The Hard Way

and lovers in the park. Dogs on leashes, tour groups, the bass bark of fire truck horns.
    Pauling asked, “Where now?”
    “Take the night off,” Reacher said. “I’m going back to the lions’ den.”
    Pauling headed for the subway and Reacher headed for the Dakota. The doorman sent him up without making a call. Either Lane had put him on some kind of an approved list or the doorman had grown accustomed to his face. Either way it didn’t feel good. Poor security, and Reacher didn’t want to be recognized as part of Lane’s crew. Not that he expected to be around the Dakota ever again. It was way above his pay grade.
    There was nobody waiting for him in the corridor on five. Lane’s door was closed. Reacher knocked and then found a bell button and pushed it. A minute later Kowalski opened up. The biggest of Lane’s guys, but no giant. Maybe six feet, maybe two hundred pounds. He seemed to be alone. There was nothing but stillness and silence behind him. He stepped back and held the door and Reacher stepped inside.
    “Where is everybody?” Reacher asked.
    “Out shaking the trees,” Kowalski said.
    “What trees?”
    “Burke has a theory. He thinks we’re being visited by ghosts from the past.”
    “What ghosts?”
    “You know what ghosts,” Kowalski said. “Because Burke told you first.”
    “Knight and Hobart,” Reacher said.
    “The very same.”
    “Waste of time,” Reacher said. “They died in Africa.”
    “Not true,” Kowalski said. “A friend of a friend of a friend called a VA clerk. Only one of them died in Africa.”
    “Which one?”
    “We don’t know yet. But we’ll find out. You know what a VA clerk makes?”
    “Not very much, I guess.”
    “Everyone has a price. And a VA clerk’s is pretty low.”
    They moved through the foyer to the deserted living room. Kate Lane’s picture still had pride of place on the table. There was a recessed light fixture in the ceiling that put a subtle glow on it.
    “Did you know them?” Reacher asked. “Knight and Hobart?”
    “Sure,” Kowalski said.
    “Did you go to Africa?”
    “Sure.”
    “So whose side are you on? Theirs or Lane’s?”
    “Lane pays me. They don’t.”
    “So you have a price, too.”
    “Only a bullshitter doesn’t.”
    “What were you, back in the day?”
    “Navy SEAL.”
    “So you can swim.”
    Reacher stepped into the interior hallway and headed for the master bedroom. Kowalski kept close behind him.
    “You going to follow me everywhere?” Reacher asked.
    “Probably,” Kowalski said. “Where are you going anyway?”
    “To count the money.”
    “Is that OK with Lane?”
    “He wouldn’t have given me the combination if it wasn’t.”
    “He gave you the combination?”
    I hope so,
Reacher thought.
Left hand. Index finger, curled. Ring finger, straight. Middle finger, straight. Middle finger, curled. 3785. I hope.
    He pulled the closet door and entered 3785 on the security keypad. There was an agonizing second’s wait and then it beeped and the inner door’s latch clicked.
    “He never gave me the combination,” Kowalski said.
    “But I bet he lets you be the lifeguard out in the Hamptons.”
    Reacher opened the inner door and pulled the chain for the light. The closet was about six feet deep and three wide. A narrow walk space on the left, money on the right. Bales of it. All of them were intact except for one that was opened and half-empty. That was the one Lane had thrown around the room and then repacked. Reacher dragged it out. Carried it to the bed and dumped it down. Kowalski stayed at his shoulder.
    “You know how to count?” Reacher asked.
    “Funny man,” Kowalski said.
    “So count that.”
    Reacher stepped back to the closet and eased in sideways and crouched. Hefted an intact plastic bale off the top of the pile and turned it over and over in his hands and checked all six sides. On one face under the legend
Banque Centrale
there was smaller print that said
Gouvernement National, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
. Under that was printed:
USD 1,000,000.
The plastic was old and thick and grimy. Reacher licked the ball of his thumb and rubbed a small circle and saw Ben Franklin’s face. Hundred-dollar bills. Ten thousand of them in the bale. The heat shrink was original and untouched. A million bucks, unless the gentlemen bankers of Burkina Faso’s national government in O-Town had been cheating, which they probably hadn’t.
    A million bucks, in a package about as heavy as a loaded