Worth Dying For

Reacher heard the click and patter of a keyboard. A computer database, not a paper book. Hoag said, ‘That’s an unlisted number.’
    ‘Unlisted as in you don’t have it, or as in you can see it but you won’t tell me?’
    ‘Unlisted as in please don’t ask me, because you’ll be putting me on the spot.’
    ‘OK, I won’t ask you. Anything under Eleanor Duncan?’
    ‘No. There are four Duncans, all male names. All unlisted.’
    ‘So give me the doctor instead.’
    ‘What doctor?’
    ‘The local guy up there.’
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t have his name.’
    ‘Then I can’t help you. This thing is purely alphabetical by last name. It’s going to say Smith, Dr Bill, or whatever. Something like that. In very small letters.’
    ‘Got to be a contact number for a doctor. There might be an emergency. Got to be some way of getting hold of the guy.’
    ‘I don’t see anything.’
    ‘Wait,’ Reacher said. ‘I know how. Give me the Apollo Inn.’
    ‘Apollo like the space rocket?’
    ‘Exactly like the space rocket.’
    The keyboard pattered and Hoag read out a number, a 308 area code for the western part of the state, and then seven more digits. Reacher repeated them once in his head and said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up and redialled.
    * * *
    Ten miles south, Mahmeini’s man was dialling too, calling home. He got Mahmeini on his cell, and said, ‘We have a problem.’
    Mahmeini said, ‘Specifically?’
    ‘Asghar has run out on us.’
    ‘Impossible.’
    ‘Well, he has. I sent him down to the car to get me a bottle of water. He didn’t come back, so I checked. The car is gone, and he’s gone too.’
    ‘Call him.’
    ‘I tried ten times. His phone is off.’
    ‘I don’t believe it.’
    ‘What do you want me to do?’
    ‘I want you to find him.’
    ‘I have no idea where to look.’
    Mahmeini said, ‘He drinks, you know.’
    ‘I know. But there’s no bar in town. Just a liquor store. And it will be closed by now. And he wouldn’t have driven to the liquor store anyway. He would have walked. It’s only about three blocks away.’
    ‘There must be a bar. This is America. Ask the concierge.’
    ‘There is no concierge. This isn’t the Bellagio. They don’t even put water in the rooms.’
    ‘There must be someone at the desk. Ask him.’
    ‘I can’t go anywhere. I don’t have a car. And I can’t ask the others for help. Not now. That would be an admission of weakness.’
    ‘Find a way,’ Mahmeini said. ‘Find a bar, and find a way of getting there. That’s an order.’
    Reacher listened to the ring tone. It was loud and sonorous and resonant in his ear, the product of a big old-fashioned earpiece maybe an inch and a half across, buried deep inside a big old-fashioned plastic handset that probably weighed a pound. He pictured the two phones ringing in the motel, fifty miles north, one at the desk, one behind the bar. Or maybe there were more than two phones. Maybe there was a third extension in a back office, and a fourth in Vincent’s private quarters. Maybethe whole place was a regular rats’ nest of wiring, just like the inside of a lunar module. But however many phones there were, they all rang for a long period, and then one of them was answered. Vincent came on and said, ‘This is the Apollo Inn,’ just like Reacher had heard him say it before, very brightly and enthusiastically, like it was a brand new establishment taking its first-ever call on its first-ever night in business.
    Reacher said, ‘I need Eleanor Duncan’s phone number.’
    Vincent said, ‘Reacher? Where are you?’
    ‘Still out of town. I need Eleanor’s number.’
    ‘Are you coming back?’
    ‘What could possibly keep me away?’
    ‘Are you not going to Virginia?’
    ‘Eventually, I hope.’
    ‘I don’t have Eleanor’s number.’
    ‘Isn’t she on the phone tree?’
    ‘No, how could she be? Seth might answer.’
    ‘OK, is the doctor there?’
    ‘Not right now.’
    ‘Slow night, then.’
    ‘Unfortunately.’
    ‘Do you have his number?’
    ‘Hold the line,’ Vincent said. There was a thump as he put the handset down, maybe on the bar, and then a pause, just about long enough for him to walk across the lounge, and then the sound of a second handset being raised, maybe at the desk. The two open lines picked up on each other and Reacher heard the room’s slow echo hissing and bouncing off the round domed ceiling. Vincent read out a number,