‘Who’s working supervisor today?’ Reacher asked.
It was a direct question. The sergeant looked for a way to avoid answering it, but she couldn’t find one.
‘Major Theodore Conrad,’ she said reluctantly.
Reacher nodded. Conrad? Not a name he recalled.
‘Would you tell him we’d like to meet with him, just briefly? And would you have those files delivered to his office?’
The way he said it was exactly halfway between a pleasant, polite request and an unspoken command. It was a tone of voice he had always found very useful with master sergeants. The woman picked up the phone and made the call.
‘He’ll have you shown upstairs,’ she said, like in her
opinion she was amazed Conrad was doing them such a massive favour.
‘No need,’ Reacher said. ‘I know where it is. I’ve been there before.’
He showed Jodie the way, up the stairs from the lobby to a spacious office on the second floor. Major Theodore Conrad was waiting at the door. Hot-weather uniform, his name on an acetate plate above his breast pocket. He looked like a friendly guy, but maybe slightly soured by his posting. He was about forty-five, and to still be a major on the second floor of the NPRC at forty-five meant he was going nowhere in a hurry. He paused, because a private was racing along the hallway towards him with two thick files in his hand. Reacher smiled to himself. They were getting the A-grade service. When this place wanted to be quick, it could be real quick. Conrad took the files and dismissed the runner.
‘So what can I do for you folks?’ he asked. His accent was slow and muddy, like the Mississippi where it originated, but it was hospitable enough.
‘Well, we need your best help, Major,’ Reacher said. ‘And we’re hoping if you read those files, maybe you’ll feel willing to give it up.’
Conrad glanced at the files in his hand and stood aside and ushered them into his office. It was a quiet, panelled space. He showed them to a matched pair of leather armchairs and stepped around his desk. Sat down and squared the files on his blotter, one on top of the other. Opened the first, which was Leon’s, and started skimming.
It took him ten minutes to see what he needed. Reacher and Jodie sat and gazed out of the window. The city baked under a white sun. Conrad finished
with the files and studied the names on the request forms. Then he glanced up.
‘Two very fine records,’ he said. ‘Very, very impressive. And I get the point. You’re obviously Jack-none-Reacher himself, and I’m guessing Mrs Jodie Jacob here is the Jodie Garber referred to in the file as the general’s daughter. Am I right?’
Jodie nodded and smiled.
‘I thought so,’ Conrad said. ‘And you think being family, so to speak, will buy you better and faster access to the archive?’
Reacher shook his head solemnly.
‘It never crossed our minds,’ he said. ‘We know all access requests are treated with absolute equality.’
Conrad smiled, and then he laughed out loud.
‘You kept a straight face,’ he said. ‘Very, very good. You play much poker? You damn well should, you know. So how can I help you folks?’
‘We need what you’ve got on a Victor Truman Hobie,’ Reacher said.
‘Vietnam?’
‘You familiar with him?’ Reacher asked, surprised.
Conrad looked blank. ‘Never heard of him. But with Truman for a middle name, he was born somewhere between 1945 and 1952, wasn’t he? Which made him too young for Korea and too old for the Gulf.’
Reacher nodded. He was starting to like Theodore Conrad. He was a sharp guy. He would have liked to pull his file to see what was keeping him a major, behind a desk out in Missouri at the age of forty-five.
‘We’ll work in here,’ Conrad said. ‘My pleasure.’
He picked up the phone and called directly to the storerooms, by-passing the master sergeant at the front desk. He winked at Reacher and ordered up the Hobie
file. Then they sat in comfortable silence until the runner came in with the folder five minutes later.