The Affair: A Reacher Novel

the concourse. Too much collateral damage. This was 1997, remember. March eleventh. Four and a half years before the new rules. Much better to wait until I was inside the lobby. The two stooges could close the doors behind me and form up shoulder to shoulder in front of them while I was getting the bad news at the desk. At that point theoretically I could turn back and fight my way past them again, but it would take me a second or two, and in that second or two the four guys with nothing to do could shoot me in the back about a thousand times.
    And if I charged forward they could shoot me in the front. And where would I go anyway? To escape
into
the Pentagon was no kind of a good idea. The world’s largest office building. Thirty thousand people. Five floors. Two basements. Seventeen miles of corridors. There are ten radial hallways between the rings, and they say a person can make it between any two random points inside a maximum seven minutes, which was presumably calculated with reference to the army’s official quick-march pace of four miles an hour, which meant if I was running hard I could be anywhere within about three minutes. But where? I could find a broom closet and steal bag lunches and holdout a day or two, but that would be all. Or I could take hostages and try to argue my case, but I had never seen that kind of thing succeed.
    So I waited.
    The DPS guy in front of me on my right said, “Sir, you be sure and have a nice day now,” and then he moved past me, and his partner moved past me on my other side, both of them just strolling slow, two guys happy to be out in the air, patrolling, varying their viewpoint. Maybe not so dumb after all. They were doing their jobs and following their plan. They had tried to decoy me into a small locked room, but they had failed, no harm, no foul, so now they were turning the page straight to plan B. They would wait until I was inside and the doors were closed, and then they would jump into crowd control mode, dispersing the incoming people, keeping them safe in case shots had to be fired inside. I assumed the lobby glass was supposed to be bulletproof, but the smart money never bets on the DoD having gotten exactly what it paid for.
    The door was right in front of me. It was open. I took a breath and stepped into the lobby.
Sometimes if you want to know for sure whether the stove is hot, the only way to find out is to touch it
.

Chapter
2
    The woman with the perfume and the pale hands was already deep into the corridor beyond the open turnstile. She had been waved through. Straight ahead of me was the two-man inquiry desk. To my left were the two guys checking badges. The open turnstile was between their hips. The four spare guys were still doing nothing beyond it. They were still clustered together, quiet and watchful, like an independent team. I still couldn’t see their shoes.
    I took another breath and stepped up to the counter.
    Like a lamb to the slaughter.
    The desk guy on the left looked at me and said, “Yes, sir.” Fatigue and resignation in his voice. A response, not a question, as if I had already spoken. He looked young and reasonably smart. Genuine DPS, presumably. MP Warrant Officers are quick studies, but they wouldn’t be running a Pentagon inquiry desk, however deeply under they were supposed to be.
    The desk guy looked at me again, expectantly, and I said, “I have a twelve o’clock appointment.”
    “Who with?”
    “Colonel Frazer,” I said.
    The guy made out like he didn’t recognize the name. The world’s largest office building. Thirty thousand people. He leafed through abook the size of a telephone directory and asked, “Would that be Colonel John James Frazer? Senate Liaison?”
    I said, “Yes.”
    Or:
Guilty as charged
.
    Way to my left the four spare guys were watching me. But not moving. Yet.
    The guy at the desk didn’t ask my name. Partly because he had been briefed, presumably, and shown photographs, and partly because my Class A uniform included my name on a nameplate, worn as per regulations on my right breast pocket flap, exactly centered, its upper edge exactly a quarter of an inch below the top seam.
    Seven letters:
REACHER
.
    Or, eleven letters:
Arrest me now
.
    The guy at the inquiry desk said, “Colonel John James Frazer is in 3C315. You know how to get there?”
    I said, “Yes.” Third floor, C ring, nearest to radial corridor number three, bay number fifteen. The Pentagon’s version of map coordinates,