61 Hours

menace.’
    Reacher asked, ‘Do you remember the army camp being built out there?’
    Janet Salter shook her head. ‘Chief Holland and Mr Peterson have asked me the same question endlessly. But I know no more than they do. I was away in school when it was built.’
    ‘People say it took months to build. Longer than a semester, probably. Didn’t you hear anything when you were back in town?’
    ‘I went to school overseas. International travel was expensive. I didn’t return during the vacations. In fact I didn’t return for thirty years.’
    ‘Where overseas?’
    ‘Oxford University, in England.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    Janet Salter asked, ‘Have I surprised you?’
    Reacher shrugged. ‘Peterson said you were a teacher and a librarian. I guess I pictured a local school.’
    ‘Mr Peterson has any South Dakotan’s aversion to grandeur. And he’s quite right, anyway. I was a teacher and a librarian. I was Professor of Library Science at Oxford, and then I helped run the Bodleian Library there, and then I came back to the United States to run the library at Yale, and then I retired and came home to Bolton.’
    ‘What’s your favourite book?’
    ‘I don’t have one. What’s yours?’
    ‘I don’t have one either.’
    Janet Salter said, ‘I know all about the crisis plan at the prison.’
    ‘They tell me it has never been used.’
    ‘But as with all things, one imagines there will be a first time, and that it will come sooner or later.’
    Plato skipped lunch, which was unusual for him. Normally he liked the ritual and ceremony of three meals a day. His staff duly prepared a dish, but he didn’t show up to eat it. Instead he walked on a serpentine path through the scrub on his property, moving fast, talking on his cell phone, his shirt going dark with sweat.
    His guy in the American DEA had made a routine scan through all their wiretap transcripts and had called with a warning. Plato didn’t like warnings. He liked solutions, not problems. His DEA guy knew that, and had already reached out to a colleague. No way to stop the hapless Russian getting busted, but things could be delayed until after the deal was done, so that the money could disappear safely into the ether and Plato could walk away enriched and unscathed. All it would cost was four years of college tuition. The colleague had a sixteen-year-old and no savings. Plato had asked how much college cost, and had been mildly shocked at the answer. A person could buy a decent car for that kind of money.
    Plato had only one remaining problem. The place in South Dakota was a multipurpose facility. Most of its contents could be sold, but not all of them. Some of them had to be moved out first. Like selling a house. You left the stove, you took the sofa.
    He trusted no one. Which helped, most of the time. But at other times it gave him difficulties. Like now. Who could he ask to pack and ship? He couldn’t call Allied Van Lines. FedEx or UPS were no good.
    His reluctant conclusion was that if you wanted something done properly, you had to do it yourself.
    Janet Salter patted the air to make Reacher stay where he was and started to clear the table around him. She asked, ‘How much do you know about methamphetamine?’
    Reacher said, ‘Less than you, probably.’
    ‘I’m not that kind of girl.’
    ‘But you’re that kind of librarian. I’m sure you’ve researched it extensively.’
    ‘You first.’
    ‘I was in the military.’
    ‘Which implies?’
    ‘Certain situations and certain operations called for what the field manuals described as alertness, focus, motivation, and mental clarity, for extended periods. The doctors had all kinds ofpep pills available. Straight meth was on its way out when I came on the job, but it had been around before that, for decades.’
    Janet Salter nodded. ‘It was called Pervitin. A German refinement of a Japanese discovery. It was in widespread use during World War Two. It was baked into candy bars.
Fliegerschokolade
, which means flyers’ chocolate, and
Panzerschokolade
, which means tankers’ chocolate. The Allies had it, also. Just as much, actually. Maybe more. They called it Desoxyn. I’m surprised anyone ever slept.’
    ‘They had morphine for sleeping.’
    ‘But now it’s controlled. Because it causes terrible damage to those who abuse it. So it has to be manufactured illegally. Which is relatively easy to do, in small home laboratories. But the manufacture of anything requires raw materials.