Never Go Back

much?’
    ‘A thousand an hour.’
    ‘Is she available now?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Does she take credit cards?’
    ‘Yes, but then she’s twelve hundred an hour.’
    Reacher said nothing.
    The foreign woman said, ‘She can be with you in less than thirty minutes, and she’s worth every penny. How would you like her to dress?’
    ‘Like a grade-school teacher,’ Reacher said. ‘About a year out of college.’
    ‘Girl next door? That’s always a popular look.’
    Reacher gave his name as Pete Lozano, and he gave the name and the address of the motel behind him.
    ‘Is that next to the airport parking lot?’ the foreign woman asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Reacher said.
    ‘We use it a lot. Emily will have no trouble finding it.’
    Reacher clicked off the call, and they got comfortable, and they waited, not talking, doing nothing at all but look ahead through the windshield.
    After ten minutes Turner said, ‘You OK?’
    Reacher said, ‘Not really.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I’m sitting here staring at fourteen-year-old girls. I feel like a pervert.’
    ‘Recognize any?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    Altogether they waited more than thirty-five minutes, and then Reacher’s phone rang. Not the foreign woman calling back with an excuse for Emily’s lateness, but Captain Edmonds calling back with what she announced as front-page news. Reacher tilted the phone and Turner put her head close to listen. Edmonds said, ‘I got the full jacket on A.M. 3435. It came through five minutes ago. Not without a little hustle on my part, I might add.’
    Reacher said, ‘And?’
    ‘No, really, you’re most welcome, major. Absolutely my pleasure. I don’t mind risking my entire career by entering in where JAG captains should fear to tread.’
    ‘OK, thank you. I should have said that first. I’m sorry.’
    ‘Some things you need to understand. We’ve been in Afghanistan more than ten years now, and in that context 3435 is a relatively low number. Currently we’re well over a hundred thousand. Which means the data on this man was created some time ago. About seven years ago, I think, as far as I can tell. And there have been no significant updates. Nothing beyond the routine minimum. Because this is a fairly ordinary guy. Boring, even. At first glance he’s a meaningless peasant.’
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘Emal Gholam Zadran. He’s now forty-two years old, and he’s the youngest of five Zadran brothers, all of them still alive. He seems to be the black sheep of the family, widely regarded as disreputable. The elder brothers are all fine upstanding poppy growers, working the family farm, like their ancestors did for a thousand years before them, very traditional, small time and modest. But young Emal didn’t want to settle for that. He tried his hand at a number of things, and failed at them all. His brothers forgave him, and took him back, and as far as anyone knows he lives near them in the hills, does absolutely nothing productive, and keeps himself to himself.’
    ‘What was he written up for seven years ago?’
    ‘One of the things he tried out, and failed at.’
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘Nothing was proved, or we’d have shot him.’
    ‘What wasn’t proved?’
    ‘The story is he set up as an entrepreneur. He was buying hand grenades from the 10th Mountain Division and selling them to the Taliban.’
    ‘How much did he get for them?’
    ‘It doesn’t say.’
    ‘Not proved?’
    ‘They tried their best.’
    ‘Why didn’t they shoot him anyway?’
    ‘Reacher, you’re talking to an army lawyer here. Nothing was proved, and we’re the United States of America.’
    ‘Suppose I wasn’t talking to an army lawyer.’
    ‘Then I would say nothing was proved, and right then we were probably kissing Afghan butt and hoping they would set up a civilian government of their own at some point in the not-too-distant future, so we could get the hell out of there, and in that atmosphere shooting indigenous individuals against whom nothing had been proved, even by our own hair-trigger military justice system, would have been regarded as severely counterproductive. Otherwise I’m sure they would have shot him anyway.’
    ‘You’re pretty smart,’ Reacher said. ‘For an army lawyer.’
    And then he clicked off, because he was watching a kid who had gotten out of a cab and was walking into the motel driveway. She was luminous. She was young and blonde, and fresh and energetic, and somehow earnest, as if she was determined to