Bad Luck and Trouble

response from her Pentagon contact: Sorry, no way. New Age is classified. Just seven words, blank and dismissive.
    “Seems he doesn’t owe you all that big,” O’Donnell said.
    “He does,” Neagley said. “Bigger than you could imagine. This says more about New Age than him and me.”
    She scrolled on through her inbox. Then she stopped. There was another message from the same guy. Different version of his name, different e-mail address.
    “Disposable,” Neagley said. “That’s a one-time free account.”
    She clicked on the message. It said: Frances, great to hear from you. We should get together. Dinner and a movie? And I need to return your Hendrix CDs. Thanks so much for the loan. I loved them all. The sixth track on the second album is dynamically brilliant. Let me know when you’re next in Washington. Please call soonest.
    Reacher said, “You own CDs?”
    “No,” Neagley said. “I especially don’t own Jimi Hendrix CDs. I don’t like him.”
    O’Donnell said, “You’ve been to movies and dinner with this guy?”
    “Never,” Neagley said.
    “So he’s confusing you with some other woman.”
    “Unlikely,” Reacher said.
    “It’s coded,” Neagley said. “That’s what it is. It’s the answer to my question. Got to be. A kosher reply from his official address, and then a coded follow-up from an unofficial address. His ass is covered both ways.”
    Dixon asked, “What’s the code?”
    “Something to do with the sixth track on the second Hendrix album.”
    Reacher said, “What was the second Hendrix album?”
    O’Donnell said, “ Electric Ladyland ?”
    “That was later,” Dixon said. “The first was Are You Experienced? ”
    “Which one had the naked women on the cover?”
    “That was Electric Ladyland .”
    “I loved that cover.”
    “You’re disgusting. You were eight years old.”
    “Nearly nine.”
    “That’s still disgusting.”
    Reacher said, “ Axis: Bold as Love. That was the second album.”
    “What was the sixth track?” Dixon asked.
    “I have no idea.”
    O’Donnell said, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

    They walked a long way east on Sunset, until they found a record store. They went inside and found cool air and young people and loud music and the H section in the Rock/Pop aisles. There was a dense foot-and-a-half of Jimi Hendrix albums. Four old titles that Reacher recognized, plus a bunch of posthumous stuff. Axis: Bold as Love was right there, three copies. Reacher pulled one and flipped it. It was wrapped in plastic and the store’s barcode label was stuck over the second half of the track listings.
    Same for the second copy.
    Same for the third.
    “Rip it off,” O’Donnell said.
    “Steal it?”
    “No, rip the plastic off.”
    “Can’t do that. It’s not ours.”
    “You smack cops around but you won’t damage a store’s wrapper?”
    “It’s different.”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to buy it. We can play it in the car. Cars have CD players, right?”
    “For the last hundred years,” Dixon said.
    Reacher took the CD and lined up behind a girl with more metal punched through her face than a grenade victim. He made it to the register and peeled off thirteen of his remaining eight hundred dollars and for the first time in his life became the owner of a digital product.
    “Unwrap it,” O’Donnell said.
    It was wrapped tight. Reacher used his fingernails to scrape up a corner and then his teeth to tear the plastic. When he got it all off he turned the CD over and ran his finger down the track list.
    “‘Little Wing,’” he said.
    O’Donnell shrugged. Neagley looked blank.
    “Doesn’t help,” Dixon said.
    “I know the song,” Reacher said.
    “Please don’t sing it,” Neagley said.
    “So what does it mean?” O’Donnell said.
    Reacher said, “It means New Age makes a weapons system called ‘Little Wing.’”
    “Obviously. But that doesn’t help us if we don’t know what Little Wing is. ”
    “Sounds aeronautical. Like a drone plane or something.”
    “Nobody heard of it?” Dixon asked. “Anybody?”
    O’Donnell shook his head.
    “Not me,” Neagley said.
    “So it really is supersecret,” Dixon said. “No loose lips in D.C. or on Wall Street or among all of Neagley’s connections.”
    Reacher tried to open the CD box but found it taped shut with a title label that ran all the way across the top seam. He picked at it with his nails and it came off in small