The Enemy

exits in detail in bound ledgers that had preprinted page numbers in the top right-hand corner. We had a good clear Xerox of the page for January fourth. I was confident it was genuine. I was confident it was complete. And I was confident it was accurate. The Military Police have numerous failings, but snafus with basic paperwork aren’t any of them.

Summer took the page from me and taped it to the wall next to the map. We stood side by side and looked at it. It was ruled into six columns. There were spaces for date, time in, time out, plate number, occupants, and reason.

“Traffic was light,” Summer said.

I said nothing. I was in no position to know whether nineteen entries represented light traffic or not. I wasn’t used to Bird and it had been a long time since I had pulled gate duty anywhere else. But certainly it seemed quiet compared to the multiple pages I had seen for New Year’s Eve.

“Mostly people reporting back for duty,” Summer said.

I nodded. Fourteen lines had entries in the Time In column but no corresponding entries in the Time Out column. That meant fourteen people had come in and stayed in. Back to work, after time away from the post for the holidays. Or after time away from the post for other reasons. I was right there among them: 1-4-90. 2302, Reacher, J., Mjr, RTB. January fourth, 1990, two minutes past eleven in the evening, Major J. Reacher, returning to base. From Paris, via Garber’s old office in Rock Creek. My vehicle plate number was listed as: Pedestrian. My sergeant was there, coming in from her off-post address to work the night shift. She had arrived at nine-thirty, driving something with North Carolina plates.

Fourteen in, to stay in.

Only five exits.

Three of them were routine food deliveries. Big trucks, probably. An army post gets through a lot of food. Lots of hungry mouths to feed. Three trucks in a day seemed about right to me. Each of them was timed inward at some point during the early afternoon and then timed outward again a plausible hour or so later. The last time out was just before three o’clock.

Then there was a seven-hour gap.

The last-but-one recorded exit was Vassell and Coomer themselves, on their way out after their O Club dinner. They had passed through the gate at 2201. They had previously been timed in at 1845. At that point their Department of Defense plate number had been written down and their names and ranks had been entered. Their reason had been stated as: Courtesy visit.

Five exits. Four down.

One to go.

The only other person to have left Fort Bird on the fourth of January was logged as: 1-4-90, 2211, Trifonov, S., Sgt. There was a North Carolina passenger vehicle plate number written in the relevant space. There was no time in recorded. There was nothing in the reason column. Therefore a sergeant called Trifonov had been on-post all day or all week and then he had left at eleven minutes past ten in the evening. No reason had been recorded because there was no directive to inquire as to why a soldier was leaving. The assumption was that he was going out for a drink or a meal or for some other form of entertainment. Reason was a question the gate guards asked of people trying to get in, not trying to get out.

We checked again, just to be absolutely sure. We came up with the same result. Apart from General Vassell and Colonel Coomer in their self-driven Mercury Grand Marquis, and then a sergeant called Trifonov in some other kind of car, nobody had passed through the gate in an outward direction in a vehicle or on foot at any time on the fourth of January, apart from three food trucks in the early part of the afternoon.

“OK,” Summer said. “Sergeant Trifonov. Whoever he is. He’s the one.”

“Has to be,” I said.

I called the main gate. Got the same guy I had spoken to before, when I was checking on Vassell and Coomer earlier. I recognized his voice. I asked him to search forward through his log, starting from the page number immediately following the one we were looking at. Asked him to check exactly when a sergeant named Trifonov had returned to Bird. Told him it could be anytime after about four-thirty in the morning on January fifth. There was a moment’s delay. I could hear the guy turning the stiff parchment pages in the ledger. He was doing it slowly, paying close attention.

“Sir, five o’clock in the morning precisely,” the guy said. “January fifth, 0500, Sergeant Trifonov, returning to base.” I heard another page turn. “He left at 2211 the previous evening.”

“Remember anything about him?”

“He left about ten minutes after those Armored staffers you were asking me about before. He was in a hurry, as I recall. Didn’t wait for the barrier to go all the way up. He squeezed right underneath it.”

“What kind of car?”

“Corvette, I think. Not a new one. But it looked pretty good.”

“Were you still on duty when he got back?”

“Yes, sir, I was.”

“Remember anything about that?”

“Nothing that stands out. I spoke to him, obviously. He has a foreign accent.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Civilian stuff. A leather jacket, I think. I assumed he had been off duty.”

“Is he on the post now?”

I heard pages turning again. I imagined a finger, tracing slowly down all the lines written after 0500 on the morning of the fifth.

“We haven’t logged him out again, sir,” the guy said. “Not as of right now. So he must be on-post somewhere.”

“OK,” I said. “Thanks, soldier.”

I hung up. Summer looked at me.

“He got back at 0500,” I said. “Three and a half hours after Brubaker’s watch stopped.”

“Three-hour drive,” she said.

“And he’s here now.”

“Who is he?”

I called post headquarters. Asked the question. They told me who he was. I put the phone down and looked straight at Summer.

“He’s Delta,” I said. “He was a defector from Bulgaria. They brought him in as an instructor. He knows stuff our guys don’t.”

I got up from my desk and stepped over to the map on the wall. Put my own fingers on the pushpins. Little finger on Fort Bird, index finger on Columbia. It was like I was validating a theory by touch alone. A hundred and fifty miles. Three hours and twelve minutes to get there, three hours and thirty-seven minutes to get back. I did the math in my head. An average speed of forty-seven miles an hour going, and forty-one coming back. At night, on empty roads, in a Chevrolet Corvette. He could have done it with the parking brake on.

“Should we have him picked up?” Summer said.

“No,” I said. “I’ll do it myself. I’ll go over there.”

“Is that smart?”

“Probably not. But I don’t want those guys to think they got to me.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“OK,” I said.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon, exactly thirty-six hours to the minute since Trifonov arrived back on-post. The weather was dull and cold. We took sidearms and handcuffs and evidence bags. We walked to the MP motor pool and found a Humvee that had a cage partition bolted behind the front seats and no inside handles on the back doors. Summer drove. She parked at Delta’s prison gate. The sentry let us through on foot. We walked around the outside of the main block until I found the entrance to their NCO Club. I stopped, and Summer stopped beside me.