Never Go Back

‘If that’s true, then why did they go ahead and come after you? Why would they do that? Why would they go ahead with a very complex and very expensive scam for no reason at all? Why would they risk that hundred grand?’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying Weeks and Edwards did tell you something. I’m saying you do know something. Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, and maybe you don’t remember it now, but Weeks and Edwards gave you some little nugget, and as a result someone got his panties in a real big wad.’

THIRTY-FIVE

TURNER PUT HER bare feet up on the bed and leaned back on the pillow. She said, ‘I’m not senile, Reacher. I remember what they told me. We’re paying a Pashtun insider, and they met with the guy, and he told them an American officer had been seen heading north to meet with a tribal elder. But at that point the identity of the American officer was definitely not known, and the purpose of the meeting was definitely not known.’

Reacher asked, ‘Was there a description?’

‘No, other than American.’

‘Man or woman?’

‘Has to be a man. Pashtun elders don’t meet with women.’

‘Black or white?’

‘Didn’t say.’

‘Army? Marines? Air Force?’

‘We all look the same to them.’

‘Rank? Age?’

‘No details at all. An American officer. That’s all we knew.’

‘There has to be something else.’

‘I know what I know, Reacher. And I know what I don’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘What does that even mean? This is like you and that woman in Korea. No one is aware of forgetting. Except I’m not forgetting. I remember what they said.’

‘How much back and forth was there?’

‘There was what I just told you, about the rumour, and then there were my orders, which were to go chase it. And that was all. One signal out, and one signal back.’

‘What about their last radio check? Did you see it?’

‘It was the last thing I saw, before they came for me. It was pure routine. No progress. Nothing to see here, folks, so move right along. That kind of thing.’

‘So it was in the original message. About the rumour. You’re going to have to try to remember it, word for word.’

‘An unknown American officer was seen heading north to meet with a tribal elder. For an unspecified reason. That’s it, word for word. I already remember it.’

‘What part of that is worth a hundred thousand dollars? And your future, and mine, and Moorcroft’s? And a bruise on a schoolgirl’s arm, in Berryville, Virginia?’

‘I don’t know,’ Turner said.

They went quiet after that. No more talking. No more discussion. Turner lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Reacher leaned on the window sill, running her summary through his head, fourteen words, a perfect sentence, with a subject and an object and a verb, and a satisfying rhythm, and a pleasing cadence: An unknown American officer was seen heading north to meet with a tribal elder. He went over and over it, and then he broke it into thirds, and stared it down, clause by clause.

An unknown American officer.

Was seen heading north.

To meet with a tribal elder.

Twenty-three syllables. Not a haiku. Or, a little less than a haiku and a half.

Meaning?

Uncertain, but he sensed a tiny inconsistency between the start of the sentence and its finish, like a grain of sand in an otherwise perfect mechanism.

An unknown American.

A tribal elder.

Meaning?

He didn’t know.

He said, ‘I’ll get going now. We’ll come back to it tomorrow. It might creep up on you in the night. That can happen. Something to do with the way the brain reacts to sleep. Memory processing, or a portal to the