Die Trying

and gradually. It looked very free-form, but it was a very technical game. Full of hidden attractions. But he could see how a young girl could be seduced by it, long ago in Europe. A frantic night under floodlights in Rotterdam. Resentful and unwilling at first, then hypnotized by the patterns made by the white ball on the green turf. Ending up in love with the game afterward. But something was ringing a warning bell. If the eleven-year-old daughter of an American serviceman had refused to go, it would have caused some kind of an embarrassment within NATO? Was that what she had said?
    “Who was your father?” he asked her. “Sounds like he must have been an important sort of a guy.”
    She turned her head away. Wouldn’t answer. Reacher stared at her. Another warning bell was ringing.
    “Holly, who the hell is your father?” he asked urgently.
    The defensive tone that had been in her voice spread to her face. No answer.
    “Who, Holly?” Reacher asked again.
    She looked away from him. Spoke to the metal siding of the truck. Her voice was almost lost in the road noise. Defensive as hell.
    “General Johnson,” she said quietly. “At that time, he was C-in-C Europe. Do you know him?”
    Reacher stared up at her. General Johnson. Holly Johnson. Father and daughter.
    “I’ve met him,” he said. “But that’s not the point, is it?”
    She glared at him. Furious.
    “Why?” she said. “What exactly is the damn point?”
    “That’s the reason,” he said. “Your father is the most important military man in America, right? That’s why you’ve been kidnapped, Holly, for God’s sake. These guys don’t want Holly Johnson, FBI agent. The whole FBI thing is incidental. These guys want General Johnson’s daughter.”
    She looked down at him like he had just slapped her hard in the face.
    “Why?” she said. “Why the hell does everybody assume everything that ever happens to me is because of who my damn father is?”

16
    MCGRATH BROUGHT BROGAN with him and met Milosevic at Meigs Field Airport in Chicago. He brought the four computer-aided mug shots and the test picture of Holly Johnson. He came expecting total cooperation from the airport staff. And he got it. Three hyped-up FBI agents in the grip of fear about a colleague are a difficult proposition to handle with anything other than total cooperation.
    Meigs Field was a small commercial operation, right out in the lake, water on three sides, just below the 12th Street beach, trying to make a living in the gigantic shadow of O’Hare. Their record keeping was immaculate and their efficiency was first-class. Not so they could be ready to handle FBI inquiries on the spur of the moment, but so they could keep on operating and keep on getting paid right under the nose of the world’s toughest competitor. But their records and their efficiency helped McGrath. Helped him realize within about thirty seconds that he was heading up a blind alley.
    The Meigs Field staff were certain they had never seen Holly Johnson or any of the four kidnappers at any time. Certainly not on Monday, certainly not around one o’clock. They were adamant about it. They weren’t overdoing it. They were just sure about it, with the quiet certainty of people who spend their working days being quietly sure about things, like sending small planes up into the busiest air lanes on the planet.
    And there were no suspicious takeoffs from Meigs Field, nowhere between noon and, say, three o’clock. That was clear. The paperwork was explicit on the subject. The three agents were out of there as briskly as they had entered. The tower staff nodded to themselves and forgot all about them before they were even back in their cars in the small parking lot.
    “OK, square one,” McGrath said. “You guys go check out this dentist situation up in Wilmette. I’ve got things to do. And I’ve got to put in a call to Webster. They must be climbing the walls down there in D.C.”

    SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND two miles from Meigs Field the young man in the woods wanted instructions. He was a good agent, well trained, but as far as undercover work was concerned he was new and relatively inexperienced. Demand for undercover operators was always increasing. The Bureau was hard put to fill all the slots. So people like him got assigned. Inexperienced people. He knew as long as he always remembered he didn’t have all the answers, he’d be OK. He had no ego problem with it. He was always willing to ask for