Child, Lee – The Enemy

in there, certainly. I know French blood when I see it.

‘Your brother called again,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘No message.’

‘What was the ten-seventeen for?’

‘Colonel Garber requests a ten-nineteen.’

I smiled. You could live your whole life saying nothing but

lO-this and lO-that. Sometimes I felt like I already had. A 10-19

was a contact by phone or radio. Less serious than a 10-16,

which was a contact by secure landline. Colonel Garber requests

a 10-19 meant Garber wants you to call him, was all. Some MP

units get in the habit of speaking English, but clearly this one

hadn’t yet.

I stepped into my office and saw Kramer’s suit carrier

propped against the wall and a carton containing his shoes and

underwear and hat sitting next to it. His uniform was still on

30

three hangers. They were hung one in front of the other on my

coat rack. I walked past them to my borrowed desk and dialled

Garber’s number. Listened to the purr of the ring tone and

wondered what my brother wanted. Wondered how he had

tracked me down. I had been in Panama sixty hours ago. Before

that I had been all over the place. So he had made a big effort to

find me. So maybe it was important. I picked up a pencil and

wrote Joe on a slip of paper. Then I underlined it, twice.

‘Yes?’ Leon Garber said in my ear.

‘Reacher here,’ I said. I looked at the clock on the wall. It

showed a little after nine in the morning. Kramer’s onward

connection to LAX was already in the air.

‘It was a heart attack,’ Garber said. ‘No question.’

‘Walter Reed worked fast.’

‘He was a general.’

‘But a general with a bad heart.’

‘Bad arteries, actually. Severe arteriosclerosis leading to fatal

ventricular fibrillation. That’s what they’re telling us. And I

believe them, too. Probably kicked in around the time the

whore took her bra off.’

‘He wasn’t carrying any pills.’

‘It was probably undiagnosed. It’s one of those things. You

feel fine, then you feel dead. No way it could be faked, anyway.

You could simulate fibrillation with an electric shock, I

guess, but you can’t simulate forty years’ worth of crap in the

arteries.’

‘Were we worried about it being faked?’

‘There could have been KGB interest,’ Garber said. ‘Kramer

and his tanks are the biggest single tactical problem the Red

Army is facing.’

‘Right now the Red Army is facing the other way.’

‘Kind of early to say whether that’s permanent or not.’ I didn’t reply. The phone went quiet.

‘I can’t let anyone else touch this with a stick,’ Garber said.

‘Not just yet. Because of the circumstances. You understand

that, right?’

‘So?’

‘So you’re going to have to do the widow thing,’ Garber said. The ? Isn’t she in Germany?’

31

‘She’s in Virginia. She’s home for the holidays. They have a

house there.’

He gave me the address and I wrote it on the slip of paper,

directly underneath where I had underlined Joe.

‘Anyone with her?’ I asked.

‘They don’t have kids. So she’s probably alone.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘She doesn’t know yet,’ Garber said. ‘Took me a while to track

her down.’

‘Want me to take a priest?’

‘It isn’t a combat death. You could take a female partner, I

guess. Mrs Kramer might be a hugger.’

‘OK.’

‘Spare her the details, obviously. He was en route to Irwin, is

all. Croaked in a layover hotel. We need to make that the official

line. Nobody except you and me knows any different yet, and

that’s the way we’re going to keep it. Except you can tell

whoever you partner with, I guess. Mrs Kramer might ask

questions, and you’ll need to be on the same page. What about

the local cops? Are they going to leak?’

‘The guy I saw was an ex-Marine. He knows the score.’

‘Semper Fi,’ Garber said.

‘I didn’t find the briefcase yet,’ I said.

The phone went quiet again.

‘Do the widow thing first,’ Garber said. ‘Then keep on looking

for it.’

I told the day-shift corporal to move Kramer’s effects to my

quarters. I wanted to keep them safe and sound. The widow

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *