The Affair: A Reacher Novel

four, facing forward. If they had all joined me at the same table, I would have had freedom of movement. But they didn’t all join me at the same table. The sergeant sat down face to face with me, but the specialists sat across the aisle, one each side of a table for two. They pulled their chairs out at an angle, one of them ready to intervene if I made a break one way, and the other ready if I broke the other way.
    “You should try the pie,” I said. “It’s really good.”
    “No pie,” the sergeant said.
    “You better order something. Or the waitress might throw you out for loitering. And if you refuse to go, she knows who to call.”
    No answer.
    I said, “There are members of the public here, too. You really can’t afford to attract attention.”
    Stalemate.
    Ten minutes to eight.
    The phone by the door stayed silent.
    The waitress came by and the sergeant shrugged and ordered three pies and three cups of coffee. Two more people came in the door, both of them civilians, one of them a young woman in a nice dress, the other a young man in jeans and a sport coat. They took a table for two, three along from the specialists and directly opposite the old couple from the hotel. They didn’t look much like the kind of folks who would get straight on the phone with their congressman because of a little public mayhem, but the more warm bodies in the room the better.
    The sergeant said, “We’re happy to sit here all night, if that’s what it takes.”
    “Good to know,” I said. “I’m going to sit here until the phone rings, and then I’m going to leave.”
    “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you communicate with anyone. Those are my orders.”
    I said nothing.
    “And I can’t let you leave. Unless you agree to go to Kelham.”
    I said, “Didn’t we just have this discussion?”
    No response.
    The phone didn’t ring.
    Five minutes to eight.
    At eight o’clock the guy in the pale suit paid his check and left, and the old lady from the hotel turned a page in her book. Nothing else happened. The phone stayed quiet. At five past eight I began to hear noise outside, behind us, the sound of cars and crunching tires, and I sensed a change in the nighttime air, like pressure building, as Bravo Company started to arrive in town, first in ones and twos, then by the dozens. I assumed Reed Riley had led the parade in his borrowed staff car, with his father in the seat beside him. I assumed the old guy was at that moment stationed at Brannan’s door, greeting his son’s men, ushering them in, grinning like an idiot.
    The three Rangers boxing me in had eaten their pies one at a time, with the other two always alert and watchful. They were pretty good. By no means the worst I had ever seen. The waitress collected their plates. She seemed to sense what was going on. Every time she passed by she gave me a concerned look. There was no doubt whose side she was on. She knew me, and she didn’t know them. I had tipped her many times, and they hadn’t, not even once.
    The noise from outside continued to build.
    The phone didn’t ring.
    I spent the next few minutes thinking about their Humvee. I knew that like every other Humvee in the world it would have a big General Motors diesel in it, and I knew that like every other Humvee in the world it would have a three-speed automatic transmission in it, and I knew that like every other Humvee in the world it would weigh northof four tons, all of which I knew would make it good for about sixty miles an hour, tops. Which I knew wasn’t race-car fast, but which I knew was fifteen times faster than walking, which I knew was a good thing.
    I waited.
    Then, just after eight-thirty, three things happened. The first was unfortunate, and the second was unprecedented, and the third was therefore awkward.
    First, the young couple left. The girl in the nice dress, and the boy in the sport coat. He laid money on the table, and they got up together and walked out holding hands, fast enough to suggest that an evening prayer meeting was not the next item on their agenda.
    And second, the old couple left. She closed her book, he folded his paper, and they got up and shuffled out the door. Back to the hotel, presumably. Far earlier than ever before. No obvious reason, except possibly a sudden hopeless intuition that old man Riley would cancel the Lear and decide on an early night in town.
    At that point the waitress was in the kitchen, which left just four people in the room, one of which