Chapter 20

The computer file Knight settled on turned out to be a PowerPoint presentation. Not her favorite format after all the hours of briefings she'd sat through over the years, but useful in some circumstances. She checked to see if the slides contained the kind of information she was hoping for. She scanned the thumbnails a second time. Then she turned to Reacher and said, "You're going to want to see this."

She took the computer back to the dining room, reconnected it, and fired up the projector. "We have the facilities. We might as well use them."

Reacher didn't look convinced.

Knight took the seat in front of the computer. Reacher stood behind her.

She said, "Ready?"

Reacher said, "As I'll ever be."

Knight hit a key and an image filled the projection screen. It was a picture of a house, nicely framed and perfectly lit. It looked like it could have been taken from a real estate listing. The place was the same kind of age as the house they were in. The same kind of size. And style. It was pretty much indistinguishable from the ones that Kane's guys were watching. All four must have been part of the same development. If you were in the market it would be hard to pick between them.

Knight waited a moment then moved on to the next slide. This showed a satellite image, heavily cropped to focus on the house and its immediate surroundings. Its roof looked in good shape. The gravel driveway was tidy. No vehicles were parked there. At the back the formal garden had received some recent attention. All the plants and hedges had been trimmed back, hard, like whoever had done it was more concerned with keeping the maintenance in check than worrying about its appearance.

One other thing in the picture caught Reacher's attention. He pointed at the center of the screen and said, "What's that?"

Knight called up the next slide. It was a shot of the house from the road, and it showed that the driveway was closed off by a gate. It was black. Wrought iron. Maybe eight feet tall at the center. The top was curved and it had the kind of heraldic-style emblems and flourishes that are designed to look classy, but really are shaped and sharpened to make it hard to climb.

Reacher said, "Can we see the lock?"

Knight moved on to the next slide. It was a close-up of the center of the gate. Where the two halves joined, three feet from the ground, there was a keypad. Knight hit the spacebar again and a box appeared on the screen, superimposed over the shiny black bars. It contained a string of six digits, then the hash symbol.

Reacher said, "Interesting."

"Isn't it?"

Knight hit the spacebar again. The next slide showed the front door. The next was a close-up of its handle. It showed another keypad. The next click brought up a text box. It showed another string of digits followed by a hash symbol. Knight stayed on the image for a moment, then clicked again. The next image was different. It was a diagram, not a photograph. It showed how a battery of deadbolts extended from the frame into the top and the sides of the door. It gave the specification of the metal that was used. It was too hard to be cut. Too thick to be bent. And it was complemented by even thicker strips that braced the door's entire height and width. A two-headed arrow indicated that the door opened out, not in.

Knight checked that Reacher had finished absorbing the detail then hit the spacebar another time. A picture of one of the first-floor windows appeared. It was a little grainy, like someone had zoomed in on the image too aggressively.

Knight said, "What are we looking at here?"

It took Reacher a moment, then he realized. "Bars, behind the glass. For security."

Knight shivered. "Not very homey. You probably like it."

"I doubt it's being used as a home."

"No kidding."

Knight hit the spacebar. Another diagram appeared. It showed an armored panel suspended above a door. Knight hit the bar again. The panel dropped down, blocking the exit.

She said, "What the…"

The next slide showed a painting hanging on a wall. It was a Van Gogh–style landscape in an ornate, gilded frame. The next slide showed it pulled away from the wall, hinged at the left like an open cupboard door. Behind it was another keypad. This one was slimmer than the others, with a touchscreen instead of regular keys. The next click of the spacebar brought up another textbox, with another code.

Knight said, "So what does this mean? You need a code to get through the gate. You need a second code to get through the front door. Then if you don't know to use a third code on the pad hidden behind the picture, a cage drops down and locks you in?"

Reacher said, "That's how it looks."

"And then what? The owners are in Russia. How do they know if someone is trapped in the house? And if they do know, what do they do? They can't fly back, surely. Do they have someone local to take care of it?"

"They don't need to do anything."

"They do. Or…oh."

"Exactly. The door is blocked. The windows are barred. I'm guessing there's no food in the fridge. The water will be shut off."

"So…my God, that's awful. Think of it. You can't eat. You can't drink. You can't even flush the toilet. You'd go mad, if you didn't die first."

Knight was still for a moment. She was silent. Then she hit the spacebar again. A slide appeared that showed a pair of floor plans. One was for the first floor. The other was for the second floor. The layout was unremarkable, but some of the rooms were labeled with colored stars. There was a blue one in the first bedroom on the right-hand stretch of the landing. Green, orange, and purple stars all together in the first room on the left-hand stretch. A yellow one downstairs in the living room. And a red one in the dining room. The colors were all rich and bold, apart from the red, which looked pale and washed-out.

The next slide showed a table with three columns. For each color of star it gave a category and a value. Yellow represented paintings. They were worth $480m. Blue was statues, $27m. Green, industrial diamonds, $124m. Orange, precious metals, $13m. Purple, jewelry, $41m. Red was for wine, $19m, and it was shown in the same weak shade as its star on the floor plan. A pale asterisk matched up with a date. It was for the following Tuesday.

Knight sat for a minute in silence, staring at the screen with her arms hanging down by her sides.

Reacher said, "You OK?"

"I'm fine. It's just…look at those numbers. How can a bunch of art be worth half a billion dollars? You know what a police department could do with that kind of money? A school? A hospital?"

"I hear you. But it's not art we're talking about."

"It is. It's paintings. Statues."

"But it's not on display. No one can see it. It can't provoke thought. Emotion. Any of the things art is supposed to do."

"So it's not art because it's hidden away? What does that make it, then?"

"A financial parachute. Metaphorically speaking. It's there so that if the guy who owns it gets shot down, he won't crash and burn. He can flee Russia. Come here. Liquidate the assets. And continue to live in obscene luxury. The question isn't how much it costs. It's what did the guy do to be able to afford it. Nothing legal, I guarantee. And now it's here, taking up space in a perfectly good house, at the same time we have veterans sleeping on the street."

"Damn. You're right. Almost makes me wish someone would steal it. Anyone but Kane, anyway."

"Someone should do something with it." Reacher nodded toward the screen. "Is there more?"

"Just a bunch of detail about how the valuations add up. Screenshots of spreadsheets, mostly, based on the peek I took in the kitchen. Want to see them?"

"Not especially. How did Fletcher get all this detail?"

"Best guess, he has a hacker working for him."

"Vidic said Paris was good with computers."

"If she's good enough she could have started with the buyer and worked back from there. Dug through the shell companies that are bound to be involved. Got into the guy's personal records. Found out what he owns. Where it is. Where he's moving it to. And when. Weird that he'd keep the codes to the gate and the front door locks somewhere so vulnerable, though."

"I doubt those got hacked."

"Then where did they come from?"

"Think how the operation must work. There are three hurdles. Getting the goods into the country. Getting them across the country. And getting them into the house. The first two are easy. You can pay customs guys. You can pay transport guys. But, assuming you're not there to open the door in person, what are you going to do to grant access to the building? You don't want to mail a key. Keys can be stolen. Copied. Sold. Reused. You'd be asking to get ripped off. So you use a keypad in place of a regular lock. Its code can be changed. Probably remotely. Activated a minute before the delivery guys arrive. Updated the moment they leave."

"So Paris hacked the delivery guys? No. That doesn't work. They wouldn't keep that kind of information on a computer. And if the code is changed the minute they're done delivering, what use is it, anyway?"

"Fletcher's guys didn't hack anyone for the code. They used their home field advantage."

"I don't follow."

"They steal art, and similar valuable things. They use other people to transport it. Stealing and transportation is a symbiotic relationship. They'll have been working together for years. A new player shows up, especially a foreign player, they hear about it. They find out about the deal with the code. Then they look for someone at the lock company who has a sick kid. A gambling debt. Some other urgent need for money."

"They hack, and they bribe. New school, and old school." Knight glanced across at Reacher. "Could be a good combination."

Reacher glanced back. "Could be a great combination."

Silence filled the room for a moment, then Reacher said, "So we agree? This is what Fletcher is planning to hit?"

Knight nodded. "It's the newest file. The values are ridiculous. Worth sticking around for even if they think the FBI is getting close. And it looks like one of the assets isn't here yet. The wine. Looks like it's coming next week. Which shows the operation is still active. Nothing is ever guaranteed but I wouldn't bet against it. Would you?"

"No. Is there anything to confirm what day they're planning the hit? What time?"

"Nothing. You don't trust what Vidic told you?"

"I'd like a way to validate it. That's for sure. What about location? Can we narrow down the address?"

"We can do better than that. I hope." Knight scrolled back to the first slide and hit a button on the keyboard. The image shrank and a bunch of words and icons appeared in a band across the top of the screen. Knight put the pointer over the picture of the house and did something with the track pad, but nothing happened. "Don't worry. Just means this picture wasn't taken with a phone." She scrolled to the close-up of the gate and tried again. This time a panel appeared. It showed an address and some technical details about the photograph. Knight clicked on it and a map opened with a blue dot showing the location. She said, "Here it is. It's less than a mile from here. I'll send it to your FBI friend if you give me his number. Kane said 4:00 a.m. tomorrow, right?"

"Right."

"Strange time, but OK."

Reacher paused. He had raided dozens of houses over the years at that kind of time. Nothing about it struck him as unusual. It was when you had the best chance of catching your targets in bed. In the deepest state of sleep. And at their groggiest when they woke up. When they would be least able to think clearly. Or resist effectively. He thought about the research he'd read from armies and secret police forces going all the way back to the Soviets and the Nazis. And how it matched his own experience. Then he said, "Messaging Wallwork can wait. Sanitize the computer. Shut it down. We need to leave."

Knight checked her watch. "We have plenty of time to get back to the motel."

"No," Reacher said. "We don't."