The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(95)

All the cars had gone from the end section of the building. When they swung by they could see the drapes in room eighteen were open. No one was visible. So Sands stopped the Chevy right by the office door and went inside with Reacher. They went straight to the counter. A guy was sitting behind it, maybe thirty years old, with a plain baseball cap and a grey shirt with red piping and the name Chuck embroidered in an oval on his chest.

Sands pulled out her worn black wallet. ‘Federal agents,’ she said. ‘We’re looking for the people who are renting room eighteen. Are they here?’

‘They were,’ Chuck said. ‘The same group had fifteen, sixteen and seventeen as well. The four rooms all the way at the end. Anyway, they’re gone now. They checked out a few minutes ago.’

‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘No, ma’am. And one of them didn’t seem well. One of the women. I think she was sick. Or drunk.’

Fisher, Reacher thought. Drugged so that she would be easier to manipulate.

‘OK,’ Sands said. ‘Never mind. We’ll need to see inside the rooms.’

‘No problem.’ Chuck took four keys from a pegboard on the wall and set them on the counter. ‘Just bring these back when you’re done.’

They started in eighteen, as that had been Fisher’s room. Then they moved on to the others. The rooms were pristine. Reacher had checked into places that weren’t as clean. Even the bullet holes he’d made in the bedroom door frame had been spackled over. There was no trash. Nothing of any kind had been left behind. Not by accident. Not hidden by Fisher. Reacher looked under the mattresses and between the folded towels and inside the toilet rolls and in the cupboards and drawers and wardrobes. He tried everywhere he’d ever heard of anything being found in all his years in the military police. He even ran hot water in the basins in the bathrooms in case Fisher had left a message on any of the mirrors. He didn’t find as much as a hair.

‘Nada,’ Sands said as they finished up in fifteen. ‘What now?’

‘Call Wallwork back,’ Reacher said. ‘See if he has anything to add.’

They ducked into the office to drop the room keys on the way to the car, and Chuck beckoned them closer.

‘I was thinking, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where those people went. But I know what they went to do. Would that help you at all?’

‘It might,’ Sands said. ‘What?’

‘They went golfing.’

Sands crossed her arms. ‘Golfing? Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure. I heard two of them talking. They were speaking Russian. I know a little because my grandparents were from St Petersburg. Anyway, one of the people used the word бункерный. It means bunker. Where do you get bunkers? Golf courses. There are a few around here. The second guy said something about it having been there for ever, so it must be an old one.’

‘Golf?’ Reacher said, when they were back in the car. ‘What an idiot.’

‘He was wrong about the golf,’ Sands said. ‘That’s for sure. But I think he just told us where the Russians took Fisher.’

‘He did? Where?’

‘When you were on the phone with Wallwork, Rusty and I pulled up some of the old records. We found a few for the lot next to the Spy House. The Klich brothers bought it about the same time they bought the land for the house. They filed a bunch of construction permits. Some more than once. And there were file notes about neighbours complaining about noise. From excavators and cement trucks. Rusty thought that was weird, because the Spy House is pretty much on its own. He said there was nothing built next to it. Not above ground, anyway. So I’m thinking, what kind of thing do you need excavators and lots of cement to make?’

‘A bunker,’ Reacher said.

‘Right,’ Sands said. ‘Only a Cold War bunker. Not one that’s full of sand and golf balls.’

‘Fisher thought the spy brothers did nothing while they were in Tennessee,’ Reacher said. ‘She was wrong. They supervised the building work.’

‘And when they left their sister took over,’ Sands said. ‘Klostermann’s mom. They took her off the records so no one would make the connection. She married Heinrich Klostermann and the house went in his name. Like money laundering, almost. Only with real estate.’

‘Then their son Henry took over when they died.’

‘Which is why he still lives there. You can’t sell a house with a Cold War bunker in the back yard without raising a few eyebrows. Not that the bunker can be much use these days.’

‘Until now. Come on. We need to head over there and recce the place.’

‘We can make a start from here.’ Sands picked up her phone and prodded and pinched at the screen until a satellite image of the Spy House’s yard was displayed. She zoomed in as close as she could but there still wasn’t much to see. Just an expanse of flat, scorched grass on the far side of a row of trees. The kind of field you might keep a donkey in if you didn’t like it very much. There was only one other feature. A set of concrete steps. They were at the end of a dirt driveway, and appeared to descend directly into the raw earth. ‘There’s not much to it. I thought there’d be hatchways and ventilation pipes and water tanks. Things we could use to get in.’