I nodded.
'The 17th Precinct is right,' I said. 'Lila Hoth told me so.'
'You met with her?'
'She called me.'
'On what?'
'Another phone I took from Leonid, He and a pal found me. It didn't work out exactly how I wanted, but I made some limited contact.'
'She confessed?'
'More or less.'
'So where is she now?'
'I don't know exactly. I'm guessing somewhere east of Fifth, south of 59th.'
'Why?'
'She used the Four Seasons as a front. Why travel?'
Lee said, 'There was a burned-out rental car in Queens. The 17th thinks the four guys used it to get out of Manhattan. Then they ditched it and used that elevated train thing to get to the airport.'
I nodded again. 'Lila said the car they used no longer exists.'
'But here's the thing,' Lee said. 'The four guys didn't head back to London or Ukraine or Russia. They were routed through Tajikistan.'
'Which is where?'
'Don't you know?'
'Those new places confuse me.'
'Tajikistan is right next to Afghanistan. They share a border. Also with Pakistan.'
'You can fly direct to Pakistan.'
'Correct. Therefore either those guys were from Tajikistan, or from Afghanistan itself. Tajikistan is where you go to get into Afghanistan without being too obvious about it. You cross the border in a pick-up truck. Roads are bad, but Kabul is not too far away.'
'OK.'
'And here's the other thing. Homeland Security has a protocol. Some kind of computer algorithm. They can trace groups of people through similar itineraries and linked bookings. Turns it those four guys entered the country three months ago from
Tajikistan, along with some other folks, including two women with passports from Turkmenistan. One was sixty, and the other was twenty-six. They came through immigration together and claimed to be mother and daughter. And Homeland Security is prepared to swear their passports were genuine.'
'So the Hoths were not Ukrainian. Everything they told us was a lie.'
We all chewed on that for twenty long seconds, in silence. I went through all the stuff Lila had told us and deleted it, item by item.
Like pulling files from a drawer, and leafing through them, and then pitching them in the trash.
I said, 'We saw their passports at the Four Seasons. They looked Ukrainian to me.'
Lee said, 'They were phony. Or they would have used them at immigration.'
I said, 'Lila had blue eyes.' Lee said, 'I noticed.'
'Where exactly is Turkmenistan?'
'Also next to Afghanistan. A longer border. Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan, clockwise from the Gulf.'
'Easier when it was all the Soviet Union.'
'Unless you lived there.'
'Are Turkmenistan and Afghanistan ethnically similar?'
'Probably. All those borders are completely arbitrary. They're accidents of history. What matters are the tribal divisions. Lines on a map have got nothing to do with it.'
'Are you an expert?'
'The NYPD knows more about that region than the CIA. We have to. We've got people over there. We've got better intelligence than anyone.'
'Could a person from Afghanistan get a passport from Turkmenistan?'
'By relocating?'
'By asking for help and getting it.'
'From an ethnic sympathizer?'
I nodded. 'Maybe under the counter.'
'Why do you ask?'
'Some Afghan people have bright blue eyes. Especially the women. Some weird genetic strand in the population.'
'You think the Hoths are from Afghanistan?'
'They knew a hell of a lot about the conflict with the Soviets. A little dressed up, but they got most of the details right.'
'Maybe they read books.'
'No, they got the feelings right. And the atmosphere. Like the ancient greatcoats. Details like that are not widely available. That's insider information. In public the Red Army made out it was superbly equipped, for obvious reasons. Our propaganda said the same thing about them, for equally obvious reasons. But it wasn't true. The Red Army was falling apart. A lot of what the Hoths said sounded like first-hand information to me.'
'So?'
'Maybe Svetlana really did fight there. But on the other side.'
Lee paused a beat. 'You think the Hoths are Afghan tribeswomen?'
'If Svetlana fought there, but not for the Soviets, then they must be.'
Lee paused again. 'In which case Svetlana was telling the whole story from the other side. Everything was inverted. Including the atrocities.'
'Yes,' I said. 'She didn't suffer them. She committed them.'
We all went quiet again, another twenty seconds. I kept my eyes moving all around the park. Look, don't see, listen, don't hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive. But nothing jumped out at me. Nothing untoward was happening. People were coming and going, people were taking dogs to the run, a line was forming at a hamburger stand. Early, but every hour of the day or night is lunch time for someone. It depends on when the day starts. Lee was going through her notes. Jacob Mark was staring at the ground, but his gaze was focused somewhere far below the surface. Finally he leaned forward and turned his head and looked at me. I thought: Here it comes. The big question. The bump in the road.
He asked, 'When Lila Hoth called you, did she mention Peter?'
I nodded. 'She picked him up in the bar.'
'Why spend four hours doing that?'
'Tradecraft. And for fun and finesse. Because she could.'
'Where is he now?'
'She said he's here in the city.'
'Is he OK?'
'She wouldn't tell me.'
'Do you think he's OK?' I didn't answer.
He said, 'Talk to me, Reacher.' I said, 'No.'
'No you won't talk to me?'
'No, I don't think he's OK.'
'But he might be.'
'I could be wrong.'
'What did she tell you?'
'I said I wasn't scared of her, and she said that's what Peter Molina had said, too. I asked if he was OK, and she said I should come over and find out for myself.'
'So he could be OK.'
'It's possible. But I think you should be realistic.'
'About what? Why would two Afghan tribeswomen want to mess with Peter?'
'To get to Susan, of course.'
'For what? The Pentagon is supposed to be helping Afghanistan.'
I said, 'If Svetlana was a fighting tribeswoman, then she was one of the mujahideen. And when the Russians went home, the mujahideen did not go back to tending their goats. They moved right along. Some of them became the Taliban, and the rest of them became al-Qaeda.'
FIFTY-EIGHT
JACOB MARK SAID, 'I HAVE TO GO TO THE COPS ABOUT PETER.'
He got halfway off the bench before I leaned across Theresa Lee and put my hand on his arm.
'Think hard,' I said.
'What's to think about? My nephew is a kidnapping victim. He's a hostage. The woman confessed.'
'Think about what the cops will do. They'll call the feds immediately. The feds will lock you up again and put Peter on the back burner, because they've got bigger fish to fry.'
'I have to try.'
'Peter's dead, Jake. I'm sorry, but you've got to face it.'
'There's still a chance.'
'Then the fastest way to find him is to find Lila. And we can do that better than those feds.'
'You think?'
'Look at their track record. They missed her once, and they let us break out of jail. I wouldn't send them to look for a book in the library.'
'How the hell do we find her on our own?'
I looked at Theresa Lee. 'Did you speak to Sansom?'
She shrugged, like she had good news and bad. She said, 'I spoke to him briefly. He said he might want to come up here personally. He said he would call me back to coordinate the where and the when. I said he couldn't do that, because I was keeping the phone switched off. So he said he would call Docherty's cell instead, and I should call Docherty and pick up the message. So I did, and Docherty didn't answer. So I tried the precinct switchboard. The dispatcher said Docherty was unavailable.'