Tripwire

without a known grave. Plenty of boys always have, in war.”
    “Then the memorial went up,” Mrs. Hobie said. “Have you seen it?”
    “The Wall?” Reacher said. “In D.C.? Yes, I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I found it very moving.”
    “They refused to put his name on it,” Hobie said.
    “Why?”
    “They never explained. We asked and we begged, but they never told us exactly why. They just said he’s no longer considered a casualty.”
    “So we asked them what he is considered as,” Mrs. Hobie said. “They just told us missing in action.”
    “But the other MIAs are on the Wall,” Hobie said.
    There was silence again. The clock hammered away in another room.
    “What did General Garber say about this?” Reacher asked.
    “He didn’t understand it,” Hobie said. “Didn’t understand it at all. He was still checking for us when he died.”
    There was silence again. The oxygen hissed and the clock hammered.
    “But we know what happened,” Mrs. Hobie said.
    “You do?” Reacher asked her. “What?”
    “The only thing that fits,” she said. “He was taken prisoner.”
    “And never released,” Hobie said.
    “That’s why the Army is covering it up,” Mrs. Hobie said. “The government is embarrassed about it. The truth is some of our boys were never released. The Vietnamese held on to them, like hostages, to get foreign aid and trade recognition and credits from us, after the war. Like blackmail. The government held out for years, despite our boys still being prisoners over there. So they can’t admit it. They hide it instead, and won’t talk about it.”
    “But we can prove it now,” Hobie said.
    He slid another photograph from the folder. Passed it across. It was a newer print. Vivid glossy colors. It was a telephoto shot taken through tropical vegetation. There was barbed wire on bamboo fence posts. There was an Oriental figure in a brown uniform, with a bandanna around his forehead. A rifle in his hands. It was clearly a Soviet AK-47. No doubt about it. And there was another figure in the picture. A tall Caucasian, looking about fifty, emaciated, gaunt, bent, gray, wearing pale, rotted fatigues. Looking half away from the Oriental soldier, flinching.
    “That’s Victor,” Mrs. Hobie said. “That’s our son. That photograph was taken last year.”
    “We spent thirty years asking about him,” Hobie said. “Nobody would help us. We asked everybody. Then we found a man who told us about these secret camps. There aren’t many. Just a few, with a handful of prisoners. Most of them have died by now. They’ve grown old and died, or been starved to death. This man went to Vietnam and checked for us. He got close enough to take this picture. He even spoke to one of the other prisoners through the wire. Secretly, at night. It was very dangerous for him. He asked for the name of the prisoner he’d just photographed. It was Vic Hobie, First Cavalry helicopter pilot.”
    “The man had no money for a rescue,” Mrs. Hobie said. “And we’d already paid him everything we had for the first trip. We had no more left. So when we met General Garber at the hospital, we told him our story and asked him to try and get the government to pay.”
    Reacher stared at the photograph. Stared at the gaunt man with the gray face.
    “Who else has seen this picture?”
    “Only General Garber,” Mrs. Hobie answered. “The man who took it told us to keep it a secret. Because it’s very sensitive, politically. Very dangerous. It’s a terrible thing, buried in the nation’s history. But we had to show it to General Garber, because he was in a position to help us.”
    “So what do you want me to do?” Reacher asked.
    The oxygen hissed in the silence. In and out, in and out, through the clear plastic tubes. The old man’s mouth was working.
    “I just want him back,” he said. “I just want to see him again, one more day before I die.”
    AFTER THAT, THE old couple were done talking. They turned together and fixed misty gazes on the row of photographs on the mantel. Reacher was left sitting in the silence. Then the old man turned back and used both hands and lifted the leather-bound folder off his bony knees and held it out. Reacher leaned forward and took it. At first he assumed it was so he could put the three photographs back inside. Then he realized the baton had been passed to him. Like a ceremony. Their quest had become Leon’s, and now it was his.
    The folder was thin. Apart from the