Page 46 of The Secret

No one else spoke up.

Baglin said, “Agent Smith?”

“I’m getting no hits for anyone currently on our radar,” Smith said. “It’s conceivable that there’s a sleeper—a pair of sleepers—that we didn’t previously know about who’ve now been activated. Or a pair of clean skins recently infiltrated. But both those scenarios are highly unlikely, in my opinion.”

Baglin nodded and said, “Walsh, is there any point asking you?”

Walsh looked away from the window. He said, “None.” Then he turned back and carried on staring into the distance.

Baglin said, “OK. You all know what we’re trying to find. Go look. Hard.”

—

The time VeronicaSanson spent on the phone proved fruitful. She had started with the premise that Neville Pritchard would have wanted to spend as little time on the road as possible. A basic principle of escape and evasion. Minimize your exposure. She also assumed that given Pritchard’s state of readiness, he would have prepared a safe haven in advance. So she called all the RV parks and campsites within a fifty-mile radius of his home. That was made easier by the fact that he lived so close to the coast. Almost half the potential area was discounted by the ocean. She explained to each person she spoke to that she’d recently moved to Annapolis with her husband and was keen to find a place where they could enjoy regular weekend getaways. They had no kids or dogs so would prefer somewhere without too many young families. In fact, the more private and secluded, the better. They were experienced RVers so didn’t need a ton of facilities. And they weren’t big on change, so if they liked the place they’d want to make a long-term booking to make sure the same plot was always available to them. Two places ticked all the boxes. They decided to try the nearer one first.

—

Reacher had beenback in his office for less than ten minutes after the morning meeting finished when there was a knock at his door. It opened before he said anything and Smith walked in. Close up she looked pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.

She said, “Reacher, can we talk?”

He said, “About what?”

“I think we need to tell Baglin what we know. What we learned from Flemming last night.”

“You do? Why?”

“The way I see it, our goal hasn’t changed. We need to stop the killer. Save Pritchard. Keep Project 192 a secret. There’s no reason to assume the killer’s motive has changed. It’s still revenge, exposure, maybe both. But what has changed is the subject pool. It’s been transformed out of all recognition. We’re not talking about a handful of KGB holdouts any longer. Not a few soldiers or spies with relatives who were harmed by the project. No. We’re talking about the relatives of a thousand bereaved families. That could be, what? Five thousand people? Ten thousand?”

“Could be.”

“That’s way too many. And think of the logistics. We’d need to liaise with the civilian company, Mason Chemical, if it’s still in business, and if it keeps records so far back. We’d need cooperation from the Indian government. The Indian army, too, if we’re right about the military training. Which we probably are.”

“Which is another problem. The Indian army only just started admitting women. No time for our suspects to have gotten trained.”

“So we’d have to look for families or individuals who had emigrated to countries with armies that have accepted women for at least, what, five years? More complication. And then we’d need help from INS, to confirm who was in the States at the relevanttime. Three people can’t do all that. It’s just not possible. Especially from thousands of miles away. And when we can’t work the way we normally would. The families were paid off, right? Well, we can’t follow the money because it was paid by the CIA, in a foreign country, so no doubt it was funneled through a bunch of shell companies and cutouts. We’d have more chance of finding Bigfoot.”

“We could look for the effect the money had. Families that suddenly bought big new houses. That set up businesses, flush with cash. Or left the village and moved to the city. Or abroad.”

“All good suggestions. But again, all things we can’t find out on our own. Which is why we should hand it off to Baglin. We should brief him, then he can make all the approaches and line up the resources.”

“Makes sense. But there’s yet another problem. There’s no way to do that without revealing that we know about Typhon. The thousand dead. Which didn’t work out too well for Flemming.”

“True. And it’s not like I want to live in a dark cell, or in a bunch of ruins like a rat. But there’s a moral obligation here. A man’s life is on the line. The reputation of the country as well, potentially.”

There was another knock at the door. Neilsen came in. His eyes narrowed when he saw that Smith was already there. He said, “What are you guys talking about?”

Reacher said, “Last night. What we learned. What we should do about it.”

Neilsen said, “What we should do? That’s obvious. Pass the buck to Baglin. Let him earn his corn. Look, if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll continue getting what we’re getting. In other words, nowhere. Neville Pritchard’s going to turn up dead sooner or later, or word of 192 will leak, or both, and we’ll be left sitting here withBlame Ustattooed on our foreheads. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that.”

Reacher said, “OK. But there’s no way to involve Baglin withoutburning Flemming. Is that what you want to do? Seems like the guy’s had enough bad luck for one lifetime.”

Neilsen shrugged. “I don’t want to burn him, no. But hey. Omelets. Eggs. And look, they might lock him up, I guess. But it’s not like he’s living like a king now. And as long as the story doesn’t go public, I can’t believe they’d throw him in the hole.”

“There might be implications for us, for knowing what we know.”

“I don’t think so. We’re professionals. Not reporters looking to shout scandal from the rooftops. We know how to handle secrets. We do it all the time.”

---