Free Night School by Lee Child

coffee,” Reacher said. “That usually fixes things up.”
    —
    In Hamburg it was lunch time, and Chief of Detectives Griezman was minutes away from a fine spread in a cellar restaurant not far from his office. But first he had work to finish. Part of his role as chief was to pass on intelligence to those who needed it. Like an editor, or a curator. Someone had to be responsible. Someone’s fat ass had to get fired if the dots didn’t join up afterward. That’s why he got the big bucks, as they said on the television.
    Naturally he tended toward caution. Better safe than sorry. Practically everything got sent somewhere. Before lunch every day. He scanned carbons and Xeroxes and made separate labeled piles, for this agency and that. His secretary had them biked out, while he was eating.
    Near the top of the pile was another report from the prostitute investigation. Among the names gathered during the door-to-door inquiries in her street were a U.S. Army major and a noncommissioned officer who claimed to be there for the purposes of tourism. The reporting officer had followed up by checking with border control records at the airport. He had discovered both Americans had indeed arrived that morning, as claimed. Therefore both could be eliminated as suspects, but the reporting officer wished to point out they didn’t look like tourists.
    Better safe than sorry. Griezman tossed the report into the space labeled U.S. Army Command HQ Stuttgart, where it was so far the only entry of the day.
    Then he read a routine one-paragraph cover-your-ass statement from the uniformed branch. It said several days ago an individual member of the public had contacted them by telephone to report that in the late afternoon he had seen an American in conversation with a dark-skinned man probably from the Middle East, in a bar just out from downtown. The member of the public further claimed the dark-skinned man was acting in an agitated manner, no doubt due to life or death secrets related to regional unrest due to historic inequities. But local officers were quick to advise that the informant in question was a known paranoid and fanatic, known for making frequent phone calls of similar doomsday content, and anyway the Middle Easterner was entitled to act in an agitated manner, because it was a hardcore bar, and his presence would not have been welcomed or long tolerated. All that said, the matter was still considered worthy of recording.
    Therefore worthy of passing on up the chain, Griezman decided. Two could play the cover-your-ass game. But passing on to where? The American consulate, of course. Partly as a tweak about the bullying behavior. Why would an American invite an Arab to a bar like that? The invitation certainly couldn’t have been the other way around. It couldn’t have been the Middle Easterner’s first choice of venue. What had been the purpose?
    But mostly he passed it on because an American was talking to an Arab. All of a sudden they were very interested in things like that. There were brownie points to be earned. There were careers to be built.
    He tossed the paragraph into the space labeled U.S. Consulate Hamburg, where it was also the only entry of the day.

Chapter 9
    Reacher and Neagley set up in the control center in the classroom. They worked on the maneuver reports. They took out a hundred, two hundred, five hundred names at a time. The military was pretty good at keeping track of people. Except people on leave. Family time, in the German suburbs. Or cheap fares home. Or vacations, or adventures. Folks all over the world. Thousands at a time, minimum.
    No information.
    Neagley said, “We also have three AWOLs in the mix. Plus an O-5 who refuses to say where he was that day.”
    A lieutenant colonel.
    Reacher said, “Who are the AWOLs?”
    “All PFCs. One infantry, one armored, and one medic.”
    Privates first class.
    Reacher said, “Medics are running away now? When did that start? How long have they been