I said, ‘Here’s the thing, Ms Scarangello. I know I only just got here, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. If Kott’s the guy, you want me out there blundering around because whoever is bankrolling him will want to stop me. Whatever faction, as O’Day likes to say. I’m supposed to bring them out in the open. That’s all. All I am is bait.’

She didn’t answer.

I said, ‘Or maybe you want Kott to come for me himself. He’s plenty mad at me, after all. I put him away for fifteen years. I’m sure that put a crimp in his lifetime plans. He’s probably nursing an appropriate degree of resentment. Maybe all that yoga was for me personally, not general career advancement.’

‘No one is thinking in terms of bait.’

‘Bullshit. Tom O’Day thinks of everything, and chooses the easiest and most effective.’

‘Are you scared?’

‘You know any infantrymen?’

‘This base has plenty.’

‘Talk to them. The infantry puts up with a world of shit. They live in holes in the ground, cold, wet, muddy, hungry, with incoming mortars and artillery and rockets, and bombs and gas, and air assault and missiles, and they have nothing ahead of them except barbed wire and machine-gun nests, but you know what they hate most of all?’

‘Snipers,’ she said.

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘Random death, out of nowhere, any time, any place, no notice, no warning. Every minute of every day. No relief. The stress becomes unbearable. It sends some of them mad, literally. And I can understand why. Right now I’m sitting in a little metal box and I’m already liking it more than I should.’

‘I met your brother once,’ Scarangello said.

‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘Joe Reacher. I was a young case officer and he was with military intelligence. We worked together on a thing.’

‘And now you’re going to tell me he spoke well of me and said I was the baddest son of a bitch in the valley. You’re going to leverage a dead man.’

‘I’m sorry he died. But he did speak well of you.’

‘If Joe was here he’d tell me to run away from this thing as far and as fast as I can. There’s a clue in the title. Military, and intelligence. He knew Tom O’Day too.’

‘You don’t like O’Day, do you?’

‘I think someone should give him a medal and a bullet in the head and name a bridge after him.’

‘Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.’

‘I’m surprised he’s still in business.’

‘This kind of thing keeps him in business. Now more than ever. He’s front and centre.’

I said nothing.

Scarangello said, ‘We can’t make you stay.’

I shrugged.

‘I owe Rick Shoemaker a favour,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick around.’

Predictable.

SIX

SCARANGELLO LEFT AFTER that, leaving a faint perfumed scent in the air, and I took my shower and went to bed. O’Day liked to start every morning with a conference, and I planned to be there, right after breakfast. Which I couldn’t find. The dawn light showed we were stuck in a remote corner of Pope Field, which was vast. I figured I was a mile or more from the nearest mess hall. Maybe five miles. And my movements were restricted. Walking around Fort Bragg unauthorized wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Not under the current circumstances. Not under any circumstances, really.

So I headed back to the red door and found Casey Nice in a room with a table. The table was loaded with muffins and pastries on plates, and big catering boxes of coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts, not army issue. Private catering. Reforms. Anything to save a buck.

Casey Nice said, ‘Comfortable quarters?’

I said, ‘Better than sleeping in a hollow log.’

‘Is that what you normally do?’

‘Figure of speech,’ I said.

‘But you slept well?’

‘Terrific.’

‘Did you meet anyone last night?’

‘I met a woman named Joan Scarangello.’

‘Good.’

‘Who is she exactly?’

‘A deputy to the deputy director of operations.’

Which sounded junior, but wasn’t. In CIA-speak a D-DDO was part of a tiny circle at the very top. One of the three or four most plugged-in people on the planet. Her natural habitat would be a Langley office about eight times the size of my shipping container, probably with more phones on the desk than I had seen in my entire life. I said, ‘They’re really taking this seriously, aren’t they?’

‘They have to, don’t you think?’

I didn’t answer that, and then Scarangello herself came in. She nodded a greeting and took a muffin and a cup of coffee. Then she left again. I took two muffins and an empty cup and a whole box of coffee. I figured I could prop it on the edge of the conference table with the spigot facing towards me. Refills as and when required. Like an alcoholic behind a bar.

The morning conference was in a room next to O’Day’s upstairs office. Nothing fancy. Just four plain tables pushed together in a square, and eight chairs for the five of us. Shoemaker and O’Day and Scarangello were already in their places. Casey Nice sat down next to Scarangello and I chose a spot with an empty chair either side. I got the coffee set up and bit the head off a muffin.