Page 27 of Exit Strategy
‘You have a license?’
‘No. But I can drive. If I have to.’
‘You can drive but have no license. You travel but have no luggage. What do you do for a home?’ Gilmour started the engine, then looked across at Reacher. ‘Don’t tell me. You have an RV. You live off-grid somewhere remote. Somewhere that looks great in photographs but is actually a pain in the ass to spend time in. Hence the travel.’
Reacher shook his head again. ‘The clue’s in the name.RV. Recreationalvehicle. Too much like a car or a truck. Not for me.’
‘Okay, then. A houseboat.’
‘Also a kind of vehicle. Also a no.’
Gilmour pulled away from the curb. ‘All right, I give up. Where do you live?’
‘Live? Everywhere. Anywhere. Wherever I want.’
‘I don’t follow. Wait. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed. Are you saying you’re – what’s the correct terminology these days – unhoused?’
‘Terminology? Right. That gets to the heart of it. You asked where Ilive. That doesn’t make sense to me. But I knew a guy from Scotland a while back. Over there they say, “Where do youstay?” And that does make sense. If you have a house or whatever else, you have to stay in it. Or near it. Most of the time, anyway. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to stay anywhere. Not permanently. Not for more than a day or two.’
‘You don’t? Why not?’
‘It’s just the way I’m wired.’
‘I guess you liked the army, then. In the right unit you’re never in one place very long.’
‘But with a twist. The army tells you where to go, and when. Now I get to pick.’
Gilmour set off driving in the opposite direction to what Reacher had expected. It felt like they were heading back toward the card club rather than to the port, which he knew was near the coffee shop. He was surprised about that but he wasn’t too concerned. He figured it was Gilmour’s idea of an evasive maneuver, and if that made himfeel better, Reacher was happy to roll with it. It wasn’t his paycheck that would get docked if they showed up late.
Gilmour did pass the card club, then he took a right at a doughnut store. He took a left at a pizza place, then another left at a bakery. For a moment Reacher felt like they were navigating by food outlet. Gilmour kept going straight after that, then slowed for no apparent reason, missing the next green light. A figure darted out from the entrance to an apartment building. A man. He was tall and skinny, wearing jeans and sneakers and a hoodie with the hood pulled up, hiding his face. He scurried around the front of the car like a panhandler, then approached the driver’s door. Gilmour lowered his window. Reacher thought he was going to give the guy some money, but he had it backward. The guy handed something to Gilmour. A brown envelope, letter-sized, folded in half. Gilmour took it and hit the window button, and before the glass was all the way up, the guy had disappeared into the nearest alleyway.
Gilmour passed the envelope to Reacher. He said, ‘It’s for you. Go ahead. Open it.’
Reacher tore the top off the envelope and shook out its contents. It was an ID card, identical to Gilmour’s, except for the name, the photograph, and the color of the lanyard, which was green and interspersed with the silhouettes of various Disney characters.
Gilmour caught Reacher’s expression and said, ‘What? It’s not a problem. Lanyard choice is left up to the employee. There’s no set protocol. I guess that was the best my guy could do. We didn’t give him much notice. And a big teddy bear like you?’ A cheeky grin spreadacross Gilmour’s face. ‘Be honest. It suits you. Go ahead. Put it on.’
Reacher pointed to the front of the card. He said, ‘My photo. I told you to delete it.’
‘I did delete it. You saw me do it. But you didn’t tell me not to retrieve it later. And you’re lucky I did. I had my guy meet me in the car when you were in the club last night. He cloned the chip in mine and I gave him your picture. Otherwise you’d have to meet him yourself later so he could take one of his own. And who knows what kind of crazy dive that would have been at. He won’t let anyone near his place. He’s paranoid. We’ve been tight since we were kids and I don’t even know where he lives these days.’
Reacher held up the card and examined it in the light. ‘This is good enough to fool the guards at your work?’
‘It should be. I had him put a short expiration date on it. Two weeks. That’ll match the cover story we’re going to use. We’ll say you’re a temp, and you’re covering for the guy who got killed. We’ll say you’re shadowing me while you do your orientation. That way you can go wherever I go and watch my back.’
Gilmour parked in the most isolated corner of the port’s lot. He slipped his old, basic phone into his pocket, locked his backpack in the trunk, then led the way to the security hut. Inside, the setup was pretty basic, like the kind of thing Reacher would have expected at a remote third-world airport. There was a reception counter to the side. Its pale laminated surface was wearing thin in places. A guard was sitting behind it wearing a faux paramilitaryuniform complete with all kinds of badges and patches and emblems. There was a metal detector arch in the center and a scarred conveyor belt feeding an X-ray machine on the other side. Beyond that, another uniformed guard sat and stared blankly at a screen. Gilmour dumped his keys, phone, wallet, and loose change in a rubber tub, sent it on its way to be scanned, and stepped through the arch. Reacher still had the borrowed phone in his pocket. He wanted to see how well the system worked, so he walked through the arch without removing it. No lights flashed. No alarm sounded. The guard didn’t seem to notice that anyone was there. Gilmour retrieved his things and tried a cheery ‘Morning, Bob.’ Some kind of sound escaped from Bob’s throat but Reacher couldn’t tell if it was a reply or a random grunt.
Reacher followed Gilmour across a courtyard and through a set of double doors leading to a larger brick building. The doors were wooden with round windows near the top, and they were painted a jarring shade of turquoise. Institutional buildings always had the worst colors, Reacher thought. He didn’t know whether that was because they were the cheapest, or if it was to discourage thieves from raiding the supply closets.
The office Gilmour had shared with the dead guy was up one flight of echoey concrete stairs and along a bleak, dimly lit corridor. Inside, the air still carried a hint of rotting vegetation, but the flowers were gone. Gilmour guessed the cleaners must have finally taken them. He was happy about that. He had hated those flowers. He could have dumped them in the trash himself, but some irrational, superstitious part of his brain had stoppedhim. He had feared that would seem like an admission of guilt.
Gilmour offered Reacher his own chair, then sat down at his coworker’s desk and picked up the phone. He hit zero for the switchboard and asked for Sabrina Patten in HR. She answered after two rings. Gilmour asked if she could spare him five minutes sometime that morning. Reacher could only vaguely make out her side of the conversation, but that was enough to tell that she was reluctant to meet him. She mentioned something about leaving work early, then being stuck with back-to-back interviews for some new IT position over the next couple of days, but Gilmour stuck to his guns. He said he was feeling depressed. That he needed to explore some sensitive issues in a safe and supportive environment for the sake of his mental health. It sounded like nonsense to Reacher, but it did the trick. Patten said she could make time for a brief chat in twenty minutes.
Gilmour hung up the phone and turned to his coworker’s computer. He pulled the keyboard a little closer, then looked at Reacher and said, ‘Ready?’
Reacher said, ‘You’re not expecting me to operate that thing?’
‘No. Of course not. But I’m going to check the shipment. The smugglers will notice. That’s what led to … the accident last time.’
