Page 53 of The Secret

“No. Baglin. He can deal with the police. The CIA. Stamoran. Whoever. But first we need to get Neilsen’s phone records.”

“How?”

“The front desk will have them, so they know how much to bill to his room.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It doesn’t. But we need to find his contact, Frank, and warn him. And see who else he was in touch with. He said he’d been shaking the trees. He might have said the wrong word in the wrong ear. The alarm could have gotten raised that way. You don’t get to the top by being overly trusting. Stamoran will have tripwires out there. All kinds of defense mechanisms. We just don’t know how many. Or where they are.”

—

Christopher Baglin wason the scene half an hour after Reacher spoke to him on the phone. He assessed the situation then called the chief of the D.C. police. Two detectives arrived within another twenty minutes. A crime scene truck was hard on their heels. Yellow and black tape sprouted all over the place, running between doorframes and across corridors. A fresh-faced uniformed officerwas set up with a clipboard to record everyone who came and went. Designated paths were marked for entering and leaving. Photographs were taken. Guys in paper suits and elasticated booties got busy with all kinds of powders and sprays. At some point two guys in dark suits showed up. They poked around everywhere but didn’t introduce themselves to anyone. They didn’t need to. Everyone there recognized CIA agents when they saw them. Finally, a pair of paramedics wheeled Neilsen’s body away on a gurney and the detectives set to work taking statements from Reacher and Smith.

They were moved into separate, makeshift interview rooms. There were no panic strips or one-way mirrors, but the rest of the detectives’ repertoire was in play. They tried every trick. Saying the other one had flipped and it was time to get out ahead of the inevitable charges. That there were witnesses. That there was only one deal to be done and the other one was wavering. Nothing worked. And the whole time a CIA guy was lurking in the corner, leaning against the wall, saying nothing.

When the dust had settled and the majority of the emergency personnel had dispersed, Baglin pulled Reacher and Smith aside. He said, “Are you folks OK? It can’t have been pleasant, what you’ve been through.”

Smith said, “I can think of better ways to spend an evening.”

Baglin said, “Your rooms were searched by the same guy?”

Reacher said, “Our rooms were searched. We assume it was by the same guy. There’s no proof, but it would be a hell of a coincidence otherwise.”

“I’m sure the detectives asked you this, but can you think of any reason why someone would come after Neilsen? Maybe after all of you?”

Reacher shook his head. “None. It’s hard to see how the attack connects with the task force in any way. We know that two womenhave committed a string of murders, and we have a good idea why, but that’s all. We have no IDs. No descriptions. No physical evidence. They’re clearly well trained and proficient, so if they believed the net was closing in, the smart play would be to go back to their regular lives. They could serve us coffee every morning at the café on the corner and we’d be none the wiser. They had no need to kill any of us. It would be a tactically retrograde move to try. Very out of character for them.”

“So what happened tonight?”

“My guess? A burglary gone wrong. Hotels get robbed all the time. And look at the sequence of our rooms. The guy started with mine. Found nothing worth taking. Moved on to Agent Smith’s.”

Smith said, “Nothing valuable in mine.”

“So the perp moved on to Neilsen’s. He was in the process of rummaging around, looking for goodies, when Neilsen stumbled in. It’s safe to say from the smell that he’d been drinking tonight. The intruder might not even have been trying to kill him. Maybe he just pushed him, trying to make a run for it.”

Baglin crossed his arms and Reacher got the feeling he wasn’t buying the story at all. No one spoke for a moment, then Baglin said, “I should apologize. Placing you all in the same hotel, let alone in adjacent rooms, was a tactical error. It exposed you to unnecessary risk. That has been remedied. You’re being moved to new hotels. Separate ones, in different parts of town. Effective immediately.”

Reacher said, “I don’t have a vehicle.”

“One has been arranged. It may have been delivered already. Check with reception on your way out.”

Smith said, “Thank you. And what about tomorrow morning?” She checked her watch. “This morning, I guess.”

Baglin said, “What about it? Be at the office, usual time. We now have three killers to catch.”

—

A car waswaiting in the lot for Reacher. It was a rental. A Ford sedan. A tinny thing with thin seats and too many buttons on the dash and not enough room behind the steering wheel. Reacher wasn’t worried about its design flaws, though. He wasn’t planning on spending much time using it.

The hotel Reacher had been allocated to was pretty much at the opposite end of the scale from the original. If the first had been designed with hordes of raucous Midwest schoolkids in mind, the second was aimed squarely at the political and diplomatic end of the market. His room was enormous. It was two rooms, really. One with a bed and a bathroom and a walk-in closet. And the other with separate sitting and dining areas. There were full-sized bottles of various washing products he didn’t recognize set around the sink and basin. The kind of things he would never dream of using. There were giant towels. Fluffy robes. Enough scatter cushions that if you had to escape the building in a fire you could throw them out of the window and they’d break your fall from ten floors up. Reacher wasn’t interested in any of those things, though. He just wanted to put the day behind him and start fresh in the morning. He made his way around, switching off lights and closing drapes, and he noticed the door to a little cabinet wasn’t closed all the way. It was a minibar. Neilsen would have liked that, he thought. He looked inside. Took out a miniature of Maker’s Mark, popped the cap, and drank a silent toast to absent friends.

Chapter20

Reacher and Smith pulled intothe parking lot outside the task force’s office within a minute of each other the following morning. Reacher came from the south. Smith from the north. They walked into reception together and saw that two extra security guards were on duty. The stable door’s been locked, Reacher thought, and showed his ID. He followed Smith down the corridor and into the boardroom. She sat and he poured himself a mug of coffee.

She said, “Do you think they’ll send a replacement for Neilsen?”

Reacher said, “I doubt it. Sending someone from the Agency was a gamble for Stamoran. A misstep, with hindsight. Neilsen was only able to get to the truth because he could tap up his buddy. The guy would never have spoken to us. Or Walsh, now that he’s woken up. Stamoran probably figured it would look more suspicious if the Agency wasn’t represented. Eyebrows would have been raised then, for sure. He probably hoped a drunk like Neilsen wouldn’t be able to do him any harm.”

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