Page 24 of The Secret

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Will you find out?”

“I’ll ask the question. Now—”

“One last thing. You said precautions are being taken to safeguard the remaining scientists from Project 192. What kind of precautions?”

“They’re being watched, twenty-four/seven, by experienced agents.”

“Were any of the victims being watched?”

“Captain, this is not the time for finger pointing or interagency point scoring.”

“That’s not my intention. If we’re going to cast a net, we need to know how fine to make it. So we need to know what we’re fishingfor. The different methods of killing tells us something. But not enough. The first guy was electrocuted, right? Killing someone that way is one thing. Doing it under the noses of experienced agents is another. It would indicate a higher degree of competence, and confidence, which in turn would imply a certain kind and level of training, and motivation.”

“I see. OK. Yes. Dr. Brown. He was at home when he waspoisoned, and his house was under observation.”

“He was the third victim?”

“Correct.” Baglin paused for a moment. “Does anyone else have a question?”

The other three stayed silent.

Baglin nodded. “All right, then. We will reconvene here at 0900 tomorrow, at which time I expect you to furnish the names of the first suspects you think should be investigated.”

Chapter10

Roberta and Veronica Sanson gatheredup all the ropes from the deck, coiled them, and put them back in their rightful places. They guessed it would be quite a while before the owners would see the boat again. They didn’t know how observant those owners would be. But even so, they didn’t want to leave any signs that the boat had been used. Especially given what it had been used for. Operating unseen was a habit. It was ingrained in them. Years of intense, arduous training had made sure of that.

When they were happy with the state ofThe Duchessthey turned their attention toPegasus. They took every piece of rope they could find and left them strewn around all over the place. Then, with just the stern line attached, Roberta worked the controls until the boat was pointing roughly in the direction of Rymer’s house, which by now was just a dot on the distant shoreline. She set the throttle to just above stalling speed. Waited for Veronica to jump back ontoThe Duchessthen leapt across after her. Cut the remaining line.And steered toward the property they had borrowed the boat from that morning.

—

The sisters hadstolen a pickup truck this time. An F-150. So ubiquitous as to be practically invisible. They hoped. But they took no chances. They didn’t risk the most direct route back to Stapleton airport because that would involve passing the agents watching Rymer’s house for a second time in a few hours. Instead, they started by heading north, then east, and finally turned south for a straight shot back to Denver.

“There are two men left,” Roberta said. She was driving with one hand on the wheel. Her right palm was stinging from a friction burn she’d gotten from the rope the first time she’d lowered Rymer into the water. “So it’s fifty/fifty the next one will know the name we need.”

Veronica said, “I’d rather it was a dead cert.”

Roberta smiled. “Nice.”

“Who’s the next lucky contestant?”

“Give me two car brands. Not Ford. Not Chevy.”

Veronica thought for a moment. She said, “Dodge. And Honda.”

A minute later Roberta pointed through the windshield. “There. A Honda Civic.” Honda was the second brand Veronica had picked, so Roberta matched it with the second name on her mental list. “Charlie Adam. Initials, CA. Lives in California. Symmetry. I love it.”

—

Reacher spent theafternoon in the building outside D.C., closed away in a room farther down the corridor that had been allocated as his office. Its décor was as bland as the reception area’s. The deskwas small and the chair was a tight fit for someone as broad as Reacher. A window looked out onto an empty section of parking lot, and beyond that a row of pale shrubs that separated the site from the road. It wasn’t the kind of place he would choose to spend time, but he wasn’t about to complain. Over the years the army had sent him to a lot of places that were much less pleasant. That was for damn sure.

Reacher was pretty certain that Christopher Baglin, the Defense Department guy, hadn’t been entirely on the level. He didn’t think the guy had been lying, necessarily. What he’d said was likely to be close to the truth. It just wouldn’t be the whole truth. Reacher’s general position when it came to briefings from the top brass was that they were incomplete unless proved otherwise. That went double for top brass he didn’t know. And double again for politicians. But he also knew that made little difference when it came to the task at hand. Some scientists had been murdered. There was little doubt about that. Based on what he’d been told, there was a chance that a soldier was responsible. And three potential victims were still alive. Reacher wanted to help keep it that way, so he picked up the phone. His first call was to the US Army Chemical Corps at Fort McClellan, Alabama. His second was to the Office of Administration at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which was just down the road, also in D.C., a stone’s throw from the White House. He needed to make a third call, to the army’s National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, but he couldn’t do that until the list he’d requested from Fort McClellan came through.

Reacher inspected the fax machine. It wasn’t doing anything. He hoped there wasn’t anything he was supposed to set or switch on or program to make it work. He checked it from all sides and saw two cables leading out of its rear. A thicker one that was connected to a power outlet, and a thinner one that was plugged into a phonesocket. That seemed reasonable, so Reacher picked a button on the front of the machine at random and pressed it. A little gray screen lit up and a shrill electronic tone pierced the air. Reacher guessed that meant the thing was all set. There was nothing he could do to make the information he wanted appear more quickly, so he turned back to the phone. He called Agent Ottoway in Chicago. He left a message on her machine asking if she could find anything out about Amber Smith. He called a buddy in the CIA and asked him to dig into Kent Neilsen. He called his brother, Joe, who worked at the Treasury Department, and left a message about Gary Walsh. Then he grabbed a blank piece of paper and a pen. He wrote down three names. All belonging to soldiers who were AWOL. Low-level offenders who were likely to skulk at the bottom of his unit’s nuisance list for the foreseeable future. Then he picked up the phone again. Called a few other MPs who had helped him over the years, or who he owed favors to. Asked if they had any names stuck on their own lists. If it was true that the Secretary of Defense was personally involved in the operation, they were going to throw the kitchen sink at it. That’s the way the world works. There was bound to be plenty of spare manpower. Enough to round up a few additional miscreants, and there was no point in letting all those tax dollars go to waste.

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