Lee Child - Tripwire

The folder was thin. Apart from the three photographs he had seen, it contained nothing more than infrequent letters home from their son and formal letters from the Department of the Army. And a sheaf of paperwork showing the liquidation of their life savings and the transfer by certified check of eighteen thousand dollars to an address in the Bronx, to fund a reconnaissance mission to Vietnam led by a man named Rutter.

The letters from the boy started with brief notes from various locations in the South, as he passed through Dix, and Polk, and Wolters, and Rucker, and Belvoir and Benning on his way through his training. Then there was a short note from Mobile in Alabama, as he boarded ship for the month-long voyage through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to Indochina. Then there were flimsy Army Mailgrams from Vietnam itself, eight from the first tour, six from the second. The paper was thirty years old, and it was stiff and dry, like ancient papyrus. Like something discovered by archaeologists.

He hadn’t been much of a correspondent. The letters were full of the usual banal phrases a young soldier writes home. There must have been a hundred million parents in the world with treasured old letters like these, different times, different wars, different languages, but the same messages: the food, the weather, the rumor of action, the reassurances.

The responses from the Department of the Army marched through thirty years of office technology. They started out typed on old manual machines, some letters misaligned, some wrongly spaced, some with red haloes above them where the ribbon had slipped. Then electric typewriters, crisper and more uniform. Then word processors, immaculately printed on better paper. But the messages were all the same. No information. Missing in action, presumed killed. Condolences. No further information.

The deal with the guy called Rutter had left them penniless. There had been some modest mutual funds and a little cash on deposit. There was a sheet written in a shaky hand Reacher guessed was the old woman’s, totaling their monthly needs, working the figures again and again, paring them down until they matched the Social Security checks, freeing up their capital. The mutuals had been cashed in eighteen months ago and amalgamated with the cash holdings and the whole lot had been mailed to the Bronx. There was a receipt from Rutter, with the amount formally set off against the cost of the exploratory trip, due to leave imminently. There was a request for any and all information likely to prove helpful, including service number and history and any existing photographs. There was a letter dated three months subsequently, detailing the discovery of the remote camp, the risky clandestine photography, the whispered talk through the wire. There was a prospectus for a rescue mission, planned in great detail, at a projected cost to the Hobies of forty-five thousand dollars. Forty-five thousand dollars they didn’t have.

“Will you help us?” the old woman asked through the silence. “Is it all clear? Is there anything you need to know?”

He glanced across at her and saw she had been following his progress through the dossier. He closed the folder and stared down at its worn leather cover. Right then the only thing he needed to know was why the hell hadn’t Leon told these people the truth?

MARILYN STONE MISSED lunch because she was busy, but didn’t mind because she was happy about the way the place was starting to look. She found herself regarding the whole business in a very dispassionate manner, which surprised her a little, because after all it was her home she was getting ready to sell, her own home, the place she’d chosen with care and thought and excitement not so many years ago. It had been the place of her dreams. Way bigger and better than anything she’d ever expected to have. It had been a physical thrill back then, just thinking about it. Moving in felt like she’d died and gone to heaven. Now she was just looking at the place like a showpiece, like a marketing proposition. She wasn’t seeing rooms she’d decorated and lived in and thrilled to and enjoyed. There was no pain. No wistful glances at places where she and Chester had fooled around and laughed and ate and slept. Just a brisk and businesslike determination to bring it all up to a whole new peak of irresistibility.

The furniture movers had arrived first, just as she’d planned. She had them take the credenza out of the hallway, and then Chester’s armchair out of the living room. Not because it was a bad piece, but because it was definitely an extra piece. It was his favorite chair, chosen in the way men choose things, for comfort and familiarity rather than for style and suitability. It was the only piece they’d brought from their last house. He’d put it next to the fireplace, at an angle. Day to day, she rather liked it. It gave the room a comfortable lived-in quality. It was the touch that changed the room from a magazine showpiece to a family home. Which was exactly why it had to go.

She had the movers carry out the butcher’s block table from the kitchen, too. She had thought long and hard about that table. It certainly gave the kitchen a no-nonsense look. Like it was a proper workplace, speaking of serious meals planned and executed there. But without it, there was an uninterrupted thirty-foot expanse of tiled floor running all the way to the bay window. She knew that with fresh polish on the tile, the light from the window would flood the whole thirty-foot span into a sea of space. She had put herself in a prospective buyer’s shoes and asked herself: Which would impress you more? A serious kitchen? Or a drop-dead spacious kitchen? So the butcher’s block was in the mover’s truck.

The TV from the den was in there, too. Chester had a problem with television sets. Video had killed the home-movie side of his business and he had no enthusiasm for buying the latest and best of his competitors’ products. So the TV was an obsolete RCA, not even a console model. It had shiny fake chrome around the screen, and it bulged out like a gray fishbowl. She had seen better sets junked on the sidewalk, looking down from the train when it eased into the 125th Street station. So she’d had the movers clear it out of the den and bring the bookcase down from the guest suite to fill its space. She thought the room looked much better for it. With just the bookcase and the leather couches and the dark lampshades, it looked like a cultured room. An intelligent room. It made it an aspirational space. Like a buyer would be buying a lifestyle, not just a house.

She spent some time choosing books for the coffee tables. Then the florist arrived with flat cardboard boxes full of blooms. She had the girl wash all her vases and then left her alone with a European magazine and told her to copy the arrangements. The guy from Sheryl’s office brought the for-sale sign and she had him plant it in the shoulder next to the mailbox. Then the garden crew arrived at the same time the movers were leaving, which required some awkward maneuvering out on the driveway. She led the crew chief around the garden, explaining what had to be done, and then she ducked back inside the house before the roar of the mowers started up. The pool boy came to the door at the same time as the cleaning service people arrived. She was caught glancing left and right between them, momentarily overcome and unsure of who to start first. But then she nodded firmly and told the cleaners to wait and led the boy around to the pool and showed him what needed doing. Then she ran back to the house, feeling hungry, realizing she’d missed her lunch, but glowing with satisfaction at the progress she was making.

THEY BOTH MADE it down the hallway to see him leave. The old man worked on the oxygen long enough to get himself up out of his chair, and then he wheeled the cylinder slowly ahead of him, partly leaning on it like a cane, partly pushing it like a golf trolley. His wife rustled along in front of him, her skirt brushing both doorjambs and both sides of the narrow passageway. Reacher followed behind them, with the leather folder tucked up under his arm. The old lady worked the lock on the door and the old man stood panting and gripping the handle of the cart. The door opened and sweet fresh air blew in.