Never Go Back

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 subconscious, or something like that. I read an article about it once, in a magazine I found on a bus.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Don’t get going,’ she said. ‘Stay here.’
    Reacher paused a beat.
    He said, ‘Really?’
    ‘Do you want to?’
    ‘Does the Pope sleep in the woods?’
    ‘Then take your shirt off.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Take it off, Reacher.’
    So he did. He hauled the thin stretchy cotton up over his shoulders, and then up over his head, and then he dropped it on the floor.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said.
    And then he waited, like he always did, for her to count his scars.
    ‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘You’re not just feral. You’re an actual animal.’
    ‘We’re all animals,’ he said. ‘That’s what makes things interesting.’
    ‘How much do you work out?’
    ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s genetic.’ Which it was. Puberty had brought him many things unbidden, including height and weight and an extreme mesomorph physique, with a six-pack like a cobbled city street, and a chest like a suit of NFL armour, and biceps like basketballs, and subcutaneous fat like a Kleenex tissue. He had never messed with any of it. No diets. No weights. No gym time. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, was his attitude.
    ‘Pants now,’ she said.
    ‘I’m not wearing anything underneath.’
    She smiled.
    ‘Me neither,’ she said.
    He undid his button. He dropped his zip. He pushed the canvas over his hips. He stepped out. One step