Tripwire

“So how did you spot it?”

“Same way,” he said. “Same psychology, but in reverse. I wanted to disbelieve it, because I knew it couldn’t be true. So I was looking for something that seemed wrong. It was the fatigues the guy was wearing that did it for me. You notice that? Old worn-out U.S. Army fatigues? This guy went down thirty years ago. There is absolutely no way a set of fatigues would last thirty years in the jungle. They’d have rotted off in six weeks.”

“But why there? What made you look in the Botanical Gardens?”

He spread his fingers against the windshield glass, pushing to ease the tension in his shoulders. “Where else would he find vegetation like that? Hawaii, maybe, but why spend the airfare for three people when it’s available free right on his doorstep?”

“And the Vietnamese boy?”

“Probably a college kid,” he said. “Probably right here at Fordham. Maybe Columbia. Maybe he wasn’t Vietnamese at all. Could have been a waiter from a Chinese restaurant. Rutter probably paid him twenty bucks for the photo. He’s probably got four friends playing the American captives. A big white guy, a small white guy, a big black guy, a small black guy, all the bases covered. All of them bums, so they look thin and haggard. Probably paid them in bourbon. Probably took all the pictures at the same time, uses them as appropriate. He could have sold that exact same picture a dozen times over. Anyone whose missing boy was tall and white, they get a copy. Then he swears them all to secrecy with this government-conspiracy shit, so nobody will ever compare notes afterward.”

“He’s disgusting,” she said.

He nodded. “That’s for damn sure. BNR families are still a big, vulnerable market, I guess, and he’s feeding off it like a maggot.”

“BNR?” she asked.

“Body not recovered,” he said. “That’s what they are. KIA/ BNR. Killed in action, body not recovered.”

“Killed? You don’t believe there are still any prisoners?”

He shook his head.

“There are no prisoners, Jodie,” he said. “Not anymore. That’s all bullshit ”

“You sure?”

“Totally certain.”

“How can you be certain?”

“I just know,” he said. “Like I know the sky is blue and the grass is green and you’ve got a great ass.”

She smiled as she drove. “I’m a lawyer, Reacher. That kind of proof just doesn’t do it for me.”

“Historical facts,” he said. “The story about holding hostages to get American aid is all baloney, for a start. They were pla

“They were slow about returning remains,” she said. “You know, our boys killed in plane crashes or battles. They played silly games about that.”

He nodded. “They didn’t really understand. It was important to us. We wanted two thousand bodies back. They couldn’t understand why. They’d been at war more than forty years, Japanese, French, the U.S., China. They probably lost a million people missing in action. Our two thousand was a drop in the bucket. Plus they were Communists. They didn’t share the value we put on individuals. It’s a psychological thing again. But it doesn’t mean they kept secret prisoners in secret camps.”

“Not a very conclusive argument,” she said dryly.

He nodded again. “Leon’s the conclusive argument. Your old man, and people just like him. I know those people. Brave, honorable people, Jodie. They fought there, and then they rose to power and prominence later. The Pentagon is stuffed full of assholes, I know that as well as anybody, but there were always enough people like Leon around to keep them honest. You answer me a question: If Leon had known there were still prisoners kept back in ‘Nam, what would he have done?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Something, obviously.”

“You bet your ass something,” he said. “Leon would have torn the White House apart brick by brick, until all those boys were safely back home. But he didn’t. And that’s not because he didn’t know. Leon knew everything there was to know. There’s no way they could have kept a thing like that a secret from all the Leons, not all the time. A big conspiracy lasting six administrations? A conspiracy people like Leon couldn’t sniff out? Forget about it. The Leons of this world never reacted, so it was never happening. That’s conclusive proof, as far as I’m concerned, Jodie.”

“No, that’s faith,” she said.

“Whatever, it’s good enough for me.”

She watched the traffic ahead, and thought about it. Then she nodded, because in the end, faith in her father was good enough for her, too.

“So Victor Hobie’s dead?”

Reacher nodded. “Has to be. Killed in action, body not recovered.”

She drove on, slowly. They were heading south, and the traffic was bad.

“OK, no prisoners, no camps,” she said. “No government conspiracy. So they weren’t government people who were shooting at us and crashing their cars into us.”

“I never thought it was,” he said. “Most government people I met were a lot more efficient than that. I was a government person, in a ma

She slewed the car right and jammed to a stop on the shoulder. Turned in her seat to face him, blue eyes wide.

“So it must be Rutter,” she said. “Who else can it be? He’s ru

Reacher smiled.

“Hey, life’s full of dangers,” he said.

MARILYN REALIZED SHE must have fallen asleep, because she woke up stiff and cold with noises coming through the door at her. The bathroom had no window, and she had no idea what time it was. Morning, she guessed, because she felt like she had been asleep for some time. On her left, Chester was staring into space, his gaze fixed a thousand miles beyond the fixtures under the sink. He was inert. She turned and looked straight at him, and got no response at all. On her right, Sheryl was curled on the floor. She was breathing heavily through her mouth. Her nose had turned black and shiny and was swollen. Marilyn stared at her and swallowed. Turned again and pressed her ear to the door. Listened hard.

There were two men out there. The sound of two deep voices, talking low. She could hear elevators in the distance. A very faint traffic rumble, with occasional sirens vanishing into stillness. Aircraft noise, like a big jet from JFK was wheeling away west across the harbor. She eased herself off the floor.

Her shoes had come off during the night. She found them scuffed under her pile of towels. She slipped them on and walked quietly to the sink. Chester was staring straight through her. She checked herself in the mirror. Not too bad, she thought. The last time she had spent the night on a bathroom floor was after a sorority party more than twenty years before, and she looked no worse now than she had then. She combed her hair with her fingers and patted water on her eyes. Then she crept back to the door and listened again.

Two men, but she was pretty sure Hobie wasn’t one of them. There was some equality in the tenor of the voices. It was back-and-forth conversation, not orders and obedience. She slid the pile of towels backward with her foot and took a deep breath and opened the door.

Two men stopped talking and turned to stare at her. The one called Tony was sitting sideways on the sofa in front of the desk. Another she had not seen before was squatted next to him on the coffee table. He was a thickset man in a dark suit, not tall, but heavy. The desk was not occupied. No sign of Hobie. The window blinds were closed to a crack, but she could see bright sun outside. It was later than she thought. She glanced back to the sofa and saw Tony smiling at her.