Never Go Back

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.

Reacher said, ‘I’m sorry, colonel. I was looking for Major Turner.’

The guy named Morgan said, ‘Sit down, Mr Reacher.’