Bad Luck and Trouble

55

Diana Bond left for the long drive back to Edwards and Reacher neatened his stack of napkins and placed the sugar container back on top of it, exactly centered. The desserts arrived and more coffee was poured and O’Donnell’s burger was served. Reacher got halfway through his pie and then he stopped eating. He sat in silence for a moment, staring out the window again. Then he moved suddenly and pointed at the sugar container and looked straight at Neagley and asked, “You know what that is?”

“Sugar,” she said.

“No, it’s a paperweight,” he said.

“So?”

“Who carries a gun with the chamber empty?”

“Someone trained that way.”

“Like a cop. Or an ex-cop. Ex-LAPD, maybe.”

“So?”

“The dragon lady at New Age lied to us. People take notes. They doodle. They work better with pencil and paper. There are no completely paperless environments.”

O’Donnell said, “Things might have changed since you last held a job.”

“The first time we talked she told us that Swan used his piece of the Berlin Wall as a paperweight. It’s kind of hard to use a paperweight in a completely paperless environment, isn’t it?”

O’Donnell said, “It could have been a figure of speech. Paperweight, souvenir, desk ornament, is there a difference?”

“First time we were there, we had to wait to get in the lot. Remember?”

Neagley nodded. “There was a truck coming out the gate.”

“What kind of a truck?”

“A photocopier truck. Repair or delivery.”

“Kind of hard to use a photocopier in a completely paperless environment, right?”

Neagley said nothing.

Reacher said, “If she lied about that, she could have lied about a whole bunch of stuff.”

Nobody spoke.

Reacher said, “New Age’s Director of Security is ex-LAPD. I bet most of his foot soldiers are, too. Safeties on, chambers empty. Basic training.”

Nobody spoke.

Reacher said, “Call Diana Bond again. Get her back here, right now.”

“She only just left,” Neagley said.

“Then she hasn’t got far. She can turn around. I’m sure her car has a steering wheel.”

“She won’t want to.”

“She’ll have to. Tell her if she doesn’t there’ll be a whole lot more than her boss’s name in the newspaper.”

It took a little more than thirty-five minutes for Diana Bond to get back. Slow traffic, inconvenient highway exits. They saw her car pull into the lot. A minute later she was back at the table. Standing beside it, not sitting at it. Angry.

“We had a deal,” she said. “I talk to you one time, you leave me alone.”

“Six more questions,” Reacher said. “Then we leave you alone.”

“Go to hell.”

“This is important.”

“Not to me.”

“You came back. You could have kept on driving. You could have called the DIA. But you didn’t. So quit pretending. You’re going to answer.”

Silence in the room. No sound, except tires on the boulevard and a distant hum from the kitchen. A dishwasher, maybe.

“Six questions?” Bond said. “OK, but I’ll be counting carefully.”

“Sit down,” Reacher said. “Order dessert.”

“I don’t want dessert,” she said. “Not here.” But she sat down, in the same chair she had used before.

“First question,” Reacher said. “Does New Age have a rival? A competitor somewhere with similar technology?”

Diana Bond said, “No.”

“Nobody all bitter and frustrated because they were outbid?”

“No,” Bond said again. “New Age’s proposition was unique.”

“OK, second question. Does the government really want Little Wing to work?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t it?”

“Because governments can get nervous about developing new attack capabilities without having appropriate defense capabilities already in place.”

“That’s a concern I’ve never heard mentioned.”

“Really? Suppose Little Wing is captured and copied? The Pentagon knows how much damage it can do. Are we happy to face having the thing turned around against us?”

“It’s not an issue,” Bond said. “We would never do anything if we thought like that. The Manhattan Project would have been canceled, supersonic fighters, everything.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Now tell me about New Age’s bench assembly.”

“Is this the third question?”

“Yes.”

“What about their bench assembly?”

“Tell me what it is, basically. I never worked in the electronics business.”

“It’s assembly by hand,” Bond said. “Women in sterile rooms at laboratory benches in shower caps using magnifying glasses and soldering irons.”

“Slow,” Reacher said.

“Obviously. A dozen units a day instead of hundreds or thousands.”

“A dozen?”

“That’s all they’re averaging right now. Nine or ten or twelve or thirteen a day.”

“When did they start bench assembly?”

“Is this the fourth question?”

“Yes, it is.”

“They started bench assembly about seven months ago.”

“How did it go?”

“Is this the fifth question?”

“No, it’s a follow-up.”

“It went fine for the first three months. They hit their targets.”

“Six days a week, right?”

“Yes.”

“When did they hit problems?”

“About four months ago.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Is this the last question?”

“No, it’s another follow-up.”

“After assembly the units are tested. More and more of them weren’t working.”

“Who tests them?”

“They have a quality control director.”

“Independent?”

“No. He was the original development engineer. At this stage he’s the only one who can test them because he’s the only one who knows how they’re supposed to work.”

“What happens to the rejects?”

“They get destroyed.”

Reacher said nothing.

Diana Bond said, “Now I really have to go.”

“Last question,” Reacher said. “Did you cut their funding because of their problems? Did they fire people?”

“Of course not,” Bond said. “Are you nuts? That’s not how it works. We maintained their budget. They maintained their staff. We had to. They had to. We have to make this thing work.”