Never Go Back

FORTY-ONE

Turner woke up too, immediately, but Reacher put his hand on her shoulder. He whispered, ‘I’ll go.’ He blinked once and slid out of bed and found his robe on the floor. He put it on as he walked. The hammering didn’t quit. It was not a polite or an apologetic sound. Not a hotel-in-the-dead-of-night sound. It was full-on urgent and demanding. Boom, boom. Arrogant, and intrusive. It was a no-argument sound. It was the sound of law enforcement. Or the sound of someone pretending to be law enforcement.

Reacher didn’t use the spy hole. He didn’t like spy holes. He never had. Too easy for an assailant to wait until the lens darkened, and then to fire a handgun through the pre-drilled hole. No aim required. Better to ignore the spy hole altogether, and fling the door open real quick and punch them in the throat. Or not. Depending on who they were, and how many they were.

Behind him Turner was out of bed and in her robe, too. He pointed her towards the bathroom. Nothing to gain by presenting a single unified target. And she had nowhere else to go. There was only one way out of the room, which was the door. They were on a high floor, and the windows didn’t open anyway. Legal issues, presumably, because of inquisitive children, and because it was an airport hotel, with noise and jet fumes from early in the morning until late at night.

Turner stepped into the bathroom, and Reacher put his hand on the handle. He took a breath. MPs or federal agents would have weapons drawn. That was for sure. But they wouldn’t shoot. Not right away. They had too much training. And too many protocols. And too much potential paperwork. But the four guys from the dented car might shoot right away. They had training, but no protocols and no paperwork.

So, best bet, open the door but stay behind it. Irresistible. A door that sags open seemingly all by itself just begs for a craned neck and a quick glance inside. And in turn a craned neck and a quick glance inside just begs for a straight right to the temple. Then you kick the door shut again instantly, and you’ve got a hostage on the floor on one side of the threshold, with his pals left outside on the other. You’ve got the basis for a negotiation.

Reacher turned the handle. Downward, ten degrees. Twenty. Thirty. No reaction. Forty, fifty, sixty. No reaction. So he continued all the way to ninety, fast, and he gave the handle a sharp tug, to pull the door through maybe two-thirds of its travel, and then he made a fist and cocked his arm and waited.

For a long time.

Clearly the door had been trapped open by a boot applied from the other side, while decisions were being considered. Which process was taking considerable time.

Close to a whole minute passed.

Then an object came sailing in.

Reacher didn’t look at it. Didn’t follow it with his conscious vision. He wasn’t born yesterday. But the brief flash he caught in the corner of his eye said envelope. A brown letter-size envelope, sealed with a metal closure, he thought, like something out of an office. Lightly loaded, with no thickness to it. And the sound it made when it fluttered to the carpet backed up the first impressions. Papery but stiff, with a faint resonant crackle, where it hit edge-on, and tiny sliding sounds, as if it carried a small number of separate items inside, each one of them thin and light.

Reacher waited.

Then a head came around the door.

With a face.

Sergeant Leach’s face.

Leach was in her ACUs. She looked very tired. She stepped into the room, and Turner stepped out of the bathroom, and Reacher closed the door. Turner saw the envelope on the carpet and said, ‘Is it all there?’

Leach said, ‘Yes.’

‘I thought you were going to overnight it.’

‘I think you’re going to need it sooner than FedEx can get it to you.’

‘So you drove out all this way?’

‘Well, I didn’t walk or fly.’

‘How long did it take?’

‘About four hours.’

‘Thank you, sergeant.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘What time are you due on post in the morning?’

‘Soon enough that I really should leave right about now.’

‘But?’

‘I’m in a position I don’t want to be in.’

‘What position?’

‘I’m going to have to criticize a fellow team member, and a senior officer.’

‘Is that one person or two?’

‘One person, ma’am.’

‘Me?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Morgan?’

‘No, ma’am. Someone else. But you’re the CO and I’m not a snitch.’

‘Then tell Reacher. He’s no one’s CO.’

Leach paused a beat, and weighed up the artifice. And came out in favour, apparently, because she turned to Reacher and said, ‘Sir, I have a longstanding concern about the duty captain.’

Reacher said, ‘How longstanding?’

‘Permanent.’

‘Why haven’t you done anything about it?’

‘I don’t know how. He’s a captain and I’m a sergeant.’

‘What’s the issue?’

‘He’s a doodler. He draws and scribbles all the time he’s on the phone.’

Reacher nodded.

‘I’ve seen the results,’ he said. ‘On his desk. An old legal pad.’

‘Do you know why he does it?’

‘Because he’s bored.’

‘But sometimes he’s not bored. When big news comes through. He changes. Suddenly he’s happy.’

‘No law against that.’

‘But the pen is still in his hand. He changes, and the drawings change too. Sometimes they’re not even drawings. Sometimes he jots things down. Key words.’

Reacher said nothing.

Leach said, ‘Don’t you see? He deals with classified information, which is supposed to exist in physical form in one place only, which is the Rock Creek file room. For the information or parts of the information to exist in physical form elsewhere is dead against regulations.’

Turner said, ‘Oh please, tell me.’

Reacher said, ‘He wrote the number down?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Leach said. ‘Yes, sir. He wrote the number down.’

Leach pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. It was a page from the yellow legal pad Reacher had seen. It was curled at the top, wide and generous, from several days of being rolled over. It was practically covered in black ink, from a ballpoint pen. There were shapes and whorls and boxes and machines and spirals, with occasional plain-text times and names and words, some of them heavily underlined, some of them boxed in and shaded over almost to the point of illegibility.

Leach put her fingertip on the first legible word, which was a little less than a third of the way down the page. The word was Kandahar. A proper noun. The name of a place. It had a vivid arrow sketched next to it. The arrow was pointing away from the word, emphatically. Leach said, ‘This is the last signal before the one that’s missing. This is Weeks and Edwards moving out of Kandahar, going back to Bagram on standby, as ordered. That all is still in the file room, exactly where it should be.’

Then she jumped her fingertip to the bottom third of the page, where two words stood out, separated by a dash: Hood — Days. The H of Hood was enhanced after the fact, with baroque curlicues. A man on the phone, bored. Leach said, ‘This is the next signal after the one that’s missing. It’s still in the file room too, immediately after the Kandahar thing. This is our guys checking in from Fort Hood in Texas, reporting that they expect to be all wrapped up in a matter of days.’

Then she moved her hand upward again and bracketed her fingers over the middle third of the page. She said, ‘So this part here is what corresponds to the gap in the record.’

The middle third of the page was a mass of bleak doodles, with shapes and whorls repeated endlessly, and boxes and mazes and spirals. But buried right in the centre of it all were the letters A and M, followed by a four-digit number. The whole thing had been first scrawled, and then gone over carefully, with more precise lines, squared up, and sharpened, and underlined, and then abandoned.

A.M. 3435.

Turner smiled and said, ‘He’s technically in the wrong, sergeant, but we’re going to overlook it this one time.’

A.M. 3435.

Which was a number that Reacher might have remembered pretty well, because it was mildly engaging, in the sense that 3 and 4 and 3 and 5, if raised to the powers of 3 and 4 and 3 and 5 respectively, would collectively add up to exactly 3435. Which was slightly interesting. Such numbers had been much discussed by a guy called Joseph Madachy, who once upon a time had been the owner, publisher and editor of a magazine called Recreational Mathematics. Reacher had read a stack of back issues, as a kid, in the library on a Marine base in the Pacific. He said, ‘Sergeant, what’s my best way of contacting Major Sullivan at JAG?’

‘Directly, sir?’

‘Person to person.’

‘When, sir?’

‘Right now.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Right this minute.’

Leach pulled another piece of paper from her pocket. Smaller. A sheet from a scratch pad, torn in half. She said, ‘This is Major Sullivan’s personal cell. I’m sure right now it’s on her night table.’

‘How did you know I would need it?’

‘I figured that was how you were going to have to do it. Defence motions get pretty wide latitude. But permission to speak freely?’

‘Of course.’

Leach took a second slip of paper from her pocket. Another sheet from a scratch pad, torn in half, just the same. She said, ‘This is Captain Edmonds’ personal cell. Your other lawyer. I think she’s a better prospect. She’s more likely to pursue it with vigour. She likes to see the right thing done.’

‘Even after I busted myself out of jail?’

‘I think so.’

‘So she’s an idealist?’

‘Get it while you can. It won’t last. It didn’t with Major Sullivan.’

Reacher asked, ‘Is the FBI involved yet?’

Leach said, ‘They’ve been notified.’

‘Who is organizing the army’s efforts?’

‘The 75th MP. A team led by Warrant Officer Espin. Who you met. He was the one who brought you to Dyer. People say he’s taking it personally. He claims you abused his good nature. He claims he did you a favour, and thereby inadvertently set the whole thing in motion.’

‘What did he do for me?’

‘He kept you at Dyer. Detective Podolski wanted to take you downtown. Espin said no. And then on top of that, you asked him to go get the MP duty captain right away, which he did, which he’s counting as another favour exploited.’

‘The duty captain would have come anyway.’

‘But not so quickly. And your whole plan depended on getting everything done before late afternoon. So you had to start early. Which Espin feels he accidentally facilitated.’

‘Is he getting anywhere?’

‘Not so far. But not through lack of trying.’

‘Can you get a message to him?’

‘Probably.’

‘Tell him to get over himself. Ask him what he would have done in our situation.’

‘I will, sir. If I can.’

‘What’s your name, sergeant?’

‘Sir, it’s Leach.’

‘No, your first name.’

‘Sir, it’s Chris.’

‘As in Christine or Christina or something?’

‘Just Chris, sir. That’s what’s on my birth certificate.’

‘Well, Chris, if I was still CO of the 110th, I’d move heaven and earth to keep you there. That unit has had its share of great NCOs, and you’re right up there with the best of them.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘No, thank you, sergeant.’

Leach left after that, in a hurry, facing a four-hour drive back, followed by a full day at the office. Reacher looked at Turner and said, ‘You must be a hell of a good commander, to inspire loyalty like that.’

‘No more than you were,’ she said. ‘You had Frances Neagley.’

‘You been reading her file too?’

‘I’ve been reading all the files. All the operational histories, too. I wanted to know the 110th inside out.’

‘Like I said, you’re a great commander.’ Reacher flattened the page from the legal pad against the top of the hotel desk, and he smoothed one of the torn halves of the scratch pad paper next to it. Then he picked up the phone and dialled Captain Tracy Edmonds’ private cell number.