One Shot

him. He hadn’t been in KC long. Not long enough to know anything. He was just killing people. For fun. He confessed to that, to me personally, before any of the other stuff ever came to light.”
    Silence in the room.
    “So we hushed it up and mustered him out,” Reacher said. “We said his four guys had been killed by Palestinians, which was plausible in Kuwait City in 1991. I was mildly pissed about the whole thing. It wasn’t the worst situation I had ever seen, but it wasn’t the nicest, either. James Barr got away with murder, by sheer luck. So I went to see him before he left and I told him to justify his great good fortune by never stepping out of line again, not ever, the whole rest of his life. I told him if he ever did, I would come find him and make him sorry.”
    Silence in the room. It lasted minutes.
    “So here I am,” Reacher said.
    “This must be classified information,” Helen Rodin said. “I mean, surely it can’t ever be
used.
There would be a huge scandal.”
    Reacher nodded. “It’s highly classified. It’s sealed inside the Pentagon. That’s why I asked if this conversation was privileged.”
    “You’d get in big trouble if you talked about it.”
    “I’ve been in big trouble before. I came here to find out if I needed to get in big trouble again. As it happens, I don’t think I do. I think your father can put James Barr away without my help. But my help is always available if he needs it.”
    Then Helen understood.
    “You’re here to pressure me,” she said. “Aren’t you? You’re telling me if I try too hard, you’ll cut me off at the knees.”
    “I’m here to keep my promise,” Reacher said. “To James Barr.”

    He closed the door and left them there, three silent and disappointed people in a room. Then he rode down in the elevator. Ann Yanni got in again on two. He wondered for a moment if she spent all day riding the elevators, hoping to be recognized. Hoping to be asked for an autograph. He ignored her. Got out with her in the lobby and just headed for the door.
    He stood for a moment in the plaza. Deciding. James Barr’s medical condition was the complicating factor. He didn’t want to stick around until the guy woke up. If that happened at all, it might take weeks. And Reacher was not a guy who liked to stick around. He liked to be on the move. Two days in one place was about his limit. But he was stuck for alternatives. He couldn’t hint at anything to Alex Rodin. Couldn’t give him a call-me-if-you-need-me number. For one thing, he didn’t have a phone. For another, a guy as squared away and cautious as Alex Rodin was would worry away at the hint until something began to unravel. He would make the link to the Pentagon easily enough. Reacher had even asked
did she get my name from the Pentagon?
That had been a careless mistake. So Alex Rodin would put two and two together, eventually. He would figure,
There’s something extra here, and I can find out what it is from the Pentagon.
The Pentagon would stonewall him, of course. But Rodin wouldn’t like being stonewalled. He would go to the media. Ann Yanni, probably. She would be ready for another network story. And at bottom Rodin would be insecure enough about losing the case that he would simply
have
to know. He wouldn’t give up on it.
    And Reacher didn’t want the story out there. Not unless it was absolutely necessary. Gulf War vets had it hard enough, with the chemical stuff and the uranium poisoning. All they had going for them was the conflict’s spotless just-war reputation. They didn’t need defaming by association with people like Barr and his victims. People would say,
Hey, they were all doing it.
And they weren’t all doing it, in Reacher’s experience. That had been a good army. So he didn’t want the story out there unless it was absolutely necessary, and he wanted to judge that for himself.
    So, no hints to Alex Rodin. No call-me contingencies.
    So . . . what, exactly?
    He decided to stick around for twenty-four hours. Maybe there would be a clearer prognosis on Barr’s condition after that. Maybe somehow he could check with Emerson and get a better feel for the evidence. Then maybe he could feel OK about leaving things with Alex Rodin’s office, on a kind of forensic autopilot. If there were problems down the road maybe he would read about them in a newspaper somewhere, far in the future, on a beach or in a bar, and then he could come all the way back again.
    So,