“I have to go to Paris,” I said.
“Paris, Texas?” she said. “Or Paris, Kentucky, or Paris, Tennessee?”
“Paris, France,” I said.
“Why?”
“My mother is sick.”
“Your mother lives in France?”
“Paris,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because she’s French.”
“Is it serious?”
“Being French?”
“No, whatever she’s sick with.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know. But I think so.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“I need a car,” I said. “I need to get to Dulles, right now.”
“I’ll drive you,” she said. “I like driving.”
She left the paperwork on my desk and went to retrieve the Chevrolet we had used before. I went to my quarters and packed an army duffel with one of everything from my closet. Then I put on my long coat. It was cold, and I didn’t expect Europe was going to be any warmer. Not in early January. Summer brought the car to my door. She kept it at thirty until we were off-post. Then she lit it up like a rocket and headed north. She was quiet for a spell. She was thinking. Her eyelids were moving.
“We should tell the Green Valley cops,” she said. “If we think Mrs. Kramer was killed because of the briefcase.”
I shook my head. “Telling them won’t bring her back. And if she was killed because of the briefcase we’ll find whoever did it from our end.”
“What do you want me to do while you’re gone?”
“Work the lists,” I said. “Check the gate log. Find the woman, find the briefcase, put the agenda in a very safe place. Then check on who Vassell and Coomer called from the hotel. Maybe they sent an errand boy out into the night.”
“You think that’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“But they didn’t know where Kramer was.”
“That’s why they tried the wrong place.”
“Who would they have sent?”
“Bound to be someone who has their interests close to his heart.”
“OK,” she said.
“And find out who was driving them just now.”
“OK,” she said.
We didn’t speak again, all the way to Dulles.
I met my brother Joe in the line at the Air France ticket desk. He had booked seats for both of us on the first morning flight. Now he was lining up to pay for them. I hadn’t seen him for almost three years. The last time we had been together was at our father’s funeral. Since then we had gone our separate ways.
“Good morning, little brother,” he said.
He was wearing an overcoat and a suit and a tie, and he looked pretty good in them. He was two years older than me, and he always had been, and he always would be. As a kid I used to study him and think, That’s how I’ll look when I grow up. Now I found myself doing it again. From a distance we could have been mistaken for each other. Standing side by side it was obvious that he was an inch taller and a little slighter than me. But mostly it was obvious that he was a little older than me. It looked like we had started out together, but he had seen the future first, and it had aged him, and worn him down.
“How are you, Joe?” I said.
“Can’t complain.”
“Busy?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
I nodded and said nothing. Truth is, I didn’t know exactly what he did for a living. He had probably told me. It wasn’t a national secret or anything. It was something to do with the Treasury Department. He had probably told me all the details and I probably hadn’t listened. Now it seemed too late to ask.
“You were in Panama,” he said. “Operation Just Cause, right?”
“Operation Just Because,” I said. “That’s what we called it.”
“Just because what?”
“Just because we could. Just because we all had to have something to do. Just because we’ve got a new Commander-in-Chief who wants to look tough.”
“Is it going well?”
“It’s like Notre Dame against the Tumble Tots. How else is it going to go?”
“You got Noriega yet?”
“Not yet.”
“So why did they post you back here?”
“We took twenty-seven thousand guys,” I said. “It wasn’t down to me personally.”
He smiled briefly and then got that narrow-eyed look I remembered from childhood. It meant he was figuring out some pedantic and convoluted line of reasoning. But we got to the head of the line before he had time to tell me about it. He took out his credit card and paid for the flights. Maybe he expected me to pay him back for mine, maybe he didn’t. He didn’t make it clear either way.
“Let’s get coffee now,” he said.
Joe was probably the only other human on the planet who liked coffee as much as I did. He started drinking it when he was six. I copied him immediately. I was four. Neither of us has stopped since. The Reacher brothers’ need for caffeine makes heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it sideline.
We found a place with a W-shaped counter snaking through it. It was three-quarters empty. It was harshly lit with fluorescent tubes and the vinyl on the stools was sticky. We sat side by side and rested our forearms on the counter in the universal pose of early-morning travelers everywhere. A guy in an apron put mugs in front of us without asking. Then he filled them with coffee from a flask. The coffee smelled fresh. The place was changing over from the all-night service to the breakfast menu. I could hear eggs frying.
“What happened in Panama?” Joe asked.
“To me?” I said. “Nothing.”
“What were your orders there?”
“Supervision.”
“Of what?”
“Of the process,” I said. “The Noriega thing is supposed to look judicial. He’s supposed to stand trial here in the States. So we’re supposed to grab him up with some kind of formality. Some way that will look acceptable when we get him in a courtroom.”
“You were going to read him his Miranda rights?”
“Not exactly. But it had to be better than some cowboy thing.”
“Did you screw up?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Who replaced you?”
“Some other guy.”
“Rank?”
“Same,” I said.
“A rising star?”
I sipped my coffee. Shook my head. “I never met him before. But he seemed like a bit of an asshole to
