Ли Чайлд - No Middle Name

Reacher left it on the hallway floor and headed back to the kitchen. He asked, ‘Why do we need electric cable?’

‘We don’t,’ his father said. ‘I ordered boots.’

‘Well, you didn’t get them. You got a spool of wire.’

His father blew a sigh of frustration. ‘Then someone made a mistake, didn’t they?’

Joe said nothing, which was very unusual. Normally in that kind of a situation he would immediately launch a series of speculative analyses, asking about the nature and format of the order codes, pointing out that numbers can be easily transposed, thinking out loud about how QWERTY keyboards put alphabetically remote letters side by side, and therefore how clumsy typists are always a quarter-inch away from an inadvertent jump from, say, footwear to hardware. He had that kind of a brain. Everything needed an explanation. But he said nothing. He just sat there, completely mute.

‘What’s up?’ Reacher said again, in the silence.

‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ his father said.

‘It will be unless you two lighten up. Which I guess you’re not going to any time soon, judging by the look of you.’

‘I lost a code book,’ his father said.

‘A code book for what?’

‘For an operation I might have to lead.’

‘China?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Where else is left?’

‘It’s theoretical right now,’ his father said. ‘Just an option. But there are plans, of course. And it will be very embarrassing if they leak. We’re supposed to be getting along with China now.’

‘Is there enough in the code book to make sense to anyone?’

‘Easily. Real names plus code equivalents for two separate cities, plus squads and divisions. A smart analyst could piece together where we’re going, what we’re going to do, and how many of us are coming.’

‘How big of a book is it?’

‘It’s a regular three-ring binder.’

‘Who had it last?’ Reacher asked.

‘Some planner,’ his father said. ‘But it’s my responsibility.’

‘When did you know it was lost?’

‘Last night. The call this morning was a negative result for the search I ordered.’

‘Not good,’ Reacher said. ‘But why is Joe involved?’

‘He isn’t. That’s a separate issue. That was the other call this morning. Another three-ring binder, unbelievably. The test answers are missing. Up at the school. And Joe went there yesterday.’

‘I didn’t even see the answer book,’ Joe said. ‘I certainly didn’t take it away with me.’

Reacher asked, ‘So what exactly did you do up there?’

‘Nothing, in the end. I got as far as the principal’s office and I told the secretary I wanted to talk to the guy about the test. Then I thought better of it and left.’

‘Where was the answer book?’

‘On the principal’s desk, apparently. But I never got that far.’

‘You were gone a long time.’

‘I took a walk.’

‘Around the school?’

‘Partly. And other places.’

‘Were you in the building across the lunch hour?’

Joe nodded.

‘And that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘That’s when they think I took it.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘It’s an honour violation, obviously. I could be excluded for a semester. Maybe the whole year. And then they’ll hold me back a grade, which will be two grades by then. You and I could end up in the same class.’

‘You could do my homework,’ Reacher said.

‘This is not funny.’

‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll have moved on by the end of the semester anyway.’

‘Maybe not,’ their father said. ‘Not if I’m in the brig or busted back to private and painting kerbstones for the rest of my career. We all could be stuck on Okinawa for ever.’

And at that point the phone rang again. Their father answered. It was their mother on the line, from Paris, France. Their father forced a bright tone into his voice, and he talked and listened, and then he hung up and relayed the news that their mother had arrived safely, and that old man Moutier wasn’t expected to live more than a couple of days, and that their mother was sad about it.

Reacher said, ‘I’m going to the beach.’

15

Reacher stepped out through the door and glanced towards the sea. The street was empty. No kids. He took a snap decision and detoured to the other side and knocked on Helen’s door. The girl he had met the day before. She opened up and saw who it was and crowded out next to him on the stoop and pulled the door all the way closed behind her. Like she was keeping him secret. Like she was embarrassed by him. She picked up on his feeling and shook her head.

‘My dad is sleeping,’ she said. ‘That’s all. He sat up and worked all night. And now he’s not feeling so hot. He just flaked, an hour ago.’

Reacher said, ‘You want to go swimming?’

She glanced down the street, saw no one was there, and said, ‘Sure. Give me five minutes, OK?’ She crept back inside and Reacher turned and watched the street, half hoping that the kid with the boil would come out, and half hoping he wouldn’t. He didn’t. Then Helen came out again, in a bathing suit under a sundress. She had a towel. They walked down the street together, keeping pace, a foot apart, talking about where they’d lived and the places they’d seen. Helen had moved a lot, but not as much as Reacher. Her dad was a rear echelon guy, not a combat Marine, and his postings tended to be longer and more stable.

The morning water was colder than it had been the afternoon before, so they got out after ten minutes or so. Helen let Reacher use her towel, and then they lay on it together in the sun, now just inches apart. She asked him, ‘Have you ever kissed a girl?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

‘The same girl two times or two girls once each?’

‘Two girls more than once each.’

‘A lot?’

‘Maybe four times each.’

‘Where?’

‘On the mouth.’

‘No, where ? In the movies, or what?’

‘One in the movies, one in a park.’

‘With tongues?’

‘Yes.’

She asked, ‘Are you good at it?’

He said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Will you show me how? I’ve never done it.’

So he leaned up on an elbow and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were small and mobile, and her tongue was cool and wet. They kept it going for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then they broke apart.

He asked, ‘Did you like it?’

She said, ‘Kind of.’

‘Was I good at it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t have anything to compare it with.’

‘Well, you were better than the other two I kissed,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, but he didn’t know what she was thanking him for. The compliment or the trial run, he wasn’t sure.

16

Reacher and Helen walked back together, and they almost made it home. They got within twenty yards of their destination, and then the kid with the boil stepped out of his yard and took up a position in the middle of the road. He was wearing the same Corps T-shirt and the same pair of ragged pants. And he was alone, for the time being.

Reacher felt Helen go quiet beside him. She stopped walking and Reacher stopped a pace ahead of her. The big kid was six feet away. The three of them were like the corners of a thin sloping triangle. Reacher said, ‘Stay there, Helen. I know you could kick this guy’s ass all by yourself, but there’s no reason why both of us should be exposed to the smell.’

The big kid just smiled.

He said, ‘You’ve been to the beach.’

Reacher said, ‘And we thought Einstein was smart.’

‘How many times have you been?’