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[760] “What the hell happened to you in there?” Hubble asked.

[761] I just shrugged at him. A meal cart appeared outside our cell. It was dragged by an old white guy. Not a guard, some kind of an orderly. Looked more like an old steward on an ocean liner. He passed a tray through an oblong slot in the bars. Covered plates, paper cups, Thermos. We ate the food sitting on our beds. I drank all the coffee. Then I paced the cell. Shook the gate. It was locked. The sixth floor was calm and quiet. A big clean cell. Separate beds. A mirror. Towels. I felt much better up here.

[762] Hubble piled the meal debris on the tray and shoved it out under the gate into the corridor. He lay down on his bed. Put his hands behind his head. Stared at the ceiling. Doing time. I did the same. But I was thinking hard. Because they had definitely gone through a selection process. They had looked us both over very carefully and chosen me. Quite definitely chosen me. Then they had tried to strangle me.

[763] They would have killed me. Except for one thing. The guy with his hands around my throat had made a mistake. He had me from behind, which was in his favor, and he was big enough and strong enough. But he hadn’t balled up his fingers. The best way is to use the thumbs on the back of the neck but fold up the fingers. Do it with knuckle pressure, not finger pressure. The guy had left his fingers out straight. So I had been able to reach up and snap them off. His mistake had saved my life. No doubt about that. Soon as he was neutralized, it was two against one. And I’d never had a problem with those kind of odds.

[764] But it was still a straightforward attempt to kill me. They came in, chose me, tried to kill me. And Spivey had just happened to be outside the bathroom. He had set it up. He had employed the Aryan Brotherhood to kill me. He had ordered the attack and waited ready to burst in and find me dead.

[765] And he had planned it yesterday before ten in the evening. That was clear. That’s why he had left us on the wrong floor. On the third, not the sixth. On a convict floor, not the holding floor. Everybody had known we should have been on the holding floor. The two guards last night in the reception bunker, they had been totally clear about it. It had said so on their battered clipboard. But at ten o’clock, Spivey had left us on the third floor where he knew he could have me killed. He’d told the Aryans to attack me at twelve o’clock the next day. He had been waiting outside that bathroom at twelve o’clock ready to burst in. Ready to see my body lying on the tiles.

[766] But then his plan had fouled up. I wasn’t killed. The Aryans were beaten off. The Red Boys had piled in to seize the moment. Mayhem had broken out. A riot was starting. Spivey was panicking. He hit the alarms and called the crash squads. Rushed us off the floor, up to the sixth, and left us up here. According to all the paperwork, the sixth floor is where we’d been all the time.

[767] A neat fallback. It made me fireproof as far as investigation went. Spivey had chosen the fallback option which said we were never there. He had a couple of serious injuries on his hands, probably even a dead guy. I figured the boss man must have choked to death. Spivey must know I had done it. But he could never say so now. Because according to him, I was never there.

[768] I lay on the bed and stared at the concrete ceiling. I exhaled gently. The plan was clear. No doubt about Spivey’s plan at all. The fallback was coherent. An aborted plan with a neat fallback position. But why? I didn’t understand it. Let’s say the strangler had balled up his fingers. They would have got me then. I would have been dead. Dumped on the bathroom floor with my big swollen tongue sticking out. Spivey would have rushed in and found me. Why? What was Spivey’s angle? What did he have against me? I’d never seen him before. Never been anywhere near him or his damn prison. Why the hell should he operate an elaborate plan to get me dead? I couldn’t begin to figure it out.

8

[769] HUBBLE SLEPT FOR A WHILE ON THE COT ACROSS FROM mine. Then he stirred and woke up. Writhed around. Looked disoriented for a moment, until he remembered where he was. Tried to check the time on his watch but saw only a band of pale skin where the heavy Rolex had been. Pushed against the bridge of his nose and remembered he’d lost his eyeglasses. Sighed and flopped his head back onto the striped prison pillow. One very miserable guy.

[770] I could understand his fear. But he also looked defeated. Like he’d just rolled the dice and lost. Like he’d been counting on something to happen, and it hadn’t happened, so now he was back in despair.

[771] Then I began to understand that, too.

[772] “The dead guy was trying to help you, wasn’t he?” I said.

[773] The question scared him.

[774] “I can’t tell you that, can I?” he answered.

[775] “I need to know,” I said. “Maybe you approached the guy for help. Maybe you talked to him. Maybe that’s why he got killed. Maybe it looks like now you’ll start talking to me. Which could get me killed, too.”

[776] Hubble nodded and rocked back and forth on his bed. Took a deep breath. Looked straight at me.

[777] “He was an investigator,” he said. “I brought him down here because I want this whole thing stopped. I don’t want to be involved anymore. I’m not a criminal. I’m scared to death and I want out. He was going to get me out and take down the scam. But he slipped up somehow and now he’s dead and I’m never going to get out. And if they find out it was me brought him down here, they’ll kill me. And if they don’t kill me, I’ll probably go to jail for a thousand years anyway, because right now the whole damn thing is very exposed and very dangerous.”

[778] “Who was the guy?” I asked him.

[779] “He didn’t have a name,” Hubble said. “Just a contact code. He said it was safer that way. I can’t believe they got him. He seemed like a capable guy to me. Tell the truth, you remind me of him. You seem like a capable guy to me, too.”

[780] “What was he doing up there at the warehouse?” I asked him.

[781] He shrugged and shook his head.

[782] “I don’t understand that situation,” he said. “I put him together with another guy, and he was meeting with him up there, but wouldn’t they have shot the other guy as well? I don’t understand why they only got one of them.”

[783] “Who was the other guy he was meeting with?” I said.

[784] He stopped and shook his head.

[785] “I’ve told you way too much already,” he said. “I must be crazy. They’ll kill me.”

[786] “Who’s on the inside of this thing?” I asked him.

[787] “Don’t you listen?” he said. “I’m not saying another word.”

[788] “I don’t want names,” I said. “Is it a big deal?”

[789] “It’s huge,” he said. “Biggest thing you ever heard of.”

[790] “How many people?” I said.

[791] He shrugged and thought about it. Counted up in his head.

[792] “Ten people,” he said. “Not counting me.”

[793] I looked at him and shrugged.

[794] “Ten people doesn’t sound like a big deal,” I said.

[795] “Well, there’s hired help,” he said. “They’re around when they’re needed. I mean a core of ten people around here. Ten people in the know, not counting me. It’s a very tight situation, but believe me, it’s a big deal.”

[796] “What about the guy you sent to meet with the investigator?” I said. “Is he one of the ten people?”

[797] Hubble shook his head.

[798] “I’m not counting him either,” he said.

[799] “So there’s you and him and ten others?” I said. “Some kind of a big deal?”

[800] He nodded glumly.

[801] “Biggest thing you ever heard of,” he said again.

[802] “And right now it’s very exposed?” I asked him. “Why? Because of this investigator poking about?”

[803] Hubble shook his head again. He was writhing around like my questions were tearing him up.

[804] “No,” he said. “For another reason altogether. It’s like a window of vulnerability is wide open right now. An exposure. It’s been very risky, getting worse all the time. But now it could go either way. If we get through it, nobody will ever know anything. But if we don’t get through it, it’ll be the biggest sensation you ever heard of, believe me. Either way, it’s going to be a close call.”

[805] I looked at him. He didn’t look to me much like the sort of a guy who could cause the biggest sensation I ever heard of.

[806] “So how long is this exposure going to last?” I asked him.

[807] “It’s nearly over,” he said. “Maybe a week. A week tomorrow is my guess. Next Sunday. Maybe I’ll live to see it.”

[808] “So after next Sunday you’re not vulnerable anymore?” I said. “Why not? What’s going to happen next Sunday?”

[809] He shook his head and turned his face away. It was like if he couldn’t see me, I wasn’t there, asking him questions.

[810] “What does Pluribus mean?” I asked him.

[811] He wouldn’t answer. Just kept on shaking his head. His eyes were screwed shut with terror.

[812] “Is it a code for something?” I said.

[813] He wasn’t hearing me. The conversation was over. I gave it up and we lapsed back into silence. That suited me well enough. I didn’t want to know anything more. I didn’t want to know anything at all. Being an outsider and knowing Hubble’s business didn’t seem to be a very smart combination. It hadn’t done the tall guy with the shaved head a whole lot of good. I wasn’t interested in sharing the same fate as him, dead at a warehouse gate, partially hidden under some old cardboard, two holes in my head, all my bones smashed. I just wanted to pass the time until Monday, and then get the hell out. By next Sunday, I planned to be a very long way away indeed.

[814] “OK, Hubble,” I said. “No more questions.”

[815] He shrugged and nodded. Sat silent for a long time. Then he spoke, quietly, with a lot of resignation in his voice.

[816] “Thanks,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

[817] I WAS ROLLED OVER ON THE NARROW COT TRYING TO FLOAT away into some kind of limbo. But Hubble was restless. He was tossing and turning and blowing tight sighs. He was coming close to irritating me again. I turned to face him.

[818] “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very uptight. It was doing me good just to talk to somebody. I’d go crazy in here on my own. Can’t we talk about something else? What about you? Tell me about yourself. Who are you, Reacher?”

[819] I shrugged at him.

[820] “I’m nobody,” I said. “Just a guy passing through. I’ll be gone on Monday.”

[821] “Nobody’s nobody,” he said. “We’ve all got a story. Tell me.”

[822] So I talked for a while, lying on my bed, running through the last six months. He lay on his bed, looking at the concrete ceiling, listening, keeping his mind off his problems. I told him about leaving from the Pentagon. Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago. Museums, music, cheap hotels, bars, buses and trains. Solitude. Traveling through the land of my citizenship like a cheap tourist. Seeing most things for the first time. Looking at the history I’d learned in dusty schoolrooms half a world away. Looking at the big things that had shaped the nation. Battlefields, factories, declarations, revolutions. Looking for the small things. Birthplaces, clubs, roads, legends. The big things and the small things which were supposed to represent home. I’d found some of them.

I told Hubble about the long hop through the endless plains and deltas all the way down from Chicago to New Orleans. Sliding around the Gulf Coast as far as Tampa. Then the Greyhound blasting north toward Atlanta. The crazy decision to bail out near Margrave. The long walk in the rain yesterday morning. Following a whim. Following some half-remembered note from my brother saying he’d been through some little place where Blind Blake might have died over sixty years ago. As I told him about it, I felt pretty stupid. Hubble was scuffling with a nightmare and I was following a meaningless pilgrimage. But he understood the urge.

[823] “I did that once,” he said. “On our honeymoon. We went to Europe. We stopped off in New York and I spent half a day looking for the Dakota building, you know, where John Lennon was shot. Then we spent three days in England walking around Liverpool, looking for the Cavern Club. Where the Beatles started out. Couldn’t find it. I guess they knocked it down.”

[824] He talked on for a while. Mostly about traveling. He’d taken plenty of trips with his wife. They’d enjoyed it. Been all over, Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean. All over the States and Canada. Had a great time together.

[825] “Don’t you get lonely?” he asked me. “Traveling on your own all the time?”

[826] I told him no, I enjoyed it. I told him I appreciated the solitude, the anonymity. Like I was invisible.

[827] “How do you mean, invisible?” he said. He seemed interested.