Page 40 of The Secret

Chapter15

Reacher, Smith, and Neilsen metin the hotel lobby at 6:00p.m., as agreed. They walked to the same restaurant as before and sat at the same table. Reacher and Smith ordered beer. Neilsen started straight in on the whiskey.

“What?” he said when he saw the others’ expressions. “You think I should stick to vodka?”

Smith cupped her hand to her ear. “What’s that I hear? Oh. It’s your liver. It thinks you should stick to water.”

Reacher and Smith brought Neilsen up to speed on the outcome of the afternoon’s meeting while they waited for their food. When it was delivered, Neilsen ordered another drink and said, “Covering up the existence of a secret nerve gas factory is a much stronger motive than keeping antidote testing under wraps. I like that much better. I made some calls this afternoon. Shook some trees. We’ll see if anything falls out.”

Reacher said, “I did the same.”

“This new information about Neville Pritchard means he must be key to potentially exposing the whole illicit program. That’s why he’s the only one they tried to take into protective custody. My guess is that he was more spy than scientist. Langley’s point man on the ground. Or the Chemical Corps’. Whoever’s pulling the strings now must have been in overall charge then. Because he has the most to lose if the lid gets blown off. With public opinion the way it is these days this could be career-ending stuff. Legacy destroying.”

Reacher said, “Whoever’s pulling the strings is a cynical bastard. He could have had all the vulnerable guys taken into custody. But he didn’t. He was happy to leave the other scientists out there in harm’s way, like bait. He tried to use them to catch the killer before she caught up with Pritchard.”

Neilsen breathed out, slowly. “That’s cold, man. You can see how this guy got to the top.”

Smith said, “Right, but what I don’t get is this. Look at it from the killer’s point of view. If Pritchard is key to revealing the secret, why leave him till last? I’d go after him first. Get the info I needed. Move on to stage two—embarrassing the USA, blackmailing the government, whatever. Then I wouldn’t need to kill the others. I’d save time. Avoid risk.”

Neilsen took a large swig and said, “Maybe she deliberately left Pritchard till last to ramp up the tension he was under. She would need him stressed to make him cooperate.”

“I guess.”

Neilsen said, “Or maybe she didn’t know all the names up front. She might have had to start at the bottom and work her way up the food chain, getting a new name out of each victim in turn.”

Smith shrugged. “Possible.”

Reacher said, “Maybe she did know all the names, but not whichthe important one was. It could have been chance that Pritchard was last.”

Smith shook her head. “Surely he couldn’t just randomly be last.”

Reacher said, “Sure he could. It’s a version of the gambler’s fallacy. It’s just as likely for Pritchard to be picked last as in any other position. Hitting on his name doesn’t get more likely after each failure.”

“You certain it works that way?”

“Absolutely. But that might not be relevant. The murders still feel personal to me. Killing everyone on the list could be the whole point. If she just wants to kill all seven, the order won’t matter. And if she knows Pritchard’s significance, leaving him till last would make sense because his security is the highest. Right now she’s batting a thousand. If she went for Pritchard first, she could have struck out right away.”

Neilsen said, “Right. But that’s academic. Maybe she wants to expose Typhon. Maybe she’s just on a homicidal spree. But whether she wants information or to complete her set of corpses, she’ll still go after Pritchard. She has to. So we have to find him, to stop her, and avoid the blame landing on us.”

“No.” Smith put her empty glass down. “You’re missing something. If she wants information, she doesn’t need Pritchard. Someone else knows about Typhon. Someone who allegedly has proof. Photographs. A secondhand source, but maybe good enough. Maybe better.”

Neilsen said, “Flemming. The journalist.”

“She could change tack. Go after him instead.”

“If she knows about him.”

“We know about him, and we’ve only been involved in this for two days. How long has she been researching? She seemed to know plenty about all her other victims.”

“We’ll visit Flemming tomorrow. As soon as Baglin’s morning briefing is over.”

Reacher said, “No. Tonight. Now. Tomorrow could be too late.”

—

The address Sarbotskiyhad given them for Flemming turned out to be an abandoned building perched on a narrow strip of land between I-295 and the Potomac. It was three stories high, built of strangely orange bricks, and it was a wildly irregular shape. Sections bulged out here and dropped back there in a way that suggested some kind of complex hidden purpose behind the design. The tops of the walls had a series of bites taken out of them like an ancient European castle. All the windows were blocked up with sheets of rusting metal and the whole place was surrounded by a fence like contractors use to secure construction sites.

Smith pulled her car over at the end of the building’s driveway. She didn’t switch off the headlights or kill the engine. Neilsen was next to her in the front. Reacher was sprawled out in the back.

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