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“Yet the legend lives on.”

“You sound uneasy about that. You must be the kind of colonel who would have found me an inconvenient subordinate.”

“In your case, would there be any other kind of colonel?”

“I never met one. But I lived in hope. I still do, as a matter of fact.”

“The general also told me Bisley was killed because our computer system has been penetrated. But she told me only after I arrived in Colorado. Not before I left. The logical conclusion is that somehow she needed to eliminate me as a suspect. I don’t like that. I might need to request a transfer.”

He waited for Reacher’s response.

“Don’t look at me,” Reacher said. “I’m not a guidance counsellor.”

“How else should I react?”

“You should think ahead to when you get your first star. How would you play it? With a thousand people and national security at stake?”

“I would play it the same.”

“Well then, no harm, no foul.”

“Except I seem to have been the first to be tested. Which means I must have been the prime suspect.”

“That’s a total non-sequitur.”

“What else could it mean?”

“It could mean you were the first she wanted to clear. Because you’re important to the success of her section. Maybe she felt terrible about it. Maybe she didn’t want to do it. But she knew she had to. She knew it would have been absolutely unacceptable not to. You worked in counterterrorism. You know the protocol. To ignore it because of personal trust or affection would be a grievous error and a court martial offense. You would have told her exactly that. I would have too. And if the shoe was on the other foot, both of us would have done the same thing to her. She would expect nothing less. A test. First, fast, and a formality. Then we could all get on with whatever came next.”

Elwood didn’t answer. The waitress came by and asked if he wanted anything. He ordered black coffee, which was a positive sign, and eggs on toast, which qualified too. Reacher asked for another slice of pie. The waitress left and Elwood said, “Run this whole thing down for me. What do we know for sure?”

“Very little,” Reacher said. “Bisley was chasing some kind of cybercrime vulnerability, maybe asked the wrong person the wrong question, maybe set off an alarm somewhere. They tracked him back to his place of employment and hacked into its computer system to keep an eye on things. Which implies our adversaries are very accomplished technically. They’re better than the NSA. Chances are they’re right here. Which would make sense. There are a lot of nerds here. Plus Bisley was killed by a crew supplied by a lawyer in an office less than a mile from where we’re sitting. Clearly the lawyer is acting as a middleman between his technically accomplished client and whoever he can find to do the dirty work. The lawyer’s first name is Hugo. His client pays a lot. Those are the only two things we actually know for sure. Except even they are only hearsay.”

“Are we assuming the technically accomplished client is a technology company here in Silicon Valley?”

“A start-up,” Reacher said.

“Why?”

“Apparently the established outfits have permanent people on staff for their dirty work. They don’t need middlemen or freelancers.”

“A well funded start-up, if they can afford to pay a lot.”

The waitress came back with their food. Breakfast for Elwood, pie for Reacher. Plus more coffee. It all looked good.

Elwood said, “What was the interface between Bisley in D.C. and a well funded technology start-up in California?”

“Bisley’s theory was about data centers stealing stuff from each other. He was concerned that military secrets could get caught up in the flow, seeing as they’re apparently scattered all over the place.”

“So the client is a well funded technology start-up possibly bending the rules. Somehow Bisley noticed. So they took him off the board, to preserve the commercial advantage their rule bending was giving them. It must be a big advantage.”

“Turner figured unimaginable billions.”

The waitress stopped by, checking how they were doing, filling their mugs from her flask. When she was gone Elwood said, “We need to ask Hugo who his client is.”

“Obviously,” Reacher said. “We’re already working on that. But we assume his office has cameras and facial recognition. They have our photographs. Yours too, now. From your digitized personnel jacket. Standing next to the flag, looking stern and grim, like a colonel should. They know you were in Summertown. They sent people to kill you. So we’re all in their system. We wouldn’t get in the door. We can’t risk driving Hugo underground. That way we would never be able to ask him anything.”

“So we approach him out of the office.”