He had booked seats for both of us on the first morning flight.
Now he was lining up to pay for them. I hadn’t seen him for
more than three years. The last time we had been together was
at our father’s funeral. Since then we had gone our separate
ways.
77
‘Good morning, little brother,’ he said.
He was wearing an overcoat and a suit and a tie, and he
looked pretty good in them. He was two years older than me,
and he always had been, and he always would be. As a kid I used to study him and think, that’s how I’ll look when I grow
up. Now I found myself doing it again. From a distance we
could have been mistaken for each other. Standing side by side
it was obvious that he was an inch taller and a little slighter than
me. But mostly it was obvious that he was a little older than me.
It looked like we had started out together, but he had seen the
future first, and it had aged him, and worn him down.
‘How are you, Joe?’ I said.
‘Can’t complain.’
‘Busy?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’
I nodded and said nothing. Truth is, I didn’t know exactly
what he did for a living. He had probably told me. It wasn’t a
national secret or anything. It was something to do with the
Treasury Department. He had probably told me all the details
and I probably hadn’t listened. Now it seemed too late to ask.
‘You were in Panama,’ he said. ‘Operation Just Cause, right?’
‘Operation Just Because,’ I said. ‘That’s what we called it.’
‘Just because what?’
‘Just because we could. Just because we all had to have
something to do. Just because we’ve got a new Commander in
Chief who wants to look tough.’
‘Is it going well?’
‘It’s like Notre Dame against the Tumble Tots. How else is it
going to go?’
‘You got Noriega yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘So why did they post you back here?’
‘We took twenty-seven thousand guys,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t down
to me personally.’
He smiled briefly and then got that narrow-eyed look I
remembered from childhood. It meant he was figuring out
some pedantic and convoluted line of reasoning. But we got to
the head of the line before he had time to tell me about it. He
took out his credit card and paid for the flights. Maybe he
78
expected me to pay him back for mine, maybe he didn’t. He
didn’t make it clear either way.
‘Let’s get coffee now,’ he said.
He was probably the only other human on the planet who
liked coffee as much as I did. He started drinking it when he
was six. I copied him immediately. I was four. Neither of us has
stopped since. The Reacher brothers’ need for caffeine makes
heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it
sideline.
We found a place with a W-shaped counter snaking through
it. It was three-quarters empty. It was harshly lit with fluorescent
tubes and the vinyl on the stools was sticky. We sat side by
side and rested our forearms on the counter in the universal
pose of early-morning travellers everywhere. A guy in an apron
put mugs in front of us without asking. Then he filled them with
coffee from a flask. The coffee smelled fresh. The place was
changing over from the all-night service to the breakfast menu.
I could hear eggs frying.
‘What happened in Panama?’ Joe asked.
‘To me?’I said. ‘Nothing.’
‘What were your orders there?’
‘Supervision.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the process,’ I said. ‘The Noriega thing is supposed to look
judicial. He’s supposed to stand trial here in the States. So we’re
supposed to grab him up with some kind of formality. Some
way that will look acceptable when we get him in a courtroom.’
‘You were going to read him his Miranda rights?’
‘Not exactly. But it had to be better than some cowboy thing.’
‘Did you screw up?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Who replaced you?’
‘Some other guy.’
‘Rank?’
‘Same,’ I said.
‘A rising star?’
I sipped my coffee. Shook my head. ‘I never met him before.