61 Hours

in a fight that had lasted longer than two or three minutes.
    A window of opportunity.
    ‘Where’s the jewellery?’ Plato said again.
    Reacher said, ‘Find it yourself.’
    The sound of feet on the stairs got a little louder.
    Plato smiled. He pushed back his cuff and made a show of checking the time on the watch on his wrist, slow and nonchalant. Then he darted forward, fast and nimble and agile, and he aimed a kick at Reacher’s side. From a sitting position Reacher swatted Plato’s foot aside and came up on his knees and Plato stumbled away and Reacher pivoted up and lunged after him.
    And hit his head hard on the ceiling, and scraped his knuckles, and collapsed back to his knees. Plato righted himself after a step and danced in and delivered the belated kick, a decent hard blow to the ribs on Reacher’s back.
    Then he stepped away and smiled again.
    He said, ‘Where’s the jewellery?’
    Reacher didn’t answer. His knuckles were bleeding and he was pretty sure his scalp was torn. The ceiling crowded down on him.
    Plato put both hands on his gun.
    He said, ‘You get one free pass. And that was it. Where’s the jewellery?’
    So Reacher used his flashlight beam and found the rightcorridor. Even from a distance the reflection came back bright and lurid. Plato walked towards it, fast and jaunty, no problem at all, right up on his toes, like he was outside on the street with just the sky above him.
    He called over his shoulder, ‘Bring some bags.’
    Reacher shuffled over and grabbed a pack of bags, and then he shuffled after Plato, hobbled, restricted, constrained, humiliated, following the little man like a giant caged ape.
    Plato was in the right corridor. He was doing what Holland had done. He was playing his flashlight beam the length of the shelf and back again, over the gold and the silver and the platinum, and the diamonds and the rubies and the sapphires and the emeralds, and the clocks and the paintings and the platters and the candlesticks. But not with greed or wonderment in his face. He was assessing the size of the packaging task, that was all.
    He said, ‘You can start bagging this shit up. But first show me the powder.’
    Reacher led him across the chamber, heels and knuckles and ass, low and deferential, all the way to the third of the three tunnels packed with meth. Still a staggering sight. Bricks stacked ten high, ten deep, a whole solid wall of them a hundred feet long, undisturbed for fifty years, old yellowing glassine glowing dull in the flashlight beams. Fifteen thousand packs. More than thirteen tons.
    ‘Is this all of it?’ Plato asked.
    ‘A third of it,’ Reacher said.
    The feet on the staircase grew louder. The fuel guy was hustling.
    Plato said, ‘We’ll take what’s here. Plus more. Until the plane is full.’
    Reacher said, ‘I thought you sold it to the Russian.’
    Plato said, ‘I did.’
    ‘But you’re going to take it anyway?’
    ‘Only some of it.’
    ‘That’s a double-cross.’
    Plato laughed. ‘You killed three people for me and now you’reupset that I’m stealing? From some dumb Russian you never met?’
    ‘I would prefer you to be true to your word, that’s all.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I want my daughter to be OK.’
    ‘She’s with those guys out of choice. And ten hours from now I’ll have no further use for her, anyway. I’m never doing business here again.’
    ‘You’ll have no further use for me, either,’ Reacher said.
    ‘I’ll let you live,’ Plato said. ‘You did well for me. Slow, but you got there in the end.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    ‘I am true to my word,’ Plato said. ‘Just not with Russians.’
    Behind them they heard the last loud footstep on the last metal stair and then the first quiet footstep on the concrete floor. They turned and saw one of Plato’s men arrive, like all of them about five seven in height, therefore stooped but not too much. He had his gun on his chest and a flashlight in his hand. He was looking all around. Not curious. Just a guy getting the job done. He found the fuel line and picked it up one-handed and pulled it out straight and jerked it and heaved serpentine waves into it to work out the kinks. He asked in Spanish where the tank was and Reacher waited until Plato translated the question and then he pointed his flashlight beam at the relevant corridor. The guy hauled the heavy hose after him and disappeared.
    Plato said, ‘Go start bagging the jewellery.’
    Reacher left him