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"You should find out Find out anted you at Bird badly enough to pull you out of Panama and replace you with an asshole And you should find out why"
The guy in the apron refilled our s," Joe said "Over well, bacon, toast"
"Pancakes," I said "Egg on the top, bacon on the side, plenty of syrup"
The guy took the menus back and went away and Joe turned around on his stool and sat back-to with his legs stretched way out into the aisle
"What exactly did her doctor say?" I asked hied "Not very nosis No real inforood with bad news They hedge around it all the time Plus, there&039;s a privacy issue, obviously"
"But we&039;re headed over there for a reason?"
He nodded "He suggested we ht be better than later"
"What is she saying?"
"That it&039;s all a lot of fuss about nothing But that we&039;re alelcome to visit"
We finished our breakfast and I paid for it Then Joe gave me my ticket, like a transaction I was sure he earned h to s and bacon with toast on the side But I took the deal We got off our stools and got our bearings and headed for the check-in counter
"Take your coat off," he said
"Why?"
"I want the clerk to see youron overseas, we rade"
"It&039;s Air France," I said "France isn&039;t even a military member of NATO"
"The check-in clerk will be Aed out of my coat Folded it over my arm and walked sideways so the left of my chest stuck out forward
"OK now?" I said
"Perfect," he said, and sht on the top roear the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit Second row has the Soldier&039;s Medal, the Bronze Star, and my Purple Heart The bottoood stuff purely by accident and none of it rade out of an airline clerk is about what it&039;s good for But Joe liked the top ts He served five years in Military Intelligence and didn&039;t get past the junk
We made it to the head of the line and he put his passport and ticket on the counter along with a Treasury Department ID Then he stepped behind ed me in the back I turned a little sideways and looked at the clerk
"Can you find us sorooed, tired He looked up at us Together we hed about four hundred fifty pounds He studied the Treasury ID and looked at my uniform and pattered on his keyboard and caentleed
We were in the last row of the first-class cabin We were talking, but ere avoiding the obvious subject We talked about music, and then politics We had another breakfast We drank coffee Air France ood coffee in first class
"Who was the general?" Joe asked
"Guy called Kramer," I said "An Armored commander in Europe"
"Armored? So as he at Bird?"
"He wasn&039;t on the post He was at a motel thirty miles away Rendezvous with a woman We think she ran aith his briefcase"
"Civilian?"
I shook my head "We think she was an officer fro in DC on his way to California for a conference"
"That&039;s a three-hundred-ht"
"But you don&039;t knoho she is"
"She&039;s fairly senior She drove her own Humvee out to the motel"
"She has to be fairly senior Kraood spell, toa five-hundred-ninety-six-mile round-trip detour"
I smiled Anyone else would have said a six-hundred-mile detour But not my brother Like me he has no middle name But it should be Pedantic Joe Pedantic Reacher
"Bird is still all infantry, right?" he said "Sorunts, as I recall So have you got many senior women?"
"There&039;s a Psy-Ops school now," I said "Half the instructors are women"
"Rank?"
"Soht colonels"
"What was in the briefcase?"
"The agenda for the California conference," I said "Kra there isn&039;t one"
"There&039;s always an agenda," Joe said
"I know"
"Check the ht colonels," he said "That would be my advice"
"Thank you," I said
"And find out anted you at Bird," he said "And why This Kra wasn&039;t the reason We know that for sure Kramer was alive and hen your orders were cut"
We read day-old copies of Le Matin and Le Monde About halfway through the flight we started talking in French We were pretty rusty, but we got by Once learned, never forgotten He asked ured it was an appropriate subject for discussion in the French language I told hiirl in Korea but since then I had been moved to the Philippines and then Panama and now to North Carolina so I didn&039;t expect to see her again I told him about Lieutenant Summer He see anyone
Then he switched back to English and asked when I had last been in Gero," I said
"It&039;s the end of an era," he said "Ger because a reunified Ger back bad memories Then it will propose a co the new Germany inside the tent Ten years from now Poland will be in NATO and the USSR won&039;t exist anymore There&039;ll be some rump nation Maybe it will be in NATO too"
"Maybe," I said
"So Kra will be different in the future"
"Probably"
"What are you going to do?"
"When?"
He turned in his seat and looked atto be force reduction, Jack You should face it They&039;re not going to keep a uy has fallen apart"
"He hasn&039;t fallen apart yet"
"But he will It&039;ll be over within a year Gorbachev won&039;t last There&039;ll be a coup The old communists will make one last play, but it won&039;t stick Then the reformers will be back forever Yeltsin, probably He&039;s OK So in DC the temptation to save money will be irresistible It&039;ll be like a hundred Christet your Commander-in-Chief is prieant with the baby son
"It&039;ll happen slowly," I said
Joe shook his head "It&039;ll happen faster than you think"
"We&039;ll always have enemies," I said
"No question," he said "But they&039;ll be different kinds of enemies They won&039;t have ten thousand tanks lined up across the plains of Ger
"You should find out why you&039;re at Bird," Joe said "Either nothingthere, and therefore you&039;re on the way down, or so there, and they want you around to deal with it, in which case you&039;re on the way up"
I said nothing
"You need to know either way," he said "Force reduction is coht now"
"They&039;ll always need cops," I said "They bring it down to a two-man army, one of them better be an MP"
"You should make a plan," he said
"I never make plans"
"You need to"
I traced ertips across the ribbons on ot me a seat in the front of the plane," I said "Maybe they&039;ll keep me in a job"
"Maybe they will," Joe said "But even if they do, will it be a job you want? Everything&039;s going to get horribly second-rate"
I noticed his shirt cuffs They were clean and crisp and secured by discreet cuff links made from silver and black onyx His tie was a plain somber item made from silk He had shaved carefully The bottom of his sideburn was cut exactly square My brother was aless than the best
"A job&039;s a job," I said "I&039;m not choosy"
We slept the rest of the way We oken by the pilot on the PA telling us ere about to start our descent into Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Local ti Nearly the whole of the second day of the new decade had disappeared like a h one Atlantic tied so, full of people and luggage It was hardlySo we found a navette instead, which is what the French call an airport shuttle bus We had to stand all the way through the dreary northern suburbs and into the center of Paris We got out at the Place de l&039;Opera at nine in the evening Paris was dark and dahts burning behind closed doors and fogged s The streets et and lined with shttiether south and west and crossed the Seine at the Pont de la Concorde Turned west again along the Quai d&039;Orsay The river was dark and sluggish Nothing wason it The streets were eet flowers?" I asked
"Too late," Joe said "Everything&039;s closed"
We turned left at the Place de la Resistance and walked into the Avenue Rapp, side by side We saw the Eiffel Tower on our right as we passed the old Our heels sounded like rifle shots on the silent sidewalk We arrived atIt was a audier Belle epoque facades Joe took his hand out of his pocket and unlocked the street door
"You have a key?" I said
He nodded "I&039;ve always had a key"
Inside the street door was a cobbled alley that led through to the center courtyard The concierge&039;s room was on the left Beyond it was a small alcove with a small, slow elevator We rode it up to the fifth floor Stepped out into a high, wide hallway It was diht-hand apartment had tall oak double doors with a discreet brass plaque engraved: M amp; Mme Girard The left-hand doors were painted off-white and labeled: Mme Reacher
We knocked and waited