Jodie nodded.
‘Of course, that’s a slight simplification,’ Newman said. ‘A fresh corpse can raise questions concerning its bones. Suppose there’s a dismemberment involved? The pathologist would refer to us for help. We can look at the saw marks on the bones and help out. We can say how weak or strong the perpetrator was, what kind of saw he used, was he left-handed or right-handed, things like that. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’m working on skeletons. Dry old bones.’
Then he smiled again. A private, amused smile. ‘And pathologists are useless with dry old bones. Really, really hopeless. They don’t know the first thing about them. Sometimes I wonder what the hell they teach them in medical school.’
The office was quiet and cool. No windows, indirect lighting from concealed fixtures, carpet on the floor. A rosewood desk, comfortable leather chairs for the visitors. And an elegant clock on a low shelf, ticking quietly, already showing three thirty in the afternoon. Just three and a half hours until the return flight.
‘We’re here for a reason, General,’ Reacher said. ‘This isn’t entirely a social call, I’m afraid.’
‘Social enough to stop calling me General and start calling me Nash, OK? And tell me what’s on your mind.’
Reacher nodded. ‘We need your help, Nash.’
Newman looked up. ‘With the MIA lists?’
Then he turned to Jodie, to explain.
‘That’s what I do here,’ he said. ‘Twenty years I’ve done nothing else.’
She nodded. ‘It’s about a particular case. We sort of got involved in it.’
Newman nodded back, slowly, but this time the light was gone from his eyes.
‘Yes, I was afraid of that,’ he said. ‘There are eighty-nine thousand one hundred twenty MIA cases here, but I bet I know which one you’re interested in.’
‘Eighty-nine thousand?’ Jodie repeated, surprised.
‘And a hundred twenty. Two thousand, two hundred missing from Vietnam, eight thousand, one hundred seventy missing from Korea, and seventy-eight thousand, seven hundred fifty missing from World War Two. We haven’t given up on any single
one of them, and I promise you we never will.’
‘God, why so many?’
Newman shrugged, a bitter sadness suddenly there in his face.
‘Wars,’ he said. ‘High explosive, tactical movement, airplanes. Wars are fought, some combatants live, some die. Some of the dead are recovered, some of them aren’t. Sometimes there’s nothing left to recover. A direct hit on a man by an artillery shell will reduce him to his constituent molecules. He’s just not there any more. Maybe a fine red mist drifting through the air, maybe not even that, maybe he’s completely boiled off to vapour. A near miss will blow him to pieces. And fighting is about territory, isn’t it? So even if the pieces of him are relatively large, enemy tank movement or friendly tank movement back and forth across the disputed territory will plough the pieces of him into the earth, and then he’s gone for ever.’
He sat in silence, and the clock ticked slowly around.
‘And airplanes are worse. Many of our air campaigns have been fought over oceans. A plane goes down in the ocean and the crew is missing until the end of time, no matter how much effort we expend in a
place like this.’
He waved his hand in a vague gesture that took in the office and all the unseen space beyond and ended up resting towards Jodie, palm up, like a mute appeal.
‘Eighty-nine thousand,’ she said. ‘I thought the MIA stuff was just about Vietnam. Two thousand
or so.’
‘Eighty-nine thousand, one hundred twenty,’ Newman said again. ‘We still get a few from Korea, the occasional one from World War Two, the
Japanese islands. But you’re right, this is mostly about Vietnam. Two thousand, two hundred missing. Not so very many, really. They lost more than that in a single morning during World War One, every morning for four long years. Men and boys blown apart and mashed into the mud. But Vietnam was different. Partly because of things like World War One. We won’t take that wholesale slaughter any more, and quite rightly. We’ve moved on. The population just won’t stand for those old attitudes now.’