by Lee Child
Reacher stayed where he was. No big rush. Nothing he could have done about it. Maybe there were guys who could have pulled it off. Hey, I’m sorry about your dead buddy that I never met, but can I separate you from your grieving pals and take you out and buy you a drink? Reacher was not one of those guys.
But the women weren’t going anywhere. He was sure of that.
He got up and stepped out and saw them where the corridor widened into a lobby. They were still together in their tight huddle. Not going anywhere. Just talking. Lots of social rules. They would end up in a bar, for sure, but not yet.
Reacher drifted back to a bank of pay phones and dialed. He leaned on the wall. He saw Briony Walker glance at him, then glance away. Just the out-of-towner making a call. Maybe to his local buddies, telling them he’s done for the day, asking them where the action is at night.
Christopher said, “Yes?”
Reacher said, “Did you hear about Christine Richardson?”
“Yes, we did.”
“So it’s going to be a little harder now.”
“It might be over now. If Richardson was the leak all along.”
“Suppose she wasn’t?”
“Then it might be easier, not harder. With the other three. Emotion helps. Loose lips sink ships.”
“It wasn’t a fun afternoon. Romance is on no one’s mind. They’re talking to each other. There’s no way into a conversation like that.”
“Exploit any opportunity you can.”
“You’re not in the Capitol, but you’re monitoring their fax line, right?”
“Correct.”
“Including tonight?”
“Of course. What do you know?”
“It’s not DeWitt.”
“How do you know?”
“She was upset. She’s thirty years old and she never had anyone die before.”
“It’s natural to be upset.”
“But if she had a secret agenda she’d have gotten over it. To do her work. But she didn’t. She hardly said a word. She sat there like the whole thing had no purpose. Which was absolutely the appropriate reaction for anyone without an agenda of her own.”
“Had either of the other two gotten over it?”
“Alice Vaz was all over it. Briony Walker likewise. And Walker made a real big fuss about going through it all one more time. With every detail stated for the record.”
“So she could check if she missed anything in her last two faxes?”
“That’s a possible interpretation.”
“What did Vaz do?”
“Same thing she did in the transcripts. Big geography. She should quit and run a travel agency.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Just monitor that fax line for me.”
Reacher hung up the phone. The women were still in the lobby, still talking, still not going anywhere. He set off toward them, just strolling, like a man with an hour to kill, like a stranger in town drawn toward the only faces he knew. Plan A was to keep the pretense going, maybe getting into the group via Briony Walker’s interest in gunshot wounds. Maybe she was a sniper groupie. He could offer some opinions. Head shot or chest shot? Well, ma’am, I favor the throat shot. If you hit it just right you can make their heads come off.
Plan B was to abandon the pretense and come clean as an MP captain undercover for MI, and see where that road led. Which might be all the way home. If he made out Richardson had been the prime suspect, then whoever worked hardest to reinforce that conclusion would be the guilty one. If no one worked hard, then Richardson had been the guilty one all along.
He strolled on.
Plan A or Plan B?
They made the decision for him.
They handed it to him on a plate.
They were civilized women, and reflexively polite in the way that military people always are. He was heading close to them. He wasn’t going to pass by on the other side. So he had to be acknowledged. Briony Walker looked straight at him, but Darwen DeWitt was the first to speak. She said, “We weren’t introduced. I guess it wasn’t that kind of an afternoon.”
“No, ma’am,” Reacher said. “I guess it wasn’t.” He said his name. He saw each of the three file it away in her memory.
He said, “I was sorry to hear about Colonel Richardson.”
DeWitt nodded. “It was a shock.”
“Did you know her well?”
“We all came up together. We expected to carry on together.”
“Brother officers,” Reacher said. “Or sisters, I guess.”
“We all felt that way.”
Reacher nodded. They could all afford to feel that way. No rivalry. Not yet. They faced no significant bottleneck until the leap from Brigadier General to Major General. From one star to two. Then a little rivalry might bite.
Briony Walker said, “It must have happened to you, sergeant. You must have lost people.”
“Ma’am, one or two.”
“And what do you do on days like that?”
“Well, ma’am, typically we would go to a bar and toast their journey. Usually starts out quiet, and ends up happy. Which is important. For the good of the unit.”
Alice Vaz said, “What unit?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.”
“What bar?”
“Whatever is close at hand.”
DeWitt said, “The Hyatt is a block away.”
They walked over to the Hyatt. But not exactly together. Not a foursome. More accurately a threesome and a singleton in a loose association, held together only by Reacher playing dumb enough to miss the hints he should get lost. The women were too polite to make it more explicit. But even so the walk was excruciatingly embarrassing. Out of the grounds, across Constitution, onto New Jersey Avenue, across Louisiana and D Street, and then they were there, at the Hyatt’s door. Reacher stepped up promptly and held it open. Because immediate action was required, right there, right then. Indecisive loitering on the sidewalk would have led to heavier hints.
They shuffled past him, first Vaz, then DeWitt, and finally Walker. Reacher fell in behind them. They found the bar. Not the kind of place Reacher was used to. For one thing, there was no bar. Not as such. Just low tables, low chairs, and waiter service. It was a lounge.
Walker looked at Reacher and asked, “What should we drink?”
Reacher said, “Pitchers of beer, but I doubt if they have those here.”
A waiter came and the women ordered white wine spritzers. It was summer. Reacher ordered hot coffee, black, no sweeteners required. He preferred not to clutter a table with jugs and bowls and spoons. The women murmured among themselves, a trio, with occasional guilty glances at him, unable to get rid of him, unable to be rude to him.
He asked, “Do those meetings usually go like that? Apart from the thing with Colonel Richardson, I mean.”
Vaz said, “Your first?”
Reacher said, “And hopefully my last, ma’am.”
Walker said, “No, it was worth it. It was a good at-bat. They can’t say no to everything. So we just made it fractionally more likely they’ll say yes to something else, sometime soon.”
“You like your job?”
“Do you like yours, sergeant?”
“Yes, ma’am, most of the time.”
“I could give the same answer.”
The waiter brought the drinks, and the women returned to their three-way private conversation. Reacher’s coffee was in a wide, shallow cup, and there wasn’t much of it. He was a couple of mouthfuls away from the next awkward moment. They hadn’t gotten rid of him leaving the Capitol, and they hadn’t gotten rid of him entering the hotel. The end of the first round of drinks was their next obvious opportunity. All it would take was an order: Sergeant, you’re dismissed. No way of fighting that, not even under Plan B. Captain, you’re dismissed worked just as well, when said by majors and lieutenant colonels.
But it was Darwen DeWitt who left after the first round of drink
s. She was still not talking much, and she clearly wasn’t enjoying herself. She was finding no catharsis. She said she had work to do, and she got up. There were no hugs. Just tight nods and brave smiles and meaningful glances, and then she was gone. Vaz and Walker looked at Reacher, and Reacher looked right back at Walker and Vaz. No one spoke. Then the waiter came back right on cue, and Vaz and Walker ordered more spritzers, and Reacher ordered more coffee.
The second spritzer loosened Walker up a little. She asked Reacher what he felt when he pulled the trigger on a live human being. Reacher quoted a guy he knew. He said recoil against his shoulder. Walker asked what was the longest kill he had ever made. Truth was about eleven feet, at that stage, because he was a cop, but he said six hundred yards, because he was supposed to be a sniper. She asked with what. Truth was a Beretta M9, but he said an M21, an ART II scope, and a 7.62 NATO round.
Alice Vaz asked, “Where was this?”
Reacher said, “Ma’am, I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Which sounds like a Special Forces scenario.”
“I guess it does.”
“Six hundred yards is fairly close range for you guys.”
“Practically point blank, ma’am.”
“Black bag for CIA, or legitimate, for us?”
“Ma’am, I’m not at liberty to say.”
And those twin denials seemed to create some credibility. Both women gradually abandoned their defensive body language. Not that it was replaced by personal interest. It was replaced by professional interest, which came across in a poignant way. Neither woman had a realistic hope in her lifetime of becoming a battlefield commander. Both were forced to take a different route. But both seemed to look across the divide with concern. In an ideal world they would be fighting. In which case they would want the best available weapons. No question about that. In which case simple ethics demanded the best available weapons for those currently doing the fighting in the less than perfect world. Simple justice. And simple preparedness, too. Their sisters might never get there, but their daughters would one day.
Walker asked Reacher his private opinion about the rifle design. Were there things that should be added? Taken away? Reacher said, “Ma’am, I think they got it about right,” partly because that was the kind of thing a sergeant would say to an officer, and partly because it was true. Walker seemed happy with the answer.
Then both Walker and Vaz got up to use the restroom. Reacher could have used a pit stop too, but he didn’t want to follow directly behind them. That would have been too weird, right after the walk from the Capitol. So he waited. He saw Vaz use a pay phone on her way. There was a line of them in wooden hutches on the lounge’s back wall. Vaz used the center phone. Walker didn’t wait for her. She went on ahead. Vaz spoke for less than ten seconds and then hung up and continued on her way to the restroom.
Walker never came back from the restroom. Vaz sat down alone and unconcerned and said Walker had gone back to the office. She had used the D Street door. She had a lot to do. And did Reacher want another drink?
Reacher and Vaz, alone together. Walker, on her own, on the loose.
Reacher said, “You buying?”
Vaz said, “Sure.”
Reacher said, “Then yes.”
“Then follow me,” Vaz said. “I know a better place than this.”
The better place was tucked in close to the tracks out the back of Union Station. It was better in the sense it had an actual bar. It was worse in every other way. In particular it was in a lousy neighborhood, full of ugly brick and ramshackle buildings, with dark streets and all kinds of alleyways and yards all over the place, with more wires overhead than trees. The bar itself felt like a waterfront establishment, mysteriously landlocked, low and wide and made a warren by subdivision into many different room-sized areas. Reacher sat with his back to a corner, where he could see both front and rear doors at once. Vaz sat next to him, not close, but not far away, either. She looked good. Better than she had a right to. Class A uniform, female officer, was generally no kind of a flattering outfit. It was essentially tubular. Maybe Vaz’s was tailored. It had to be. The jacket was waisted. It went in and out properly. The skirt was tight. And a little short. Just a fraction, but detectable by the human eye unaided.
Vaz said, “I hope not to be in this shop much longer.”
“Where next?”
“War Plans, I hope.”
“Do they cash this shop’s checks?”
“You mean, can I take my credits with me? Absolutely. Politics and War Plans? They’re practically the same thing.”
“So when?”
“As soon as possible.”
“But you’re worried this business with Colonel Richardson will slow things down. No one likes a fuss, right? And the shop is understaffed now. Maybe they can’t let you go.”
“You’re pretty smart, for a sergeant.”
“Rank has nothing to do with being smart, ma’am.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“You first.”
“Nothing to tell,” Vaz said. “California girl, West Point cadet, first I wanted to see the world, and then I wanted to control it. You?”
“Marine Corps boy, West Point cadet, first I wanted to see the world, and then I wanted to survive it.”
“I don’t remember many West Point cadets who became sergeants afterward.”
“Some did. From time to time. In a way.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“You’re an undercover operator,” Vaz said. “I always knew the day would come.”
“When what?”
“When you finally figured it out. As in, your procurement office is riddled with corruption, and has been for years. As in, you don’t need a new sniper rifle. You know that. But those guys have already sold stock in the new model. Maybe the money is already spent. So they have to make it happen. Any way they can. I mean, did you hear some of the arguments they were making?”
“Where is their office?”
“Who? Procurement is a big department.”
“The guy I saw today, for instance.”
“His office is in the Capitol Building.”
“With a fax machine?”
“Of course.”
“Did any of the others know this?”
“In the political shop? We all did. Why do you think Walker made them go through the whole thing again today? Because she wanted to generate a third fax.”
“Why?”
“An extra piece of evidence for you. We knew you’d catch up with it eventually.”
“Why didn’t one of you drop a dime before?”
“Not our place.”
“You mean the cost-benefit ratio wasn’t right. One of you would have to step up, and it’s conceivable she could lose. Because anything can happen in a military court. In which case she’s out of the running right from that moment. Because she was once on the losing side. You couldn’t risk that kind of mistake. Not having come so far.”
“The running for what?”
“For whatever it is you all plan to be.”
“For a spell we thought the previous sniper could be the undercover guy. The one you replaced. Like entrapment. He was letting the officer push him to want more and more. But in the end we thought he was just a sniper. So we’d have nailed you for the real undercover guy in about a minute, except no one was really paying attention this afternoon.”
“Because of Richardson? What did she think was happening?”
“The same as we all did. Procurement is a swamp and you’d notice sooner or later.”
“What is it you plan to be?”
“Respected. Perhaps within a closed community, but by someone.”
“Has your life lacked respect so far?”
“You have no idea,” Vaz said. She turned toward him, moving on the bench, her knees coming close to his, dark nylon over dark skin. She said, “I’m proceeding on the assumption that I can trust my impression
that you’re younger than me. And in a branch with much less generous and accelerated promotion. And that therefore I outrank you.”
“I’m a captain,” Reacher said. “Ma’am.”
“Therefore if our chains of command were in any way related, it would be inappropriate for us to have a close relationship. Therefore the question is, are our chains of command in any way related?”
“I think they’re about as far apart as chains of command can be.”
“Wait there,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
And she got up and threaded her way through the cluttered space, heading for the restroom corridor in back. Five minutes, minimum, Reacher thought. He followed her as far as a pay phone on the wall. The phone was a scratched old item and the wall behind it was dark with smoke and grime.
He dialed, and said his name.
Cornelius Christopher said, “Yes?”
Reacher said, “I’m done.”
“What does that mean? You’re quitting?”
“No, it means the job is done.”
“What do you know?”
“Walker must be back at the Capitol by now. Any faxes yet?”
“No.”
“You were wrong. No one is leaking to a foreign firearms manufacturer. No one ever was. Why would anyone need to? Everyone knows what a good sniper rifle should be. It’s self-explanatory. It’s obvious. The basic principles have been understood for a century. No one needs to gather secret intelligence. Because they already know.”
“So what’s the story?”
“I’m waiting for the final proof. I should have it in five minutes or less.”
“Proof of what?”
“It’s Alice Vaz,” Reacher said. “Think about the transcripts. Her big-picture questions. She asked a couple more this afternoon. She wanted it spelled out exactly where this new rifle will be used. She asked what new environments it might face.”
“So?”
“She was trying to get into War Plans through the back door. And the procurement guy fell for it. No details, but he gave plenty of weather clues. Anyone could reverse-engineer our entire slate of global intentions from what he said.”
“Like what?”
“He said high altitude plus freezing mist.”
