Tony Jackson had worked 30 years for MI5. He was a grammar-school boy recruited straight out of his redbrick university, after sitting a fast-track civil service exam. His results had not impressed the civil service itself, but clearly something in his psychometric paper had caught someone’s eye. Two weeks after his formal rejection he received a plain and enigmatic letter inviting him to an appointment at a hotel near Regent Street. Just after his arrival he had been required to sign the Official Secrets Act. Just before his departure he had become a government agent. Thirty years later he still was, now an Assistant Director, in charge of all his nation’s counterterrorism efforts.

His three decades of service had been hard and varied, played out against an endless conveyor of evolving threats. He had kept up pretty well. Better than most, in fact – hence the promotions. Now he was considered a mentor. Which he disliked, because such a notion was inevitably regressive. He knew only about the past. No one knew about the future. When asked the number one lesson his years had taught him, he would answer honestly: really the only lesson his years had taught him was never ever to leave the last of your Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve. Because something always happened on Christmas Eve. Sometimes big, sometimes small. But always something. Everything else changed all the time. Christmas Eve seemed to be the only constant in the intelligence world.

And sure enough, at eight in the morning on the 24th, at home, his landline rang. Which was OK. His shopping was done. On the phone was the duty officer at Thames House. A woman. Almost certainly a shift-swap volunteer, given the calendar, earning goodwill by sending others home to family. Hence almost certainly young, single and dedicated enough to disappoint her own family by staying in town. She said her name was Ann Cassidy, and that she thought he should come in and take a look at something.

Everything else changed all the time. Christmas Eve seemed to be the only constant in the intelligence world

He asked, ‘Is the canteen open yet?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Have them send up a bacon sandwich and a pot of coffee. And a mince pie. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

His driver was waiting at the curb outside his house in a heroically polished Jaguar saloon. The drive to the office was easy. Traffic was light. Pedestrians were few. It was not long after eight. Panic shopping would start at ten.

His breakfast was waiting at the head of a long table in the middle of a long room full of screens, where any of London’s cameras could be followed in real time. Most cameras overlapped, and some could be moved remotely. Up, down, left, right. Whole damning narratives could be built.

In the room were three people. Ann Cassidy, the duty officer, maybe 30, dressed like a normal person in jeans and a sweater. A Christmas perk. Next to her was the duty analyst, who was a man a few years older, and a technical operator on a rolling chair, scooting left, scooting right, pressing buttons, nudging joysticks.

Jackson said, ‘Talk me through it.’

Cassidy said, ‘We got a routine note via British Airways from Homeland Security in the US about last night’s dinnertime departure from JFK to Heathrow. Which arrived two hours ago. They had two items of low-grade non-urgent concern. The first was an American male travelling on a passport issued directly by the State Department.’

‘A diplomat?’

‘No, a paying customer. Diplomats don’t pay. The point was this man didn’t go to the New York passport office or wherever. Or the post office in some Wild West town. He wasn’t an employee, yet the State Department opened its secret velvet-lined vault and handed him a passport.’

‘For this trip?’

‘No, the passport is eight years old.’

‘For a trip eight years ago, then. Somewhere in the world. No doubt to do the State Department a service. No doubt larded with plausible deniability and zero connections back to them. Merely a private adventure. Were there any, eight years ago?’

‘They’re looking into it, and so are we.’

‘What was Homeland Security’s second concern?’

‘An American male who boarded with absolutely no luggage. No checked bags, no cabin bag, no backpack, no man bag, absolutely nothing. TSA traced him back on their hard drive to the security line. The overhead cameras show him approach the conveyor and empty his pockets into a dog bowl. Five items only, believed to be his passport, his boarding pass folded into thirds, a bank card of some kind, a thin wad of US dollars folded once, and what we think is a travel toothbrush. Nothing else.’

‘OK,’ Jackson said. ‘I agree that’s fairly unusual.’

‘Hence their note,’ Cassidy said. ‘They ran their numbers and virtually no one flies transatlantic with absolutely nothing. It must be virtually impossible. Even the minimalist hipsters with homes in both places pack moisturiser.’

‘So on the one hand we have a long-ago and possibly sinister State Department contractor, and on the other hand we have someone who, after discarding the boarding pass, will continue his life’s journey with just four items to his name.’

‘He knew he would be a person of interest. But he’s not hiding. He’s making sure we see him’

‘Not exactly, sir, no.’

‘How so?’

‘They’re the same passenger.’

Jackson didn’t answer.

The analyst said, ‘We felt either circumstance was interesting in itself, but both together, much more so.’

‘Do we have a name?’ Jackson asked.

‘Supposed to be with us any minute. Plus a background check.’

‘Are you tracking him?’

‘Right here,’ said the operator, tapping a screen. ‘We got him at the aeroplane door, through a process of elimination. Very easy. Two hundred passengers, 14 crew, he was literally the only one carrying nothing.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Outside Paddington station. He took the train from the airport.’

‘What’s he doing?’

There was a pause.

The analyst said, ‘We think he’s following somebody.’

‘Show me,’ Jackson said.

The operator clicked a button and a still frame lit up a large screen at the end of the room, bright and clear and easy for all to see. The frame was an expanse of white.

‘Establishing shot,’ the operator said. ‘Like a chain of custody. This is the aeroplane door, about to open. Our own CCTV in the jetway, set high. An early facial recognition trial. Didn’t work, but we kept the cameras. Our man is the 60th passenger to leave. Which probably puts him in premium economy. Which he probably chose for the legroom.’

‘More than probably,’ Jackson said.

The screen was showing the plane door filled on the inside by a man taller than the opening and nearly as wide. He paused a second and turned sideways and ducked his head and stepped out of the gloom. He stopped and faced front and rolled his shoulders and clicked his neck. He lifted his face as if to the sun. His arms hung down by his sides. His hands were empty. He was a very big man. Close to two metres tall, close to 120 kilos. Arms like an ape and hands the size of the turkey Jackson had defrosting in his larder.

The man moved on. The screen changed to the first of Heathrow’s own cameras, at the jetway exit. The man stepped out and followed the crowd, walking easy. More cameras showed his progress, which slowed badly as corridors merged and one planeload of people became two, then three, then four.

The big man was no longer walking easy. He was swaying left, swaying right, sometimes slowing, sometimes speeding up, periodically stretching tall and raising his head.

‘See?’ the analyst said. ‘Subconscious movements left and right and fast and slow, because he’s mimicking the person he’s following, and he’s craning to look ahead because he’s worried about losing his target in the crowd.’

Jackson waited. Ann Cassidy was saying nothing, fairly conspicuously. He asked her, ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘Not completely,’ she said.

‘Which part?’

‘I agree he’s following somebody. The behaviour stays the same all the way to the train and beyond. The subconscious movements are a classic tell, although I’ll come back to that, if I may. What I don’t agree is that he’s craning his neck to see ahead in case he loses his target. He’s two metres tall, for goodness’ sake. He doesn’t need to crane his neck. He could crouch down a bit and still see perfectly well.’

‘So what’s the craning about?’

‘We need to start again at the plane door. What does he do?’

‘He steps out and loosens up. He’s stiff. He’s a big man and he’s been in a small chair for seven hours.’

‘What else?’

‘You tell me.’

‘He tilts his face up. There was no need for that. He had just uncricked his neck another way, and it wasn’t his face that was stiff from seven hours in a chair.’

‘So why?’

‘He found our camera and looked straight into it for two whole seconds. Square on, chin up. Then he walked on, and every single camera he passed, he identified it and raised his head so it could get a good look at him.’

‘Why would he do that?’

A computer dinged before Cassidy could answer. A message coming in. The analyst ducked away to check it. He called out, ‘Here it is, chapter and verse. His name is Jack Reacher, he’s a retired US army military police investigator, he was here in London eight years ago, using the same passport, at the request of the State Department, the CIA and military intelligence collectively, because there were credible projections of a sniper attack at the G8 summit and apparently Reacher knew the likely suspect, having arrested him in the army many years before.’

Jackson made the calls. Unmarked cars, plain clothes on the street, drones, the whole nine yards

Jackson said, ‘Nothing happened at the G8 eight years ago.’

The analyst scrolled on. ‘The sniper suspect was found shot to death in a house in Romford, along with a number of local east London criminals and gangsters, all dead too, from various causes, none of them natural.’

‘So someone preempted the problem. Does it say who?’

‘The report is silent on that matter.’

Cassidy asked, ‘Do we assume this man Reacher did it?’

Jackson said, ‘Can’t rule him out, obviously.’

‘Exactly. That’s what he predicted. He knows how these things work. He knows we have cameras. He knew he would be a person of interest. But he’s not hiding. He’s not wearing a hat and looking down. Quite the opposite. He’s making sure we see him. And his movements are totally exaggerated. Because he’s signalling to us. He’s saying, you know who I am, and you need to know I’m following somebody.’

‘That’s incredibly elaborate. Why doesn’t he just give us a ring?’

‘Go back to the security line. What was in his pockets? He doesn’t have a phone.’

There was a pause.

Jackson said, ‘Who is he following?’

‘We can’t tell,’ Cassidy said. ‘Could be any one of the 59 people in front of him.’

‘Where is he now?’

The technical operator scooted left and hit a switch and the live feed came up on the big screen.

‘He’s leaning on a railing in Westbourne Terrace,’ the operator said. ‘I think he just lost his target.’

 ‘What happened?’ Jackson asked.

The operator split the screen, leaving the live shot on the left, with the big man motionless against black iron railings and white stucco houses. On the right the operator spooled backward in time, jumping from shot to shot, looking for clear coverage. And finding it. An HD colour camera on a streetlight had the big man’s broad back in the foreground. Over his left shoulder a thin stream of people walked ahead of him. Men, women, some young, some older, all moving at a classic urban pace, not slow, not fast, but dogged. All of them were plausible targets. Up ahead they had to filter left, around a pair of surveyors in hi-vis jackets, who were setting up a theodolite on a wide-set tripod.

The fourth to divert around them was an old man in a short brown coat. He was stooped and slender, with a briefcase in his right hand. A lit-up taxi came toward him. He threw out his left hand and the taxi stopped and he climbed in. The taxi moved off.

The big man stopped. He stood still for a moment. Then he walked on as far as the surveyors and spoke with them briefly. Then he walked back and took up his current position against the railing.

‘The old man was the target,’ the analyst said. ‘He gets away, the pursuit is terminated.’

Jackson asked, ‘What did Reacher say to the surveyors?’

‘Most likely he was asking if they heard the old man tell the cabbie an address. Which evidently they didn’t, hence the termination.’

The operator rewound to his best shot of the old man, which wasn’t great, being from behind. He zoomed in. Hunched, bony, old. Nothing more. The briefcase was an old-fashioned item.

‘Recognise him?’ the analyst asked.

‘Not from that angle,’ Jackson said.

‘Are we tracking the taxi?’ Cassidy asked.

‘Currently moving north through Maida Vale,’ the operator said. ‘Side streets, mostly. Coverage is patchy.’

He clicked back to the live feed. The big man was staring straight into the camera.

‘It’s like he’s looking at us,’ Cassidy said.

The big man crooked a finger and moved his arm. A follow-me gesture. He pushed off the railing and walked back the way he had come. He turned right into Chilworth Street, checked for cameras, found one, and sat down on a low wall, right in the middle of the camera’s field of view. He flashed his open hands, twice. Ten fingers and ten fingers.

Illustrated by Chris King

Cassidy said, ‘What does that mean?’

‘He’s going to wait there for 20 minutes,’ Jackson said. ‘I think he wants to talk.’

‘Can you get there in 20 minutes?’

‘I have lights and a siren, if I need them.’

But he didn’t. Shopping hadn’t started. From Thames House to Chilworth Street took 16 easy minutes. The big man was there, still on the wall, relaxed, just waiting. There was a wan sun low in the sky and the air was cold. Nine in the morning, on Christmas Eve.

Jackson sat on the wall a yard from the big man. He said, ‘Welcome to London, Mr Reacher.’

‘Thank you,’ the big man said. ‘Always a pleasure.’

‘My name is Jackson. Security services, counter-terrorism. What’s the purpose of your visit?’

‘Leisure and tourism. I met a flight attendant who gave me a friends-and-family ticket. She’s going to give me Christmas dinner tomorrow. More, if I’m lucky.’

‘Who was the old man who hailed the taxi?’

‘Someone you were very interested in back in the day. I was a baby lieutenant. I got roped into a joint operation with CIA and MI6. On Britain’s behalf. Didn’t work out. The guy got away.’

‘When was this?’

‘The 1980s. Something about the IRA.’

‘Before my time,’ Jackson said. ‘He must have been young then.’

‘We all were. He was a student from Tehran, I think.’

‘Name?’

‘Don’t remember. Something Iranian. Your boys called him the Pistol. He had something wrong with his hand. His forefinger didn’t work. It stuck straight out all the time, with the thumb at an angle. It was like he was miming a gun. I saw it this morning, on the plane, when he got his briefcase out of the overhead.’

Jackson took out his phone and called Cassidy. Told her to search the databases for the codename Pistol. He clicked off and asked, ‘What was the purpose of your visit eight years ago?’

‘Don’t remember,’ Reacher said again. ‘There was CIA involvement, which is always best forgotten. But I assume it worked out OK in the end.’

Jackson’s phone rang. A fast response. The databases must have lit up red. He listened for a long moment. Poker face, except his jaw clamped a little. He clicked off again and said, ‘Yes, we were very interested. We still are. Arms dealer. A lot of damage over the years. MI6 lost three people during that operation when you were a baby.’

Reacher said nothing.

Jackson said, ‘The surveyors didn’t hear an address?’

 ‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘They didn’t hear an address.’ He gestured at the camera. ‘But you’re tracking the taxi.’

‘It’s headed for the wilds of north London. We won’t be able to react fast enough.’

‘Special Branch not standing by?’

‘They’re called SO15 now. They’re always standing by. But they haven’t invented teleportation yet.’

‘How long would they need?’

‘Twenty minutes, probably.’

‘Call them now. Clearly the Pistol spooked when he saw the surveyors. Street repairs on Christmas Eve? Possibly suspicious. So he took off.’

‘But where?’

‘More important is where would he think they would put cops dressed as surveyors? Not randomly along his route. I think he was nearly at his destination. I think he postponed his arrival literally at the doorstep. He spooked because it was his moment of maximum tension.’

‘Postponed, not abandoned?’

‘It’s probably an important meeting. I think he assumes undercover cops can’t plausibly block the sidewalk all day. I think he assumes they will leave pretty soon.’

‘That’s all guesswork.’

‘But educated. The surveyors didn’t hear an address. Instead they heard him say, drive me around for an hour and bring me back here.’

Jackson made the calls. Unmarked cars, plain clothes on the street, fake Amazon vans, drones, the whole nine yards. All to be ready in 15 minutes. He clicked off and asked, ‘What would you have done about this if we hadn’t responded to the cameras?’

‘I planned to stick around for an hour,’ Reacher said. ‘I planned to have a full and frank discussion with the guy. Somewhere with no cameras. We lost someone too in that operation back when I was a baby. A friend of mine. One of the few I had.’

But Jackson wasn’t listening. He was planning ahead in his mind, rehearsing, chasing the weak points. Reacher said, ‘Anyway, Merry Christmas’, and then he got up and walked away. Twelve hours later, from the warmth of the flight attendant’s bed, he saw an evening news bulletin. An arrest had been made in the Paddington area of London. A terrorist kingpin. A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said Britain’s counter-terrorism expertise had given the world’s intelligence agencies an early Christmas present.

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