A Wanted Man

FORTY

SORENSON GOT THROUGH the chequerboard and back to the Interstate without further incident. The car stayed on the road. The rain kept on falling. It was a gloomy day. The sky was low and the colour of iron. Traffic was heavier than Reacher had seen it the night before. Each vehicle was trailing a long grey Zeppelin of spray. Sorenson had her wipers on fast. She was sticking to seventy miles an hour. She asked, ‘What’s the fastest way of finding Alan King’s brother from the army?’

‘King claimed he was a red leg,’ Reacher said. ‘Probably just a dagby. The Gulf, the first time around. Mother Sill will know.’

‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’

‘A red leg is an artilleryman. Because way back they had red stripes on their dress pants. And their branch colour is still red. A dagby is a 13B MOS. Which is a cannon crewmember’s military occupational specialty. In other words, a dagby. A dumb-ass gun bunny. Mother Sill is Fort Sill, which is artillery HQ. Someone there will have a record. The Gulf the first time around was the thing with Saddam Hussein, back in 1991.’

‘I knew that part.’

‘Good.’

‘The brother’s first name was Peter, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘And you still think King was his real last name?’

‘More likely than not. Worth a try, anyway.’

‘Dumb-ass gun bunny isn’t very polite.’

‘But very necessary,’ Reacher said. ‘Unfortunately Frederick the Great once said that field artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl. It went to their heads. They started calling themselves the kings of battle. They started to think they’re the most important part of the army. Which obviously isn’t true.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the military police is the most important part of the army.’

‘What did they call you?’

‘Sir, usually.’

‘And?’

‘Meatheads. Monkey patrol. And chimps, but that was an acronym.’

‘For what?’

‘Completely hopeless in most policing situations.’

‘Where is Fort Sill?’

‘Lawton, Oklahoma.’

She speed-dialled her phone in its cradle. Reacher heard the ring tone loud and clear through the stereo. A voice answered, male, low and fast and without preamble. A duty officer, probably, with Sorenson’s number front and centre on his caller ID, and therefore instantly on the ball and ready for business. The night guy, most likely, still there at the end of his watch. He didn’t sound like a guy who had just gotten out of bed. Sorenson said to him, ‘I need you to call the army at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, and get what they have on an artilleryman named Peter King, who was on active service in 1991. Present whereabouts and details of family would be especially appreciated. Give them my cell number and ask them to call me back direct, OK?’

‘Understood,’ the guy said.

‘Is Stony in his office yet?’

‘Just arrived.’

‘What’s the word?’

‘Nothing is happening yet. It’s weird.’

‘No three-ring circus?’

‘Phones are quiet. No one has even asked for the night log yet.’

‘Weird.’

‘Like I said.’

The eyewitness was not kept waiting at the reception desk. There was no line. He had been given a cup of coffee and he had eaten a breakfast muffin. The woman at the desk took his name and asked what kind of bed he preferred. She was a plump, motherly type, seemingly very patient and capable. The eyewitness didn’t really understand her question.

He said, ‘Bed?’

The woman said, ‘We have rooms with kings, queens, and twins.’

‘I guess anything will do.’

‘Don’t you have a preference?’

‘What would you suggest?’

‘Honestly, I think the rooms with the queens are ideal. Overall they feel a little more spacious. With the armchairs and all? Most people like those rooms the best.’

‘OK, I’ll take one of those.’

‘Good,’ the woman said, brightly. She marked it up in a book and took a key off a hook. She said, ‘Room fourteen. It’s easy to find.’

The eyewitness carried the key in his hand and left the lobby. He stood for a moment in the chill air and looked up at the sky. It was going to rain. It was probably already raining in the north. He set off down the path and saw a knee-high fingerpost for rooms eleven through fifteen. He followed the sign. The path wound its way through sad winter flowerbeds and came out at a long low block of five rooms together. Room fourteen was the last but one. There was an empty leaf-strewn swimming pool not far from it. The eyewitness thought it would make a nice facility in the summer, with blue water in it, and the flowers all around it in bloom. He had never been in a swimming pool. Lakes and rivers, yes, but never a pool.

Beyond the pool was the perimeter wall, a waist-high decorative feature made of stucco over concrete blocks. Ten feet beyond that was the security fence, all tall and black and angular and topped with canted-in rolls of razor wire. The eyewitness figured it must have been very expensive. He knew all about the price of fencing, being a farmer. Labour and materials could kill you.

He unlocked room fourteen. He stepped inside. The bed was a little wider than the one he shared at home. There were clothes on it, in neat piles. Two outfits, both the same. Blue jeans, blue shirts, blue sweaters, white undershirts, white underwear, blue socks. There were pyjamas on the pillow. There were toiletries in the bathroom. Soap, shampoo, shaving cream. Some kind of lotion. Deodorant. There were razors. There was toothpaste, and a toothbrush sealed in cellophane. There was a comb. There was a bathrobe. There were lots of towels.

He looked at the bed but sat down in an armchair. He had been told lunch was available from twelve o’clock onward. Nothing to do until then. So he figured he might start his day with a nap. Just a short doze. It had been a long night.

Reacher waited until Sorenson was safely past a howling semi truck, and then he said, ‘Tell me about how the fingerprint thing worked with the dead guy.’

‘Standard procedure,’ Sorenson said. ‘It’s the first thing they do, before decomposition starts to make it difficult. They take the prints and upload them to the database.’

‘By satellite?’

‘No, over the regular cell phone networks.’

‘That’s convenient.’

‘You bet it is. We love cell phones. We love them to death. For all kinds of reasons. I mean, can you imagine? Suppose twenty years ago Congress had proposed a law saying every citizen had to wear a radio transponder around his neck, all day and all night, so the government could track him wherever he went. Can you imagine the outrage? But instead the citizens went right ahead and did it to themselves. In their pockets and purses, not around their necks, but the outcome is the same.’

‘Were there prints in the bright red car?’

‘Plenty. Those guys took no care at all.’

‘Did you upload them?’

‘Of course.’

‘Any results?’

‘Not yet,’ Sorenson said. ‘Which almost certainly means those guys aren’t in the database. The software will hunt for hours, until it’s sure, but it never takes this long. They must be virgins.’

‘Therefore not foreign,’ Reacher said. ‘There are no foreign fingerprint virgins, right? Everyone gets fingerprinted at the port of entry. Or for their visas. Unless they’re illegals. They could have come over the Canadian border, I guess. People say it’s full of holes.’

‘Except how did they get into Canada? We have access to their databases too. And Canada has no other borders. Unless they hiked across the North Pole or swam the Bering Strait.’

‘There’s Alaska.’

‘But to get into Alaska from overseas you have to be fingerprinted.’

‘No chance of errors or glitches?’

‘Not for the last ten years.’

‘OK, they’re not foreign.’

Sorenson drove on. She had driven the opposite way just hours before, but she didn’t really recognize the terrain. The highway looked different. It was lit up a dull grey and there was no view to the sides and no horizon ahead or behind. It was like passing through an endless cloud. The rain was easing but the road was still streaming. There was spray everywhere.

By her side Reacher said, ‘Where did the State Department guy come from?’

She said, ‘I don’t know. He just showed up in a car. But he was for real. I saw his ID.’

‘Does the State Department have field offices, like you guys?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘So where did he come from? Obviously not D.C., because he got there too quick.’

‘Good question. I’ll ask my SAC. He got a message that the guy was coming. And I know he spoke to State during the night. That’s how we found out the dead guy was a trade attaché.’

‘Or not. It feels to me like State was keeping its eye on something. Like standing by, in the vicinity. If the guy really was from State, that is. He could have been CIA too.’

Sorenson said nothing. Nothing about the checked shirt from Pakistan or the Middle East, nothing about the night-time calls from the CIA, nothing about their insistent requests for constant updates. She didn’t know why, beyond a kind of basic superstition. Some things just shouldn’t be mentioned out loud, and in her opinion the idea of the CIA roaming America’s heartland by night was one of them.