The Affair: A Reacher Novel

why I was gone so long. He’s running a very tight ship. Every last man is confined to quarters. There are MPs everywhere. The MPs are watching each other, as well as everyone else. The armory is under guard. The logs show no weapons in or out for two solid days.”
    “And?”
    “Well, naturally I assumed I was getting conned big time. And sure enough, there were two hundred empty beds. So naturally I assumed they’ve got a shadow force bivouacked in the woods somewhere. But Munro said no, that’s a full company currently deployed elsewhere for a month. He swore blind. And I believed him, ultimately, because like everyone else I’ve heard the planes come in and out, and I’ve seen the faces come and go.”
    I nodded.
Alpha Company
, I thought.
Kosovo
.
    She said, “So in the end it all added up. Munro showed me a lot of evidence and it was all very consistent. And no one can run a con that perfect. So there is no exclusion zone. I was wrong. And you must be wrong about the debris field. It must have been local kids, scavenging.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said. “It looked like a very organized search.”
    She paused a beat. “Then maybe the 75th is sending people directly from Benning. Which is entirely possible. Maybe they’re living in the woods around the fence. All Munro proved is that no one is leaving Kelham. He could be one of those guys who tells you a small truth in order to hide a bigger lie.”
    “Sounds like you didn’t like him much.”
    “I liked him well enough. He’s smart and he’s loyal to the army. But if we’d both been Marine MPs at the same time I’d have been worried.I’d have seen him as a serious rival. There’s something about him. He’s the type of guy you don’t want to see moving into your office. He’s too ambitious. And too good.”
    “What did he say about Janice May Chapman?”
    “He gave me what appeared to be a very expert summary of what appeared to be a very expert investigation which appeared to prove no one from Kelham was ever involved with anything.”
    “But you didn’t believe it?”
    “I almost did,” she said.
    “But?”
    “He couldn’t hide the rivalry. He made it clear. It’s him against me. It’s the army against the local sheriff. That’s the challenge. He wants the world to think the bad guy is on my side of the fence. But I wasn’t born yesterday. What the hell else would he want the world to think?”
    “So what are you going to do?”
    “I’m not sure yet.”
    “What do you want to do?”
    “He doesn’t respect the Marines, either. Him against me means the army against the Corps. Which is a bad fight to pick. So if he wants rivalry, I want to give it right back. I want to take him on. I want to beat him like a rented mule. I want to find the truth somehow and stick it up his ass.”
    “Do you think you can do that?”
    She said, “I can if you help me.”

Chapter
35
    We sat in the idling Caprice for a long minute, saying nothing. The car must have had ten thousand hours of stake-out duty on it. From its previous life, in Chicago or New Orleans or wherever. Every pore of every interior surface was thick with sweat and odor and exhaustion. Grime was crusted everywhere. The floor mats had separated into hard tufts of fiber, each one like a flattened pearl.
    Deveraux said, “I apologize.”
    I said, “For what?”
    “For asking you to help me. It wasn’t fair. Forget I said anything.”
    “OK.”
    “Can I let you out somewhere?”
    I said, “Let’s go talk to Janice May Chapman’s nosy neighbors.”
    “No,” she said. “I can’t let you do that. I can’t let you turn against your own people.”
    “Maybe I wouldn’t be turning against my own people,” I said. “Maybe I would be doing exactly what my own people wanted me to do all along. Because maybe I would be helping Munro, not you. Because he might be right, you know. We still have no idea who did what here.”
    We
. She didn’t correct me. Instead she said, “But what’s your best guess?”
    I thought about the limousines scurrying in and out of Fort Kelham,carrying expensive lawyers. I thought about the exclusion zone, and the panic in John James Frazer’s voice, on the phone from the Pentagon. Senate Liaison. I said, “My best guess is it was a Kelham guy.”
    “You sure you want to take the risk of finding out for sure?”
    “Talking to a man with a gun is a risk. Asking questions isn’t.”
    I believed that then, back in 1997.
    Janice