And it’s cold enough that we’re worried about ice. So we’ve
got salt down. Things age fast, this time of year on the highway
shoulder. And this looks old and worn, but not very
deteriorated. It’s got some grit on it, in the weave of the canvas.
But not very much. It hasn’t been out there since New Year’s
Eve, that much is for damn sure. Less than twenty-four hours,
I’d say. One night, not more.’
‘Can you be certain?’ Summer asked.
He shook his head. Put the case back on the counter.
‘Just a guess,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’ll have to sign for it.’
164
I nodded. He reversed the desk ledger and pushed it towards
me. I had Reacher in a subdued-pattern stencil above my right
breast pocket, but I figured he hadn’t paid much attention to it.
He had spent most of his time looking at Summer’s pockets. So
I scrawled K. Kramer on the appropriate line in the book and
picked up the briefcase and turned away.
‘Funny sort of burglary,’ the desk guy said. ‘There’s an Amex
card and money still in the wallet. We inventoried the contents.’
I didn’t reply. Just went out through the doors, back to the
Humvee.
Summer waited for a gap in the traffic and then drove across all
three lanes and bounced straight onto the soft grass median.
She went down a slope and through a drainage ditch and
straight up the other side. Paused and waited and turned left
back onto the blacktop and headed south. That was the kind of
thing a Humvee was good for.
‘Try this,’ she said. ‘Last night Vassell and Coomer leave Bird
at ten o’clock with the briefcase. They head north for Dulles or
D.C. They extract the agenda and throw the case out the car
window.’
‘They were in the bar and the dining room their whole time at
Bird.’
‘So one of their dinner companions passed it on. We should
check who they ate with. Maybe one of the women on the
Humvee list was there.’
‘They were all alibied.’
‘Only superficially. New Year’s Eve parties are pretty chaotic.’
I looked out the window. Afternoon was fading fast. Evening
was coming on. The world looked dark and cold.
‘Sixty miles,’ I said. ‘The case was found sixty miles north of
Bird. That’s an hour. They would have grabbed the agenda and
ditched the case faster than that.’
Summer said nothing.
‘And they would have stopped at the rest area to do it. They
would have put the case in a garbage can. That would have
been safer. Throwing a briefcase out of a car window is pretty
conspicuous.’
‘Maybe there really wasn’t an agenda.’
165
‘It would be the first time in military history.’
‘Then maybe it really wasn’t important.’
‘They ordered bag lunches at Irwin. Two-stars, one-stars, and
colonels were planning to work through their lunch hour. That
might be the first time in military history too. That was an
important conference, Summer, believe me.’
She said nothing.
‘Do that U-turn thing again,’ I said. ‘Across the median. Then
go back north a little. I want to look at the rest area.’
The rest area was the same as on most American interstates I
had seen. The northbound highway and the southbound highway
eased apart to put a long fat bulge into the median. The
buildings were shared by both sets of travellers. Therefore they
had two fronts and no backs. They were built of brick and had
dormant flower beds and leafless trees all around them. There
were gas pumps. There were angled parking slots. Right then
the place seemed to be halfway between quiet and busy. It was
the end of the holidays. Families were struggling home, ready
for school, ready for work. The parking slots were maybe
one-third filled with cars. Their distribution was interesting.
People had grabbed the first parking spot they saw rather than
chancing something farther on, even though that might have
put them ultimately a little closer to the food and the bathrooms.
Maybe it was human nature. Some kind of insecurity.
There was a small semicircular plaza at the facility’s main