“Yes?” Leon Garber said in my ear.

“Reacher here,” I said. The clock on the wall showed a little after nine in the morning. Kramer’s onward connection to LAX was already in the air.

“It was a heart attack,” Garber said. “No question.”

“Walter Reed worked fast.”

“He was a general.”

“But a general with a bad heart.”

“Bad arteries, actually. Severe arteriosclerosis leading to fatal ventricular fibrillation. That’s what they’re telling us. And I believe them too. Probably kicked in around the time the whore took her bra off.”

“He wasn’t carrying any pills.”

“It was probably undiagnosed. It’s one of those things. You feel fine, then you feel dead. No way it could be faked, anyway. You could simulate fibrillation with an electric shock, I guess, but you can’t simulate forty years’ worth of crap in the arteries.”

“Were we worried about it being faked?”

“There could have been KGB interest,” Garber said. “Kramer and his tanks are the biggest single tactical problem the Red Army is facing.”

“Right now the Red Army is facing the other way.”

“Kind of early to say whether that’s permanent or not.”

I didn’t reply. The phone went quiet.

“I can’t let anyone else touch this with a stick,” Garber said. “Not just yet. Because of the circumstances. You understand that, right?”

“So?”

“So you’re going to have to do the widow thing,” Garber said.

“Me? Isn’t she in Germany?”

“She’s in Virginia. She’s home for the holidays. They have a house there.”

He gave me the address and I wrote it on the slip of paper, directly underneath where I had underlined Joe.

“Anyone with her?” I asked.

“They don’t have kids. So she’s probably alone.”

“OK,” I said.

“She doesn’t know yet,” Garber said. “Took me a while to track her down.”

“Want me to take a priest?”

“It isn’t a combat death. You could take a female partner, I guess. Mrs. Kramer might be a hugger.”

“OK.”

“Spare her the details, obviously. He was en route to Irwin, is all. Croaked in a layover hotel. We need to make that the official line. Nobody except you and me knows any different yet, and that’s the way we’re going to keep it. Except you can tell whoever you partner with, I guess. Mrs. Kramer might ask questions, and you’ll need to be on the same page. What about the local cops? Are they going to leak?”

“The guy I saw was an ex-Marine. He knows the score.”

“Semper Fi,” Garber said.

“I didn’t find the briefcase yet,” I said.

The phone went quiet again.

“Do the widow thing first,” Garber said. “Then keep on looking for it.”

I told the day-shift corporal to move Kramer’s effects to my quarters. I wanted to keep them safe and sound. The widow would ask for them, eventually. And things can disappear, on a big base like Bird, which can be embarrassing. Then I walked over to the O Club and looked for MPs eating late breakfasts or early lunches. They usually cluster well away from everybody else, because everybody else hates them. I found a group of four, two men and two women. They were all in woodland-pattern BDUs, standard on-post dress. One of the women was a captain. She had her right arm in a sling. She was having trouble eating. She would have trouble driving too. The other woman had a lieutenant’s bar on each lapel and Summer on her nametape. She looked to be about twenty-five years old and she was short and slender. She had skin the same color as the mahogany table she was eating off.

“Lieutenant Summer,” I said.

“Sir?”

“Happy New Year,” I said.

“Sir, you too.”

“You busy today?”

“Sir, general duties.”

“OK, out front in thirty minutes, Class As. I need you to hug a widow.”

I put my own Class As on again and called the motor pool for a sedan. I didn’t want to ride all the way to Virginia in a Humvee. Too noisy, too uncomfortable. A private brought me a new olive-green Chevrolet. I signed for it and drove it around to post headquarters and waited.

Lieutenant Summer came out halfway through the twenty-eighth minute of her allotted thirty. She paused a second and then walked toward the car. She looked good. She was very short, but she moved easily, like a willowy person. She looked like a six-foot catwalk model reduced in size to a tiny miniature. I got out of the car and left the driver’s door open. Met her on the sidewalk. She was wearing an expert sharpshooter badge with bars for rifle, small bore rifle, auto rifle, pistol, small bore pistol, machine gun, and submachine gun hanging on it. They made a little ladder about two inches long. Longer than mine. I only have rifle and pistol. She stopped dead in front of me and came to attention and fired off a perfect salute.

“Sir, Lieutenant Summer reports,” she said.

“Take it easy,” I said. “Informal mode of address, OK? Call me Reacher, or nothing. And no saluting. I don’t like it.”

She paused. Relaxed.

“OK,” she said.

I opened the passenger door and started to get in.

“I’m driving?” she asked.

“I was up most of the night.”

“Who died?”

“General Kramer,” I said. “Big tank guy in Europe.”

She paused again. “So why was he here? We’re all infantry.”

“Passing through,” I said.

She got in on the other side and racked the driver’s seat all the way forward. Adjusted the mirror. I pushed the passenger seat back and got as comfortable as I could.

“Where to?” she said.

“ Green Valley, Virginia,” I said. “It’ll be about four hours, I guess.”

“That’s where the widow is?”

“Home for the holidays,” I said.

“And we’re breaking the news? Like, Happy New Year, ma’am, and by the way, your husband’s dead?”

I nodded. “Lucky us.” But I wasn’t really worried. Generals’ wives are as tough as they come. Either they’ve spent thirty years pushing their husbands up the greasy pole, or they’ve endured thirty years of fallout as their husbands have climbed it for themselves. Either way, there’s not much left that can get to them. They’re tougher than the generals, most of the time.

Summer took her cap off and tossed it onto the backseat. Her hair was very short. Almost shaved. She had a delicate skull and nice cheekbones. Smooth skin. I liked the way she looked. And she was a fast driver. That was for damn sure. She clipped her belt and took off north like she was training for NASCAR.

“Was it an accident?” she asked.

“Heart attack,” I said. “His arteries were bad.”

“Where? Our VOQ?”

I shook my head. “A crappy little motel in town. He died with a twenty-dollar hooker wedged somewhere underneath him.”

“We’re not telling the widow that part, right?”

“No, we’re not. We’re not telling anyone that part.”

“Why was he passing through?”

“He didn’t come to Bird itself. He was transiting D.C. Frankfurt to Dulles, then National to LAX twenty hours later. He was going out to Irwin for a conference.”

“OK,” she said, and then she went very quiet. We drove on. We got about level with the motel, but well to the west, heading straight for the highway.

“Permission to speak freely?” she said.

“Please,” I said.

“Is this a test?”

“Why would it be a test?”

“You’re from the 110th Special Unit, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am.”

“I have an application pending.”

“To the 110th?”

“Yes,” she said. “So, is this a covert assessment?”

“Of what?”

“Of me,” she said. “As a candidate.”

“I needed a woman partner. In case the widow is a hugger. I picked you out at random. The captain with the busted arm couldn’t have driven the car. And it would be kind of inefficient for us to wait until we had a dead general to conduct personnel assessments.”

“I guess,” she said. “But I’m wondering if you’re sitting there waiting for me to ask the obvious questions.”