Page 30 of Exit Strategy
There was hope for Gilmour yet, Reacher thought.
Gilmour checked his watch, then turned to leave. He said, ‘Come on. It’s time we weren’t here.’ He opened the door but stopped before he could step through. He turned and looked around the little room. ‘This is the second time I thought I was leaving for good. Let’s hope I’m right this time.’
NINETEEN
Steve McClaren knocked on Morgan Strickland’s door and opened it without waiting for a reply. That was a serious breach of etiquette on his part, but it was done with intent. Partly because he was annoyed. But mainly because he wanted Strickland to have no doubt about just how annoyed he was.
Strickland was sitting at his desk reading a printed copy of the proposed contract that Mark Hewson had emailed him. He had a pen in his hand and was about to make some alterations to one of the clauses. He pretended not to notice McClaren, crossing out a word here, adding a phrase there.
McClaren stepped forward, right up to Strickland’s desk. He had an iPad in one hand. He held it out and said, ‘Have you seen this?’
Strickland glanced up. The screen showed an image ofa man in his twenties. He was wearing a plain olive-drab battledress uniform. He was standing in the shell of a ruined kitchen with an M16 in his hand. The weapon was aimed at nothing in particular. Behind the man a robotic terrorist figure was pointing a pistol at a point between his shoulder blades. Strickland said, ‘Looks like footage from an assessment. This morning’s?’
‘You sayassessment. I sayabomination.’ McClaren swiped the screen sideways and a video began to play. It showed another man. He was a similar age. He had the same kind of generic uniform. He crept into a dusty living room. He was holding a pistol. It was pointed to his right. He was looking to his left. Another robotic figure emerged from behind a couch to the side of the door. The robot had a shotgun. The guy didn’t notice it was there for fully six seconds. ‘Impressive, huh? Would you want him watching your back?’ McClaren swiped again. The next guy to appear was in a backyard. A robot popped out from behind a child’s playhouse. It was dressed as a woman in a bright yellow sundress. It was holding a baby. The guy shot it in the chest and again in the head, covering its mechanized frame with sticky red paint.
Strickland said, ‘I’m guessing this isn’t the highlight reel?’
‘There are no highlights.’ McClaren killed the screen and tossed the iPad onto the desk. ‘There are only lowlights.Disaster-lights. The only thing that saved us from a giant cleaning bill is that the system wasn’t working right. The paintball guns only fired about ten percent of the time. And do you know what was even worse thanthe jackasses’ performance out there? The automated system passed all but two of them.’
‘All but two? Was there—’
‘But don’t worry. The scores don’t stand. I overwrote them manually. I failed the whole damn class.’ McClaren turned and made for the door but paused before exiting. ‘Morgan, seriously. We need a new process. We can’t keep wasting time and money like this.’
Strickland waited for McClaren to close the door behind him, then spun the iPad around and switched it back on. The video of the robotic mom was frozen on the screen. He tapped an icon at the top-right corner and a menu replaced the image. He used a PIN to access a hidden level. A new list of options appeared. He selected the one that gave him the ability to view the candidate’s score. McClaren had rated the guy at 39 out of 100. The overall rating saidFAILin heavy red letters. Strickland dragged a slider up the screen. The guy’s score increased to 50. 60. 70. And when it hit 71, the rating changed toPASS. Strickland repeated the process for all the recruits that McClaren had failed. He gave some 71. Some 72. One got a 100 because his finger slipped on the shiny glass. But whatever number they ended up with, he made sure each recruit got switched to a passing grade. Then he checked the two that the system had failed. One had gotten a 12. The other, 22. Strickland thought for a moment, then passed both of them, too.
The Human Resources department was housed in the farthest building from the docks. It was a dozen yearsold, and when it was built, the company’s accountants had the upper hand over its architects. That was clear. It looked like the runner-up in a cost-cutting contest for a particularly unimaginative budget hotel chain, Reacher thought. There was nothing actively offensive about it. The place was just utterly bland. It was as if any feature that could have brought a hint of visual interest or discernible style had been shaved off, watered down, or deleted. Reacher had heard of sick-building syndrome, where workers’ health suffered as a result of being incarcerated in sixties or seventies brutalist bunkers. He figured that if boring-building syndrome was a thing, this place would be a prime example.
Reacher followed Gilmour inside and up a flight of stairs that led to a wide rectangular office suite. The layout reminded Reacher of a bookstore he’d visited in an old railway town out west somewhere a couple of years before. That place had started life as a brothel. The reception area was in the center, and the perimeter was lined with a whole series of smaller rooms where the business had been taken care of. This place seemed similar, only the rooms had desks and computers rather than beds.
Gilmour pointed Reacher to a couch in the center of the reception space, then continued toward an office with an open door in the middle of the row on the left-hand side. A woman saw him coming and stepped out to greet him. Sabrina Patten, Reacher assumed. She was around five feet ten with straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Despite being tied up, it stretched halfway down her back. She was wearing a bottle-green pencil skirt that just covered her knees, black pumps with three-inch heels,and a crisp white blouse that was cinched in at the waist and pulled tight across her chest. She shook Gilmour’s hand, arm straight, keeping her distance, and gestured for him to come inside. She closed the door behind them. It was solid, and the walls facing the reception area had no windows. Reacher couldn’t hear what was happening inside Patten’s office. He couldn’t see. She could be murdering Gilmour, for all he knew. Then Reacher smiled to himself. He shook the thought away. He was spending too much time with the guy. Paranoia must be infectious.
Reacher settled down on the couch and kept an eye on the entrance. Three people entered the reception area while he was there. The first was a man who looked to be barely out of his teens. He was wearing a suit a size too large. It was made of some kind of dark, shiny material. Reacher guessed it was the first one he’d ever owned, probably bought specially for that day’s visit. A woman came out of the office next to Patten’s, greeted him, and herded him inside. He was probably there for an interview. Reacher wondered if he would be successful. And if he was, what kind of path that would start him on.
The next two people walked in together. A man, in his fifties, also wearing a suit, only this one was creased and worn. Almost ready for the trash. He was with a woman. She was younger and had smarter clothes. She was carrying a briefcase, and she had a deep-seated scowl carved into her face. A union rep, Reacher thought. Or a lawyer. Either way it suggested a career heading in the opposite direction to the first guy’s. Or maybe a glimpse into the first guy’s future.
No one paid the pair any attention for five minutes.Neither of them sat down. The man stood still, head bent, arms hanging slackly at his sides like a deactivated robot. The woman prowled back and forth like she was looking for someone to yell at. Eventually a man came out of a corner office. He looked tired and belligerent. He glared at them for a moment, then ushered them through his door and out of Reacher’s sight.
Sabrina Patten’s door opened sixteen minutes after it had closed. Gilmour emerged on his own. He looked the same as when he went in. There was no sign of any improvement in his state of mind. He nodded to Reacher, then made for the exit. He led the way outside and into a narrow passage that ran between the HR building and its neighbor. He pressed his back against the wall, body rigid, fists clenched, and said, ‘She was hiding something. I’m sure of it. But I just couldn’t make her give it up.’
Reacher said, ‘Want me to try?’
Gilmour shrugged. ‘I tried charm. Tried to make her laugh. Make her feel sorry for me. Nothing worked. Maybe if you could frighten her … I don’t know. Something’s got her good and scared already. She’s dug in. I spun a good story but she wasn’t buying any of it.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said I was depressed. Struggling with imposter syndrome, like I wasn’t qualified for my job. I told her that if I could understand why she hired me it would help. Give me some validation. She could tell I was angling for something, I guess, because right away she went into corporate robot mode. Nothing like when I first met her. She said I got the job because I was the best-qualifiedcandidate, which we both knew was a load of crap. I said that with all the stress I was under I couldn’t remember who I’d used as a reference. I asked her to remind me. Said it would help to know who had a good opinion of me. She said she’d have to check the file, but really there was no point because references these days are basically just confirmation of employment dates. She said people are scared of getting sued in case they praise someone who turns out to be an ax murderer or whatever. More BS, obviously. But I couldn’t shake her.’
‘We need another angle.’
‘Right.’ Gilmour pulled a phone out of his pocket. It was in a bottle-green case. ‘This might help.’
‘Hers?’
Gilmour nodded. ‘I’ll get into her email. Her messages. Her calendar. Something in there will give her away.’
Dominic Kelleher had three piles of papers lined up in front of him on the desk in his office at the Butcher’s Dog. He’d put them there thirty minutes ago but had hardly looked at them since. He couldn’t focus on anything. He couldn’t hold a train of thought. The papers wound up so far from his mind that he almost forgot to scoop them up and hide them away when he heard a gentle knock on his door.
Kelleher called out, ‘Who’s there?’
