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“Wrong number,” he said. “We’re not who you think we are.”

“You’re EEF.”

“Do you have a problem with them?”

“You know we do.”

“Mistaken identity,” Reacher said. “We’re not EEF.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Then who are you?”

“Exact details would tie you up for days with all kinds of bureaucracy concerning classified information and national security. Prior to that all you’re permitted to hear is that we’re federal law enforcement officers from Washington D.C.”

The old guy in the blazer glanced at Elwood, then Turner, then back at Reacher. All three were more than plausible as government cops. Two actually were, and one had been. Elwood was especially impressive. He could have been on recruiting posters. The old guy glanced left and right at his colleagues, in their own separate carts. His wingmen. They were the kind of solid people who still trusted authority. Less than they used to, maybe, but deep down their instincts ran one way only.

The woman in the blazer said, “May we know why you’re here?”

“We’re not at liberty to say.”

“You were looking at EEF’s fence.”

“Through it, technically.”

“What have they done?”

“Tell us about your own problems with them.”

They looked at each other and the younger guy in the blazer took over. Maybe the club secretary. The details guy. He said, “That building has been there ten years. Five different tenants have cycled through. We never had a moment’s trouble with any of them. Then EEF leased it. First they wanted to dig a trench across the whole course to lay a cable. We said no, obviously. Can you imagine? The damage would have been catastrophic. We would have had to close for two or more years.”

He stopped for a breath and the older guy took over again. He said, “Then they tried to buy the place. They decided they wanted to build their campus on this piece of land. They offered the members a million dollars each to vote for the sale. That’s not permitted under our rules. They spent weeks bullying us and agitating and setting us against each other.”

The younger guy took over again. “Then they gave up on the purchase and changed back to just wanting the trench again. Except this time it wasn’t a trench. It was a narrow slit. They said there’s a new tool, like a chainsaw. They said it fits on a regular backhoe. It cuts a slit, as deep as you need, but only an inch wide. They said it would be invisible.”

“We didn’t believe them,” the older guy said. “In particular our groundsman didn’t believe them. He felt a deep soil disturbance of that magnitude could never be invisible. So we said no again. More bullying, more pressure. They asked to do a short section as a test, to prove it to us. We said no. They did it anyway.”

The woman in the blazer said, “They came in at night with a backhoe and cut all the way across the ninth fairway. They patched it up like they had proposed, and they left. We suppose they thought we wouldn’t notice, so they could come back later and say told you so. But of course we noticed. It was like a war zone. The backhoe’s tires tore everything up. The cut itself will be blatantly obvious for a decade.”

“Come see for yourself,” the old guy said. “Hop aboard.”

Elwood said, “Ma’am?”

Turner shrugged and said, “Let’s go see for ourselves.”

Elwood rode with the older guy, Reacher with the younger guy, and Turner with the woman. The carts zipped across the grass, which was green and smooth and immaculately manicured. Reacher couldn’t tell one fairway from another. He had never played golf. Never wanted to. He knew there were eighteen holes, which he guessed meant there were eighteen fairways, so the ninth would be somewhere in the middle of the acreage. Probably the easiest for the backhoe to get to from the street.

The carts all slowed and came to a stop. They were on the edge of a fairway, near to where it changed to a green. The ninth hole, presumably. There were pale scooped-out sand traps and grass mowed as smooth as velvet in perfect stripes. There were slopes and plateaus. There was a flag in the hole, a clean red triangle on a pole that was perfectly white and perfectly vertical.

There was a thin scar all the way across the fairway.

They climbed out of the carts. Reacher was no kind of a horticulturalist. He had never grown anything. As a kid he had thrown down seeds, but he had never lived anywhere long enough to see them flower. But even he could tell something bad had happened. Side to side across the width of the fairway there was a broad bruised area. From the backhoe’s tires, he assumed. The thin scar ran along the center of it. The scar was less than an inch wide, dead straight, in places sunken down a fraction, as if the dirt underneath had compacted, in other places standing proud, like a rope laid across the surface, the thickness of Reacher’s finger. Altogether it was obvious, although perhaps not blatantly, and it would take a long time to fade away, although perhaps not a decade.

“Do you see?” the old man asked.

“It’s an outrage,” Reacher said.