Page 30 of The Secret

“Nothing? Not one name?”

“Nothing. The kind of work those guys were doing, the kind of material they were involved with, it doesn’t really have a civilian application. Safe to say my well is dry.”

Baglin glared at Walsh, then moved on. “Neilsen?”

Neilsen took a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and held it out. It was surprisingly smooth and crisp, and four names were neatly written in cobalt blue ink. “Confidence? Also low to very low. I wish I could say otherwise but the facts just aren’t there.”

Baglin stacked the three pages, straightened their edges, and got to his feet. He said, “Keep working. Wrack your brains. Think laterally. Read tea leaves or cast chicken bones if you have to. Just get me more names in case none of these pan out. I’m going to have pagers delivered to you this afternoon. Wear one at all times. If anythingbreaks out of hours, you’re to be back here within fifteen minutes. Any questions?”

Reacher said, “Any word of attacks on scientists from other projects?”

Baglin shook his head. “No. This is the only one.”

—

The phone inthe Pentagon rang again at 11:21a.m. Eastern. Not a scheduled time for a call.

The guy who answered it listened, hung up, then moved into his outer office and dialed the number for Charles Stamoran’s car phone. Stamoran had just settled into the car’s backseat after a meeting at the White House, which had not gone as well as he’d hoped. He picked up the handset and said, “This better be good news.”

The Pentagon guy took a breath, then said, “Charlie Adam is dead. He fell off a cliff from the patio behind his house. His wife returned from walking their dog and found he was missing. She thought he’d gone to the store but his car was still in the garage. Then she noticed more gulls than usual circling and swooping toward the beach. She looked down and saw his body. It was in bad shape. The ME confirmed he died from injuries sustained in the fall. A safety rail that meets the local construction code is in place, so the fall could not have been an accident. Not unless Mr. Adam climbed over voluntarily, then slipped or lost his balance. The agents confirmed that no one entered or exited the property, so foul play is unlikely. Mrs. Adam admitted that her husband had recently exhibited signs of depression but rejected the idea that he committed suicide.”

Stamoran leaned his head back against the soft leather. Charlie Adam was the guy from the project he knew least well. He’d alwaysfound him prickly and a little vain. He couldn’t offer an informed opinion about what Adam would or wouldn’t do in any given situation. Except this one. He was sure Adam hadn’t jumped. And he was sure he hadn’t fallen. Howeverunlikely, this was foul play. He had no doubt. Because this wasn’t about Adam. It was about whoever was picking the scientists off, one by one. Now there was only one left. Pritchard. And Pritchard was still missing. Which was a circumstance that might play in their favor. But equally, it might not. Much as Stamoran hated to admit it, maybe it was time to think about contingencies.

Stamoran straightened up and said, “There’s an upside here. We know where the guy will strike next. We know Pritchard won’t be there. We can make sure a surprise is in store. But I want something to fall back on, if it becomes necessary. Baglin is running the task force?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him to keep mining for names. If we can identify this asshole before he gets to Pritchard’s house, so much the better. But also tell him to shift his focus. There’s something else I want him to find.”

—

A pager wasdelivered to Reacher’s office at 1:00p.m.He had seen doctors and businesspeople wearing pagers clipped to their belts but he didn’t want to do that, himself. He thought it would look pretentious, so he shoved it into his jacket pocket. At 1:05 it started to beep. Quietly at first, but by the time he’d fished it out and found a button to press, it was loud and angry. Reacher put it back in his pocket. He figured the sound must have been some kind of a test procedure, or confirmation that the device was activated.Then he heard doors slamming and footsteps hurrying down the corridor and realized the alert must be for real.

—

Christopher Baglin wasalready in his seat at the head of the table when Reacher got to the boardroom. The other three were getting settled. Reacher made his way around to his place, sat, and folded his arms. He could see from Baglin’s expression and the stoop of his shoulders that more bad news was on its way.

“We’ve lost another one.” Baglin looked at each person in turn. “Another scientist from Project 192. Charlie Adam. Officially, he jumped, or fell, off a cliff behind his home in California. But let’s be realistic. No one’s buying that kind of coincidence. He was murdered by the same person who killed his colleagues.”

“Or by another person from the same organization,” Smith said.

Baglin glared at her, then said, “I guess we can’t rule out a team effort, at this stage. But here’s the thing. Only one scientist is still alive. Obviously efforts to protect him will be ramped up to the max. But we’ve already seen that our perp is pretty adept at getting around security. It’s like he’s a ghost. It would be far safer to intercept him before he gets close. To do that, we need to identify him. So I need you to cast your nets wider. To think more creatively. In short, I need more names. And I need them yesterday. Understood?”

Four heads nodded around the table.

Baglin said, “Good. If you come up with anything hot, page me. Failing that, we’ll reconvene at 0900. Now, one more thing. Reacher and Neilsen, you’ve been looking for relatives of scientists from the sixties in your services. Anyone who died very recently, or who is seriously sick. I like that. It’s sound logic. But I want you to expand on it. It doesn’t follow that the scientist and the killer have to berelated. They could be friends. Comrades in some kind of counterculture movement. Hell, the current guy could be getting paid by the older one. So I want you to stop worrying about the precise connection for a moment. We can piece that together afterward. Just look at anyone connected, however loosely, to the program in the sixties. Understood?”

—

Roberta and VeronicaSanson did the closest thing possible to making their stolen Jeep disappear. They parked it in the long-term lot at LAX, wiped it for prints, just in case, and walked away.

There was no debate about where to go next. No need to pick at random from a list of targets. They knew exactly what their destination was. And they had a plan to get there without attracting attention. Roberta took a Delta flight to Washington National. Veronica flew United to Dulles. Both used cash and fake IDs. And then, to mix up their routine, they figured on staying one night at an airport hotel, each stealing a car the next morning, and making their way toward the coast.

—

The meeting wrappedup and Reacher’s afternoon played out much like it had the previous day. Phone calls and faxes and lists of names. Nothing to get his pulse racing, but nothing to complain about. Not directly.

Smith knocked on his door at ten after five and offered a lift to the hotel, which Reacher accepted. Neilsen was waiting in the parking lot. He suggested dinner at the same place as the night before, which Smith and Reacher didn’t object to. They met in the hotel reception at 6:00p.m.and again they walked. Again the drizzlestarted to fall. The bar wasn’t crowded, so they took the same table as before. The same waitress came to take their order.

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