counter staff in the lobby. The whole archive is technically part of the public record, but the staff take a lot of trouble to keep that fact well obscured. In the past Reacher had agreed with that tactic, no hesitation. Military records can be very frank, and they need to be read and interpreted in strict context. He'd always been very happy they were kept away from the public. But now he was the public, and he was wondering how it was going to play. There were millions of files piled up in dozens of huge storerooms, and it would be very easy to wait days or weeks before anything got found, even with the staff running around like crazy and looking exactly like they were doing their absolute best. He had seen it happen before, from the inside, many times. It was a very plausible act. He had watched it, with a wry smile on his face.
So they paused in the hot Missouri sunshine after they paid off the cab and agreed on how to do it. They walked inside and saw the big sign: One File at a Time. They lined up in front of the clerk and waited. She was a heavy woman, middle-aged, dressed in a master sergeant's uniform, busy with the sort of work designed to achieve nothing at all except to make people wait until it was done. After a long moment she pushed two blank forms across the counter and pointed to where a pencil was tied down to a desk with a piece of string.
The forms were access requests. Jodie filled in her last name as Jacob and requested all and any information on Major Jack-none-Reacher, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. Reacher took the pencil from her and asked for all and any information on Lieutenant General Leon Jerome Garber. He slid both forms back to the master sergeant, who glanced at them and dropped them in her out-tray. She rang a bell at her elbow and went back to work. The idea was some private would hear the bell, come pick up the forms, and start the patient search for the files.
"Who's working supervisor today?" Reacher asked.
It was a direct question. The sergeant looked for a way to avoid answering it, but she couldn't find one.
"Major Theodore Conrad," she said, reluctantly.
Reacher nodded. Conrad? Not a name he recalled.
"Would you tell him we'd like to meet with him, just briefly? And would you have those files delivered to his office?"
The way he said it was exactly halfway between a pleasant, polite request and an unspoken command. It was a tone of voice he had always found very useful with master sergeants. The woman picked up the phone and made the call.
"He'll have you shown upstairs," she said, like in her opinion she was amazed Conrad was doing them such a massive favor.
"No need," Reacher said. "I know where it is. I've been there before."
He showed Jodie the way, up the stairs from the lobby to a spacious office on the second floor. Major Theodore Conrad was waiting at the door. Hot-weather uniform, his name on an acetate plate above his breast pocket. He looked like a friendly guy, but maybe slightly soured by his posting. He was about forty-five, and to still be a major on the second floor of the NPRC at forty-five meant he was going nowhere in a hurry. He paused, because a private was racing along the hallway toward him with two thick files in his hand. Reacher smiled to himself. They were getting the A-grade service. When this place wanted to be quick, it could be real quick. Conrad took the files and dismissed the runner.
"So what can I do for you folks?" he asked. His accent was slow and muddy, like the Mississippi where it originated, but it was hospitable enough.
"Well, we need your best help, Major," Reacher said. "And we're hoping if you read those files, maybe you'll feel willing to give it up."
Conrad glanced at the files in his hand and stood aside and ushered them into his office. It was a quiet, paneled space. He showed them to a matched pair of leather armchairs and stepped around his desk. Sat down and squared the files on his blotter, one on top of the other. Opened the first, which was Leon's, and started skimming.
It took him ten minutes to see what he needed. Reacher and Jodie sat and gazed out of the window. The