Jack In A Box (3 page)

Kim wasted no body heat demurring. She hopped up into the passenger seat and immediately put her frozen fingers near the blasting heat vent.

“Frontier?” she said.

“Nonstop, huh? You can’t be afraid of flying.” When she failed to reply, he said, “Jumping out of moving planes, now that’s a lot harder.” Still no response. He took a deep breath. “Okay then. Dane County, Frontier Airlines it is.” Lothar attended to driving the heavy vehicle expertly through snow-covered streets through towns unprepared for the early winter storm.

After she’d warmed up enough to sit a normal distance from the fan’s blasting heat, Lothar glanced toward her and asked, “Did she give you the business about getting married and having babies before she dies?”

Kim nodded. She didn’t know this man. She had no intention of discussing her personal life with him, no matter how angry she was.

He grinned. “She does that to me every time I see her.”

“Really? I thought it was only me she subjected to never-ending ridicule.”

Lothar laughed, the kind of deep belly laugh that only emerged from genuine mirth, the contagious kind. “When did you get so special?”

Kim smiled, felt better, almost as if she’d found an Otto family ally for the first time in her life, knowing the feeling was supremely foolish. Relief lasted about twenty seconds before the SUV swerved on a black ice patch and she grabbed the armrest to avoid being slung across the seat. She snugged up her seatbelt several notches.

Traffic slogged along, slowing their progress. Several vehicles less suited to the conditions slipped on patches of invisible black ice. They’d dodged two fender-benders already. Snow plows and salt trucks clogged the roadway, but drivers willingly waited as they passed.

Lothar concentrated intently on driving, but he must have sensed her anxiety because he said, “Planes take off in these conditions all the time around here. They’ll de-ice. Two or three times if they need to. You’ll be fine.”

Kim’s stomach started doing backflips and the two antacids she held on her tongue weren’t helping in the least. De-icing two or three times? Seriously? Didn’t these people know how dangerous ice on airplanes was? Didn’t they understand that de-icing two or three times made crashing more likely, not less? Was she completely surrounded by hostiles here?

When they reached the curbside drop off for Frontier Airlines, Lothar turned toward her and placed a hand on her arm. “Hang on a minute. I have something for you.”

Kim knew she looked puzzled because that was how she felt. Lothar reached inside his jacket and pulled a photograph from his breast pocket. He handed it to her.

She bit her lip to suppress a gasp. Major Jack Reacher’s official Army head shot. She flipped the photo over and on the back was a sticker sporting typewritten information: Tonight. 10:00 p.m. National Gallery of Art, East Building, front entrance.

“What is this?”

“Following orders.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was ordered to deliver that to you.”

“By whom?”

“The point is someone wants to see you. They knew I could deliver the message. You understand?”

“Spell it out for me,” she said, but she knew. She wanted him to voice her concern aloud so she would know she wasn’t crazy. Because it was crazy to think that someone would manipulate her father to manipulate her to come to Wisconsin to meet a reliable cousin to give her a meeting back in Washington DC which is where she started from this morning and where she was returning in thirty-three minutes if she survived her flight.

Lothar asked a question instead. “You recognized the photo, didn’t you? How are you involved with that guy? Is he the reason you were so incensed at Grandma Louisa’s meddling in your personal life? You’re not dating that guy?”

He seemed genuinely concerned about her, which worried her more than the message. No one in the extended Otto family had shown her the least bit of concern her entire life. Why start now?

She said, “Do
you
know him?”

“By reputation. Otherwise, before my time. Reacher was discharged in 1997. Something hinky about it, though. His situation was definitely not normal, Kim. Wherever that guy went, bodies piled up. And I’m not talking about normal battlefield casualties. Nobody is that unlucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a Captain in the U.S. Army. Like you, Agent Otto, I follow orders and don’t ask questions, or I pay the consequences. Before today, I never had a problem with that because the Army never ordered me to do anything this odd; something not right is going on here.”

No shit,
she thought. “Like what?”

He shrugged, giving up. “Friends come and go in life, but enemies pile up. Reacher made a lot of enemies. You be careful, little ‘cuz, or you’ll never reach Grandma Louisa’s age with or without those Vietnamese longevity genes.”

A vehicle behind the SUV laid on the horn letting Lothar know it was long past time to move.

Kim slipped Reacher’s photo into her jacket pocket, popped open the door, and slid out to the ground.

Before she closed herself outside in the cold, Lothar said, “You need anything, here’s my card. I feel responsible for you now. Don’t let them be calling me to your funeral.”

4.

WASHINGTON, D.C. WAS FULL of shadowy men these days. Some were harmless. Some were crazy. Sometimes it was impossible to tell the difference. Always safer to avoid confrontation, just in case.

He stood motionless in a shadowed doorway, an intimidating giant, waiting. He carried his broad frame tall and straight. He wore indigo jeans and brown work boots on his feet. Both hands were stuffed into leather jacket pockets, probably for warmth. Fair hair fell shaggy around his ears and collar, his only cap against winter’s cold. Sunglasses covered his eyes and reflected the weak sunset like cat pupils. Without visible effort, he seemed infinitely patient, self-possessed, self-confident, alert and relaxed, harmless and dangerous.

Few pedestrians raised their heads from the biting November wind enough to notice him; those who did veered wide, walked along the curb, as far away as possible from the boxy doorway. Just in case.

When the burner cell phone vibrated he pulled it out of his pocket and held the speaker to his ear. The woman’s voice reported just the facts, “Messages delivered; on their way.”

He said nothing.

He dropped the phone to the concrete, smashed it casually with the heel of his heavy boot, picked up the largest pieces, scattered the smallest, and walked unhurried toward Pennsylvania Avenue, dropping the rest into random trash bins along his route.

5.

AGENT CARLOS GASPAR FLASHED his badge at the entrance to the Pentagon, provided appropriate identification and after his approved visitor status was confirmed, he was flagged through.

As he expected, the building was busy even though it was five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. Gaspar had slept an hour on the plane; Tylenol, the strongest pain killer he allowed himself, never lasted longer. He’d stopped for coffee after he passed security.

No one knew him here, but both civilians and military personnel were busy with more pressing matters. He’d passed security so they ignored him, likely accepting that his clearance was high enough. Which it was.

He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. Two hours before he’d meet Otto in the coffee shop. Plenty of time.

The first step in any follow-up investigation was to review and analyze all the previous reports. Because Otto and Gaspar were tasked by one of the FBI’s most powerful leaders and assigned a rush under-the-radar project, this step hadn’t been completed.

He knew where he was going, what to look for, and what he should find there.

He also knew he wouldn’t find it. The absence of what should be present would speak volumes.

Archived service records, defined as records for veterans sixty-two years or more post-separation, were stored and open to the public at the new National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Nothing pertaining to Reacher would be archived there because he’d been discharged in March 1997.

All inactive personnel records for veterans with a discharge date less than sixty-two years ago remained the property of the Department of Defense and its individual branches. In Reacher’s case, that meant the Army.

Gaspar was an active, practicing Catholic. He believed in divine providence. At first, it felt like he was on the right investigative path and he might find what he sought, even without an official archive. A fire had destroyed service records at the prior St. Louis center in 1973, but Reacher was only thirteen then.

But then Gaspar ran into several official gaps that concealed Reacher’s history more effectively than youth or fire.

The Army didn’t begin retaining records electronically until 2002, five years after Reacher’s separation. This meant his files weren’t retained in electronic format by the Army or electronically shared with the NPRC.

Worse, the Army’s policies on maintaining and releasing service records were changed in April, 1997 and several times thereafter. The rules filled more than fifty-five pages, regularly revised, of course.

All of which meant that Reacher’s records were once and should remain hard copies, resting in files owned by the Army that could be and probably were buried so deep in bullshit that no one would ever find them.

Unless.

Unless Reacher did something to get himself inscribed by bits and bytes into the electronic records after he left the army.

Which, Gaspar was betting, Reacher had done. Probably many times. For sure, at least once barely six months after the army let him go. If Gaspar could find that record, he’d have verified hard proof and Reacher’s trail might begin to unravel.

Gaspar knew Reacher had been arrested in Margrave, Georgia, and his fingerprints were taken and sent to FBI headquarters. A report was returned to the Margrave Police Department. Margrave PD records were also destroyed in a fire, which Gaspar was as sure as he could possibly be was no coincidence.

Even so, the initial fingerprint request should exist in FBI files. Gaspar had checked. The request did not exist in FBI files. Which Gaspar was sure, but could not prove, was no coincidence, either.

This was where the government’s redundancy and repetitive nature might be harnessed, Gaspar hoped. The Margrave PD request and FBI reply should also have been noted in Reacher’s military file, as should any request and reply about Reacher at any time from the date of his discharge until this very moment and into the future. Anything after 2002 should be electronically recorded for sure. And anything before 1997 might also have been updated because of the later electronic entries.

It was this army record Gaspar sought now. Positive paper trail proof of the legally admissible kind that Jack Reacher had been present in Margrave in September 1997, six months after his Army discharge, that Reacher was
there.
Not a shadow. Not a ghost. Not a rumor. But a real person.

Tangible proof of Reacher’s Margrave presence was important because it provided the immovable, rock hard foundation he needed to nail down. Gaspar’s training said it was required and his gut said it mattered and that was enough for him. He and Otto were assigned to build the Reacher file and by God, he’d do it right, and he wouldn’t make his wife a widow or his five children orphans in the process if he could possibly help it.

First things first. The Margrave PD print request and the Army’s reply.

Then they would take the next steps.

Whatever those steps were.

And if the print request and reply documents were missing from the army files?

Starting here and now, he would confirm one way or the other.

Gaspar was a practicing Catholic. He believed in divine intervention. But he was an FBI Special Agent who also believed in hard proof and his gut. So he knew. He knew before he opened the box marked Jack (none) Reacher and sifted through the paperwork.

Relevant records ended when Reacher separated from the army in March 1997.

After Gaspar confirmed it, he and Otto could move forward. But to where?

6.

AN HOUR BEFORE THE SCHEDULED MEETING, Otto and Gaspar stepped out of the coffee shop located across the street from the J. Edgar Hoover building into the mild autumn weather. Full dark had fallen a while back, but streetlights and headlights and floodlights eliminated all blackness. The trees were partially clothed in fall finery; grass remained green and a few flowers still bloomed. No breeze ruffled to cool the temperature.

After Wisconsin, Kim found the evening weather pleasantly warm. After Miami, Gaspar might have been a bit chilled. Both were energized by the anticipated confrontation. Maybe they were finally going to catch a break.

Saturday night on Pennsylvania Avenue NW was subdued. Traffic moved at posted speeds or less. Couples and small groups populated the sidewalks, strolling with discrete distances between them. Nothing out of the ordinary to notice.

Gaspar stretched like a cat, asked, “Shall we walk?” and set off eastbound before she had a chance to respond.

Kim ran through the options. The Metro Stop at 7th Street was off the path, a cab wasn’t worth the wait, she absolutely wasn’t taking the bus, Gaspar wasn’t limping, and walking always helped to organize her thoughts before a mission.

“Probably easiest, if you’re up for it,” Kim said, quickening her pace to reach him and keep up with his longer stride.

So they approached the National Gallery of Art’s East Building the first time as any tourist might travel from FBI headquarters, hoofing less than a mile along Pennsylvania Avenue and turned right at 4th Street NW, walking along the sidewalk opposite the East Building.

Kim had studied the building through quick online research during her return flight from Madison. Opened in 1978, it was designed by I.M. Pei, which no doubt accounted for its irregular shape and probably explained the National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 1981.