Page 64 of Chain Reaction

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Four miles southeast of them Axel Brill was taking his first formal policy meeting with his new head of security, up on the glossy, glassy executive floor, with the wall to wall windows and the stunning view. Saxby Cameron was sitting in. The business partner. The know-how guy. Everyone agreed that intelligence gathering was key. Brill claimed his was the best in the world by far. He could access anything, anywhere, anytime. Cameron agreed, in more temperate and technical language, but with the same basic promise. The new head of security seemed very impressed, and extremely energized by the implied possibilities. His name was Hennessy. He was a large man with eyes as dead as a shark’s. He had a long military career behind him. He seemed to have progressed from one multi-letter acronym to the next. JSOC, SOCOM, OCONUS, and plenty more. Neither Brill nor Cameron knew what the acronyms meant, but both were sure the guy was the type of person they wanted. Brill laid out the kind of things they were likely to need from him, using Bisley’s visit to Summertown as an example. Then he moved on to the concierge’s multiple subsequent failures, at the Swiss motel, at the Four Seasons, at the suite hotel, and then all the way over in Virginia. Brill said those were examples of what they didn’t need.

Hennessy said, “Tell me more about this lawyer.”

“He works out of a small office in Palo Alto,” Brill said. “Word on the street was he was the go-to guy if you needed certain things to be arranged. Allegedly lots of people use him. But he was no good in the end. I fired him last night.”

“How much does he know?”

“Everything, bro.”

“That’s not good.”

“We have attorney-client privilege. He can’t open his mouth.”

“He shouldn’t open his mouth,” Hennessy said. “But he can. There’s a difference. Anyone can open their mouth. Depends on the incentive. Would he go to prison for you? I don’t think so. Lawyers never do. He’s a liability.”

Brill said nothing.

Cameron said, “So what’s your professional advice?”

“We should adopt a two-step philosophy. If something needs to be done, it should be done right. That’s step one. But if loose ends are left, they should be cleaned up. That’s step two.”

Brill said, “So you want to go all step-two on the guy?”

“My professional assessment is you can’t afford not to. A liability is a very bad thing to have, going forward.”

“When?”

“Tactically there’s no urgency. He would need to be at the plea bargain stage before he would offer to rat you out. But my mama used to tell me, never put off till tomorrow what you can get done today.”

Brill was quiet a minute. Then he said, “Whenever, bro. As soon as you like. The guy is a waste of oxygen. Plus you’re right. I would feel safer.”

Hennessy looked at Cameron.

Cameron said, “I would feel safer too.”

—

The acupuncturist’s binoculars were very high quality. They cast a vivid, detailed image. Reacher saw faint points of light behind the glass of Lazarus Lorenzo’s windows. Desk lamps, maybe, not ceiling fixtures. Someone was checking the fine print. From time to time he saw moving shadows, as if people were walking in and walking out of rooms. On the outside nothing was happening. The front door remained resolutely closed. No one approached on the sidewalk. Occasional cars passed by in the roadway, some of them holding a legal twenty-five, some of them going faster, all of them rolling right past the blue building, none of them paying it any particular attention. Thirty minutes had passed, out of the acupuncturist’s predicted forty. Reacher moved his binoculars to see further up the street. Nothing doing there either. He focused closer again. A customer came out of the hygge store next door and rode away on a silent electric scooter.

Elwood said, “These days we do this with drones.”

“Binoculars are better,” Reacher said.

“We would deploy a fleet. We could find the taxi five miles away.”

“We don’t need to find it five miles away. The only part we care about is when it stops on the curb a hundred feet from here and the guy steps out in the open. Binoculars are better for that.”

“Your performance review would say you’re resistant to change.”

“I like change. Literally every day is different for me. What I don’t like is dumb ideas.”

“You think drones are dumb?”

“For a job like this, sure I do. They’re noisy. You think Hugo wouldn’t notice a swarm of giant insects buzzing around his head?”

“They would be eight miles in the sky. Long-lens video cameras, real-time encoded signals bouncing off satellites.”