‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘You should,’ Newman said back. ‘Because it’s true.’
‘I can’t tell his folks that,’ Reacher said. ‘I just can’t. It would kill them.’
‘Hell of a secret,’ Jodie said. ‘They let him get away with murder?’
‘Politics,’ Newman said. ‘The politics over there stunk to high heaven. Still do, as a matter of fact.’
‘Maybe he died later,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe he got
away into the jungle and died there later. He was still very sick, right?’
‘How would that help you?’ Newman asked.
‘I could tell his folks he was dead, you know, gloss over the exact details.’
‘You’re clutching at straws,’ Newman said.
‘We have to go,’ Jodie said. ‘We need to make the
plane.’
‘Would you run his medical records?’ Reacher asked. ‘If I got hold of them from his family? Would you do that for me?’ There was a pause.
‘I’ve already got them,’ Newman said. ‘Leon brought them with him. The family released them to him.’
‘So will you run them?’ Reacher asked. ‘You’re clutching at straws,’ Newman said again. Reacher turned around and pointed at the hundred cardboard boxes stacked in the alcove at the end of the room. ‘He could already be here, Nash.’
‘He’s in New York,” Jodie said. ‘Don’t you see that?’
‘No, I want him to be dead,’ Reacher said. ‘I can’t
go back to his folks and tell them their boy is a deserter
and a murderer and has been running around all this
time without contacting them. I need him to be dead.’
‘But he isn’t,’ Newman said.
‘But he could be, right?’ Reacher said. ‘He could
have died later. Back in the jungle, someplace else,
maybe far away, on the run? Disease, malnutrition?
Maybe his skeleton was found already. Will you run
his records? As a favour to me?’
‘Reacher, we need to go now,’ Jodie said.
‘Will you run them?’ Reacher asked again.
‘I can’t,’ Newman said. ‘Christ, this whole thing is
classified, don’t you understand that? I shouldn’t have told you anything at all. And I can’t add another name to the MIA lists now. The Department of the Army wouldn’t stand for it. We’re supposed to be reducing the numbers here, not adding to them.’
‘Can’t you do it unofficially? Privately? You can do that, right? You run this place, Nash. Please? For me?’
Newman shook his head. ‘You’re clutching at straws, is all.’
‘Please, Nash,’ Reacher said.
There was a silence. Then Newman sighed.
‘OK, damn it,’ he said. ‘For you, I’ll do it, I guess.’
‘When?’ Reacher asked.
Newman shrugged. ‘First thing tomorrow morning, OK?’
‘Call me as soon as you’ve done it?’
‘Sure, but you’re wasting your time. Number?’
‘Use the mobile,’ Jodie said.
She recited the number. Newman wrote it on the cuff of his lab coat.
‘Thanks, Nash,’ Reacher said. ‘I really appreciate this.’
‘Waste of time,’ Newman said again.
‘We need to go,’ Jodie called.
Reacher nodded vaguely and they all moved towards the plain door in the cinder-block wall. Lieutenant Sifnon was waiting on the other side of it with the offer of a ride around the perimeter road to the passenger terminals.
FIFTEEN
First class or not, the flight back was miserable. It was the same plane, going east to New York along the second leg of a giant triangle. It was cleaned and perfumed and checked and refuelled, and it had a new crew onboard. Reacher and Jodie were in the same seats they had left four hours earlier. Reacher took the window again, but it felt different. It was still two and a half times as wide as normal, still sumptuously upholstered in leather and sheepskin, but he took no pleasure in sitting in it again.
The lights were dimmed, to represent night. They had taken off into an outrageous tropical sunset boiling away beyond the islands and then they had turned away to fly towards darkness. The engines settled to a muted hiss. The flight attendants were quiet and unobtrusive. There was only one other passenger in the cabin. He was sitting two rows ahead, across the aisle. He was a tall spare man, dressed in a seersucker short-sleeve shirt printed with pale stripes. His right forearm was laid gently on the arm of the chair, and his hand hung down, limp and relaxed. His eyes were closed.