Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child [39]
The young woman didn’t reply. She struggled to find a reaction, like I was embarrassing her with too much information. I said, “They were supposed to leave my ticket here.”
“Your ticket?”
“My invitation.”
“Who was?”
“Elspeth,” I said. “Mrs. Sansom, I mean. Or their guy.”
“Which guy?”
“Their security person.”
“Mr. Springfield?”
I smiled to myself. Springfield was a manufacturer of autoloader rifles, the same as Browning was. The guy liked word games, which was fun, but dumb. False names work better if they’re completely unconnected with reality.
I asked, “Have you seen them yet this morning?” It was an attempt at finesse. I was guessing Greensboro wasn’t in Sansom’s own Congressional district. A Senate campaign needed statewide funding and exposure. I figured Sansom’s own patch was already sewn up tight, and that by now he would be trawling farther afield. Therefore he had probably stayed in the hotel overnight, to be ready for the early start. But I couldn’t be sure. To ask if he had come down from his room yet would make me look like an idiot if he lived five minutes away. To ask if he had arrived yet would make me look just as bad, if he lived two hundred miles away. So I aimed for neutrality.
The woman said, “They’re still upstairs, as far as I know.”
I said, “Thanks,” and walked back into the lobby, away from the elevators, so she wouldn’t have anything to worry about. I waited until her phone rang and she started tapping on her keyboard and concentrating on her computer screen, and then I drifted around the edge of the room and hit the up button.
I figured that Sansom would be in a big suite, and that the big suites would all be on the top floor, so I hit the highest number the elevator had to offer. A long moment later I stepped out into a hushed carpeted corridor and saw a uniformed cop standing easy outside a double mahogany door. A patrolman, from the Greensboro PD. Not young. A veteran, with first dibs on some effortless overtime. A token presence. I walked toward him with a rueful smile on my face, like Hey, you’re working, I’m working, what’s a guy to do? I figured he must have processed a few visitors already. Room service coffee, staffers with legitimate reasons to be there, maybe journalists. I nodded to him and said, “Jack Reacher for Mr. Sansom,” and leaned beyond him and knocked on the door. He didn’t react. Didn’t complain. Just stood there, like the window-dressing he was. Whatever Sansom was going to be next, right then he was still only a Congressman from the sticks, and he was a long way from getting serious protection.
There was a short delay, and then the suite door opened. Sansom’s wife stood there with her hand on the inside handle. She was dressed, coiffed, made up, and ready for the day.
“Hello, Elspeth,” I said. “Can I come in?”
Chapter 25
I saw a fast, expert, politician’s-wife calculation run behind Elspeth Sansom’s eyes. First instinct: Throw the bum out. But: There was a cop in the corridor, and probably media in the building, and almost certainly hotel staff within earshot. And local people talk. So she swallowed once and said, “Major Reacher, how nice to see you again,” and stood back to give me room to pass.
The suite was large and dark because of draped windows and full of heavy furniture in rich and muted colors. There was a living room with a breakfast bar and an open door that must have led to a bedroom. Elspeth Sansom walked me to the middle of the space and stopped,