thought. Dumb or distracted to let me see. The keypad beeped and Lane opened the inner door. Reached inside and pulled a chain. A light came on and showed a chamber maybe six feet by three. It was stacked with cube-shaped bales of something wrapped tight in heavy heat-shrunk plastic. Dust and foreign printing on the plastic. At first Reacher didn’t know what he was looking at.