Never Go Back (4 page)

No answer.

‘You could check with Colonel Morgan, if you like. I’m sure he’s back at his billet by now.’

No answer.

‘Or you could check with your duty sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the kid said. ‘I’ll do that instead.’

He made the call, and listened for a second, and put the phone down and said, ‘Sir, the sergeant requests that you stop by the desk.’

‘I’ll be sure to do that, soldier,’ Reacher said. He drove on, and parked next to the little red two-seater, which was still there, exactly where it had been before. He got out and locked up and walked through the cold to the door. The lobby felt quiet and still. A night and day difference, literally. But the same sergeant was at the reception desk. Finishing her work, before going off duty. She was on a high stool, typing on a keyboard. Updating the day’s log, presumably. Record-keeping was a big deal, all over the military. She stopped and looked up.

Reacher asked her, ‘Are you putting this visit in the official record?’

She said, ‘What visit? And I told the private at the gate not to, either.’

Not tongue-tied any more. Not with the interloper Morgan out of the house. She looked young, but infinitely capable, like sergeants the world over. The tape over her right breast said her name was Leach.

She said, ‘I know who you are.’

Reacher said, ‘Have we met?’

‘No, sir, but you’re a famous name here. You were this unit’s first commander.’

‘Do you know why I’m back?’

‘Yes, sir. We were told.’

‘What was the general reaction?’

‘Mixed.’

‘What’s your personal reaction?’

‘I’m sure there’s a good explanation. And sixteen years is a long time. Which makes it political, probably. Which is usually bullshit. And even if it isn’t, I’m sure the guy deserved it. Or worse.’

Reacher said nothing.

Leach said, ‘I thought about warning you, when you first came in. Best thing for you would have been just to run for it. So I really wanted to turn you around and get you out of here. But I was under orders not to. I’m sorry.’

Reacher asked her, ‘Where is Major Turner?’

Leach said, ‘Long story.’

‘How does it go?’

‘She deployed to Afghanistan.’

‘When?’

‘The middle of the day, yesterday.’

‘Why?’

‘We have people there. There was an issue.’

‘What kind of an issue?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And?’

‘She never arrived.’

‘You know that for sure?’

‘No question.’

‘So where is she instead?’

‘No one knows.’

‘When did Colonel Morgan get here?’

‘Within hours of Major Turner leaving.’

‘How many hours?’

‘About two.’

‘Did he give a reason for being here?’

‘The implication was Major Turner had been relieved of her command.’

‘Nothing specific?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Was she screwing up?’

Leach didn’t answer.

Reacher said, ‘You may speak freely, sergeant.’

‘No, sir, she wasn’t screwing up. She was doing a really good job.’

‘So that’s all you’ve got? Implications and disappearances?’

‘So far.’

‘No gossip?’ Reacher asked. Sergeants were always part of a network. Always had been, always would be. Like rumour mills. Like uniformed versions of tabloid newspapers.

Leach said, ‘I heard one little thing.’

‘Which was?’

‘It might be nothing.’

‘But?’

‘And it might not be connected.’

‘But?’

‘Someone told me the guardhouse at Fort Dyer has a new prisoner.’

SIX

FORT DYER WAS
an army base very close to the Pentagon. But Leach told Reacher that eight years after he mustered out a cost-cutting exercise had merged it with the Marine Corps’ nearby Helsington House. The newly enlarged establishment had been given the logical if clumsy name of Joint Base Dyer-Helsington House. In Reacher’s day both Dyer and Helsington House had been high-status places in their own right, staffed mostly by senior and very important people. With the result that the Dyer PX had looked more like Saks Fifth Avenue than a Wal-Mart. And he had heard the Marines’ store was even better. Therefore the new blended version was likely to be no lower on the social totem pole. Therefore its cells were likely to house only high-status prisoners. No drunken brawlers or petty thieves there. An MP major with a problem would be a typical tenant. Therefore Leach’s rumour might be right. The Dyer guardhouse was located north and west of the Pentagon. Diagonally across the cemetery. Less than five miles from the 110th’s HQ. Much less.

‘The army and the jarheads in the same place?’ Reacher said. ‘How’s that working out for them?’

‘Politicians will do anything to save a buck,’ Leach said.

‘Can you call ahead for me?’

‘You going there? Now?’

‘I have nothing better to do at the moment.’

‘Do you have a vehicle?’

‘Temporarily,’ Reacher said.

The night was quiet and dark and suburban, and the drive to Dyer took less than ten minutes. Getting into the Joint Base itself took much longer. The merger had happened less than four years after 9/11, and whatever cost-cutting money had been saved hadn’t been saved on security. The main gate was on the south side of the complex, and it was impressive. There were concrete dragons’ teeth everywhere, funnelling traffic through a narrowing lane blocked by three consecutive guard shacks. Reacher was in battered civilian clothes and had no military ID. No ID at all, in fact, except a worn and creased U.S. passport that was already long expired. But he was in a government car, which created a good first impression. And the military had computers, and he showed up as on active service as of the middle of that evening. And the army had sergeants, and Leach had lit up the favour network with a blizzard of calls. And Dyer had a Criminal Investigation office, and to Reacher’s mild surprise there were still guys around who knew guys who knew guys who remembered his name. The upshot was that just forty-five minutes after stopping at the first barrier he was face to face with an MP captain in the guardhouse front office.

The captain was a serious dark guy of about thirty, and his ACU nametape said his name was Weiss. He looked honest and decent and reasonably friendly, so Reacher said, ‘This is just a personal matter, captain. Not even remotely official. And I’m probably a little toxic right now, so you should proceed with extreme caution. You should keep this visit off the record. Or refuse to talk to me altogether.’

Weiss said, ‘Toxic how?’

‘Looks like something I did sixteen years ago has come back to bite me in the ass.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I don’t remember. No doubt someone will remind me soon enough.’

‘The computer says you were just recalled.’

‘Correct.’

‘I never heard of that before.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Doesn’t sound good. Like someone really wanted you back in the jurisdiction.’

Reacher nodded. ‘That’s how I took it. Like I was being extradited out of civilian life. To face the music. But it was a much simpler procedure. There was no kind of a hearing.’

‘You think they’re serious?’

‘Feels that way at the moment.’

‘What do you need from me?’

‘I’m looking for Major Susan Turner of the 110th MP.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, it’s personal.’

‘Connected with your problem?’

‘No. Not in any way.’

‘But you were with the 110th, right?’

‘A long time before Major Turner got anywhere near it.’

‘So you’re not subverting testimony or coaching a witness?’

‘Absolutely not. This is a different matter entirely.’

‘Are you a friend of hers?’

‘I was hoping that might be a future development. Or not, depending on what I think of her when I meet her.’

‘You haven’t met her yet?’

‘Is she here?’

Weiss said, ‘In a cell. Since yesterday afternoon.’

‘What’s the charge?’

‘She took a bribe.’

‘From who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘For what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How much of a bribe?’

‘I’m just a jailer,’ Weiss said. ‘You know how it is. They don’t give me chapter and verse.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Visiting hours are over.’

‘How many guests have you got tonight?’

‘Just her.’

‘So you’re not busy. And we’re off the record, right? So no one will know.’

Weiss opened up a green three-ring binder. Notes, procedures, standing orders, some of them printed, some of them handwritten. He said, ‘She seems to have been expecting you. She passed on a request through her lawyer. She mentioned you by name.’

‘What’s the request?’

‘It’s more of an instruction, really.’

‘Saying what?’

‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

Reacher said nothing.

Weiss looked down at the three-ring binder and said, ‘Quote, per the accused’s explicit request, under no circumstances is Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, Retired, former commander of the 110th MP, to be granted visitation privileges.’

SEVEN

GETTING OUT OF
the Joint Base was only marginally quicker than getting in. Each of the three guard shacks checked ID and conducted a trunk search, to make sure Reacher was who he said he was, and hadn’t stolen anything. Then after clearing the last of the barriers he threaded his way along the same route the local bus had taken. But he stopped early, and pulled in at the kerb. There were plenty of highway ramps all around. There was I-395, spearing south and west. There was the George Washington Memorial Parkway, heading north and west. There was I-66, heading due west. There was I-395 going east, if he wanted it. All of them quiet and flowing fast. There was a big country out there. There was I-95, all the way up and down the eastern seaboard, and the West Coast, five days away, and the vast interior, empty and lonely.

They couldn’t find you before. They won’t find you now.

A new discharge, this time without honour
.

She doesn’t want to see you
.

Reacher moved off the kerb and drove back to the motel.

The two guys with the T-shirts were gone. Evidently they had gotten up and staggered off somewhere. Reacher left their car on the kerb two hundred yards away. He left the key in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Either it would be stolen by a couple of punks, or the two guys would come back to get it. He really didn’t care which.

He walked the last of the distance and let himself into his dismal room. He had been right. The shower was weak and strangled, and the towels were thin, and the soap was small, and the shampoo was cheap. But he cleaned up as well as he could, and then he went to bed. The mattress felt like a sack stuffed with balled-up plastic, and the sheets felt damp with disuse. But he fell asleep just fine. He set the alarm in his head for seven, and he breathed in, and he breathed out, and that was it.

Romeo dialled Juliet again and said, ‘He just tried to make contact with Turner over at Dyer. And failed, of course.’

Juliet said, ‘Our boys must have missed him at the motel.’

‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Yes, you too.’

Reacher didn’t make it to seven o’clock. He was woken at six, by a brisk tap at the door. It sounded businesslike. Not threatening.
Tap, tap, tappity tap
. Six o’clock in the morning, and someone was already cheerful. He slid out of bed and hauled his pants out from under the mattress and put them on. The air in the room was sharp with cold. He could see his breath. The heater had been off all night.

He padded barefoot across the sticky carpet and opened the door. A gloved hand that had been ready to tap again was pulled back quickly. The hand was attached to an arm, which was attached to a body, which was in a Class A army uniform, with JAG Corps insignia all over it. A lawyer.

A woman lawyer.

According to the plate on the right side of her tunic her name was Sullivan. She was wearing the uniform like a business suit. She had a briefcase in her non-tapping hand. She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t particularly short, but her eye line was level with Reacher’s shirtless chest, where there was an old .38 bullet wound, which seemed to preoccupy her.

Reacher said, ‘Yes?’

Her car was behind her, a dark-green domestic sedan. The sky was still black.

She said, ‘Major Reacher?’

She was in her mid-thirties, Reacher guessed, a major herself, with short dark hair and eyes that were neither warm nor cold. He said, ‘How can I help you?’

‘It’s supposed to be the other way around.’

‘You’ve been assigned to represent me?’

‘For my sins.’

‘For the recall appeal or the Juan Rodriguez thing or the Candice Dayton thing?’

‘Forget the recall appeal. You’ll get five minutes in front of a panel about a month from now, but you won’t win. That never happens.’

‘So Rodriguez or Dayton?’

‘Rodriguez,’ Sullivan said. ‘We need to get right to it.’ But she didn’t move. Her gaze traced its way downward, to his waist, where there was another scar, by that point more than a quarter century old, a big ugly white starfish overlaid by crude stitches, cut through by a knife wound, which was much more recent, but still old.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Aesthetically I’m a mess. But come in anyway.’

She said, ‘No, I think I’ll wait in the car. We’ll talk over breakfast.’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a diner two blocks away.’

‘You paying?’

‘For myself. Not for you.’

‘Two blocks away? You could have brought coffee.’

‘Could have, but didn’t.’

‘Some big help you’re going to be. Give me eleven minutes.’

‘Eleven?’

‘That’s how long it takes me to get ready in the morning.’

‘Most people would say ten.’

‘Then either they’re faster than me or imprecise.’ He closed the door on her and padded back to the bed and took his pants off again. They looked OK. Laying them out under the mattress was as close as he ever got to ironing. He walked on to the bathroom and set the shower running. He cleaned his teeth and climbed under the weak lukewarm stream and used what was left of the soap and shampoo. He dried himself with damp towels and dressed and stepped out to the lot. Eleven minutes, dead on. He was a creature of habit.