by Lee Child
“So which was it?”
“That’s my business. I still haven’t seen ID.”
“What exactly are you doing here in Washington? With Sansom?”
“That’s my business too.”
“You want to ask him questions?”
“You got a law against asking people questions?”
“You were a witness. Now you’re investigating?”
“Free country,” I said.
“Sansom can’t afford to tell you anything.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe not.”
The guy paused a beat and said, “You like tennis?”
I said, “No.”
“You heard of Jimmy Connors? Bjorn Borg? John McEnroe?”
I said, “Tennis players, from way back.”
“What would happen if they played the U.S. Open next year?”
“I have no idea.”
“They would get their asses kicked all over the court. They would get their heads handed to them on a plate. Even the women would beat them. Great champions in their day, but they’re old men now and they come from a whole different era. Time moves on. The game changes. You understand what I’m telling you?”
I said, “No.”
“We’ve seen your record. You were hot shit back in prehistory. But this is a new world now. You’re out of your depth.”
I turned and glanced at the door. “Is Browning still out there? Or did he dump me?”
“Who is Browning?”
“The guy who delivered me here. Sansom’s guy.”
“He’s gone. And his name isn’t Browning. You’re a babe in the woods.”
I said nothing. Just heard the word babe and thought about Jacob Mark, and his nephew Peter. A girl from a bar. A total babe. Peter left with her.
One of the other two guys in the room said, “We need you to forget all about being an investigator, OK? We need you to stick to being a witness. We need to know how Sansom’s name is linked with the dead woman. You’re not going to leave this room until we find out.”
I said, “I’ll leave this room exactly when I decide to. It will take more than three file clerks to keep me somewhere I don’t want to be.”
“Big talk.”
I said, “Sansom’s name is already way out there, anyway. I heard it from four private investigators in New York City.”
“Who were they?”
“Four guys in suits with a phony business card.”
“Is that the best you can do? That’s a pretty thin story. I think you heard it from Susan Mark herself.”
“Why do you even care? What could an HRC clerk know that would hurt a guy like Sansom?”
Nobody spoke, but the silence was very strange. It seemed to carry in it an unstated answer that spiraled and ballooned crazily upward and outward, like: It’s not just Sansom we’re worried about, it’s the army, it’s the military, it’s the past, it’s the future, it’s the government, it’s the country, it’s the whole wide world, it’s the entire damn universe.
I asked, “Who are you guys?”
No answer.
I said, “What the hell did Sansom do back then?”
“Back when?”
“During his seventeen years.”
“What do you think he did?”
“Four secret missions.”
The room went quiet.
The lead agent asked, “How do you know about Sansom’s missions?”
I said, “I read his book.”
“They’re not in his book.”
“But his promotions and his medals are. With no clear explanation of where else they came from.”
Nobody spoke.
I said, “Susan Mark didn’t know anything. She can’t have. It’s just not possible. She could have turned HRC upside down for a year without finding the slightest mention.”
“But someone asked her.”
“So what? No harm, no foul.”
“We want to know who it was, that’s all. We like to keep track of things like that.”
“I don’t know who it was.”
“But clearly you want to know. Otherwise why would you be here?”
“I saw her shoot herself. It wasn’t pretty.”
“It never is. But that’s no reason to get sentimental. Or in trouble.”
“You worried about me?”
No one answered.
“Or are you worried I’ll find out something?”
The third guy said, “What makes you think the two worries are different? Maybe they’re the same thing. You find out something, you’ll be locked up for life. Or caught in the crossfire.”
I said nothing. The room went quiet again.
The lead agent said, “Last chance. Stick to being a witness. Did the woman mention Sansom’s name or not?”
“No,” I said. “She didn’t.”
“But his name is out there anyway.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
“And you don’t know who’s asking.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”
“OK,” the guy said. “Now forget all about us and move on. We have no desire to complicate your life.”
“But?”
“We will if we have to. Remember the trouble you could make for people, back in the 110th? It’s much worse now. A hundred times worse. So do the smart thing. If you want to play, stick to the senior circuit. Stay away from this. The game has changed.”
They let me go. I went down in the elevator and walked past the guy at the door and stood on a broad paved area and looked at the river flowing slowly by. Reflected lights moved with the current. I thought about Elspeth Sansom. She impressed me. Don’t come dressed like that, or you won’t get in. Perfect misdirection. She had suckered me completely. I had bought a shirt I didn’t need or want.
Not soft.
That was for damn sure.
The night was warm. The air was heavy and full of waterborne smells. I headed back toward Dupont Circle. A mile and a quarter, I figured. Twenty minutes on foot, maybe less.
Chapter 24
Restaurant meals in D.C. rarely run shorter than an hour or longer than two. That had been my experience. So I expected to find Sansom finishing up his entrée or ordering his dessert. Maybe already drinking coffee and thinking about a cigar.
Back at the restaurant about half the courtyard tables had turned over their clientele. There were new boys in suits, and new girls in skirts. More pairs now than threesomes or quartets, and more romance than work. More bright chatter designed to impress, and less scanning of electronic devices. I walked past the hostess station and the woman there called after me and I said, “I’m with the Congressman.” I pushed through the wooden door and scanned the inside room. It was a low rectangular space full of dim light and spicy smells and loud conversation and occasional laughter.
Sansom wasn’t in it.
No sign of him, no sign of his wife, no sign of the guy who had called himself Browning, no pack of eager staffers or campaign volunteers.
I backed out again and the woman at the hostess station looked at me quizzically and asked, “Who were you joining?”
I said, “John Sansom.”
“He isn’t here.”
“Evidently.”
A kid at a table next to my elbow said, “North Carolina Fourteenth? He left town. He’s got a fundraiser breakfast tomorrow in Greensboro. Banking and insurance, no tobacco. I heard him tell my guy all about it.” His last sentence was directed at the girl opposite him, not at me. Maybe the whole speech was. My guy. Clearly the kid was a hell of an important player, or wanted to be.
I stepped back to the sidewalk and stood still for a second and then set out for Greensboro, North Carolina.
I got there on a late bus that was scheduled to stop first in Richmond, Virginia, and then in Raleigh, and then in Durham, and then in Burlington. I didn’t notice the itinerary. I slept all the way. We arrived in Greensboro close to four o’clock in the morning. I walked
past bail bond offices and shuttered pawn shops and ignored a couple of greasy spoon eateries until I found the kind of diner I wanted. I wasn’t choosing on the basis of food. All diner food tastes the same to me. I was looking for phone books and racks of free local newspapers and it took a long walk to find them. The place I picked was just opening for business. A guy in an undershirt was greasing a griddle. Coffee was dripping into a flask. I hauled the Yellow Pages to a booth and checked H for hotels. Greensboro had plenty. It was a decent-sized place. Maybe a quarter-million people.
I figured a fundraising breakfast would take place in a fairly upscale location. Donors are rich, and they don’t go to the Red Roof Inn for five hundred dollars a plate. Not if they work in banking and insurance. I guessed the Hyatt or the Sheraton. Greensboro had both. Fifty-fifty. I closed the Yellow Pages and started leafing through the free papers, looking for confirmation. Free papers carry all kinds of local coverage.
I found a story about the breakfast in the second paper I opened. But I was wrong about the hotels. Not the Hyatt, not the Sheraton. Instead Sansom was fixed up at a place called the O. Henry Hotel, which I guessed was named for the famous North Carolina writer. There was an address given. The event was planned to start at seven in the morning. I tore out the story and folded it small and put it in my pocket. The guy behind the counter finished his preparations and brought me a mug of coffee without asking. I took a sip. Nothing better than a fresh brew in the first minute of its life. Then I ordered the biggest combo on the menu and sat back and watched the guy cook it.
I took a cab to the O. Henry Hotel. I could have walked, and it took longer to find the cab than to make the drive, but I wanted to arrive in style. I got there at a quarter after six. The hotel was a modern facsimile of a stylish old place. It looked like an independent establishment, but probably wasn’t. Few hotels are. The lobby was rich and dim and full of clubby leather armchairs. I walked past them to the reception desk with as much panache and confidence as was possible for a guy in a creased nineteen-dollar shirt. There was a young woman on duty behind the counter. She looked tentative, as if she had just come in and wasn’t settled yet. She looked up at me and I said, “I’m here for the Sansom breakfast.”
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, like she didn’t know what to do with me next. Then John Sansom stepped out of the bedroom to see what the fuss was all about.
He was in pants and a shirt and a tie and socks. No shoes. He looked small, like a miniature man. Wiry build, narrow through the shoulders. His head was a little large compared to the rest of his body. His hair was cut short and neatly brushed. His skin was tanned, but in a creased, active, outdoors kind of a way. Rugged. No sun lamps for this guy. He glowed with wealth, and power, and energy, and charisma. It was easy to see how he had won plenty of elections. Easy to see why the news weeklies were in love with him. He looked at me and then looked at his wife and asked, “Where’s Springfield?”
Elspeth said, “He went downstairs to check on things. They must have passed in the elevators.”
Sansom nodded, not much more than a fast up-and-down with his eyelids. A practiced decision maker, and a pragmatic man, not much given to crying over spilled milk. He glanced at me and said, “You don’t give up.”
I said, “I never have.”
“Didn’t you listen to those federal boys in Washington?”
“Who were they, exactly?”
“Those guys? You know how it is. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. But whatever, they were supposed to warn you off.”
“Didn’t resonate.”
“They copied me on your record. I told them they’d fail.”
“They talked to me like I was a moron. And they called me too old. Which makes you way too old.”
“I am way too old. For most of this shit, anyway.”
“You got ten minutes?”
“I can give you five.”
“You got coffee?”
“You’re wasting time.”
“We’ve got plenty of time. More than five minutes, anyway. More than ten, even. You need to lace your shoes and put a jacket on. How long can that take?”
Sansom shrugged and stepped over to the breakfast bar and poured me a cup of coffee. He carried it back and gave it to me and said, “Now cut to the chase. I know who you are and why you’re here.”
“Did you know Susan Mark?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Never met her, never even heard of her before last night.”
I was watching his eyes, and I believed him. I asked, “Why wo
uld an HRC clerk be coerced into checking you out?”
“Is that what was happening?”
“Best guess.”
“Then I have no idea. HRC is the new PERSCOM, right? What did you ever get from PERSCOM? What did anyone? What have they got there? Dates and units, that’s all. And my life is public record anyway. I’ve been on CNN a hundred times. I joined the army, I went to OCS, I was commissioned, I was promoted three times, and I left. No secrets there.”
“Your Delta missions were secrets.”
The room went a little quieter. Sansom asked, “How do you know that?”
“You got four good medals. You don’t explain why.”
Sansom nodded.
“That damn book,” he said. “The medals are a matter of record, too. I couldn’t disown them. It wouldn’t have been respectful. Politics is a minefield. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either way around, they can always get to you.”
I said nothing. He looked at me and asked, “How many people are going to make the connection? Besides you, I mean?”
“About three million,” I said. “Maybe more. Everyone in the army, and all the vets with enough eyesight left to read. They know how things work.”
He shook his head. “Not that many. Most people don’t have inquiring minds. And even if they do, most people respect secrecy in matters like that. I don’t think there’s a problem.”
“There’s a problem somewhere. Otherwise why was Susan Mark being asked questions?”
“Did she actually mention my name?”
I shook my head. “That was to get your attention. I heard your name from a bunch of guys I’m assuming were employed by the person asking the questions.”
“And what’s in this for you?”
“Nothing. But she looked like a nice person, caught between a rock and a hard place.”
“And you care?”
“You do too, if only a little bit. You’re not in politics just for what you can get out of it for yourself. At least I sincerely hope you’re not.”
“Are you actually my constituent?”