CHAPTER THREE<\/p>\n

There was no one waiting outside bay fifteen. No special crew. No one at all. The corridor was entirely empty, too, both ways, as far as the eye could see. I guessed everyone else was already where they wanted to be. Twelve o\u2019clock meetings were in full swing.<\/p>\n

Bay fifteen\u2019s door was open. I knocked on it once, as a courtesy, as an announcement, as a warning, and then I stepped inside. Originally most of the Pentagon\u2019s office space was open plan, boxed off by file cabinets and furniture into bays, hence the name, but over the years walls had gone up and private spaces had been created. Frazer\u2019s billet in 3C315 was pretty typical. It was a small square space with a window without a view, with a metal DoD desk, and a chair with arms and two without, and a credenza and a double-wide storage unit.<\/p>\n

And it was a small square space entirely empty of people, apart from Frazer himself in the chair behind the desk. He looked up at me and smiled and said, “Hello, Reacher.”<\/p>\n

I looked left and right. No one there. No one at all. There was no private bathroom. No large closet. No other door of any kind. The corridor behind me was empty. The giant building was quiet.<\/p>\n

Frazer said, “Sit down, if you like.”<\/p>\n

I sat down.<\/p>\n

Frazer said, “You\u2019re late.”<\/p>\n

“I apologize,” I said. “I got hung up.”<\/p>\n

Frazer nodded. “This place is a nightmare at twelve o\u2019clock. Lunch breaks, shift changes, you name it. It\u2019s a zoo. I never plan to go anywhere at twelve o\u2019clock. I just hunker down in here.” He was about five-ten, maybe two hundred pounds, wide in the shoulders, solid through the chest, red-faced, black-haired, in his middle forties. Plenty of old Scottish blood in his veins. He had been in Vietnam as a teenager and the Gulf as an older man. He had combat pips all over him like a rash. He was an old-fashioned warrior, but unfortunately for him he could talk and smile as well as he could fight, so he had been posted to Senate Liaison, because the guys with the purse strings were the real enemy.<\/p>\n

He said, “So what have you got for me?”<\/p>\n

I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I hadn\u2019t expected to get that far.<\/p>\n

He said, “Good news, I hope.”<\/p>\n

“No news,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Nothing?”<\/p>\n

I nodded. “Nothing.”<\/p>\n

“You told me you had the name. That\u2019s what your message said.”<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t have the name.”<\/p>\n

“Then why say so? Why ask to see me?”<\/p>\n

I paused a beat.<\/p>\n

“It was a shortcut,” I said.<\/p>\n

“In what way?”<\/p>\n

“I put it around that I had the name. I wondered who might crawl out from under a rock, to shut me up.”<\/p>\n

“And no one has?”<\/p>\n

“Not so far. But ten minutes ago I thought it was a different story. There were four spare men in the lobby. In DPS uniforms. They followed me. I thought they were an arrest team.”<\/p>\n

“Followed you where?”<\/p>\n

“Around the E ring to the D. Then I lost them on the stairs.”<\/p>\n

Frazer smiled again.<\/p>\n

“You\u2019re paranoid,” he said. “You didn\u2019t lose them. I told you, there are shift changes at twelve o\u2019clock. They come in on the Metro like everyone else, they shoot the shit for a minute or two, and then they head for their squad room. It\u2019s on the B ring. They weren\u2019t following you.”<\/p>\n

I said nothing.<\/p>\n

He said, “There are always groups of them hanging around. There are always groups of everyone hanging around. We\u2019re seriously overmanned. Something is going to have to be done. It\u2019s inevitable. That\u2019s all I hear about, all day, every day. There\u2019s nothing we can do to stop it. We should all bear that in mind. People like you, especially.”<\/p>\n

“Like me?” I said.<\/p>\n

“There are lots of majors in this man\u2019s army. Too many, probably.”<\/p>\n

“Lots of colonels too,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Fewer colonels than majors.”<\/p>\n

I said nothing.<\/p>\n

He asked, “Was I on your list of things that might crawl out from under a rock?”<\/p>\n

You were the list, I thought.<\/p>\n

He said, “Was I?”<\/p>\n

“No,” I lied.<\/p>\n

He smiled again. “Good answer. If I had a beef with you, I\u2019d have you killed down there in Mississippi. Maybe I\u2019d come on down and take care of it myself.”<\/p>\n

I said nothing. He looked at me for a moment, and then a smile started on his face, and the smile turned into a laugh, which he tried very hard to suppress, but he couldn\u2019t. It came out like a bark, like a sneeze, and he had to lean back and look up at the ceiling.<\/p>\n

I said, “What?”<\/p>\n

His gaze came back level. He was still smiling. He said, “I was thinking about that phrase people use. You know, they say, that guy? He couldn\u2019t even get arrested.”<\/p>\n

I said nothing.<\/p>\n

He said, “You look terrible. There are barbershops here, you know. You should go use one.”<\/p>\n

“I can\u2019t,” I said. “I\u2019m supposed to look like this.”
\n#<\/p>\n

Eight days earlier my hair had been eight days shorter, but apparently still long enough to attract attention. Leon Garber, who at that point was once again my commanding officer, summoned me to his office, and because his message read in part without repeat without attending to any matters of personal grooming I figured he wanted to strike while the iron was hot and dress me down right then, while the evidence was still incontrovertibly in existence, right there on my head. And that was exactly how the meeting started out. He asked me, “Which army regulation covers a soldier\u2019s personal appearance?”<\/p>\n

Which I thought was a pretty rich question, coming from him. Garber was without a doubt the scruffiest officer I had ever seen. He could take a brand new Class A coat from the quartermaster\u2019s stores and an hour later it would look like he had fought two wars in it, then slept in it, then survived three bar fights in it.<\/p>\n

I said, “I can\u2019t remember which regulation covers a soldier\u2019s personal appearance.”<\/p>\n

He said, “Neither can I. But I seem to recall that whichever, the hair and the fingernail standards and the grooming policies are in chapter one, section eight. I can picture it all quite clearly, right there on the page. Can you remember what it says?”<\/p>\n

I said, “No.”<\/p>\n

“It tells us that hair grooming standards are necessary to maintain uniformity within a military population.”<\/p>\n

“Understood.”<\/p>\n

“It mandates those standards. Do you know what they are?”<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve been very busy,” I said. “I just got back from Korea.”<\/p>\n

“I heard Japan.”<\/p>\n

“That was just a stopover on the way.”<\/p>\n

“How long?”<\/p>\n

“Twelve hours.”<\/p>\n

“Do they have barbers in Japan?”<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m sure they do.”<\/p>\n

“Do Japanese barbers take more than twelve hours to cut a man\u2019s hair?”<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m sure they don\u2019t.”<\/p>\n

“Chapter one, section eight, paragraph two, says the hair on the top of the head must be neatly groomed, and that the length and the bulk of the hair may not be excessive or present a ragged, unkempt, or extreme appearance. It says that instead, the hair must present a tapered appearance.”<\/p>\n

I said, “I\u2019m not sure what that means.”<\/p>\n

“It says a tapered appearance is one where the outline of the soldier\u2019s hair conforms to the shape of his head, curving inward to a natural termination point at the base of his neck.”<\/p>\n

I said, “I\u2019ll get it taken care of.”<\/p>\n

“These are mandates, you understand. Not suggestions.”<\/p>\n

“OK,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Section two says that when the hair is combed, it will not fall over the ears or the eyebrows, and it will not touch the collar.”<\/p>\n

“OK,” I said again.<\/p>\n

“Would you not describe your current hairstyle as ragged, unkempt, or extreme?”<\/p>\n

“Compared to what?”<\/p>\n

“And how are you doing in relation to the thing with the comb and the ears and the eyebrows and the collar?”<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ll get it taken care of,” I said again.<\/p>\n

Then Garber smiled, and the tone of the meeting changed completely.<\/p>\n

He asked, “How fast does your hair grow, anyway?”<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t know,” I said. “A normal kind of speed, I suppose. Same as anyone else, probably. Why?”<\/p>\n

“We have a problem,” he said. “Down in Mississippi.”<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Lee Child<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n