"He served a full tour," Hobie said. "He was commended twice. He came home with a medal. I could see right away the idea of keeping the books for a print shop was too small for him. I thought he would serve out his time and get a job flying helicopters for the oil rigs. Down in the Gulf, perhaps. They were paying big money then, for Army pilots. Or Navy, or Air Force, of course."
"But he went over there again," Mrs. Hobie said. "To Vietnam again."
"He signed on for a second tour," Mrs. Hobie said. "He didn't have to. But he said it was his duty. He said the war was still going on, and it was his duty to be a part of it. He said that's what patriotism meant."
"And what happened?" Reacher asked.
There was a long moment of silence.
"He didn't come back," Hobie said.
The silence was like a weight in the room. Somewhere a clock was ticking. It grew louder and louder until it was filling the air like blows from a hammer.
"It destroyed me," Hobie said quietly.
The oxygen wheezed in and out, in and out, through a constricted throat.
"It just destroyed me. I used to say: I'll exchange the whole rest of my life, just for one more day with him."
"The rest of my life," his wife echoed. "For just one more day with him."
"And I meant it," Hobie said. "And I still would. I still would, Major. Looking at me now, that's not much of a bargain, is it? I haven't got much life left in me. But I said it then, and I said it every day for thirty years, and as God is my witness, I meant it every single time I said it. The whole rest of my life, for one more day with him."
"When was he killed?" Reacher asked, gently.
"He wasn't killed," Hobie said. "He was captured."
"Taken prisoner?"
The old man nodded. "At first, they told us he was missing. We assumed he was dead, but we clung on, hoping. He was posted missing, and he stayed missing. We never got official word he was killed."
"So we waited," Mrs. Hobie said. "We just kept on waiting, for years and years. Then we started asking. They told us Victor was missing, presumed killed. That was all they could say. His helicopter was shot down in the jungle, and they never found the wreckage."
"We accepted that then," Hobie said. "We knew how it was. Plenty of boys died without a known grave. Plenty of boys always have, in war."
"Then the memorial went up," Mrs. Hobie said. "Have you seen it?"
"The Wall?" Reacher said. "In D.C.? Yes, I've been there. I've seen it. I found it very moving."
"They refused to put his name on it," Hobie said.
"Why?"
"They never explained. We asked and we begged, but they never told us exactly why. They just said he's no longer considered a casualty."
"So we asked them what he is considered as," Mrs. Hobie said. "They just told us missing in action."
"But the other MIAs are on the Wall," Hobie said.
There was silence again. The clock hammered away in another room.
"What did General Garber say about this?" Reacher asked.
"He didn't understand it," Hobie said. "Didn't understand it at all. He was still checking for us when he died."
There was silence again. The oxygen hissed and the clock hammered.
"But we know what happened," Mrs. Hobie said.
"You do?" Reacher asked her. "What?"
"The only thing that fits," she said. "He was taken prisoner."
"And never released," Hobie said.
"That's why the Army is covering it up," Mrs. Hobie said. "The government is embarrassed about it. The truth is some of our boys were never released. The Vietnamese held on to them, like hostages, to get foreign aid and trade recognition and credits from us, after the war. Like blackmail. The government held out for years, despite our boys still being prisoners over there. So they can't admit it. They hide it instead, and won't talk about it."
"But we can prove it now," Hobie said.
He slid another photograph from the folder. Passed it across. It was a newer print. Vivid glossy colors. It was a telephoto shot taken through tropical vegetation. There was barbed wire on bamboo fence posts. There was an Oriental figure in a brown uniform, with a bandanna around his forehead. A rifle in his hands. It was clearly a Soviet AK-47. No doubt about it. And there was another figure in the picture. A tall Caucasian, looking about fifty, emaciated, gaunt, bent, gray, wearing pale, rotted fatigues. Looking half away from the Oriental soldier, flinching.
"That's Victor," Mrs. Hobie said. "That's our son. That photograph was taken last year."
"We spent thirty years asking about him," Hobie said. "Nobody would help us. We asked everybody. Then we found a man who told us about these secret camps. There aren't many. Just a few, with a handful of prisoners. Most of them have died by now. They've grown old and died, or been starved to death. This man went to Vietnam and checked for us. He got close enough to take this picture. He even spoke to one of the other prisoners through the wire. Secretly, at night. It was very dangerous for him. He asked for the name of the prisoner he'd just photographed. It was Vic Hobie, First Cavalry helicopter pilot."
"The man had no money for a rescue," Mrs. Hobie said. "And we'd already paid him everything we had for the first trip. We had no more left. So when we met General Garber at the hospital, we told him our story and asked him to try and get the government to pay."
Reacher stared at the photograph. Stared at the gaunt man with the gray face.
"Who else has seen this picture?"
"Only General Garber," Mrs. Hobie answered. "The man who took it told us to keep it a secret. Because it's very sensitive, politically. Very dangerous. It's a terrible thing, buried in the nation's history. But we had to show it to General Garber, because he was in a position to help us."
"So what do you want me to do?" Reacher asked.
The oxygen hissed in the silence. In and out, in and out, through the clear plastic tubes. The old man's mouth was working.
"I just want him back," he said. "I just want to see him again, one more day before I die."
AFTER THAT, THE old couple were done talking. They turned together and fixed misty gazes on the row of photographs on the mantel. Reacher was left sitting in the silence. Then the old man turned back and used both hands and lifted the leather-bound folder off his bony knees and held it out. Reacher leaned forward and took it. At first he assumed it was so he could put the three photographs back inside. Then he realized the baton had been passed to him. Like a ceremony. Their quest had become Leon's, and now it was his.
The folder was thin. Apart from the three photographs he had seen, it contained nothing more than infrequent letters home from their son and formal letters from the Department of the Army. And a sheaf of paperwork showing the liquidation of their life savings and the transfer by certified check of eighteen thousand dollars to an address in the Bronx, to fund a reconnaissance mission to Vietnam led by a man named Rutter.
The letters from the boy started with brief notes from various locations in the South, as he passed through Dix, and Polk, and Wolters, and Rucker, and Belvoir and Benning on his way through his training. Then there was a short note from Mobile in Alabama, as he boarded ship for the month-long voyage through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to Indochina. Then there were flimsy Army Mailgrams from Vietnam itself, eight from the first tour, six from the second. The paper was thirty years old, and it was stiff and dry, like ancient papyrus. Like something discovered by archaeologists.
He hadn't been much of a correspondent. The letters were full of the usual banal phrases a young soldier writes home. There must have been a hundred million parents in the world with treasured old letters like these, different times, different wars, different languages, but the same messages: the food, the weather, the rumor of action, the reassurances.
The responses from the Department of the Army marched through thirty years of office technology. They started out typed on old manual machines, some letters misaligned, some wrongly spaced, some with red haloes above them where the ribbon had slipped. Then electric typewriters, crisper and more uniform. Then word processors, immaculately printed on better paper. But the messages were all the same. No information. Missing in action, presumed killed. Condolences. No further information.
The deal with the guy called Rutter had left them penniless. There had been some modest mutual funds and a little cash on deposit. There was a sheet written in a shaky hand Reacher guessed was the old woman's, totaling their monthly needs, working the figures again and again, paring them down until they matched the Social Security checks, freeing up their capital. The mutuals had been cashed in eighteen months ago and amalgamated with the cash holdings and the whole lot had been mailed to the Bronx. There was a receipt from Rutter, with the amount formally set off against the cost of the exploratory trip, due to leave imminently. There was a request for any and all information likely to prove helpful, including service number and history and any existing photographs. There was a letter dated three months subsequently, detailing the discovery of the remote camp, the risky clandestine photography, the whispered talk through the wire. There was a prospectus for a rescue mission, planned in great detail, at a projected cost to the Hobies of forty-five thousand dollars. Forty-five thousand dollars they didn't have.