Personal (Jack Reacher, #19)

by Lee Child

“To your destination.” The guy crammed himself back in his seat next to his copilot and they both got busy checking dials. I followed the steward and found a cabin full of butterscotch leather and walnut veneer.

Which made some kind of sense. Special Forces were the armed wing of the CIA, which was the hands-on wing of the State Department, and some decisions would require all three fingers in the same pie all at once.

Unusually for a thin wiry guy he was immensely calm and still. He could drop his heart rate to the low thirties, and he could lie inert for many hours. He had superhuman eyesight. In other words, he was a born sniper. Even the army recognized it.

Then I detoured to the clothing store and hunted around at the khaki end of the color spectrum and the low end of the price list, and I picked out underwear and socks, and pants, and a shirt, and a jacket that might have been intended for golf in the rain. I didn’t find any shoes better than the pair I had on. As always I changed in the cubicle and left my old stuff in the trash. As always Casey Nice was interested in the process. She said, “I heard about this at the briefing, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe it.” I said, “You had a briefing about me?” “General O’Day calls you Sherlock Homeless.” “He should think about buying a new sweater himself.”

“Are you CIA?” I shook my head. “Retired military. I busted our guy once. Are you FSB or SVR?” “SVR,” he said, which meant Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, which was their foreign intelligence service. Like the CIA, or the DGSE, or MI6 in Britain. Then he said, “But we’re all still KGB really. Old wine, new bottles.”