The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  The first thing I did was take a long hot shower. Deveraux’s scent came up at me in the steam. I dried off and dressed in full-on Class A uniform, soup to nuts. Then I called Stan Lowrey and asked him for a ride back to the bus depot. I figured if I hurried I could get to D.C. by dinner time, which was about twelve hours ahead of schedule. And I told Lowrey to make no secret of where I was going. I figured the more people who knew, and the longer I was there, the better chance things would have to come crawling out of the woodwork.

  Washington D.C. at seven o’clock on a Monday evening was going quiet. A company town, where the company was America, and where work never really stopped, but where it moved into quiet confidential locations after five in the afternoon. Salons, bars, fancy restaurants, townhouse parlors, those locations were unknown to me, but I knew the neighborhoods most likely to contain them. So I skipped the kind of distant chain hotels a lowly O-4 like me would normally use, and I headed for the brighter lights and the cleaner streets and the higher prices south of Dupont Circle. Not that I was intending to pay for anything. Legend had it there was a fancy place on Connecticut Avenue with a glitch in its back office, whereby uniformed guests were automatically billed to the Department of the Army. Some one-time conference arrangement that had never been canceled, or some embittered veteran in charge of the ledgers, no one knew. But the legend said you could be in Arlington Cemetery before the charges caught up with you.

  I walked there slowly, in the center of every sidewalk I used. I was vigilant without appearing to be so. I used store windows as mirrors and gazed around innocently at every crosswalk light. No one was paying me any attention. I was crowded and jostled at times, but only by normal busy people rushing ahead to the next thing on their long agendas. I got to the hotel without any trouble and checked in under my real name and rank, and the legend held up, in that I was asked for no charge card or deposit. All I had to do was sign a piece of paper, which I did, as clearly and legibly as possible. No point in being the bait in a trap, and then hiding your light under a bushel. Not that I had ever been sure what a bushel was. Some kind of a small barrel, I assumed. In which case the light would go out anyway, for want of oxygen.

  I rode the elevator to my room and hung my Class A coat on a hanger and called down and asked for dinner to be delivered. Thirty minutes later I was eating a sirloin steak, which would also be billed to the Pentagon. Thirty minutes after that I left the tray in the corridor and went out for a walk, just trawling, just seeing if my passage would pull anyone out of the shadows behind me. But no one reacted, and no one followed. I walked around the Circle and then quartered the blocks beyond it, passing the Iraqi Embassy at one extreme and the Colombian at the other. I saw men and women I took to be federal agents of various kinds, and men and women out of uniform but clearly military, and men and women in uniform, from all four branches of the service, and numerous private citizens in serious suits, but none of them made a move against me. None of them was even slightly interested. I was part of the furniture.

  So I went back to the hotel, and I went to bed in my luxurious room, and I waited to see what would happen the next day, which would be Tuesday, the eleventh of March, 1997.

  Chapter

  64

  I woke up at seven and let the Department of the Army buy me a room service breakfast. By eight I was showered and dressed and out on the street. I figured this was when the serious business would begin. A noon appointment at the Pentagon for a guy based as far away as I was made it likely I would have stayed in town the night before, and Washington hotels were easily monitored. It was that kind of a city. And I wasn’t hiding my light under any kind of small barrels. So I half-expected opposition in the lobby, or right outside the street door. I found it in neither place. It was a fresh spring morning, the sun was out, the air was warm, and everything I saw was benign and innocent.

  I made a show of strolling out to a newspaper kiosk, even though the hotel supplied publications of every type. I bought a Post, and a Times, and I lingered and loitered over making change, all slow and unconcerned, but there was no approach and no attack. I carried the papers to a coffee shop and sat at an outside table, in full view of the whole world.

  No one looked at me.

  By ten o’clock I was full of coffee and had read the ink off both broadsheets and no passerby had shown any interest in me. I began to think I had outsmarted myself with my choice of hotel. A transient O-4 would normally stay in a different kind of place, of which there were simply too many to call. So I began to think it likely the opposition would be focusing on the end of my journey, not a stop along the way. Which would be more efficient for them, anyway. They knew exactly where I was going, and exactly when.

  Which meant they would be waiting for me in or around the Pentagon, at or before twelve o’clock. The belly of the beast. Much more dangerous. Less than three miles away, but a different planet in terms of how they would do things.

  It was still a beautiful morning, so I walked. Any day could be the last of life or liberty, so small pleasures were always worth pursuing. I went south on 17th Street, past the Executive Office Building next to the White House, down the side of the Ellipse, and onto the Mall. I turned away from George Washington’s monument and headed for Abraham Lincoln’s. I looped left of the old guy and found my way onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge and stepped out over the broad waters of the Potomac. Plenty of people were making the same trip by car. No one else was doing it on foot. The morning joggers were long gone, and the afternoon joggers were still at work.

  I stopped halfway across and leaned on the rail. Always a wise precaution on a bridge. Nowhere for a follower to hide. They had to keep on coming. But there was no one behind me. No one ahead of me, either. I gave it five minutes, resting on my elbows like a contemplative soul, but no one came. So I moved on again, another three hundred yards, and I arrived in Virginia. Straight ahead of me in the distance was Arlington National Cemetery. The main gate. I was there five minutes later. I walked into the sea of white stones. Immediately there were graves all around me. Always the best way to approach the Department of Defense. Through the graveyard. For purposes of perspective.

  I detoured once to pay my respects to JFK, and again to pay my respects to the Unknown Soldier. I walked behind Henderson Hall, which was a high-level Marine place, and I came out the cemetery’s south gate, and there it was: the Pentagon. The world’s largest office building. Six and a half million square feet, thirty thousand people, more than seventeen miles of corridors, but just three street doors. Naturally I wanted the southeast entrance. For obvious reasons. So I looped around, staying alert, keeping my distance, until I was able to join the thin stream of people coming in from the Metro station. The stream got thicker as it funneled toward the doors. It turned out to be a decent crowd. The right kind of people, for my particular purposes. I wanted witnesses. Arrests go bad all the time, sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose.

  But I got in OK, despite a little uncertainty in the lobby. What I thought was an arrest team turned out to be a new watch coming on duty. A temporary manpower surplus. That was all. So I made it to 3C315 unmolested. Third floor, C ring, nearest to radial corridor number three, bay number fifteen. John James Frazer’s office. Senate Liaison. There was no one in there with him. He was all alone. He told me to close the door. I did. He told me to sit down. I did.

  He said, “So what have you got for me?”

  I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I hadn’t expected to get that far.

  He said, “Good news, I hope.”

  “No news,” I said.

  “You told me you had the name. That’s what your message said.”

  “I don’t have the name.”

  “Then why say so? Why ask to see me?”

  I paused a beat.

  “It was a shortcut,” I said.

  And right there the meeting died on its feet. There was really nothing more to say. Frazer put on a big show of being tolerant. And
patient. He called me paranoid. Then he laughed a little. About how I couldn’t even get arrested. Then he tried to look concerned. About my state of health, maybe. And certainly about my appearance. The hair and the stubble. He put on the kind of brusque and manly voice an uncle uses with a favorite nephew.

  He said, “You look terrible. There are barbershops here, you know. You should go use one.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m supposed to look like this.”

  “Because of the undercover role?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not really undercover, are you? I heard the local sheriff rumbled you immediately.”

  “I think it’s worth continuing for the general population. The army is not real popular with them at the moment.”

  “Anyway, I expect you’ll be withdrawn now. In fact I’m surprised you haven’t been withdrawn already. When did you last get orders?”

  “Why would I be withdrawn?”

  “Because matters appear to be resolved in Mississippi.”

  “Do they?”

  “I think so. The shootings outside of Kelham were clearly a case of an excess of zeal from an unofficial and unauthorized paramilitary force from another state. The authorities in Tennessee will take care of all that. We can’t really stand in their way. Our powers are limited.”

  “They were ordered there.”

  “No, I don’t really think so. Those groups have extensive underground communications. We think it will prove to be a civilian initiative.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “This is not debate class. Facts are facts. This country is overrun with groups like that. Their agendas are decided internally. There’s really no doubt about that.”

  “What about the three dead women?”

  “The perpetrator has been identified, I believe.”

  “When?”

  “The news became public three hours ago, I think.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t have all the details.”

  “One of ours?”

  “No, I believe it was a local person. Down there in Mississippi.” I said nothing.

  Frazer said, “Anyway, thank you for coming in.”

  I said nothing.

  Frazer said, “This meeting is over, major.”

  I said, “No, colonel, it isn’t.”

  Chapter

  65

  The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity. And silence.

  There were thirty thousand people the other side of Frazer’s closed door, but I couldn’t hear any of them. I couldn’t hear anything at all. Just the kind of hissing quiet typical of a C ring office.

  Frazer said, “Don’t forget you’re talking to an officer senior to you in rank.”

  I said, “Don’t forget you’re talking to an MP authorized to arrest anyone from a newborn private to a five-star general.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “The Tennessee Free Citizens were ordered to Kelham. That’s clear, I think. And I agree, they acted with an excess of zeal when they got there. But that’s on the guy who gave the order, as much as it’s on them. More so, in fact. Responsibility starts at the top.”

  “No one gave any orders.”

  “They were dispatched at the same moment I was. And Munro. We all converged. It was one single integrated decision. Because Reed Riley was there. Who knew that?”

  “Perhaps it was a local decision.”

  “What was your personal position?”

  “Purely passive. And reactive. I was ready to handle the fallout, if any. Nothing more.”

  “You sure?”

  “Senate Liaison is always passive. It’s about putting out fires.”

  “Is it never proactive? Never about cutting firebreaks ahead of time?”

  “How could I have done that?”

  “You could have seen the danger coming. You could have made a plan. You could have decided to defend Kelham’s fence from pesky civilians asking awkward questions. But you couldn’t ask the Rangers to do that themselves. No commander on earth would recognize that as a legal order. So you could have called some unofficial buddies. From Tennessee, say, which is your home state. Where you know people. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “No, that’s ridiculous.”

  “And then to integrate your whole approach you could have decided to tap MP phones, to monitor things, and to give yourself an early warning in case anything seemed to be heading in the wrong direction.”

  “That’s ridiculous too.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  “Of course I deny it.”

  “So humor me,” I said. “Let’s talk theoretically. If a person did those two things, what would you think?”

  “What two things?”

  “Called Tennessee, and tapped phones. What would you think?”

  “That laws were broken.”

  “Would a person do one thing and not the other? Speaking as a professional soldier?”

  “He couldn’t afford to. He couldn’t afford to have an unauthorized force in the field without a way of knowing if it was close to being discovered.”

  “I agree,” I said. “So whoever deployed the yahoos also tapped the phones, and whoever tapped the phones also deployed the yahoos. Am I making sense? Theoretically?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Yes or no, colonel?”

  “Yes.”

  I asked, “How good is your short-term memory?”

  “Good enough.”

  “What was the first thing you said to me when I came in here today?”

  “I told you to close the door.”

  “No, you said hello. Then you told me to close the door.”

  “And then I told you to sit down.”

  “And then?”

  He said, “I don’t recall.”

  “We had a minor discussion about how busy this place is at noon.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “And then you asked me what news I had.”

  “And you didn’t have any.”

  “Which surprised you. Because I had left a message in which I told you I had the name.”

  “I was surprised, yes.”

  “What name?”

  “I wasn’t sure. It might have concerned anything.”

  “In which case you would have said a name. Not the name.”

  “Perhaps I was humoring your delusion that someone did in fact send those amateurs to Mississippi. Because it seemed important to you.”

  “It was important to me. Because it was true.”

  “OK, I respect your convictions. I suggest you find out who.”

  “I have found out who.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “You slipped up,” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t leave you a message,” I said. “I made an appointment. With your scheduler. That was all. I didn’t give a reason for it. I just said I needed to see you at noon today. The only time I mentioned anything about names and the Tennessee Free Citizens was on a completely separate call with General Garber. Which evidently you were listening to.”

  The hissing quiet in the little office seemed to change in pitch. It went low and ominous, like a real thrumming silence.

  Frazer said, “Some things are too big for you to understand, son.”

  “Probably,” I said. “I’m not too clear about what happened in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. I can’t make the quantum physics work. But I can get by with a lot of other things. For instance, I understand the Constitution of the United States pretty well. You ever heard of the First A
mendment? It guarantees the freedom of the press. Which means any old journalist is entitled to approach any old fence he likes.”

  “That guy was from some radical pinko rag in a college town.”

  “And I understand you’re lazy. You’ve spent years kissing Carlton Riley’s ass, and you don’t want to start over with a new guy. Not now. Because that would involve actually doing your damn job.”

  No reply.

  I said, “The second human being your boys killed was an underage recruit. He was on his way to try to join the army. His mother killed herself the same night. I understand both of those things. Because I saw what was left. First one, and then the other.”

  No reply.

  I said, “And I understand you’re doubly arrogant. First you thought I wouldn’t figure out your genius scheme, and then when I did, you thought you could deal with me all by yourself. No help, no backup, no arrest teams. Just you and me, here and now. I have to ask, how dumb are you?”

  “And I have to ask, are you armed?”

  “I’m in Class A uniform,” I said. “No sidearm is carried with Class A uniform. You’ll find that in the regulations.”

  “So how dumb are you?”

  “I didn’t expect to be in this situation. I didn’t expect to get this far.”

  “Take my advice, son. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

  “You got a gun in your desk?”

  “I have two guns in my desk.”

  “You going to shoot me?”

  “If I have to.”

  “This is the Pentagon. There are thirty thousand military personnel outside your door. They’re all trained to run toward the sound of gunfire. You better have a story ready.”

  “You attacked me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because you’re obsessed about who shot some ugly black kid in the back of beyond.”

  “I never told anyone he was ugly. Or black. Not on the phone. You must have gotten that from your Tennessee buddies.”