—
Sinclair unzipped the pouch and Reacher smelled copier paper still hot from the printer. There had been a flurry of phone calls, he guessed, and then a high-speed digital transmission incoming from somewhere, either Personnel Command back home, or Stuttgart maybe, directly into the Hamburg consulate, where a high-speed machine had done fast work, and where the young attaché in the Brooks Brothers tie had caught the tumbling pages and butted them together and zipped them up and grabbed a cab. The National Security Council. Even faster than the army press room.
The pages were crisp clear monochrome copies of a standard-issue army personnel file, for Private First Class Horace-none-Wiley, who was thirty-five years old, and from Sugar Land, Texas. He was coming to the end of his first three-year hitch. He had been a thirty-two-year-old recruit. He was five feet eight inches tall, and lightly built. Like a long-distance runner.
The second page had his photograph. It was clipped to the top right corner. Not a passport thumbnail like the old days, but a bigger print. Maybe three inches by two. The Xerox process had bleached out the highlights, like liquid neon, and made the shadows sooty. The image of the paperclip itself looked photographic, but also radioactive.
It was the same guy.
The Xerox imperfections gave the picture a hand-made quality, like a sketch done in charcoal. Like the sketch done in pencil. The same sketch. The same guy. No question. Zero doubt. The brow, the cheek bones, the deep-set eyes. The nose, like a blade. The crease in the cheek, exactly parallel. The set jaw, like he was clamping his teeth. The mouth, like a thin wound, completely expressionless.
Only the hair was different. The photograph was three years old. Horace-none-Wiley had signed on with a regular country-boy buzz cut. A slam dunk, where Army Regulation 670-3-2 was concerned. The extreme, the eccentric, and the faddish had all come later.
“We’ll show the photograph to Mr. Klopp,” Sinclair said. “But there’s really no doubt about it. Congratulations, major. And sergeant. Outstanding work. You started with two hundred thousand.”
Reacher said, “Only because someone made a dumb note about a dumb phone call, which survived about seven different levels of bureaucracy before winding up with the United States government itself. We’re always trying to cut down on paperwork. Maybe we should rethink that.”
“What now?”
“Now we wait. For a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes to come on out and take a walk.”
Chapter 20
Sugar Land was what Wiley intended to call his new ranch. Or Sugarland, all one word. Not that he would grow sugar. It was cattle country. He was going to have the largest herd in the world. And the best. But first he would need a name across the top of his gate. Fancy wrought iron. Maybe leave it in red primer. Sugar Land would look good. All in capital letters. Or all one word, Sugarland. And it would be a kind of personal tribute. To an old ambition. Once upon a time he had tried to make it in Sugar Land. But it was a tough old town. Now he was buying a place forty times bigger than the entire incorporated municipality.
All good.
It was like falling. At first he had fought it, and then he had gone with it. And then he had fallen even faster. Everything had sped up around him. Which was why he was ready way too early. Ready for the meeting. He felt he had to be prepared. Especially now. The endgame would happen quickly. It always did.
—
In Sinclair’s presence Reacher called Griezman from the room phone, on the speaker, and he gave him Wiley’s name, to go with the face, and he told him as far as they knew the messenger had already arrived, and then he reconfirmed all the various protocols, about how to call it in if something happened, and above all about being cautious around the apartment. But not so cautious he would miss something. A tough job. But Griezman sounded on top of it. He agreed to all the points. His language was convincing. Reacher saw Sinclair relax a little. Then she looked at him, right in the eye, a level gaze. He wasn’t sure why. Either half approving, because the crazy plan might be working after all, or half disapproving, because now he had made her complicit.