The Affair: A Reacher Novel

was me, and three of which were my babysitters.
    The sergeant smiled and said, “Just us now.”
    I didn’t answer.
    He said, “No members of the public.”
    I didn’t answer.
    He said, “And I don’t think the waitress is the complaining type. Not really. She knows this place could end up on the shit list easy as anything. For a month. Or two. Or for however long it takes to put her on welfare.”
    He was leaning forward across the table. Closer to me than before. Looking straight at me. His two men were leaning forward across the aisle, elbows on knees, hands loose, feet planted, watching me.
    Then the third thing happened.
    The phone rang.

Chapter
83
    The three Rangers were good. Very good. The phone was a traditional old item with a big metal bell inside, which rang for a whole lazy second before adding a reverberation tail that took another whole lazy second to die away, whereupon the sequence would repeat itself endlessly until either the call was answered or the caller gave up. An old-fashioned, comforting sound, familiar for a hundred years. But on this occasion before the first ring was halfway over all three Rangers were in motion. The guy directly to my left was instantly on his feet, lunging behind me, putting big hands on my shoulders, pressing me down into my seat, hauling me back past the vertical, keeping me in a weak and inefficient position. The sergeant opposite me was instantly leaning forward, grabbing my wrists, pressing them into the tabletop with the flat of his hands. The third guy came up out of his chair and balled his fists and blocked the aisle, ready to hit me anywhere he could if I moved.
    A fine performance.
    I offered no resistance.
    I just sat there.
    Everyone has a plan, me included.
    The phone rang on.
    Three rings later the waitress came out of the kitchen. She paused a beat and took one look and then pushed past the Ranger in the aisleand headed for the phone. She picked up and listened and glanced my way and started talking, looking at me the whole time, as if she was describing my current predicament to someone.
    To Frances Neagley, I assumed.
    Or I hoped.
    The waitress listened again for a moment and then trapped the phone between her ear and her shoulder and took out her order pad and her pen. She started writing. And kept on writing. Practically an essay. She started a second page. The guy behind me kept the pressure on. The sergeant kept hold of my wrists. The third guy moved closer. The waitress made shapes with her mouth as she concentrated on spelling unfamiliar words. Then she stopped writing and checked back through what she had, and she swallowed once and blinked twice as if the next part of her task was going to be difficult.
    She hung up the phone. She tore out her two written pages and held them as if they were hot. She took a step toward us. The guy behind me took his weight off my shoulders. The sergeant let go of my wrists. The third guy sat down again.
    The waitress walked the length of the aisle, right into our little group, a fifth member, and she shuffled one written page on top of the other, and she checked the three guys’ collars, and she focused on the sergeant. The man in charge.
    She said, “I have a two-part message for you, sir.”
    The guy nodded at her and she started reading.
    She said, “First, whoever you are, you should let this man go immediately, for both your own sake and the army’s, because second, whoever you are and whatever your orders and whatever you think on this occasion, he’s likely to be right and you’re likely to be wrong. This message comes from an NCO of equal rank, with nothing but the army’s and your best interests at heart.”
    Silence.
    The sergeant said, “Noted.”
    Nothing more.
    Neagley
, I thought.
Good try
.
    Then the waitress leaned forward and put her second handwritten page face down on the table and slid it toward me, fast and easy, thesame way she had slid a million diner checks before. I trapped it under my left palm and kept my right hand ready.
    No one moved.
    The waitress stood still for a second, and then she walked back to the kitchen.
    I used the ball of my left thumb and curled the top of the paper upward, like a guy playing poker, and I read the first two lines of my message. Seven words. The first of them was a Latin preposition. Typical Neagley.
Per
. Meaning in this context
According to
. The next six words were
United States Marine Corps Personnel Command
. Which meant that whatever