“OK, we’re secure,” she said. “For now.”
Neagley yawned and stretched. “So take a break. Be ready for a hard week.”
“I feel stupid,” Froelich said. “I don’t know if this is a game or for real.”
“You feel too much,” Neagley said.
Froelich looked at the ceiling. “What would Joe do now?”
Reacher paused and smiled. “Go to the store and buy a suit, probably.”
“No, seriously.”
“He’d close his eyes for a minute and work it all out like it was a chess puzzle. He read Karl Marx, you know that? He said Marx had this trick of explaining everything with one single question, which was, who benefits?”
“So?”
“Let’s say it is an insider doing this. Karl Marx would say, OK, the insider plans to benefit from it. Joe would ask, OK, how does he plan to benefit from it?”
“By making me look bad in front of Stuyvesant.”
“And getting you demoted or fired or whatever, because that rewards him in some way. That would be his aim. But that would be his only aim. Situation like that, there’s no serious threat against Armstrong. That’s an important point. And then Joe would say, OK, suppose it’s not an insider, suppose it’s an outsider. How does he plan to benefit?”
“By assassinating Armstrong.”
“Which gratifies him in some other way. So Joe would say what you’ve got to do is proceed as if it’s an outsider, and proceed very calmly and without panicking, and above all successfully. That’s two birds with one stone. If you’re calm, you deny the insider his benefit. If you’re successful, you deny the outsider his benefit.”
Froelich nodded, frustrated. “But which is it? What did the cleaners tell you?”
“Nothing,” Reacher said. “My read is somebody they know persuaded them to smuggle it in, but they aren’t admitting to anything.”
“I’ll tell Armstrong to stay home tomorrow.”
Reacher shook his head. “You can’t. You do that, you’ll be seeing shadows every day and he’ll be in hiding for the next four years. Just stay calm and tough it out.”
“Easy to say.”
“Easy to do. Just take a deep breath.”
Froelich was still and silent for a spell. Then she nodded.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll get you a driver. Be back here at nine in the morning. There’ll be another strategy meeting. Exactly a week after the last one.”
The morning was damp and very cold, like nature wanted to be done with fall and get started with winter. Exhaust fumes drifted down the streets in low white clouds and pedestrians hurried by on the sidewalks with their faces ducked deep into scarves. Neagley and Reacher met at eight-forty at the cab line outside the hotel and found a Secret Service Town Car waiting for them. It was double-parked with the engine running and the driver standing next to it. He was maybe thirty years old, dressed in a dark overcoat and gloves, and he was up on his toes, scanning the crowd anxiously. He was breathing hard and his breath was pluming in the air.
“He looks worried,” Neagley said.
The inside of the car was hot. The driver didn’t speak once during the journey. Didn’t even say his name. Just bulled through the morning traffic and squealed into the underground garage. Led them at a fast walk into the interior lobby and into the elevator. Up three floors and across to the reception desk. It was manned by a different guy. He pointed down the corridor toward the conference room.
“Started without you,” he said. “You better hurry.”
The conference room was empty apart from Froelich and Stuyvesant sitting face-to-face across the width of the table. They were both still and silent. Both pale. On the polished wood between them lay two photographs. One was the official FBI crime scene eight-by-ten of the previous day’s ten-word message: The day upon which Armstrong will die is fast approaching. The other was a hasty Polaroid of another sheet of paper. Reacher stepped close and bent to look.
“Shit,” he said.
The Polaroid showed a single sheet of letter-sized paper, exactly like the first three in every detail. It followed the same format, a printed message neatly centered near the middle of the page. Nine words: A demonstration of your vulnerability will be staged today.
“When did it come?” he asked.
“This morning,” Froelich said. “In the mail. Addressed to Armstrong at his office. But we’re bringing all his mail through here now.”
“Where is it from?”
“Orlando, Florida, postmarked Friday.”
“Another popular tourist destination,” Stuyvesant said.
Reacher nodded. “Forensics on yesterday’s?”
“Just got a heads-up by phone,” Froelich said. “Everything’s identical, thumbprint and all. I’m sure this one will be the same. They’re working on it now.”
Reacher stared at the pictures. The thumbprints were completely invisible, but he felt he could just about see them there, like they were glowing in the dark.
“I had the cleaners arrested,” Stuyvesant said.
Nobody spoke.
“Gut call?” Stuyvesant said. “Joke or real?”
“Real,” Neagley said. “I think.”
“Doesn’t matter yet,” Reacher said. “Because nothing’s happened yet. But we act like it’s for real until we know otherwise.”
Stuyvesant nodded. “That was Froelich’s recommendation. She quoted Karl Marx at me. The Communist Manifesto.”
“Das Kapital, actually,” Reacher said. He picked up the Polaroid and looked at it again. The focus was a little soft and the paper was very white from the strobe, but there was no mistaking what the message meant.
“Two questions,” he said. “First, how secure are his movements today?”
“As good as it gets,” Froelich said. “I’ve doubled his detail. He’s scheduled to leave home at eleven. I’m using the armored stretch again instead of the Town Car. Full motorcade. We’re using awnings across the sidewalks at both ends. He won’t see open air at any point. We’ll tell him it’s another rehearsal procedure.”
“He still doesn’t know about this yet?”
“No,” Froelich said.
“Standard practice,” Stuyvesant said. “We don’t tell them.”
“Thousands of threats a year,” Neagley said.
Stuyvesant nodded. “Exactly. Most of them are background noise. We wait until we’re absolutely sure. And even then, we don’t always make a big point out of it. They’ve got better things to do. It’s our job to worry.”
“OK, second question,” Reacher said. “Where’s his wife? And he has a grown-up kid, right? We have to assume that messing with his family would be a pretty good demonstration of his vulnerability.”
Froelich nodded. “His wife is back here in D.C. She came in from North Dakota yesterday. As long as she stays in or near the house she’s OK. His daughter is doing graduate work in Antarctica. Meteorology, or something. She’s in a hut surrounded by a hundred thousand square miles of ice. Better protection than we could give her.”
Reacher put the Polaroid back down on the table.
“Are you confident?” he asked. “About today?”
“I’m nervous as hell.”
“But?”
“I’m as confident as I can be.”
“I want Neagley and me on the ground, observing.”
“Think we’re going to screw up?”
“No, but I think you’re going to have your hands full. If the guy’s in the neighborhood, you might be too busy to spot him. And he’ll have to be in the neighborhood if he’s for real and he wants to stage a demonstration of something.”
“OK,” Stuyvesant said. “You and Ms. Neagley, on the ground, observing.”
Froelich drove them to Georgetown in her Suburban. They arrived just before ten o’clock. They got out three blocks short of Armstrong’s house and Froelich drove on. It was a cold day, but a watery sun was trying its best. Neagley stood still and glan
ced around, all four directions.
“Deployment?” she asked.
“Circles, on a three-block radius. You go clockwise and I’ll go counterclockwise. Then you stay south and I’ll stay north. Meet back at the house after he’s gone.”
Neagley nodded and walked away west. Reacher went east into the weak morning sun. He wasn’t especially familiar with Georgetown. Apart from short periods during the previous week spent watching Armstrong’s house he had explored it only once, briefly, just after he left the service. He was familiar with the college feel and the coffee shops and the smart houses. But he didn’t know it like a cop knows his beat. A cop depends on a sense of inappropriateness. What doesn’t fit? What’s out of the ordinary? What’s the wrong type of face or the wrong type of car for the neighborhood? Impossible to answer those questions without long habituation to a place. And maybe impossible to answer them at all in a place like Georgetown. Everybody who lives there comes from somewhere else. They’re there for a reason, to study at the university or to work in the government. It’s a transient place. It has a temporary, shifting population. You graduate, you leave. You get voted out, you go someplace else. You get rich, you move to Chevy Chase. You go broke, you go sleep in a park.
So just about everybody he saw was suspicious. He could have made a case against any of them. Who belonged? An old Porsche with a blown muffler rumbled past him. Oklahoma plates. An unshaven driver. Who was he? A brand new Mercury Sable was parked nose-to-tail with a rusted-out Rabbit. The Sable was red and almost certainly a rental. Who was using it? Some guy just in for the day for a special purpose? He detoured next to it and glanced in through the windows at the rear seat. No overcoat, no hat. No open ream of Georgia-Pacific office paper. No box of latex medical gloves. And who owned the Rabbit? A graduate student? Or some backwoods anarchist with a Hewlett-Packard printer at home?
There were people on the sidewalks. Maybe four or five of them visible at any one time in any one direction. Young, old, white, black, brown. Men, women, young people carrying backpacks full of books. Some of them hurrying, some of them strolling. Some of them obviously on their way to the market, some of them obviously on their way back. Some of them looking like they had no particular place to go. He watched them all in the corner of his eye, but nothing special jumped out at him.
Time to time he checked upper-story windows as he walked. There were a lot of them. It was good rifle territory. A warren of houses, back gates, narrow alleys. But a rifle would be no good against an armored stretch limo. The guy would need an antitank missile for that. Of which there were plenty to choose from. The AT-4 would be favorite. It was a three-foot disposable fiberglass tube that fired a six-and-a-half pound projectile through eleven inches of armor. Then the BASE principle took over. Behind Armor Secondary Effect. The entrance hole stayed small and tight, so the explosive event stayed confined to the interior of the vehicle. Armstrong would be reduced to little floating carbon pieces not much bigger than charred wedding confetti. Reacher glanced up at the windows. He doubted that a limo would have much armor plate in the roof, anyway. He made a mental note to ask Froelich about it. And to ask if she often rode in the same car as her charge.
He turned a corner and came out at the top of Armstrong’s street. Looked up at the high windows again. A mere demonstration wouldn’t require an actual missile. A rifle would be functionally ineffective, but it would make a point. A couple of chips in the limo’s bulletproof glass would serve some kind of notice. A paintball gun would do the trick. A couple of red splatters on the rear window would be a message. But the upper-floor windows were quiet as far as the eye could see. They were clean and neat and draped and closed against the cold. The houses themselves were quiet and calm, serene and prosperous.
There was a small crowd of onlookers watching the Secret Service team erect an awning between Armstrong’s house and the curb. It was like a long narrow white tent. Heavy white canvas, completely opaque. The house end fitted flat against the brick around Armstrong’s front door. The curb end had a radius like a jetway at an airport. It would hug the profile of the limo. The limo’s door would open right inside it. Armstrong would pass from the safety of his house straight into the armored car without ever being visible to an observer.
Reacher walked a circle around the group of curious people. They looked unthreatening. Neighbors, mostly, he guessed. Dressed like they weren’t going far. He moved back up the street and continued the search for open upper-story windows. That would be inappropriate, because of the weather. But there weren’t any. He looked for people loitering. There were plenty of those. There was a block where every second storefront was a coffee shop, and there were people passing time in every one of them. Sipping espresso, reading papers, talking on cell phones, writing in cramped notebooks, playing with electronic organizers.
He picked a coffee shop that gave him a good view south down the street and a marginal view east and west and bought a tall regular, black, and took a table. Sat down to wait and watch. At ten fifty-five a black Suburban came up the street and parked tight against the curb just north of the tent. It was followed by a black Cadillac stretch that parked tight against the tent’s opening. Behind that was a black Town Car. All three vehicles looked very heavy. All three had reinforced window frames and one-way glass. Four agents spilled out of the lead Suburban and took up stations on the sidewalk, two of them north of the house and two of them south. Two Metro Police cruisers snuffled up the street and the first stopped right in the center of the road well ahead of the Secret Service convoy and the second hung back well behind it. They lit up their light bars to hold the traffic. There wasn’t much. A blue Chevy Malibu and a gold Lexus SUV waited to get by. Reacher had seen neither vehicle before. Neither had been out cruising the area. He looked at the tent and tried to guess when Armstrong was passing through it. Impossible. He was still gazing at the house end when he heard the faint thump of an armored door closing and the four agents stepped back to their Suburban and the whole convoy took off. The lead cop car leapt forward and the Suburban and the Cadillac and the Town Car fell in behind it and moved fast up the street. The second police cruiser brought up the rear. All five vehicles turned east right in front of Reacher’s coffee shop. Tires squealed on the pavement. The cars accelerated. He watched them disappear. Then he turned back and watched the small crowd in the street disperse. The whole neighborhood went quiet and still.
They watched the motorcade drive away from a vantage point about eighty yards from where Reacher was sitting. Their surveillance confirmed what they already knew. Professional pride prevented them from writing off his commute to work as actually impossible, but as a viable opportunity it was going to be way down on their list. Way, way down. Right there at the bottom. Which made it all the more fortunate that the transition website offered so many other tempting choices.
They walked a circuitous route through the streets and made it back to their rented red Sable without incident.
Reacher finished his last mouthful of coffee and walked down toward Armstrong’s house. He stepped off the sidewalk where the tent blocked it. It was a white canvas tunnel leading directly to Armstrong’s front door. The door was closed. He walked on and stepped back on the sidewalk and met Neagley coming up from the opposite direction.
“OK?” he asked her.
“Opportunities,” she said. “Didn’t see anybody about to exploit any of them.”
“Me neither.”
“I like the tent and the armored car.”
Reacher nodded. “Takes rifles out of the equation.”
“Not entirely,” Neagley said. “A .50 sniper rifle would get through the armor. With the Browning AP round, or the API.”
He made a face. Either bullet was a formidable proposition. The standard armor-piercing item just blasted through steel plate, and the alternative armor-piercing incendiary burned its way through. But in the end he shook his head.
“No chance to aim,” he said. “First you’d
have to wait until the car was rolling, to be sure he was in it. Then you’re putting a bullet into a large moving vehicle with dark windows. Hundred-to-one you’d hit Armstrong himself inside.”
“So you’d need an AT-4.”
“What I thought.”
“Either with the high-explosive against the car, or else you could use it to put a phosphorous bomb into the house.”
“From where?”
“I’d use an upper-floor window in a house behind Armstrong’s. Across the alley, in back. Their defense is mostly concentrated on the front.”
“How would you get in?”
“Phony utility guy, water company, electric company. Anybody who could get in carrying a big toolbox.”
Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
“It’s going to be a hell of a four years,” Neagley said.
“Or eight.”
Then there was the hiss of tires and the sound of a big engine behind them and they turned to see Froelich easing up in her Suburban. She stopped alongside them, twenty yards short of Armstrong’s house. Gestured them into the vehicle. Neagley got in the front and Reacher sprawled in the back.
“See anybody?” Froelich asked.
“Lots of people,” Reacher said. “Wouldn’t buy a cheap watch from any of them.”
Froelich took her foot off the brake and let the engine’s idle speed crawl the car along the road. She kept it tight in the gutter and stopped it again when the nearside rear door was exactly level with the end of the tent. Lifted her hand from the wheel and spoke into the microphone wired to her wrist.
“One, ready,” she said.
Reacher looked to his right down the length of the canvas tunnel and saw the front door open and a man step out. It was Brook Armstrong. No doubt about it. His photograph had been all over the papers for five solid months and Reacher had spent four whole days watching his every move. He was wearing a khaki raincoat and carrying a leather briefcase. He walked through the tent, not fast, not slow. An agent in a suit watched him from the door.
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