“What happened in Panama?” Joe asked.

“To me?” I said. “Nothing.”

“What were your orders there?”

“Supervision.”

“Of what?”

“Of the process,” I said. “The Noriega thing is supposed to look judicial. He’s supposed to stand trial here in the States. So we’re supposed to grab him up with some kind of formality. Some way that will look acceptable when we get him in a courtroom.”

“You were going to read him his Miranda rights?”

“Not exactly. But it had to be better than some cowboy thing.”

“Did you screw up?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Who replaced you?”

“Some other guy.”

“Rank?”

“Same,” I said.

“A rising star?”

I sipped my coffee. Shook my head. “I never met him before. But he seemed like a bit of an asshole to me.”

Joe nodded and picked up his mug. Said nothing.

“What?” I said.

“Bird’s not a small post,” he said. “But it’s not real big either, right? What are you working on?”

“Right now? Some two-star died and I can’t find his briefcase.”

“Homicide?”

I shook my head. “Heart attack.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“After you got there?”

I said nothing.

“You sure you didn’t screw up?” Joe said.

“I don’t think so,” I said again.

“So why did they pull you out of Panama? One day you’re supervising the Noriega process, and the next day you’re in North Carolina with nothing to do? And you’d still have nothing to do if the general hadn’t died.”

“I got orders,” I said. “You know how it is. You have to assume they know what they’re doing.”

“Who signed the orders?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should find out. Find out who wanted you at Bird badly enough to pull you out of Panama and replace you with an asshole. And you should find out why.”

The guy in the apron refilled our mugs. Shoved plastic menus in front of us.

“Eggs,” Joe said. “Over well, bacon, toast.”

“Pancakes,” I said. “Egg on the top, bacon on the side, plenty of syrup.”

The guy took the menus back and went away and Joe turned around on his stool and sat back-to with his legs stretched way out into the aisle.

“What exactly did her doctor say?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Not very much. No details, no diagnosis. No real information. European doctors aren’t very good with bad news. They hedge around it all the time. Plus, there’s a privacy issue, obviously.”

“But we’re headed over there for a reason?”

He nodded. “He suggested we might want to come. And then he hinted that sooner might be better than later.”

“What is she saying?”

“That it’s all a lot of fuss about nothing. But that we’re always welcome to visit.”

We finished our breakfast and I paid for it. Then Joe gave me my ticket, like a transaction. I was sure he earned more than me, but probably not enough to make an airline ticket proportional to a plate of eggs and bacon with toast on the side. But I took the deal. We got off our stools and got our bearings and headed for the check-in counter.

“Take your coat off,” he said.

“Why?”

“I want the clerk to see your medal ribbons,” he said. “Military action going on overseas, we might get an upgrade.”

“It’s Air France,” I said. “France isn’t even a military member of NATO.”

“The check-in clerk will be American,” Joe said. “Try it.”

I shrugged out of my coat. Folded it over my arm and walked sideways so the left of my chest stuck out forward.

“OK now?” I said.

“Perfect,” he said, and smiled.

I smiled back. Left-to-right on the top row I wear the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, and the Legion of Merit. Second row has the Soldier’s Medal, the Bronze Star, and my Purple Heart. The bottom two rows are the junk awards. I won all of the good stuff purely by accident and none of it means very much to me. Using it to get an upgrade out of an airline clerk is about what it’s good for. But Joe liked the top two rows. He served five years in Military Intelligence and didn’t get past the junk.

We made it to the head of the line and he put his passport and ticket on the counter along with a Treasury Department ID. Then he stepped behind my shoulder. I put my own passport and ticket down. He nudged me in the back. I turned a little sideways and looked at the clerk.

“Can you find us something with legroom?” I asked him.

He was a small man, middle-aged, tired. He looked up at us. Together we measured almost thirteen feet tall and weighed about four hundred fifty pounds. He studied the Treasury ID and looked at my uniform and pattered on his keyboard and came up with a forced smile.

“We’ll seat you gentlemen up front,” he said.

Joe nudged me in the back again and I knew he was smiling.

We were in the last row of the first-class cabin. We were talking, but we were avoiding the obvious subject. We talked about music, and then politics. We had another breakfast. We drank coffee. Air France makes pretty good coffee in first class.

“Who was the general?” Joe asked.

“Guy called Kramer,” I said. “An Armored commander in Europe.”

“Armored? So why was he at Bird?”

“He wasn’t on the post. He was at a motel thirty miles away. Rendezvous with a woman. We think she ran away with his briefcase.”

“Civilian?”

I shook my head. “We think she was an officer from Bird. He was supposed to be overnighting in D.C. on his way to California for a conference.”

“That’s a three-hundred-mile detour.”

“Two hundred and ninety-eight.”

“But you don’t know who she is.”

“She’s fairly senior. She drove her own Humvee out to the motel.”

“She has to be fairly senior. Kramer’s known her for a good spell, to make it worth driving a five-hundred-ninety-six-mile round-trip detour.”

I smiled. Anyone else would have said a six-hundred-mile detour. But not my brother. Like me he has no middle name. But it should be Pedantic. Joe Pedantic Reacher.

“Bird is still all infantry, right?” he said. “Some Rangers, some Delta, but mostly grunts, as I recall. So have you got many senior women?”

“There’s a Psy-Ops school now,” I said. “Half the instructors are women.”

“Rank?”

“Some captains, some majors, a couple of light colonels.”

“What was in the briefcase?”

“The agenda for the California conference,” I said. “Kramer’s staffers are pretending there isn’t one.”

“There’s always an agenda,” Joe said.

“I know.”

“Check the majors and the light colonels,” he said. “That would be my advice.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And find out who wanted you at Bird,” he said. “And why. This Kramer thing wasn’t the reason. We know that for sure. Kramer was alive and well when your orders were cut.”

We read day-old copies of Le Matin and Le Monde. About halfway through the flight we started talking in French. We were pretty rusty, but we got by. Once learned, never forgotten. He asked me about girlfriends. I guess he figured it was an appropriate subject for discussion in the French language. I told him I had been seeing a girl in Korea but since then I had been moved to the Philippines and then Panama and now to North Carolina so I didn’t expect to see her again. I told him about Lieutenant Summer. He seemed interested in her. He told me he wasn’t seeing anyone.

Then he switched back to English and asked when I had last been in Germany.

“Six months ago,” I said.

“It’s the end of an era,” he said. “Germany will reunify. France will renew its nuclear testing because a reunified Germany will bring back bad memories. Then it will propose a common currency for the EC as a way of keeping the new Germany inside the tent. Ten years from now Poland will be in NATO and the USSR won’t exist anymore. There’ll be some rump nation. Maybe it will be in NATO too.”