a small black guy, all the bases covered. All of them bums, so they look thin and haggard. Probably paid them in bourbon. Probably took all the pictures at the same time, uses them as appropriate. He could have sold that exact same picture a dozen times over. Anyone whose missing boy was tall and white, they get a copy. Then he swears them all to secrecy with this government-conspiracy shit, so nobody will ever compare notes afterward."
"He's disgusting," she said.
He nodded. "That's for damn sure. BNR families are still a big, vulnerable market, I guess, and he's feeding off it like a maggot."
"BNR?" she asked.
"Body not recovered," he said. "That's what they are. KIA/ BNR. Killed in action, body not recovered."
"Killed? You don't believe there are still any prisoners?"
He shook his head.
"There are no prisoners, Jodie," he said. "Not anymore. That's all bullshit "
"You sure?"
"Totally certain."
"How can you be certain?"
"I just know," he said. "Like I know the sky is blue and the grass is green and you've got a great ass."
She smiled as she drove. "I'm a lawyer, Reacher. That kind of proof just doesn't do it for me."
"Historical facts," he said. "The story about holding hostages to get American aid is all baloney, for a start. They were planning to come running south down the Ho Chi Minh Trail as soon as we were out of there, which was right against the Paris Accords, so they knew they were never going to get any aid no matter what they did. So they let all the prisoners go in '73, a bit slowly, I know, but they let them go. When we left in '75, they scooped up about a hundred stragglers, and then they handed them all straight back to us, which doesn't jibe with any kind of a hostage strategy. Plus they were desperate for us to de-mine their harbors, so they didn't play silly games."
"They were slow about returning remains," she said. "You know, our boys killed in plane crashes or battles. They played silly games about that."
He nodded. "They didn't really understand. It was important to us. We wanted two thousand bodies back. They couldn't understand why. They'd been at war more than forty years, Japanese, French, the U.S., China. They probably lost a million people missing in action. Our two thousand was a drop in the bucket. Plus they were Communists. They didn't share the value we put on individuals. It's a psychological thing again. But it doesn't mean they kept secret prisoners in secret camps."
"Not a very conclusive argument," she said dryly.
He nodded again. "Leon's the conclusive argument. Your old man, and people just like him. I know those people. Brave, honorable people, Jodie. They fought there, and then they rose to power and prominence later. The Pentagon is stuffed full of assholes, I know that as well as anybody, but there were always enough people like Leon around to keep them honest. You answer me a question: If Leon had known there were still prisoners kept back in 'Nam, what would he have done?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Something, obviously."
"You bet your ass something," he said. "Leon would have torn the White House apart brick by brick, until all those boys were safely back home. But he didn't. And that's not because he didn't know. Leon knew everything there was to know. There's no way they could have kept a thing like that a secret from all the Leons, not all the time. A big conspiracy lasting six administrations? A conspiracy people like Leon couldn't sniff out? Forget about it. The Leons of this world never reacted, so it was never happening. That's conclusive proof, as far as I'm concerned, Jodie."
"No, that's faith," she said.
"Whatever, it's good enough for me."
She watched the traffic ahead, and thought about it. Then she nodded, because in the end, faith in her father was good enough for her, too.
"So Victor Hobie's dead?"
Reacher nodded. "Has to be. Killed in action, body not recovered."
She drove on, slowly. They were heading south, and the traffic was bad.
"OK, no prisoners, no camps," she said. "No government conspiracy. So they weren't government people who were shooting at us and crashing their cars into us."
"I never thought it was," he said. "Most government people I met were a lot more efficient than that. I was a government person, in a manner of speaking. You think I'd miss two days in a row?"