7

The material used to pack the twenty-two-inch cavity between the outside of the old walls and the inside of the new walls was hauled over from its storage shed in an open pickup truck. There was a ton of it and it took four trips. Each consignment was carefully unloaded by a team of eight volunteers. They worked together like an old-fashioned bucket-brigade attending a fire. They passed each box along, hand to hand, into the building, up the stairs to the second floor. The boxes were stacked in the hallway outside the modified corner room. The three builders opened each box in turn and carried the material into the room. Then they stacked it carefully into the wide spaces behind the new softwood framing. The unloaders generally paused for a moment and watched them, grateful for a moment of rest.

The process lasted most of the afternoon because of the amount of material and the care they took in moving it. When the last of the four loads was stacked upstairs, the eight volunteers dispersed. Seven of them headed for the mess hall. The eighth stretched in the last of the afternoon sun and strolled off. It was his habit. Four or five times a week, he would take a long walk on his own, especially after a period of heavy work. It was assumed to be his way of relaxing.

He strolled in the forest. There was a beaten path running west through the silence. He followed it for a half-mile. Then he paused and stretched again. He used the weary twisting motion of a tired man easing a sore back to glance around a complete circle. Then he stepped sideways off the path. Stopped strolling. Started an urgent walk. He dodged trees and followed a wide looping course west, then north. He went straight for a particular tree. There was a large flat rock bedded in needles at its base. He stood still and waited. Listened hard. Then he ducked down and heaved the rock to one side. Underneath was a rectangular shape wrapped in oilcloth. He unfolded the cloth and took out a small hand-held radio. Pulled the stubby antenna and hit a button and waited. Then he whispered a long and excited message.

When the old building was quiet again, the employer stopped by with some strange new instructions. The three builders asked no questions. Just listened carefully. The guy was entitled to get what he wanted. The new instructions meant a certain amount of work would have to be redone. In the circumstances, not a problem. Even less of a problem when the employer offered a cash bonus on top of the bid price.

The three builders worked fast and it took them less time than it might have. But it was already evening by the time they finished. The junior man stayed behind to pack tools and coil cables. The crew chief and the other guy drove north in the dark and parked exactly where the employer had told them to. Got out of their truck and waited in the silence.

"In here," a voice called. The employer. "All the way in back."

They went in. The place was dark. The guy was waiting for them, somewhere in the shadows.

"These boards any use to you?" the employer asked.

There was a stack of old pine boards, way in back.

"They're good lumber," the employer said. "Maybe you can use them. Like recycling, you know?"

There was something else on the ground beside the stack of boards. Something strange. The two carpenters stared. Strange humped shapes. The two carpenters stared at the strange humped shapes, then they stared at each other. Then they turned around. The employer smiled at them and raised a dull black automatic.

The resident agent at the FBI's remote satellite, station was a smart enough guy to realize it was going to be important. He didn't know exactly how or why it was going to be important, but an undercover informant doesn't risk a radio message from a concealed location for no reason. So he copied the details into the FBI computer system. His report flashed across the computer network and lodged in the massive mainframe on the first floor of the FBI's Hoover Building in Washington, DC. The Hoover Building database handles more new reports in a day than there are seconds, so it took a long moment for the FBI software to scan through and pick out the key words. Once it had done so, it lodged the bulletin high in its memory and waited.

At exactly the same time, the system was logging a message from the FBI Field Office in Chicago. The bureau chief up there, Agent-in-Charge McGrath, was reporting that he'd lost one of his people. Special Agent Holly Johnson was missing, last seen twelve o'clock Chicago time, whereabouts currently unknown, contact attempted but not achieved. And because Holly Johnson was a pretty special case, the message carried an eyes-only code which kept it off every terminal in the building except the one all the way upstairs in the director's office.

The director of the FBI got out of a budget review meeting just before seven-thirty in the evening. He walked back to his office suite and checked his messages. His name was Harland Webster and he had been with the Bureau thirty-six years. He had one more year to run on his term as director, and then he'd be gone. So he wasn't looking for trouble, but he found it glowing on the monitor of his desktop terminal. He clicked on the report and read it through twice. He sighed at the screen.

"Shit," he said. "Shit, shit, shit."

The report in from McGrath in Chicago was not the worst news Webster had ever had in thirty-six years, but it came pretty damn close. He buzzed the intercom on his desk and his secretary answered.

"Get me McGrath in Chicago," he said.

"He's on line one," his secretary told him. "He's been waiting for you."

Webster grunted and hit the button for line one. Put the call on the speakerphone and leaned back in his chair.

"Mack?" he said. "So what's the story?"

McGrath's voice came in clear from Chicago.

"Hello, chief," he said. "There is no story. Not yet. Maybe we're worrying too early, but I got a bad feeling when she didn't show. You know how it is."

"Sure, Mack," Webster said. "You want to confuse me with some facts?"

"We don't have any facts," McGrath said. "She didn't show for a five o'clock case conference. That struck me as unusual. There were no messages from her anywhere. Her pager and her cellphone are out of commission. I asked around and the last anybody saw of her was about twelve o'clock,"

"She was in the office this morning?" Webster asked.

"All morning," McGrath said.

"Any appointments before this five o'clock thing?" Webster said.

"Nothing in her diary," McGrath said. "I don't know what she was doing or where she was doing it."

"Christ, Mack," Webster said. "You were supposed to take care of her. You were supposed to keep her off the damn streets, right?"

"It was her lunch break," McGrath said. "What the hell could I do?"

There was a silence in the director's suite, broken only by the faint hum on the speakerphone. Webster drummed his fingers on his desk.

"What was she working on?" he asked.

"Forget it," McGrath said. "We can assume this is not interference by a Bureau suspect, right? Doesn't make any kind of sense in her case."

Webster nodded to himself.

"In her case, I agree, I guess," he said. "So what else are we looking at?"

"She was injured," McGrath said. "Tore up her knee playing ball. We figure maybe she fell, made it worse, maybe ended up in the ER. We're checking the hospitals now."

Webster grunted.

"Or else there's a boyfriend we don't know about," McGrath said. "Maybe they're in a motel room somewhere, getting laid."

"For six hours?" Webster said. "I should be so lucky."

There was silence again. Then Webster sat forward.

"OK, Mack," he said. "You know what to do. And you know what not to do, case like hers, right? Keep in touch. I've got to go to the Pentagon. I'll be back in an hour. Call me then if you need me."

Webster broke the connection and buzzed his secretary to call his car. Then he walked out to his private elevator and rode down to the underground parking lot. His driver met him there and they walked together over to the director's bulletproof limousine.

"Pentagon," Webster said to his driver.

Traffic wasn't bad, seven-thirty on a June Monday evening. Took about eleven minutes to do the two and a half miles. Webster spent the time making urgent calls on his mobile. Calls to various locations within such a tight geographical radius that he could probably have reached them all by shouting. Then the big car came up to the Pentagon River Entrance and the Marine sentry stepped over. Webster clicked off his phone and buzzed his window down for the identification ritual.

The director of the FBI," he said. "To see the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff."

The sentry snapped a salute and waved the limousine through. Webster buzzed the window back up and waited for the driver to stop. Then he got out and ducked in through the personnel door. Walked through to the chairman's suite. The chairman's secretary was waiting for him.

"Go right through, sir," she said. "The general will be along in a moment."

Webster walked into the chairman's office and stood waiting. He looked out through the window. The view was magnificent, but it had a strange metallic tint. The window was made of one-way, bulletproof Mylar. It was a great view, but the window was on the outside of the building, right next to the River Entrance, so it had to be protected. Webster could see his car, with his driver waiting beside it. Beyond the car was a view of the Capitol, across the Potomac. Webster could see sailboats in the Tidal Basin, with the last of the evening sun glinting low on the water. Not a bad office, Webster thought. Better than mine, he thought.

Meeting with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was a problem for the director of the FBI. It was one of those Beltway oddities, a meeting where there was no cast-iron ranking. Who was superior? Both were presidential appointees. Both reported to the president through just one intermediary, the defense secretary or the attorney general. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was the highest-ranking military post that the nation had to offer. The director of the FBI was the highest-ranking law-enforcement post. Both men were at the absolute top of their respective greasy poles. But which greasy pole was taller? It was a problem for Webster. In the end, it was a problem for him because the truth was his pole was shorter. He controlled a budget of two billion dollars and about twenty-five thousand people. The chairman oversaw a budget of two hundred billion and about a million people. Two million if you added in the National Guard and the Reserves. The chairman was in the Oval Office about once a week. Webster got there twice a year, if he was lucky. No wonder this guy's office was better.

The chairman himself was impressive too. He was a four-star general whose rise had been spectacular. He had come from nowhere and blitzed upward through the army just about faster than his tailor could sew the ribbons on his uniform. The guy had ended up lopsided with medals. Then he had been hijacked by Washington and moved in and made the place his own, like it was some military objective. Webster heard his arrival in the anteroom and turned to greet him as he came into the office.

"Hello, General," he said.

The chairman sketched a busy wave and grinned.

"You want to buy some missiles?" he said.

Webster was surprised.

"You're selling them?" he said. "What missiles?"

The chairman shook his head and smiled.

"Just kidding," he said. "Arms limitation. Russians have gotten rid of a bomber base in Siberia, so now we've got to get rid of the missiles we assigned against it. Treaty compliance, right? Got to play fair. The big stuff, we're selling to Israel. But we've still got about a couple hundred little ones, you know, Stingers, shoulder-launch surface-to-air things. All surplus. Sometimes I think we should sell them to the dope dealers. God knows they've got everything else they want. Better weapons than we've got, most of them."

The chairman talked his way around to his chair and sat down. Webster nodded. He'd seen presidents do a similar thing, tell a joke, tell a light-hearted story, man-to-man, get the ice broken, make the meeting work. The chairman leaned back and smiled.

"So what can I do for you, Director?" he asked.

"We got a report in from Chicago," Webster said. "Your daughter is missing."

8

By midnight in Chicago the third-floor conference room was set up as a command center. FBI technicians had swarmed all evening, running phone lines into the room and installing computer terminals in a line down the center of the hardwood table. Now at midnight it was dark and cool and quiet. Shiny blackness outside the wall of glass. No scramble to decide which side of the table was better.

Nobody had gone home. There were seventeen agents sprawled in the leather chairs. Even the Bureau lawyer was still there. No real reason for that, but the guy was feeling the same triple-layered response they all were. The Bureau looks after its own. That was layer number one. The Chicago Field Office looks after Holly Johnson. That was layer number two. Not just because of her connections. That had nothing to do with it. Holly was Holly. And layer number three was what McGrath wanted, McGrath got. If McGrath was worried about Holly, then they all were worried, and they all were going to stay worried until she was found, safe and sound. So they were all still there. Quiet, and worried. Until McGrath came loudly and cheerfully into the room, making a big entrance, smoking like his life depended on it.

"Good news, people, listen up, listen up," he called out.

He dodged his way through to the head of the table. Murmuring died into sudden silence. Eighteen pairs of eyes, followed him.

"We found her," he called out. "We found her, OK? She's safe and well. Panic's over, folks. We can all relax now."

Eighteen voices started talking all at once. All asking the same urgent questions. McGrath held his hands up for quiet, like a nominee at a rally.

"She's in the hospital," he said. "What happened is her surgeon got a window for this afternoon he wasn't expecting. He called her, she went right over, they took her straight to the OR. She's fine, she's convalescing, and she's embarrassed as all hell for the fuss she's caused."

The eighteen voices started up again, and McGrath let them rumble on for a moment. Then he held his hands up again.

"So, panic over, right?" he called out again, smiling.

The rumbling got lighter in tone as relief fueled the voices.

"So, people, home to bed," McGrath said. "Full working day tomorrow, right? But thanks for being here. From me, and from Holly. Means a lot to her. Brogan and Milosevic, you stay awhile, share out her workload for the rest of the week. The rest of you, goodnight, sleep well, and thanks again, gentlemen."

Fifteen agents and the lawyer smiled and yawned and stood up. Jostled cheerfully and noisily out of the room. McGrath and Brogan and Milosevic were left scattered in random seats, far from each other. McGrath walked over in the sudden silence to the door. Closed it quietly. Turned back and faced the other two.

"That was all bullshit," he said. "As I'm sure you both guessed."

Brogan and Milosevic just stared at him.

"Webster called me," McGrath said. "And I'm sure you can both guess why. Major, major DC involvement. They're going ape shit down there. V.I.P kidnap, right? Webster's been given personal responsibility. He wants total secrecy and minimum numbers. He wants everybody up here off this case right now except me plus a team of two. My choice. I picked the two of you because you know her best. So it's the three of us. We deal direct with Webster, and we don't talk to anybody else at all, OK?"

Brogan stared at him and nodded. Milosevic nodded in turn. They knew they were the obvious choices for the job. But to be chosen by McGrath for any reason was an honor. They knew it, and they knew McGrath knew they knew it. So they nodded again, more firmly. Then there was silence for a long moment. McGrath's cigarette smoke mingled with the silence up near the ceiling. The clock on the wall ticked around toward half past midnight.

"OK," Brogan said finally. "So what now?"

"We work all night, is what," McGrath said. "All day, all night, every day, every night, until we find her."

He glanced at the two of them. Reviewed his choices. An adequate team, he thought. A good mixture. Brogan was older, drier, a pessimist. A compact man with a tidy, ordered approach, laced with enough imagination to make him useful. An untidy private life, with a girlfriend and a couple of ex-wives somewhere, all costing him big bucks and worry, but it never interfered with his work. Milosevic was younger, less intuitive, flashier, but solid. A permanent sidekick, which was not necessarily a fault. A weakness for big expensive four-wheel-drives, but everybody needs some kind of a hobby. Both of them were medium-term Bureau veterans, with mileage on their clocks and scalps on their belts. Both of them were focused and neither of them ever bitched about the work or the hours. Or the salary, which made them just about unique. An adequate team. They were new to Chicago, but this investigation was not going to stay in Chicago. McGrath was just about sure of that.

"Milo, you figure out her movements," he said. "Every step, every minute from twelve noon."

Milosevic nodded vaguely, like he was already lost in doing that.

"Brogan, background checks," McGrath said. "We need to find some reason here."

Brogan nodded dourly, like he knew the reason was going to be the beginning and the end of the whole thing.

"I start with the old guy?" he asked.

"Obviously," McGrath said. That's what I would do."

"OK, which one?" Brogan asked.

"Whichever one," McGrath replied. "Your choice."

Seventeen hundred and two miles away another executive decision had been taken. A decision about the third carpenter. The employer drove back to the white building in the crew chiefs pickup. The third carpenter had finished up stacking the tools and he took a step forward when he saw the vehicle approaching. Then he stopped in puzzlement when he saw the huge figure at the wheel. He stood, uncertain, while the employer pulled up at the curb and heaved himself out.

"OK?" the employer said to him.

"Where are the guys?" the carpenter asked.

"Something came up," the employer said. "Something came up."

"Problem?" the guy asked.

He went quiet, because he was thinking about his share of the price. A minority share, for sure, because he was the junior guy, but a minority share of that price was still more cash than he'd seen in a long time.

"You got a saw there?" the employer asked.

The guy just looked at him.

"Dumb question, right?" the employer said. "You're a carpenter and I'm asking you if you got a saw? Just show me your best saw."

The guy stood still for a moment, then he ducked down and pulled a power saw from the stack of tools. A big thing in dull metal, wicked circular blade, fresh sawdust caked all around it.

"Crosscut?" the employer asked. "Good for ripping through real tough stuff?"

The guy nodded.

"It does the job," he said, cautiously.

"OK, here's the deal," the employer said. "We need a demonstration."

"Of the saw?" the guy asked.

"Of the room," the employer said.

"The room?" the guy repeated.

"Supposed to be nobody can get out of it," the employer said. "That's the idea behind it, right?"

"You designed it," the guy said.

"But did you build it right?" the employer said. "That's what I'm asking here. We need a trial run. A demonstration to prove it serves its purpose."

"OK, how?" the guy asked.

"You go in there," the employer said. "See if you can get out by morning. You built it, right? So you know all the weak spots. If anybody can get out, you can, that's for damn sure, right?"

The guy was quiet for a long moment. Trying to understand.

"And if I can?" he asked.

The employer shrugged.

"Then you don't get paid," he said. "Because you didn't build it right."

The guy went quiet again. Wondering if the employer was joking.

"You spot the flaw in my logic?" the employer asked. "The way you're figuring it right now, it's in your interest just to sit there on your ass all night, then tomorrow you say to me no sir, I couldn't get out of there, no sir, not at all."

The carpenter laughed a short nervous laugh.

"That's how I was thinking," he said.

"So what you need is an incentive," the employer said. "Understand? To make sure you try real hard to get out."

The carpenter glanced up at the blanked-off second-story corner. When he glanced back down, there was a dull black automatic in the employer's hand.

"There's a sack in the truck," the employer said, "go get it, OK?"

The carpenter just looked around, astonished. The employer pointed the gun at his head.

"Get the sack," he said quietly.

There was nothing in the pickup bed. There was a burlap sack on the passenger seat. Wrapped into a package maybe a foot and a half long. It was heavy. Felt like reaching into a freezer at the market and pulling out a side of pig.

"Open it up," the employer called. "Take a look."

The carpenter peeled back the burlap. First thing he saw was a finger. Icy white, because the blood had drained. Yellow workman's calluses standing out, big and obvious.

"I'm going to put you in the room now," the employer called to him. "You don't get out by morning, I'm going to do that to you, OK? With your own damn saw, because mine went dull doing those."

9

Reacher lay quietly on the dirty straw in his stall in the cow barn. Not asleep, but his body was shut down to the point where he might as well have been. Every muscle was relaxed and his breathing was slow and even. His eyes were closed because the barn was dark and there was nothing to see. But his mind was wide awake. Not racing, but just powering steadily along with that special nighttime intensity you get in the absence of any other distractions.

He was doing two things at once. First he was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock on to the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be ready for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is.

The second simultaneous thing Reacher was doing was playing around with a little mental arithmetic. He was multiplying big numbers in his head. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old, just about to the day. Thirty-seven multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five was thirteen thousand five hundred and five. Plus twelve days for twelve leap years was thirteen thousand five hundred and seventeen. Eight months counting from his birthday in October forward to this date in June was two hundred and forty-three days. Total of thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days since he was born. Thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days, thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty nights. He was trying to place this particular night somewhere on that endless scale. In terms of how bad it was.

Truth was, it wasn't the best night he had ever passed, but it was a long way from being the worst. A very long way. The first four or so years of his life, he couldn't remember anything at all, which left about twelve thousand three hundred nights to account for. Probability was, this particular night was up there in the top third. Without even trying hard, he could have reeled off thousands of nights worse than this one. Tonight, he was warm, comfortable, uninjured, not under any immediate threat, and he'd been fed. Not well, but he felt that came from a lack of skill rather than from active malice. So physically he had no complaints.

Mentally it was a different story. He was suspended in a vacuum just as impenetrable as the darkness inside the cow barn. The problem was the total lack of information. He was not a guy who necessarily felt uncomfortable with some lack of information. He was the son of a Marine officer and he had lived the military life literally all the way since birth. Therefore confusion and unpredictability were what he was accustomed to. But tonight there was just too much missing.

He didn't know where he was. Whether by accident or by design, the three kidnapers had given him absolutely no clue at all where they were headed. It made him feel adrift. His particular problem was, living the military life from birth, out of those thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days of his life he'd spent probably much less than a fifth of them actually inside the United States. He was as American as the president, but he'd lived and served all over the world most of his life. Outside the United States. It had left him knowing his own country about as well as the average seven-year-old knows it. So he couldn't decode the subtle rhythms and feel and smells of America as well as he wanted to. It was possible that somebody else could interpret the unseen contours of the invisible landscape or the feel of the air or the temperature of the night and say yes, I'm in this state now or that state now. It was possible people could do that. But Reacher couldn't. It gave him a problem.

Added to that he had no idea who the kidnapers were. Or what their business was. Or what their intentions were. He'd studied them closely, every opportunity he'd had. Conclusions were difficult. The evidence was all contradictory. Three of them, youngish, maybe somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, fit, trained to act together with a measure of efficiency. They were almost military, but not quite. They were organized, but not official. Their appearance shrieked: amateurs.

Because they were so neat. They all had new clothes, plain chain store cottons and poplins, fresh haircuts. Their weapons were fresh out of the box. The Glocks were brand-new. The shotgun was brand-new, packing grease still visible.