smoker’s needs. Lamps and bowls and long, long pipes, the heights all arranged so that a man lying relaxed on his side would find the pipe exactly where he wanted it. There were pillows here and there, and a warm, dull weight in the air.
They found Scully and Montague in the next room along. They were both around sixty years old, both grey, both trim, but not iron-hard like the kind of general who wants people to know he came from the infantry. These two were happy for folk to know they came from the back rooms. They were wearing dark pants and satin smoking jackets. Their pipes were made of silver and bone. They both had holes in both temples, through and through with jacketed bullets. Nine-millimetres, from the service Berettas that had fallen to the floor. The entry wounds were on the right. Reacher pictured them, the dawn call, as agreed, but no answer, so maybe a handshake, and then muzzles against skin, and elbows out, and one, two, three.
And then the street was suddenly howling with sirens, and about a hundred people jumped out of cars.
A guy from the DEA told them the story, in a front room off the wide, cool hallway. It turned out Shrago had spilled to Espin inside about a second and a half, which meant Morgan was in custody thirty minutes later, and Morgan had spilled inside a second and a half too, whereupon Espin had called three different agencies, and a raid had been planned. And executed. But five minutes late.
‘You weren’t late,’ Reacher said. ‘You could have come yesterday, and they would have done the same thing. It didn’t matter who was coming up the stairs. You or us or anybody, they were going down like gentlemen.’
The guy said there were opium dens like Dove Cottage everywhere, all over the world, for the kind of civilized man who prefers fine wine over beer. Opium was the authentic product, heated to a vapour, the vapour inhaled, a gentleman’s relish, as sweet as organic honey. The real thing. The source. Not cut or altered or extracted or converted. Not in any way. Not sordid, not street, and unchanged for thousands of years. Archaeologists would tell you Stone Age had a double meaning.
And like fine wine, all kinds of bullshit crept in. Terrain was held to be important. The best was held to be Afghan. Individual hillsides were examined. Like vineyards. Montague did a deal with the Zadran brothers. Their stuff was high grade. They branded it
Then eventually the crowd in the house included Colonel John James Temple, who was still Turner’s attorney of record, and both Major Helen Sullivan and Captain Tracy Edmonds, who were still Reacher’s. Temple had gotten a permanent stay on Turner’s confinement order. She was basically free to go, pending formal dismissal of charges. Sullivan and Edmonds had bigger problems. Given Morgan’s current status, it was impossible to say whether Reacher was or was not still in the army. It was likely a question that would run all the way, to the Deputy Chief of Staff for personnel, who was dead upstairs.
Turner begged a ride for them both, with Colonel Temple, who had been little placated when Reacher returned his ID. The atmosphere was tense. But Reacher was keen to get Turner back to the hotel, and Colonel Temple’s sedan was better than walking. Except they didn’t go back to the hotel. Evidently Turner had given Rock Creek as their destination, because Temple drove over the water into Virginia. The old stone building. Her command. Her base. Her home base. Her home.
Which was when he had known for sure. She loved the campfire. As had he, once upon a time, but only briefly, and only that special fire inside the 110th Special Unit. Which was now hers.
It was well into the morning when they arrived, and everyone was there. The night watch had stayed. Espin had kept them in the loop, and they had followed the play by play. The day watch had gotten in to find it a done deal, all bar the shouting. Sergeant Leach was there, and the duty captain. Reacher wondered if Turner would ever mention the doodling. Probably not. More likely promote him sideways.
Her first hour was largely ceremonial, with a lot of fist bumps, and shooting the shit, and slaps on the back, and then somehow she ended the tour in her office, and she stayed there, starting where she had left off, reviewing every piece of information, and checking every disposition. Reacher hung out with Leach for a spell, and then he went down the old stone steps and took a long walk, a random figure-eight around bland three-lane blocks. He got back and found her still occupied, so he hung out with Leach some more, and then it went dark, and then she came down the stairs, with a car key in her hand.
She said, ‘Ride with me.’
The little red sports car had been down a few days, but it started fine, and it ran steady, if a little loud and throaty, but Reacher figured that might have been dialled in on purpose by the guy who designed the muffler. Turner put the heater dials in the red and unlatched the top, and dropped it down behind the seats.
‘Like a rock-and-roll song on the radio,’ she said.
She backed out of her slot, and she drove out through the gate, and she turned left, and she followed the bus route, past the motel and onward to the mall, where she pulled up in front of the big stucco place with the Greek style of menu.
‘Buy you dinner?’ she said.
There were all kinds of people in the restaurant. Couples, and families, and children. Some of the children were girls, and some of them might have been fourteen. Turner chose a booth at the front window, and they watched a bus go by, and Reacher said, ‘I’m a detective, and I know what you’re going to say.’
She said, ‘Do you?’
‘It was always fifty-fifty. Like flipping a coin.’
‘That easy?’
‘You have no obligation even to think about it. This was my thing, not yours. I came here. You didn’t come to South Dakota.’
‘That’s true. That’s how it started. I wasn’t sure. But it changed. For a time. Starting in that cell, in the Dyer guardhouse. You were taking Temple away, and you looked over your shoulder at me and told me to wait there. And I did.’
‘You had no choice. You were in the guardhouse.’
‘And now I’m not.’
