Page 34 of The Secret

There were three customers in the place, spread across two of the smaller tables, and one waiter was on duty. He strolled across to the lectern and said, “Table for three? Breakfast or brunch?”

Reacher said, “We want to see the owner.”

The waiter looked startled. He said, “He’s not here.”

“We’ll wait.”

“OK. I guess. As long as you place an order and don’t block a table if other guests—”

“We’ll wait in his office.”

The waiter shook his head. He said, “That will not be possible.”

Reacher said, “Are you sure?” He started toward the back of the room. The waiter set off after him, fussing and flapping in his wake like an anxious child. Smith and Neilsen followed a few steps behind. Reacher weaved through the tables until he got to an embroidered red and gold curtain that was hanging across a doorway in the back wall. It was between two giant paintings of old guys in antique military uniforms sitting astride docile white horses. Reacher pulled the curtain aside. He saw a tiny vestibule and a staircase, leading up. A guy was by the bottom step, perched on a wooden stool. He stood up. He was the same height as Reacher but his chest was so wide that his arms couldn’t hang straight down at his sides. He glared, but didn’t say a word.

The waiter hustled up and said, “I’m sorry, Sergei. This guest is…lost. He didn’t mean to trespass, I’m sure.” The waiter went up on tiptoes and leaned over, closer to Reacher. He lowered his voice and said, “Come on. Let me take you to a table. If you place a large enough order—champagne, caviar, a suckling pig perhaps—then this little mistake can be overlooked. Sergei will stay here. You can leave. He won’t hurt you.”

Reacher said nothing. He had hoped someone like Sergei would be waiting there. It confirmed that the stairs led somewhere important. With luck, to the owner’s office. In which case there would be more bodyguards. Probably the same size, or bigger. Probably armed. Ready to rush down and snuff out any threat at the first sound of trouble. Which was bad luck for Sergei. It meant there was no time for Reacher to offer him the opportunity to surrender. He had to get straight down to business, so he tipped back his head. Just a little. Just enough to provide some leverage. He engaged the muscles in his neck and chest and abdomen. Then he flung himself forward, jackknifing at the waist and driving his forehead straight into Sergei’s face. It was a brutal, primitive, devastating move. The kind Reacher liked best. Sergei had no warning. No time to react. No chance to defend himself. His nose and cheekbones shattered. Cartilage was crushed and torn. Teeth showered down onto the carpet. Blood gushed onto his shirt and he fell back and landed crumpled, inert, half on the floor, half on the staircase.

Reacher turned to the waiter, wiped a trace of blood from his forehead, and said, “We’re going upstairs. If anyone’s waiting for us, I’ll come back down—and what I did to Sergei, I’ll do to you. Are we clear?”

—

Reacher picked hisway around Sergei’s immobile limbs and led the way upstairs. It took Smith and Neilsen a moment to catch up. Reacher’s outburst of violence had wrong-footed them. Reacher stepped out into a corridor that ran perpendicular, the whole width of the building. There was a window at each end, six doors on one side, and four on the other. The walls were painted a dull almond color with scuffs and dents scattered all the way along at various heights. Light came from naked bulbs in plastic holders at intervalson the ceiling. One was flickering and hanging down on its wires. Outside of the public area the place fell somewhere between dump and fire hazard, Reacher thought. Maybe the café wasn’t doing so well, after all. Maybe the Soviet guys weren’t too familiar with high standards of decoration. Or safety. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

Smith and Neilsen arrived in the corridor behind Reacher and straightaway the nearest door flew open. A guy strode through. He could have been Sergei’s twin. He was the same height. The same weight. He had the same bulked-up stance. Only this guy didn’t stay still. He put his head down and started to charge.

Reacher pointed to the other half of the corridor and said, “Move!” He glanced to his right to make sure Smith and Neilsen were at a safe distance, then he stepped the other way. Toward the onrushing guy. He squared up. Waited until impact seemed inevitable, then danced aside and flattened himself against the wall. The guy was level. Almost past Reacher. On course to demolish the other two. Reacher stretched out. He grabbed the guy’s collar and belt, planted his feet, and pivoted, hard. He felt like his arms were getting wrenched out of their sockets but he held firm. He waited until the other guy had swung through 90 degrees. So he was no longer in line with the corridor. He was facing down the stairs. Then Reacher let go. The guy’s velocity had dropped a little but he still had plenty of momentum. Enough to carry him half the length of the staircase in midair. When he finally made contact, his arms were stretched out above his head. It was an instinctive response. An attempt to break his fall. Which it did in the extremely short term. It also broke his wrists and his collarbones. It slowed the front half of his body. But not his legs. It caused them to flip up, over his head, and sent him cartwheeling down onto the floor beyond the bottom step. He landed in a solid heap, half on top of his doppelganger.

More bad news for Sergei, Reacher thought.

—

Reacher checked bothways along the corridor. Nothing was moving. He had ten doors to pick from. The guy they needed to find would be behind one of them. Assuming he was in the building. And the presence of the heavies suggested he would be. Reacher figured the kind of guy who used fake titles and grandiose made-up names must have quite an ego, and a guy with an ego would want his bodyguards close, to show how important he was. So Reacher closed in on the door that Sergei’s lookalike had rushed out of. It was still open, but just a crack. Reacher listened. He heard papers rustling. A creaking sound like someone shifting their weight in a stiff leather chair. And breathing. Calm. Relaxed. No sense of tension. And from more than one person.

Reacher nudged the door with his shoulder and strolled casually through like he was returning home from a boring day at the office. Like he wasn’t expecting to face any kind of a challenge. The room was rectangular with a window at the far end and dark wood paneling on the walls. There was a desk three-quarters of the way in. A man was sitting behind it. He had broad shoulders. His head was large and square. He was bald, and he had narrow eyes that were set close together beneath a giant slab of a forehead. There were four other men in the room. Two were sitting on plain wooden chairs in front of the desk. Two were on identical chairs near the left-hand wall. All were wearing expensive suits and ties but they looked child-sized compared to the last two guys Reacher had faced. Even though they were sitting down, he could tell they were not very tall. He guessed maybe five feet eight. Five feet ten at the most. They had shaved heads. Their eyes were bright and constantly moving. They looked lean and rangy. The kind of guys who could run all day and all night with huge packs on their backs. Special Forces types. Probably former Spetsnaz operators. The big lunks who werenow at the bottom of the stairs were just window dressing. Their job was to scare people who didn’t know better. These guys were the ones who would get the job done if a threat got serious.

Or so someone hoped.

Reacher stopped in the center of the room and looked at the man behind the desk with an expression that said he’d been more impressed with the contents of his Kleenex the last time he’d blown his nose. Smith and Neilsen had followed Reacher in but hung back near the doorway. The two guys near the wall got to their feet. So did the pair by the desk. They shifted around so the four were in a square. None had their backs to Smith or Neilsen. Reacher was boxed in. It was a promising position for them. Their numerical advantage and the close quarters negated Reacher’s natural strengths—his weight, and the length of his arms and legs. Had it been one against one, or two against one, with more room to maneuver, they wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near him. If they tried to get in range for a punch or a kick he could pick them off at leisure. But here they could swarm in from all sides. One or two of them would take some damage, most likely severe, but if the others sustained the attack, there was every chance they would succeed. And the way they were formed up was smart. Two of them were behind Reacher, outside his field of vision. The odds were against him. That was for sure. But the odds had been against him before. Countless times. All the way back to his childhood when he and his brother, Joe, had been forced to slug it out with the local tough kids the first day of every new school they attended, all around the world. Reacher knew what was going to happen. He didn’t need to see the guys in his blind spot. One of them would be the first to attack. It didn’t matter which. Not as long as Reacher moved before he got hit. So he spun to his left. He raised his arm as he turned. Brought it up to horizontal. The side of his fist was likethe face of a sledgehammer and it was accelerating as it swung around. It caught the first guy under his chin and lifted him off his feet. The force threw him back. His head hit the wall and he slid down to the floor, out cold.

Reacher pushed off his back foot, reversed direction, twisted at the waist, and launched the same fist at the guy in the opposite corner of the square. He was aiming for his face. Going for power rather than placement. But the guy was fast. He anticipated Reacher’s move. Given the weight difference he opted to block with both forearms. It was effective. He knocked Reacher’s fist off target. Deflected it so it was set to sail harmlessly past his ear. Only the moment they made contact, Reacher bent his arm. His elbow shifted sideways and the tip crunched into the guy’s nose. He fell like a suit slipping off a hanger and before he hit the floor Reacher had reversed course again. He was back in the first corner. The guy who’d started to the right of that was moving, too. Going forward into what was now empty space. Their roles had flipped. Now he couldn’t see Reacher. For a moment he was defenseless. And Reacher had a rule. You get the chance to put your enemy down, you take it. Every time. No hesitation. No pearl clutching about whether that’s a gentlemanly thing to do. No Marquess of Queensberry rules. So Reacher stepped in close. He punched the guy in the right kidney, hard and fast, middle knuckle extended to multiply the force. He did the same to his left kidney. And when the guy collapsed forward onto his knees, Reacher kicked him in the head like he was trying for a sixty-yard field goal.

One guy was left standing. He had shifted across, directly in front of the desk, and was pulling something out of his pants pocket. A knife handle. He hit a round brass button and a blade snapped into place, bright and sharp and mean.

Reacher said, “Bring that thing near me and I’ll make you eat it.”

The guy held the knife out in front and moved it from side to side in a slow, fluid, mocking motion.

Reacher said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He stretched to the side and picked up the chair the guy had been sitting on. He flipped it around so that its legs were pointing straight out, then charged. He drove the guy back. The guy’s arms were flailing and his knife was nowhere near finding a target. Reacher kept going. The guy bumped into the edge of the desk and fell, sprawling onto its scratched wooden top. Reacher dropped the chair, pinned the guy’s wrist with one hand, and used his other forearm to crush the guy’s throat. He lifted the guy’s wrist then hammered it down, dislodging the knife from his grip. Swung his leg up and planted his knee on the guy’s chest. Picked up the knife. Folded away the blade. And pinched the guy’s nose.

The guy held his breath for thirty seconds. Forty-five. His face turned red. His eyes started to bulge. He finally opened his mouth. He spluttered and gasped. Reacher shoved the knife so far in it jammed against the guy’s tonsils. Then he lifted the guy up and flung him headfirst into the wall.

The man behind the desk had rolled his chair back to avoid getting slashed. He waited a moment then stood up and came around and set the fallen chair back on its feet in its place by the wall. He stared at each unconscious body in turn, then turned his attention to Reacher. This guy was a good five inches shorter but must have been fifty pounds heavier. His legs were relatively short and his waist was narrow, which made his chest and shoulders look cartoonishly big. He was still for a moment, then he launched himself forward, arms spread wide, straight toward Reacher. He was trying to grab him and wrestle him to the floor. Reacher moved at the same moment. Straight toward the guy. One arm rising. Elbow out front like the tip of a steel bar. It connected with the bridge of theguy’s nose. His head stopped dead. His legs kept moving. His feet left the floor and he crashed down, flat on his back, still as a rock.

Smith moved up alongside Reacher. She jabbed him in the arm and said, “The hell have you done? How can we talk to him now?”

Reacher said, “Don’t worry. This isn’t the guy we want. He can’t be. It was too easy.”

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