And he must have taken it alone. There was no one with him. No one next to him, and no one in the shadows. He was standing still, facing the main terminal doors. They walked up behind him, and he spun around, and Reacher bought three first-class seats with Baldacci’s credit card.
SIXTY-FOUR
THEY WERE AT the gate twenty minutes before boarding started, in seats with a wide field of view, and they didn’t see Shrago. Not that Reacher expected to. LA was a big place, hard to get around, and first the bank charge would have to be spotted, and then Shrago would have to get himself to the airport, and there simply wasn’t enough time. So Reacher drank coffee and relaxed, and then boarding started, and then his phone rang, so he took his seat while talking, which was what pretty much everyone else was doing.
It was Edmonds on the phone, from Virginia. She said, ‘The 75th MP just informed me about the Candice Dayton situation.’
‘I told you I didn’t remember her.’
‘I apologize. I should have been less sceptical.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I almost believed it myself.’
‘I asked around about Crew Scully’s friends.’
‘And?’
‘He had a West Point classmate he stayed close to. They came up together like bottle rockets. I asked five separate people, and this is the guy I got from all of them.’
‘What is he?’
‘Currently the army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for intelligence.’
‘That would do it.’
‘They share similar backgrounds, they live near each other in Georgetown, and they’re members of all the same clubs, including some very exclusive ones.’
‘Are they rich?’
‘Not like some people are rich. But they’re comfortable, in an old-fashioned way. You know how it is with those people. Comfortable takes a few million.’
‘What’s the guy’s name?’
‘Gabriel Montague.’
‘You were right about the similar backgrounds. Gabe and Crew. Sounds like a bar near Harvard. Or a store where you buy torn jeans for three hundred dollars.’
‘These are huge targets, Reacher. These are giants walking the earth. And you have precisely zero evidence of anything.’
‘You think like a lawyer. One of which I need right now, by the way. I’m an innocent man. I don’t want any smoke and mirrors about what happened after they locked me up for two things I didn’t do. If I broke out, it was because I was entitled to.’
‘Major Sullivan is working on that. She wants everything dismissed. The fruits of a poisoned tree.’
‘Tell her to be quick. We’re heading back right now, with a semi-official escort. I don’t want any fun and games at Reagan National. She’s got about six hours.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
Then the steward came on the PA and said the cabin door was closing, and all devices should be in the off position. So for the first time in his life Reacher complied with the crew member’s instruction, and he dropped the phone in his pocket, and the plane pushed back and started to taxi. It took off over the ocean, and then it pulled a wide right-hand 180, so it was facing east again, and it recrossed the coast above Santa Monica, and it climbed as it flew inland, so that North Hollywood and the Ventura Freeway and Vineland Avenue and the coach diner and the little house with the blue door were all off the port side, far away and far below, barely visible at all.
A three-way conversation in first class was not easy. The chairs were wide, which put the window seat on one side pretty far from the aisle seat on the other. And the crew members were always back and forth from the galley, with endless free food and drink. Which all helped Reacher see why being rich was called being comfortable, but which made talking difficult. In the end Espin got up and perched on the arm of Turner’s chair, and Turner leaned over nearer Reacher in the window, and they got it to where everyone could see and hear everyone else, and Espin said, ‘If I need any kind of warrant for Morgan, obviously they’re going to ask me about the nature of this alleged conspiracy. So you’d better have a story for me by the time we get off this plane. Or you’re giving me nothing. In which case we’d need to rethink your special status.’
Reacher said, ‘It’s not going to work that way, Pete. This is not an audition. We’re not trying to break into the movies. And you have no vote here. We’re going our separate ways at Reagan National, whether or not we have a story, and whether or not you like it, and you’re going to wave us goodbye with a cheery smile on your face, either standing up by the door or sitting down in a wheelchair with a broken leg. Those are the ground rules. Are we clear?’
Espin said, ‘But we share what information we have?’
‘Absolutely. As in, Captain Edmonds just told me Crew Scully has a close personal friend named Gabriel Montague.’
‘He would. Did they go to prep school together?’
‘More or less. West Point, anyway.’
‘Who is he?’
‘The army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for intelligence.’
