Lee Child: Never Go Back

It was the closest thing to a home base Reacher had ever had. The bus let him out two blocks away, on a corner, at the bottom of a long hill he had walked many times. The road coming down towards him was a three-lane, with cracked concrete sidewalks and mature trees in pits. The HQ building was ahead on the left, in a broad lot behind a high stone wall. Only its roof was visible, made of grey slate, with moss growing on its northern hip.

There was a driveway entrance off the three-lane, which came through the high stone wall between two brick pillars, which in Reacher’s time had been purely decorative, with no gates hung off them. But gates had been installed since then. They were heavy steel items with steel wheels which ran in radiused tracks butchered into the old blacktop. Security, in theory, but not in practice, because the gates were standing open. Inside them, just beyond the end of their swing, was a sentry hutch, which was also new. It was occupied by a private first class wearing the new Army Combat Uniform, which Reacher thought looked like pyjamas, all patterned and baggy. Late afternoon was turning into early evening, and the light was fading.

Reacher stopped at the sentry hutch and the private gave him an enquiring look and Reacher said, ‘I’m here to visit with your CO.’

The guy said, ‘You mean Major Turner?’

Reacher said, ‘How many COs do you have?’

‘Just one, sir.’

‘First name Susan?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s correct. Major Susan Turner, sir.’

‘That’s the one I want.’

‘What name shall I give?’

‘Reacher.’

‘What’s the nature of your business?’

‘Personal.’

‘Wait one, sir.’ The guy picked up a phone and called ahead. A Mr Reacher to see Major Turner . The call went on much longer than Reacher expected. At one point the guy covered the mouthpiece with his palm and asked, ‘Are you the same Reacher that was CO here once? Major Jack Reacher?’

‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

‘And you spoke to Major Turner from somewhere in South Dakota?’

‘Yes,’ Reacher said.

The guy repeated the two affirmative answers into the phone, and listened some more. Then he hung up and said, ‘Sir, please go ahead.’ He started to give directions, and then he stopped, and said, ‘I guess you know the way.’

‘I guess I do,’ Reacher said. He walked on, and ten paces later he heard a grinding noise, and he stopped and glanced back.

The gates were closing behind him.

The building ahead of him was classic 1950s DoD architecture. Long and low, two storeys, brick, stone, slate, green metal window frames, green tubular handrails at the steps up to the doors. The 1950s had been a golden age for the DoD. Budgets had been immense. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the military had gotten whatever it wanted. And more. There were cars parked in the lot. Some were army sedans, plain and dark and well used. Some were POVs, personally owned vehicles, brighter in colour but generally older. There was a lone Humvee, dark green and black, huge and menacing next to a small red two-seater. Reacher wondered if the two-seater was Susan Turner’s. He figured it could be. On the phone she had sounded like a woman who might drive such a thing.

He went up the short flight of stone steps to the door. Same steps, same door, but repainted since his time. More than once, probably. The army had a lot of paint, and was always happy to use it. Inside the door the place looked more or less the same as it always had. There was a lobby, with a stone staircase to the second floor on the right, and a reception desk on the left. Then the lobby narrowed to a corridor that ran the length of the building, with offices left and right. The office doors were half glazed with reeded glass. The lights were on in the corridor. It was winter, and the building had always been dark.

There was a woman at the reception desk, in the same ACU pyjamas as the guy at the gate, but with a sergeant’s stripes on the tab in the centre of her chest. Like an aiming point, Reacher thought. Up, up, up, fire. He much preferred the old woodland-pattern battledress uniform. The woman was black, and didn’t look happy to see him. She was agitated about something.

He said, ‘Jack Reacher for Major Turner.’

The woman stopped and started a couple of times, as if she had plenty she wanted to say, but in the end all she managed was, ‘You better head on up to her office. You know where it is?’

Reacher nodded. He knew where it was. It had been his office once. He said, ‘Thank you, sergeant.’

He went up the stairs. Same worn stone, same metal handrail. He had been up those stairs a thousand times. They folded around once and came out directly above the centre of the lobby at the end of the long second-floor corridor. The lights were on in the corridor. The same linoleum was on the floor. The office doors to the left and right had the same reeded glass as the first-floor doors.

His office was third on the left.

No, Susan Turner’s was.

He made sure his shirt was tucked and he brushed his hair with his fingers. He had no idea what he was going to say. He had liked her voice on the phone. That was all. He had sensed an interesting person behind it. He wanted to meet that person. Simple as that. He took two steps and stopped. She was going to think he was crazy.

But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He shrugged to himself and moved on again. Third on the left. The door was the same as it always had been, but painted. Solid below, glass above, the reeded pattern splitting the dull view through into distorted vertical slices. There was a corporate-style name plate on the wall near the handle: Maj. S. R. Turner, Commanding Officer . That was new. In Reacher’s day his name had been stencilled on the wood, below the glass, with even more economy: Maj. Reacher, CO .

He knocked.

He heard a vague vocal sound inside. It might have been Enter . So he took a breath and opened the door and stepped inside.

He had been expecting changes. But there weren’t many. The linoleum on the floor was the same, polished to a subtle sheen and a murky colour. The desk was the same, steel like a battleship, painted but worn back to shiny metal here and there, still dented where he had slammed some guy’s head into it, back at the end of his command. The chairs were the same, both behind the desk and in front of it, utilitarian mid-century items that might have sold for a lot of money in some hipster store in New York or San Francisco. The file cabinets were the same. The light fixture was the same, a contoured white glass bowl hung off three little chains.

The differences were mostly predictable and driven by the march of time. There were three console telephones on the desk, where before there had been one old rotary-dial, heavy and black. There were two computers, one a desktop and one a laptop, where before there had been an in-tray and an outtray and a lot of paper. The map on the wall was new and up to date, and the light fixture was burning green and sickly, with a modern bulb, all fluorescent and energy-saving. Progress, even at the Department of the Army.

Only two things in the office were unexpected and unpredictable.

First, the person behind the desk was not a major, but a lieutenant colonel.

And second, he wasn’t a woman, but a man.

THREE

THE MAN BEHIND the desk was wearing the same ACU pyjamas as everyone else, but they looked worse on him than most. Like fancy dress. Like a Halloween party. Not because he was particularly out of shape, but because he looked serious and managerial and desk-bound. As if his weapon of choice would be a propelling pencil, not an M16. He was wearing steel eyeglasses and had steel-grey hair cut and combed like a schoolboy’s. His tapes and his tags confirmed he was indeed a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, and that his name was Morgan.