Small Wars

by Lee Child

  The guy shoved her in the chest.

  Which was a mistake on several different levels. Military discipline could not allow assaults by detainees. And Neagley hated physical contact. No one knew why. But it was a recognized issue. She couldn’t bear to be touched. She wouldn’t even shake hands. Not even with a friend. Thus a glove laid on her in anger was beyond the pale, and liable to produce a reaction.

  For the trooper the reaction resulted in a broken nose and a kick in the balls. She came off the back foot and drove the heel of her hand into the guy’s face, from below, an arching blow like a flyweight boxer thumping the heavy bag, and there was a puff of blood in the air, and the guy skittered back on his heels, and she punted him another six feet with the kick, and he went down on his ass with his back against the front wheel of his car, huffing and puffing and squealing.

  Reacher said, “Feel free to make an official complaint. I’ll swear out a witness statement. About how you got your clock cleaned by a girl. You want that in the record?”

  The guy didn’t, apparently. He just flapped his hands, mute.

  Get lost.

  In the car on the way back to base Neagley said, “I agree the guy was an idiot.”

  Reacher said, “But?”

  “Why me? Why didn’t you do it?”

  “Like they say in England, why buy a dog and bark yourself?”

  —

  Back on the base Ellsbury’s sergeant had a phone message for Neagley. She returned the call and came out and said, “They found an address for Crawford’s parents. Plural. Now they think the father is still alive. But the phone number doesn’t get them past the servants’ quarters. They can’t even establish whether the Crawfords are home or not right now. I guess the butler is too discreet. They want someone to do a drive-by, to get the lay of the land.”

  Reacher said, “Where is it?”

  “Myrtle Beach.”

  “That’s in South Carolina.”

  “Which is an adjacent state. I think we should volunteer.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? It’s a done deal here.”

  —

  Neagley drove. An adjacent state, but still hundreds of miles. They took I-16 to I-95, and headed north, and then jumped off cross-country for the final short distance, in the middle of the afternoon. They had an address but no street map, so they asked at gas stations until they got pointed in the right direction, which turned out to be a ritzy enclave between an inland waterway and the ocean. A manicured road ran through it, with little dead-end streets coming off it left and right like ribs. The Crawfords’ street was on the ocean side. Their house was a big mansion facing the sea, on a deep lot with a private beach.

  It looked closed up.

  The windows were shuttered from the inside. Painted surfaces, reflecting blindly through the glass. Neagley said, “They’re obviously away. In which case we should go talk to the butler. We shouldn’t take no for an answer. Evasion is easy on the phone. Face to face is harder.”

  “Works for me,” Reacher said.

  They drove in, on a long cobblestone driveway, their Firestone tires pattering, and they paused briefly at the front door, but it was blank and bolted, so they followed the cobblestones around to the back, where a back door was also blank and bolted. The servants’ entrance, currently not in use.

  “So where is the servant?” Reacher said. “How discreet can one man be?”

  There was a garage block. Most of the bays had doors, but one was a pass-through to a utility yard in back. There was a car parked in the pass-through. An old compact, all sun-faded and dinged up with age. A plausible POV for a butler.

  There was an apartment above the garage bays. All dormer windows and gingerbread trim, slimy from the salt air. There was an external staircase leading to the door.

  Reacher said, “This place is so upscale even the downstairs people are upstairs.”

  He went first, with Neagley at his shoulder, and he knocked on the door. The door was opened immediately. As if they were expected. Which they were, Reacher supposed. Their car had made a certain amount of noise.

  A woman. Maybe sixty years old, and careworn. A housedress. Knuckles like walnuts. A hard worker. She said, “Yes?”

  Reacher said, “Ma’am, we’re from the U.S. Army, and we need to know Mr. and Mrs. Crawford’s current location.”

  “Does it concern their daughter?”

  “At this point, until I know their whereabouts, I’m not at liberty to say what it concerns.”

  The woman said, “You better come in and speak to my husband.”

  Who was not the butler. Not if the shows Reacher had seen on TV were true. This was a hangdog fellow, thin and bent over from labor, with big rough hands. A gardener, maybe.

  Reacher said, “What’s your phone number?”

  They told him, and Neagley nodded. Reacher said, “Are you the only people here at the moment?”

  They said yes, and Reacher said, “So I believe the army has already called you. For some reason yours is the only number we have.”

  The hangdog guy said, “The family is away.”

  “Where?”

  The woman said, “We should know what this is about.”

  “You can’t filter their news. You don’t have that right.”

  “So it is about their daughter. It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

  The room was small and cramped. The ceiling was low, because of the eaves. The furniture was plain, and not generous in quantity. Storage was inadequate, clearly. Essential paperwork was stacked on the dining table. Bills, and mail. The floor was bare board. There was a television set. There was a shelf with three books, and a toy frog painted silver. Or an armadillo. Something humped. Maybe two inches long. Something crouching.

  “Excuse me,” Reacher said.

  He stepped closer.

  Not a frog. Not an armadillo. A toy car. A sports coupe. Painted silver. A Porsche.

  Reacher stepped over to the dining table. Picked up a piece of opened mail.

  A bank statement. A savings account. Almost a hundred dollars in it.

  It was addressed to H & R Crawford, at the address the army had, and the phone number was the same.

  Not filtering the news.

  Reacher said, “Sir, ma’am, I very much regret it’s my duty on behalf of the Commander in Chief to inform you your daughter was the victim of an off-post homicide two evenings ago. The circumstances are still being investigated, but we do know her death must have been instantaneous and she can have felt no pain.”

  —

  Like most MPs Reacher and Neagley had delivered death messages before, and they knew the drill. Not touchy-feely like neighbors. The army way was appropriately grim, but with the stalwart radiation of wholesome sentiments such as courage and service and sacrifice. Eventually the parents started asking them questions, and they answered what they could. Career good, luck bad. Then Neagley said, “Tell us about her,” which Reacher assumed was a hundred percent professional interest, but which also played well in the psychological context.

  The woman told the story. The mother. It came right out of her. She was the cook. The hangdog guy was a groundskeeper. The father. Caroline was their daughter. An only child. She had grown up right there, above the garages. She hadn’t enjoyed it. She wanted what was in the big house. She was ten times smarter than them. Wasn’t fair.

  Reacher said, “She gave the impression she had family money.”

  The hangdog guy said, “No, that was all hers. She gets paid a fortune. It’s a government job. Those people look after each other. Pensions, too, I expect. All kinds of benefits.”

  “No legacies? No inheritances?”

  “We gave her thirty-five dollars when she went to West Point. It was all we had saved. That’s all she ever got. Anything else, she earned.”

  Reacher said, “May I use your phone?”

  They said yes, and he dialed the Pentagon. A number on a desk outside an office with a window
. Answered by a sergeant.

  Reacher said, “Is he there? It’s his brother.”

  Joe’s voice came on the line.

  Reacher said, “Name a good steakhouse in Alexandria open late.”

  Joe did.

  Reacher said, “I’ll meet you there at nine o’clock tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep you in the loop.”

  “With Crawford? Is there something weird?”

  “Many things. I need to run an idea by you.”

  —

  Neagley drove. Back on I-95. Hundreds of miles. As far as from Fort Smith to Myrtle Beach, all over again. They stayed on the left of the Potomac and got to Alexandria ninety minutes after dark. They were five minutes late to the restaurant. There was a guy near the door, doing nothing. Plain clothes. Almost convincing.

  Neagley went in and got a table for one. Then Reacher went in and sat with Joe. White linen, dim candlelight, ruby wines, a hushed atmosphere. There was another guy in plain clothes all alone at a table, on the other side of the room from Neagley. Symmetrical.

  Joe said, “I see you brought your attack dog with you.”

  Reacher said, “I see you brought two of yours.”

  “Crawford is serious shit. Immediate action might be required.”

  “That’s why Neagley is here.”

  They ordered. Onion soup and a rib-eye for Reacher, foie gras and a filet mignon for Joe. Fries for both, red wine for Joe, coffee for Reacher. Plus tap water. No small talk.

  Reacher said, “I was worried about the road from the beginning. It doesn’t go anywhere. Stupid place to set a trap. Can’t have been random. But deliberate makes no sense either. She had a choice of three or four destinations, and about forty different ways of getting there. Then I figured it out. A truly smart guy would ignore the destinations. He wouldn’t try to predict how she would get from A to B or C or D. He would figure all roads were equal. At least in terms of transportation. But not equal in other ways. Not emotionally, for instance. Sometimes I forget that normal people like driving more than I do. So a smart guy would ask, which road would she use just for the hell of it? A young woman with a brand-new sports car? No contest. That was a great road. Straightaways, nice bends, trees, sunshine, the smell of fresh air. Great noise, too, probably. A windows-down kind of a road. A smart guy would be able to predict it.”

  Joe said, “A smart guy with military training.”

  “Because of the triple shot? I agree. It’s a high-stress moment. That was automatic. Muscle memory. Years at the gun range. The guy was one of ours.”

  “But which one of ours, and why?”

  “This is where it gets highly speculative. She wasn’t rich. I know that now. I should have known long ago. It was right there in the fine print from the autopsy. She had recent cosmetic dentistry. A rich girl would have had it years before. As a teenager. So, no family money. I met her parents. They had thirty-five dollars in her college fund. There are no rich uncles. They think she earned it all. Government job. They think she earned a fortune. But we know she didn’t. Ten light colonels couldn’t afford a brand-new Porsche. But she got one. With what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “She was in War Plans. Suppose she was selling information to a foreign government? Iraq, maybe. They’d pay a fortune. She’s writing the plan. They’d be getting it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Possible,” Joe said. “Theoretically. As a worst-case scenario.”

  “Are we going to have a problem with Iraq?”

  “Likely,” Joe said. “He wants Kuwait. Next year, or the year after. We’ll have to throw him out. Probably stage in Saudi, put the Navy in the Gulf. The whole nine yards.”

  “So he wants that plan. And he pays for it, word for word. From a woman who maybe didn’t want to be poor anymore. Scuttlebutt says she came out of her shell in War Plans. Finally started spending some of her money. Except maybe it wasn’t finally. Maybe that was the first money she ever had.”

  Joe said nothing.

  Reacher said, “Counterintelligence must have been keeping an eye on such things. But for some reason they missed her, and so it went on for a long time. It became the legend. Family money. The richest woman. It was hiding in plain sight. Then something changed. Suddenly they figured her out.”

  Joe said, “How?”

  Reacher said, “Could be a number of reasons. Could be dumb luck.”

  “Or?”

  “Could be counterintelligence got a new commander. Maybe the new commander brought with him the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly two plus two made four. Which would be dumb luck of a different kind. But it happens.”

  Joe said nothing.

  Reacher said, “But let’s freeze the action right there. Let’s look at it from the new commander’s point of view. Right then he’s the only one with all the pieces. He’s the only one who can see the whole picture. In the world. It’s a lonely position. No one else knows. But it’s all about who else knows. Because no one else must know. It’s only Iraq, but who will believe that? You’ll have mass panic. Every plan will be called compromised. The Soviet strategy will fall apart. Nothing will be believed ever again. So it’s vital no one else knows. Literally. Not ever. No one. Two can’t keep a secret. But she has to be stopped. And treason gets the death penalty. The new commander concludes he has to do it himself. It’s the only way to contain it. Almost a historic moment. The world will be saved. That big of a deal. But the world will never know. So it’s ironic, and strategically astute, and noble and ethical. Like a patriotic duty.”

  Joe said nothing.

  Reacher said, “I imagine a new commander of such a unit would be smart enough to figure out the thing with the sports car and the road.”

  Joe said, “The guy had size fifteen feet.”

  “He had a maximum size fifteen. You can’t make your footprints smaller, but you can make them bigger. I figure I could put on a tennis shoe, something tight, and get my whole foot inside a size fifteen boot. Tight and solid. Not like clown shoes. I could stomp around making footprints like an astronaut on the moon. You know where I got that idea?”

  Joe said, “No.”

  “The second time we lived on Okinawa. You were six. Maybe seven. You got into a thing where you would get up early in the morning and clump around in Dad’s boots. I didn’t know why. Maybe it’s a first-born thing. Maybe you were trying to fill his shoes, literally. But I would hear you. And once you got him in trouble with Mom for making marks on the rug. That’s where I got the idea.”

  “Lots of people must have done that.”

  “How many grew up to be recently promoted commanders of counterespionage units?”

  Joe said nothing.

  Reacher said, “Thinking back, you did pretty well on the phone. You must have been very shocked. But you didn’t forget to ask the obvious questions, like who died. And you asked how, which was good, and I said shot on a lonely road, but then you should have asked shot on a lonely road how, because a sniper in the trees was just as plausible as a stationary ambush. On the back roads. But you didn’t ask shot on a lonely road how. You could have scripted that part a little better. And you got nervous. You wouldn’t let it go. You asked me what I was going to do about her. And you totally blew it with the six hundred and ninety-three miles. You’re a pedantic guy, Joe. You wouldn’t get it wrong. And I’m sure you didn’t. You figured Benning was on a level with a distance you knew for sure. The same radius. And the distance you knew for sure was your office to Fort Smith. Because you’d just driven it. Twice. There and back.”

  Joe said, “Interesting hypothetical. What would a hypothetical policeman do about it?”

  “He would feel hypothetically better without a guy in the lobby and a guy in the room.”

  “Just Neagley?”

  “She’s driving the car. She’s entitled to eat.”

  “Crawford is serious shit.”

  Reacher said, “Relax. The hypoth
etical policeman doesn’t see a problem. He’s a real-world person. I’m sure his analysis would have been the same as the hypothetical unit commander’s. But there’s a problem. I suppose the hypothetical size fifteens were supposed to be a dealbreaker, a cold case forever, but they didn’t work. They’re railroading a guy. Size fifteen feet, the same ammo as the hypothetical unit commander doing it himself, and the same tires, all a pure coincidence, but they’re calling it three cherries on a slot machine. The guy is going down.”

  “What should a hypothetical unit commander do about that?”

  “I’m sure there’s a code word. Probably through the office of the president. Things get shut down. Guys get let go.”

  Joe said nothing.

  “Then cases stay cold forever.”

  Joe said, “OK.”