Child, Lee – The Enemy

the desk.’

We checked the gate log together. Operation Just Cause in

Panama had moved all domestic installations up one level on

the DefCon scale and therefore all closed posts were recording

entrances and exits in detail in bound ledgers that had pre

printed page numbers in the top right-hand corner. We had a

good clear Xerox of the page for January 4th. I was confident

it was genuine. I was confident it was complete. And I was

confident it was accurate. The Military Police has numerous

failings, but snafus with basic paperwork aren’t any of them.

Summer took the page from me and taped it to the wall next

to the map. We stood side by side and looked at it. It was ruled

into six columns. There were spaces for date, time in, time out,

plate number, occupants, and reason.

‘Traffic was light,’ Summer said.

I said nothing. I was in no position to know whether nineteen

entries represented light traffic or not. I wasn’t used to Bird and

it had been a long time since I had pulled gate duty anywhere

else. But certainly it seemed quiet compared to the multiple

pages I had seen for New Year’s Eve.

‘Mostly people reporting back for duty,’ Summer said.

214

I nodded. Fourteen lines had entries in the time in column

but no corresponding entries in the time out column. That

meant fourteen people had come in and stayed in. Back to

work, after time away from the post for the holidays. Or after

time away from the post for other reasons. I was right there

among them: 1-4-90, 2302, Reacher, J., Mjr, RTB. January 4th

1990, two minutes past eleven in the evening, Major J. Reacher,

returning to base. From Paris, via Garber’s old office in Rock

Creek. My vehicle plate number was listed as” Pedestrian. My

sergeant was there, coming in from her off-post address to work

the night shift. She had arrived at nine thirty, driving some

thing with North Carolina plates.

Fourteen in, to stay in.

Only five exits.

Three of them were routine food deliveries. Big trucks,

probably. An army post gets through a lot of food. Lots of

hungry mouths to feed. Three trucks in a day seemed about

right to me. Each of them was timed inward at some point

during the early afternoon and then timed outward again a

plausible hour or so later. The last time out was just before

three o’clock.

Then there was a seven-hour gap.

The last-but-one recorded exit was Vassell and Coomer themselves,

on their way out after their O Club dinner. They had

passed through the gate at 2201. They had previously been

timed in at 1845. At that point their Department of Defense

plate number had been written down and their names and ranks

had been entered. Their reason had been stated as courtesy

visit.

Five exits. Four down.

One to go.

The only other person to have left Fort Bird on the fourth of

January was logged as: 1-4-90, 2211, Trifonov, S., Sgt. There

was a North Carolina passenger vehicle plate number written in

the relevant space. There was no time in recorded. There was

nothing in the reason column. Therefore a sergeant called

Trifonov had been on post all day or all week and then he had

left at eleven minutes past ten in the evening. No reason

had been recorded because there was no directive to enquire as

215

to why a soldier was leaving. The assumption was that he was

going out for a drink or a meal or for some other form of

entertainment. Reason was a question the gate guards asked of

people trying to get in, not trying to get out.

We checked again, just to be absolutely sure. We came up

with the same result. Apart from General Vassell and Colonel

Coomer in their self-driven Mercury Grand Marquis, and then a

sergeant called Trifonov in some other kind of car, nobody had

passed through the gate in an outward direction in a vehicle or

on foot at any time on the fourth of January, apart from three

food trucks in the early part of the afternoon.

‘OK,’ Summer said. ‘Sergeant Trifonov. Whoever he is. He’s

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