Page 5 of The Secret

“Yes. Sergeant Lisa Hall. How—”

“UE and DS are men?”

“Yes. But—”

“There are no other women on the team?”

“No. But I still—”

Reacher held up his hand. “Fifteen days ago you received a Red crate by mistake. Fourteen days ago we received a report that M16s had been stolen from this facility. We checked. They hadn’t.”

“I heard about the raid. I don’t see the connection.”

“The report was anonymous, but the voice was female. I read the file.”

“I still don’t—”

“Sergeant Hall realized a Red crate was missing the day after it got mishandled. She knew it could be traced back to her so she made a bogus accusation. A serious one. Stolen weapons. Theinvestigators came running, just like she knew they would. They opened all the crates, including hers. They were looking for M16s. Complete ones. That’s what they found, so they closed the case. No crime detected. Then if the missing receivers came to light, Hall had just been cleared of theft. She was hoping an investigator would make the same jump you did. That the doctored weapons arrived that way, from the Gulf.”

“No. I know Lisa Hall. She wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Let’s make sure. Where is she today?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Then find out.”

“Sir.” The sergeant shuffled across to the phone on the wall. Thin clouds of dust puffed up around his feet. He dialed slowly, made the inquiry, and when he was done he said, “Not on duty, sir.”

Reacher said, “OK. So where’s her billet?”

—

Veronica Sanson waswaiting for her sister, Roberta, on the fourth floor of the parking garage. She was standing at the side of a blue minivan. They had stolen it from the long-term lot at O’Hare when they arrived in the city, two days before. Roberta nodded a greeting and opened the van’s rear door. They took turns, one keeping watch, one hunkering down between the back seats and changing their clothes. Off came the hospital outfits. On went jeans and sneakers and shirts and jackets. All plain, anonymous items. When they were dressed the sisters hugged, retrieved their plain canvas duffels from the van’s narrow cargo area, wiped the vehicle clean of prints, then made their way to separate exits. Roberta threaded her way west. She pushed through knots of shoppers and tourists, past the wide storefronts and cafés and offices, until she reached theClark/Lake El stop. Veronica walked south and kept going to Roosevelt, where the Orange Line emerged from its underground section.

—

Reacher liked thearmory sergeant at Rock Island. He figured the guy was reasonably smart. Reasonably street wise. Reasonably capable of anticipating the kind of trouble he’d be in if Hall somehow got word that she was under suspicion. But Reacher was a cautious guy. He’d learned a long time ago that it can be dangerous to overestimate a person. That unit loyalty can run deeper than deference to a stranger. Especially when that stranger is an MP. So he made sure that the sergeant was clear about the consequences of any phone calls he might be tempted to make. He left no room for doubt. Then he requisitioned a car from the base’s motor pool and found his way to Hall’s address.

Hall lived in the last of a little knot of houses stretched out along a river about four miles east of the Arsenal’s main gate. Her home was small and neat. Set up for efficiency, Reacher thought. No fancy décor to maintain. No complicated yard work to stay on top of. There was no answer at the door when Reacher knocked. No sign of anyone through the windows, front or back. Just an array of budget furniture laid out as if someone had tried to re-create a picture from a low-cost catalog. There was nothing personal. No photographs. No ornaments. None of the knickknacks people use to impose their identity on a place. Reacher understood that. Aside from his four years at West Point he had spent his life bouncing from one base to another. Six months here. Six months there. Different countries. Different continents. Never anyplace long enough to feel at home. First as a kid, because his father had been an officer in the Marines. Then as an adult, as an officer himself. Maybe Hall had thesame experience. Maybe she was anticipating her next change of station and didn’t want to waste effort on a place she knew she was soon going to quit. Or maybe she had another reason to be ready to leave in a hurry.

Reacher walked back to his borrowed car and settled in to wait. He wasn’t worried about how long it might take. He was a patient man. He had nowhere else to be. And he was naturally suited to two states of existence. Instant, explosive action. And near-catatonic stasis. It was the in-between he struggled with. The sitting through pointless meetings and reviews and briefings that made up so much of army life.

Chapter3

The phone rang at 9:00p.m.Eastern. That was 8:00p.m.Central, where the call originated. Which was right on time.

It was answered immediately.

The guy who had dialed said, “Another one’s dead. Keith Bridgeman. Massive blunt force trauma resulting from falling out of his hospital room window. United Medical, Chicago. Twelfth floor. Had been recovering from a heart attack. Not out of the woods but was expected to pull through. Fine when the nurses did their rounds a couple of hours earlier. No reported visitors or calls or outside contact. The police are fifty/fifty, suicide or accident. He must have unlocked the window himself—the key was still in his pocket—but there was no note. All for now. More at 0800.”

“Understood.” The guy who had answered hung up.

—

Officially the telephoneline they had used didn’t exist. It was one of the Pentagon’s ghost circuits. There were hundreds of them in thebuilding. Maybe thousands. They generate no records, incoming or outgoing. The call that had just ended could never be traced. It could never be correlated with the next call made on the same line, but the Pentagon guy walked through to the outer office anyway. Old habits die hard. He picked up a different phone and dialed a number from memory. A number that was not written down anywhere. Not listed. Not officially in service.

The Pentagon guy’s call was picked up in the study of a house four miles away, in Georgetown, D.C. By Charles Stamoran. The Secretary of Defense of the United States of America.

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