The Enemy (50 page)

I bent a fence post until I had room to slip past it. Walked straight through Willard's yard and around his garage to his front door. There was no porch light. The view from the street was half-open, half-obscured. Not perfect. But not bad. I put my elbow on the bell. Heard it sound inside. There was a short pause and then I heard footsteps. I stood back. Willard opened the door. No delay at all. Maybe he was expecting Chinese food. Or a pizza.

I punched him in the chest to move him backward. Stepped in after him and closed the door behind me with my foot. It was a dismal house. The air was stale. Willard was clutching the stair post, gasping for breath. I hit him in the face and knocked him down. He came up on his hands and knees and I kicked him hard in the ass and kept on kicking until he took the hint and started crawling towards the kitchen as fast as he could. He got himself in there and kind of rolled over and sat on the floor with his back hard up against a cabinet. There was fear in his face, for sure, but confusion, too. Like he couldn't believe I was doing this. Like he was thinking: this is about a disciplinary complaint? His bureaucratic calculus couldn't compute it. "Did you hear about Vassell and Coomer?" I asked him. He nodded, fast and scared.

"Remember Lieutenant Summer?" I asked him.

He nodded again.

"She pointed something out to me," I said. "Kind of obvious, but she said they would have gotten away with it if I hadn't ignored you."

He just stared at me.

"It made me think," I said. "What exactly was I ignoring?"

He said nothing.

"I misjudged you," I said. "I apologize. Because I thought I was ignoring a busybody careerist asshole. I thought I was ignoring some kind of a prissy nervous idiot corporate manager who thought he knew better. But I wasn't. I was ignoring something else entirely."

He stared up at me.

"You didn't feel embarrassed about Kramer," I said. "You didn't feel sensitive about me harassing Vassell and Coomer. You weren't speaking for the army when you wanted Carbone written up as a training accident. You were doing the job you were put there to do. Someone wanted three homicides covered up, and you were put there to do it for them. You were participating in a deliberate cover-up, Willard. That's what you were doing. That's what I was ignoring. I mean, what the hell else were you doing, ordering me not to investigate a homicide? It was a cover-up, and it was planned, and it was structured, and it was decided well in advance. It was decided on the second day of January, when Garber was moved out and you were moved in. You were put in there so that what they were planning to do on the fourth could be controlled. No other reason."

He said nothing.

"I thought they wanted an incompetent in there, so that nature would take its course. But they went one better than that. They put a friend in there."

He said nothing.

"You should have refused," I said. "If you had refused, they wouldn't have gone ahead with it and Carbone and Brubaker would still be alive."

He said nothing.

"You killed them, Willard. Just as much as they did."

I crouched down next to him. He scrabbled on the floor and pressed backward against the cupboard behind him. He had defeat in his eyes. But he gave it one last shot. "You can't prove anything," he said. Now I said nothing.

"Maybe it was just incompetence," he said. "You thought about that? How are you going to prove the intention?"

I said nothing. His eyes went hard.

"You're not dealing with idiots," he said. "There's no proof anywhere."

I took Franz's Beretta out of my pocket. The one I had brought out of the Mojave. I hadn't lost it. It had ridden all the way with me from California. That was why I had checked my luggage, just that one time. They won't let you carry guns inside the cabin. Not without paperwork.

"This piece is listed as destroyed," I said. "It doesn't officially exist any more."

He stared at it.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "You can't prove anything."

"You're not dealing with an idiot either," I said.

"You don't understand," he said. "It was an order. From the top. We!re in the army. We obey orders."

I shook my head. "That excuse never worked for any soldier anywhere."

"It was an order," he said again.

"From who?"

He just closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "I know exactly who it was. And I know I can't get to him. Not where he is. But I can get to you.

"You can be my messenger."

He opened his eyes. "You won't do it," he said.

"Why didn't you refuse?"

"I couldn't refuse. It was time to choose up sides. Don't you see? We're all going to have to do that."

I nodded. "I guess we are."

"Be smart now," he said. "Please."

"I thought you were one bad apple," I said. "But the whole barrel is bad. The good apples are the rare ones."

He stared at me.

"You ruined it for me," I said. "You and your damn friends."

"Ruined what?"

"Everything."

I stood up. Stepped back. Clicked the Beretta's safety to fire. He stared at me.

"Goodbye, Colonel Willard," I said.

I put the gun to my temple. He stared at me.

"Just kidding," I said.

Then I shot him through the centre of the forehead. It was a typical nine-millimetre full metal jacket through-and through. It put the back of his skull into the cupboard behind him and left it there with a lot of smashed china. I stuffed the reefer and the speed and the crack cocaine in his pockets, along with a symbolic roll of dollar bills. Then I walked out the back door and away through his yard. I slipped through the fence and through the lot behind his and walked back to my car. I sat in the driver's seat and opened my duffel and changed my boots. Took off the pair that had been ruined in the Mojave and put on a better pair. Then I drove west, toward Dulles. Into the Hertz return bays. Car rental bosses aren't dumb. They know people get cars messy. They know they accumulate all kinds of crap inside. So they position big garbage cans near the return bays in the hope that renters will do the decent thing and clear some of the crap out themselves. That way they save on wages. Cut out even a minute a car, and staff costs drop a lot over a whole year. I put my old boots in one can, and the Beretta in another. As many cars as Hertz rented at Dulles in a day, those cans were headed for the crusher on a regular basis.

I walked all the way to the terminal. I didn't feel like taking the bus. I showed my military ID and used my checkbook and bought a one-way ticket to Paris, on the same Air France red-eye Joe had taken back when the world was different. I got to the Avenue Rapp at eight in the morning. Joe told me the cars were coming at ten. So I shaved and showered in the guest bathroom and found my mother's ironing board and pressed my Class A uniform very carefully. I found polish in a cupboard and shined my shoes. Then I dressed. I put my full array of medals on, all four rows. I followed the Correct Order of Wear regulations, and the Wear of Full Size Medals regulations. Each one hung down neatly over the ribbon in the row below. I used a cloth and cleaned them. I cleaned my other badges too, including my major's oak leaves, one last time. Then I went into the white-painted living room to wait.

Joe was in a black suit. I was no expert on clothing but I figured it was new. It was some kind of a fine material. Silk, maybe. Or cashmere. I didn't know. It was beautifully cut. He had a white shirt and a black tie. Black shoes. He looked good. I had never seen him look better. He was holding up. He was a little strained around the eyes, maybe. We didn't talk. Just waited.

At five to ten we went down to the street. The corbillard showed up right on time, from the dp6t mortuaire. Behind it was a black Citroen limousine. We got in the limousine and closed the doors and it moved off after the hearse, slow and quiet.

"Just us?'I said.

"The others are meeting us there."

"Who's coming?"

"Lamonnier," he said. "Some of her friends."

"Where are we doing it?"

"Pre Lachaise," he said.

I nodded. Pre Lachaise was a famous old cemetery. Some kind of a special place. I figured maybe my mother's Resistance history entitled her to be buried there. Maybe Lamonnier had fixed it.

"There's an offer in on the apartment," Joe said.

"How much?"

"In dollars your share would be about sixty thousand."

"I don't want it," I said. "Give my share to Lamonnier. Tell him to find whatever old guys are still alive and spread it around. He'll know some organizations."

"Old soldiers?"

"Old anybody. Whoever did the right thing at the right time."

"You sure? You might need it."

"I'd rather not have it."

"OK," he said. "Your choice."

I watched out the windows. It was a grey day. The honey tones of Paris were beaten down by the weather. The river was sluggish, like molten iron. We drove through the Place de la Bastille. Pre Lachaise was up in the northeast. Not far, but not so near you thought of it as close. We got out of the car near a little booth that sold maps to the famous graves. All kinds of people were buried at Pre Lachaise. Chopin, Molire, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison.

There were people waiting for us at the cemetery gate. There was the concierge from my mother's building, and two other women I didn't know. The croque-morts lifted the coffin up on their shoulders. They held it steady for a second and then set off at a slow march. Joe and I fell in behind, side by side. The three women followed us. The air was cold. We walked along gritty paths between strange European mausoleums and headstones. Eventually we came to an open grave. Excavated earth was piled neatly on one side of it and covered with a green carpet that I guessed was supposed to look like grass. Lamonnier was waiting there for us. I guessed he had gotten there well ahead of time. He probably walked slower than a funeral. Probably hadn't wanted to hold us up, or embarrass himself.

The pallbearers set the coffin down on rope slings that were already laid out in position. Then they picked it up again and manoeuvred it over the hole and used the ropes to lower it down gently. Into the hole. There was a man who read some stuff from a book. I heard the words in French and their English translations drifted through my mind. Dust to dust, certain it is, vale of tears. I didn't really pay attention. I just looked at the coffin, down in the hole.

The man finished speaking and one of the pallbearers pulled back the green carpet and Joe scooped up a handful of dirt. He weighed it in his palm and then threw it down on the coffin lid. It thumped on the wood. The man with the book did the same thing. Then the concierge. Then both of the other women. Then Lamonnier. He lurched over on his awkward canes and bent down and filled his hand with earth. Paused with his eyes full of tears and just turned his wrist so that the dirt trailed out of his fist like water.

I stepped up and put my hand to my heart and slipped my Silver Star off its pin. Held it in my palm. The Silver Star is a beautiful medal. It has a tiny silver star in the centre of a much larger gold one. It has a bright silk ribbon in red white and blue, all shot through with a watermark. Mine was engraved on the back: J. Reacher. I thought: J for Josephine. I tossed it down in the hole. It hit the coffin and bounced once and landed right side up, a little gleam of light in the greyness. I called long distance from the Avenue Rapp and got orders back to Panama. Joe and I ate a late lunch together and promised to stay in better touch. Then I headed back to the airport and flew through London and Miami and picked up a transport south. As a newly minted captain I was given a company to command. We were tasked to maintain order in Panama City during the Just Cause endgame. It was fun. I had a decent bunch of guys. Being out in the field again was refreshing. And the coffee was as good as ever. They ship it wherever we go, in cans as big as oil drums.

I never went back to Fort Bird. Never saw that sergeant again, the one with the baby son. I thought of her sometimes, when force reduction began to bite.

I never saw Summer again, either. I heard she talked up Kramer's agenda so much that JAG Corps wanted the death penalty for treason, and then she finessed confessions out of Vassell and Coomer and Marshall on all the other stuff in exchange for life in prison. I heard she got promoted captain the day after they went to Leavenworth. So she and I ended up on the same pay grade. We met in the middle. But our paths never crossed again.