Child, Lee – The Enemy

There were two message slips on my desk. The first was: Major

Franz called. Please call him back. The second said: Detective

Clark returned your call. I dialled Franz in California first.

‘Reacher?’ he said. ‘I asked about the Armored agenda.’

‘And?’

‘There wasn’t one. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to

it.’

‘But?’

‘We both know that’s bullshit. There’s always an agenda.’

‘So did you get anywhere?’

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘But I can prove an incoming secure

fax from Germany late on December thirtieth, and I can

prove significant Xeroxing activity on the thirty-first, in the

afternoon. And then there was some shredding and burning on

New Year’s Day, after the Kramer news broke. I spoke to the

incinerator guy. One burn bag, full of paper shreds, maybe

enough for about sixty sheets.’

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‘How secure is their secure fax line?’

‘How secure do you want it to be?’

‘Extremely secure. Because the only way I can make sense

out of this is if the agenda was really secret. I mean, really secret. And if it was really secret, would they have put it on

paper in the first place?’

‘They’re XII Corps, Reacher. They’ve been living on the front

line for forty years. All they’ve got is secrets.’

‘How many people were scheduled to attend the conference?’

‘I spoke to the mess. There were fifteen bag lunches booked.’

‘Sixty pages, fifteen people, that’s a four-page agenda, then.’

‘Looks that way. But they went up in smoke.’

‘Not the original that was faxed from Germany,’ I said.

‘They’ll have burned that one over there.’

‘No, my guess is Kramer was hand-carrying it when he died.’

‘So where is it now?’

‘Nobody knows. It got away.’

‘Is it worth chasing?’

‘Nobody knows,’ I said again. ‘Except the guy who wrote it,

and he’s dead. And Vassell and Coomer. They must have seen

it. They probably helped with it.’

‘Vassell and Coomer went back to Germany. This morning.

it.’First flight out of Dulles. The staffers here were talking about

‘You ever met this new guy Willard?’ I asked him.

‘No.’

‘Try not to. He’s an asshole.’

‘Thanks for the warning. What did we do to deserve him?’

‘I have no idea,’ I said. We hung up and I dialled the Virginia

number and asked for Detective Clark. I got put on hold. Then I

heard a click and a second’s worth of squad room sounds and a

voice came on the line.

‘Clark,’ it said.

‘Reacher,’ I said. ‘U.S. Army, down at Fort Bird. Did you want

me?’

‘You wanted me, as I recall,’ Clark said. ‘You wanted a

progress report. But there isn’t any progress. We’re looking at

a brick wall here. We’re looking for help, actually.’

‘Nothing I can do. It’s your case.’

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‘I wish it wasn’t,’ he said.

‘What have you got?’

‘Lots of nothing. The perp was in and out without maybe

touching a thing. Gloves, obviously. There was a light frost on

the ground. We’ve got some residual grit from the driveway and

the path, but we’re not even close to a footprint.’

‘Neighbours see anything?’

‘Most of them were out, or drunk. It was New Year’s Eve. I’ve

had people up and down the street canvassing, but nothing’s

jumping out at me. There were some cars around, but there

would be anyway, on New Year’s Eve, with folks heading back

and forth to parties.’

‘Any tyre tracks on the driveway?’

‘None that mean anything.’

I said nothing.

‘The victim was killed with a crowbar,’ Clark said. ‘Probably

the same tool as was used on the door.’

‘I figured that,’ I said.

‘After the attack the perp wiped it on the rug and then

washed it clean in the kitchen sink. We found stuff in the pipe.

No prints on the faucet. Gloves, again.’

I said nothing.

‘Something else we haven’t got,’ Clark said. ‘There’s nothing

much to say your general ever really lived there.’

‘Why?’

‘We gave it the full-court press, forensically. We printed the

whole place, we took hair and fibre from everywhere including

the sink and shower traps, like I said. Everything belonged to

the victim except a couple of stray prints. Bingo, we thought,