"You want me to get them to bring you a chair?" the woman asked.

"No," Holly said.

"Well, I could use one," the woman said. "I've got to wait and watch you eat. Make sure you don't steal the silverware."

Holly nodded vaguely and circled around the woman. Glanced at the open door. The woman followed her gaze and grinned.

"Nowhere to run," she said. "We're a long way from anywhere, and there's some difficult terrain in the way. North, you'd reach Canada in a couple of weeks, if you found enough roots and berries and bugs to eat. West, you'd have to swim the river. East, you'd get lost in the forest or eaten by a bear, and even if you didn't, you're still a month away from Montana. South, we'd shoot you. The border is crawling with guards. You wouldn't stand a chance."

The road is blocked?" Holly asked.

The woman smiled.

"We blew the bridge," she said. There is no road, not anymore."

"When?" Holly asked her. "We drove in."

"Just now," the woman said. "You didn't hear it? I guess you wouldn't, not with these walls."

"So how does Readier get sent out?" Holly asked. "He's supposed to be carrying some sort of a message."

The woman smiled again.

That plan has changed," she said. "Mission canceled. He's not going."

"Why not?" Holly asked.

The woman looked straight at her.

"We found out what happened to Peter Bell," she said.

Holly went quiet.

"Readier killed him," the woman said. "Suffocated him. In North Dakota. We were just informed. But I expect you know all about it, right?"

Holly stared at her. She thought: Reacher's in big trouble. She saw him, handcuffed and alone somewhere.

"How did you find out?" she asked quietly.

The woman shrugged.

"We have a lot of friends," she said.

Holly kept on staring at her. She thought: the mole. They know we were in North Dakota. Takes a map and a ruler to figure out where we are now. She saw computer keyboards clicking and Jackson's name scrolling up on a dozen screens.

"What's going to happen to Readier?" she asked.

"A life for a life," the woman said. That's the rule here. Same for your friend Reacher as for anybody else."

"But what's going to happen to him?" Holly asked again.

The woman laughed.

"Doesn't take much imagination," she said. "Or maybe it does. I don't expect it's going to be anything real simple."

Holly shook her head.

"It was self-defense," she said. The guy was trying to rape me."

The woman looked at her, scornfully.

"So how is that self-defense?" she said. "Wasn't trying to rape him, was he? And you were probably asking for it, anyhow."

"What?" Holly said.

"Shaking your tail at him?" the woman said. "We know all about smart little city b.i.t.c.hes like you. Poor old Peter never stood a chance."

Holly just stared at her. Then she glanced at the door.

"Where is Reacher now?" she asked.

"No idea," the woman said. "Chained to a tree somewhere, I guess."

Then she grinned.

"But I know where he's going," she said. The parade ground. That's where they usually do that sort of stuff. We're all ordered up there to watch the fun."

Holly stared at her. Then she swallowed. Then she nodded.

"Will you help me with this bed?" she asked. "Something wrong with it."

The woman paused. Then she followed her over.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked.

Holly pulled the blanket back and heaved the mattress onto the floor.

The bolts seem a little loose," she said.

"Where?" the woman said.

"Here," Holly said.

She used both hands on the long tube. Whipped it upward and spun and smashed it like a blunt spear into the side of the woman's head. The f.l.a.n.g.e hit her like a metal fist. Skin tore and a neat rectangle of bone punched deep into her brain and she bounced off the mattress and was dead before she hit the floor. Holly stepped carefully over the tray of lunch and limped calmly toward the open door.

THIRTY

HARLAND WEBSTER GOT BACK TO THE HOOVER BUILDING FROM Colorado at three o'clock Thursday afternoon, East Coast time. He went straight to his office suite and checked his messages. Then he buzzed his secretary.

"Car," he said.

He went down in his private elevator to the garage and met his driver.

They walked over to the limousine and got in.

"White House," Webster said.

"You seeing the president, sir?" the driver asked, surprised.

Webster scowled forward at the back of the guy's head. He wasn't seeing the president. He didn't see the president very often. He didn't need reminding of that, especially not by a d.a.m.n driver sounding all surprised that there even was such a possibility.

"Attorney general," he said. "White House is where she is right now."

His driver nodded silently. Cursed himself for opening his big mouth.

Drove on smoothly and un.o.btrusively. The distance between the Hoover Building and the White House was exactly sixteen hundred yards. Less than a mile. Not even far enough to click over the little number in the speedometer on the limousine's dash. It would have been quicker to walk. And cheaper. Firing up the cold V8 and hauling all that bulletproof plating sixteen hundred yards really ate up the gas. But the director couldn't walk anywhere. Theory was he'd get a.s.sa.s.sinated.

Fact was there were probably about eight people in the city who would recognize him. Just another DC guy in a gray suit and a quiet tie.

Anonymous. Another reason old Webster was never in the best of tempers, his driver thought.

Webster knew the attorney general pretty well. She was his boss but his familiarity with her did not come from their face-to-face meetings.

It came instead from the background checks the Bureau had run prior to her confirmation. Webster probably knew more about her than anybody else on earth did. Her parents and friends and ex-colleagues all knew their own separate perspectives. Webster had put all of those together and he knew the whole picture. Her Bureau file took up as much disk s.p.a.ce as a short novel. Nothing at all in the file made him dislike her. She had been a lawyer, faintly radical at the start of her career, built up a decent practice, grabbed a judges.h.i.+p, never annoyed the law-enforcement community, without ever becoming a rabid foaming-at-the-mouth pain in the a.s.s. An ideal appointment, sailed through her confirmation with no problem at all. Since then she had proved to be a good boss and a great ally. Her name was Ruth Rosen and the only problem Webster had with her was that she was twelve years younger than him, very good looking, and a whole lot more famous than he was.

His appointment was for four o'clock. He found Rosen alone in a small room, two floors and eight Secret Service agents away from the Oval Office. She greeted him with a strained smile and an urgent inclination of her elegant head.

"Holly?" she asked.

He nodded. He gave her the spread, top to bottom. She listened hard and ended up pale, with her lips clamped tight.

"We totally sure this is where she is?" she asked.

He nodded again.

"Sure as we can be," he said.

"OK," she said. "Wait there, will you?"

She left the small room. Webster waited. Ten minutes, then twenty, then a half-hour. He paced. He gazed out of the window. He opened the door and glanced out into the corridor. A secret serviceman glanced back at him. Took a pace forward. Webster shook his head in answer to the question the guy hadn't asked and closed the door again.

Just sat down and waited.

Ruth Rosen was gone an hour. She came back in and closed the door.

Then she just stood there, a yard inside the small room, pale, breathing hard, some kind of shock on her face. She said nothing. Just let it dawn on him that there was some kind of a big problem happening.

"What?" he asked.

"I'm out of the loop on this," she said.

"What?" he asked again.

"They took me out of the loop," she said. "My reactions were wrong.

Dexter is handling it from here."

"Dexter?" he repeated. Dexter was the president's White House chief of staff. A political fixer from the old school. As hard as a nail, and half as sentimental. But he was the main reason the president was sitting there in the Oval Office with a big majority of the popular vote.

"I'm very sorry, Harland," Ruth Rosen said. "He'll be here in a minute."

He nodded sourly and she went back out the door and left him to wait again.

The relations.h.i.+p between the rest of the FBI and the Field Office in b.u.t.te, Montana, is similar to the relations.h.i.+p between Moscow and Siberia, proverbially speaking. It's a standard Bureau joke. Screw up, the joke goes, and you'll be working out of b.u.t.te tomorrow. Like some kind of an internal exile. Like KGB foul-ups were supposedly sent out to write parking tickets in Siberia.

But on that Thursday July third, the Field Office in b.u.t.te felt like the center of the universe for McGrath and Milosevic and Brogan. It felt like the most desirable posting in the world. None of the three had ever been there before. Not on business, not on vacation. None of them would have ever considered going there. But now they were peering out of the air force helicopter like kids on their way to the Magic Kingdom. They were looking at the landscape below and swiveling their gaze northwest toward where they knew Yorke County was hiding under the distant hazy mist.

The resident agent at b.u.t.te was a competent Bureau veteran still reeling after a personal call from Harland Webster direct from the Hoover Building. His instructions were to drive the three Chicago agents to his office, brief them on the way, get them installed, rent them a couple of jeeps, and then get the h.e.l.l out and stay the h.e.l.l out until further notice. So he was waiting at the Silver Bow County Airport when the dirty black air force chopper clattered in. He piled the agents into his government Buick and blasted back north to town.

"Distances are big around here," he said to McGrath. "Don't ever forget that. We're still two hundred forty miles shy of Yorke. On our roads, that's four hours, absolute minimum. Me, I'd get some mobile units and move up a lot closer. Basing yourselves down here won't help you much, not if things start to turn bad up there."

McGrath nodded.

"You hear from Jackson again?" he asked.

"Not since Monday," the resident agent said. The dynamite thing."

"Next time he calls, he speaks to me, OK?" McGrath said.

The b.u.t.te guy nodded. Fished one-handed in his pocket while he drove.

Pulled out a small radio receiver. McGrath took it from him. Put it into his own pocket.

"Be my guest," the b.u.t.te guy said. "I'm on vacation. Webster's orders. But don't hold your breath. Jackson doesn't call often. He's very cautious."

The Field Office was just a single room, second floor of a two-floor munic.i.p.al building. A desk, two chairs, a computer, a big map of Montana on the wall, a lot of filing s.p.a.ce, and a ringing telephone.

McGrath answered it. He listened and grunted. Hung up and waited for the resident agent to take the hint.

"OK, I'm gone," the old guy said. "Silver Bow Jeep will bring you a couple of vehicles over. Anything else you guys need?"