She pushed on, breathing hard, still moving well, right up there in the zone.

The traffic on 16th Street was stop-start heavy, frustration on every block, past Juniper Street, and Iris, and Hemlock, and Holly, and Geranium, and Floral. Then past Walter Reed, with the park green and serene on the right. The driver was no longer a bullet. He was shrapnel at best, subject to aerodynamic forces, jinking right and left between the lanes to win some fractional advantage on the dead-straight road. A Southern town, built for horses and buggies, perspiring gentlemen in hats and vests flicking mosquitoes away, now sclerotic with jammed vehicles, superheated air shimmering above their hoods, expensive paint winking in the sun.

He still had a long way to go. He was going to be late.

Reacher walked the corridors until he smelled an office with a coffee machine going. He ducked in and helped himself to a cup, practising a sergeant’s manner, on the surface quiet and deferential, with ramrod competence showing underneath. But the office was empty, so his acting was wasted, and the coffee was burnt and stewed. But he took it with him anyway, in one hand, the sheaf of documents in the other, all the way back to Cornelius Christopher’s office.

Christopher said, ‘You look the part.’

Reacher said, ‘Do I?’

‘Your file says you’re pretty good with a long gun.’

‘I do my best.’

‘You could have been a real sniper.’

‘Too much waiting around. Too much mud. The best snipers are always country boys.’

‘And you’re a city boy?’

‘I’m a nowhere boy. I grew up on Marine bases.’

‘Yet you joined the army?’