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“More likely thought a one-star wouldn’t do it. All you’re good for is sharpening pencils and raising objections.”

“It gave me an unfair advantage.”

“You OK?” he asked, a third time.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“There’s no such thing as an unfair advantage. You use what you’ve got. I was born big, and I don’t feel guilty about it.”

“Your poor mother. She must have thought she was carrying quadruplets.”

“Don’t work too hard.”

“I might have to. It’s a long agenda. Some of it is pretty vague. I need to brush up on a bunch of stuff. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You bet,” he said, and clicked off the call.

—

It was late, even on the West Coast, but Reacher went out for a walk. He was restless. In fact he was boiling inside with rage and unspent adrenaline. He thought maybe the submachine gun was his fault. They could predict from the diary where she was going to be the night before, but they couldn’t predict who had come with her. They had planned for him being there. And why not? He had been with her for every attempt they had made in California. Why would Virginia be different? They had tooled up accordingly. The MP5 was better than a silenced pistol for quick and dirty work against multiple targets. One of which was supposed to be him. Which would not have been a major concern. He would have been happy to take his chances against some random sold-out first sergeant.

It was the guy coming to her house that upset him. He wished he had been there. He would have torn the guy’s arm off at the shoulder and beaten him to death with it.

—

Three a.m. on the West Coast was six a.m. in D.C., so Axel Brill made the call. The promised deadline was upon them. They will execute at their discretion, but before six o’clock tomorrow morning. So was it done? Brill really needed to know. He was losing days and days of work, and keeping his investors on the hook depended entirely on his promise of lightning-fast progress. In a business that was already moving lightning-fast. He had to stand out. Delays were not part of his vision. Delays were for other people, not for Axel Brill.

The phone rang a long time before the concierge answered. Right away Brill knew from the tone of the guy’s voice that the news was not good. A tentative greeting, downbeat and nervous.

Brill said, “What’s up, bro?”

“The operator they sent is MIA.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He vanished without a trace.”

“And she’s still alive?”

“They assume so.”

“You failed,” Brill said.

“They failed. Not me.”

“You chose them. At a ludicrous price I’m sure included a monster mark-up for yourself. So now your kid is good for his college fund, but my ass is still hanging out in the breeze.”

“I don’t have a kid.”

“Figure of speech, bro. I’m seriously pissed. I’m not getting the service I expected. Or paid for. You screwed up at the Swiss motel, and the Four Seasons, and the suite hotel, and now in D.C.”

“We got the first guy in Summertown.”

“What about the second guy? The colonel?”

“He was already long gone. He only stayed a few hours.”

“So you failed again. You’re a waste of space. You’re an embarrassment. You’re like a bad line of code. All I ever get is the same error message, over and over again.”