“You didn’t strike me as a reader,” Bannon said.
“I get by,” Reacher said.
“And I would caution you against vigilantism.”
“That’s a big word for a Special Agent.”
“Whatever, I don’t want independent action.”
Reacher nodded.
“Noted,” he said.
Bannon smiled. “You done the math puzzle yet?”
“What math puzzle?”
“We’re assuming that Vaime rifle was in Minnesota on Tuesday and North Dakota yesterday. Now it’s here in D.C. today. They didn’t fly it in, that’s for damn sure, because putting long guns on a commercial flight leaves a paper trail a mile long. And it’s too far to drive in the time they had. So either one guy was on his own with the Heckler & Koch in Bismarck while the other guy was driving all the way from Minnesota to here with the Vaime. Or if both guys were in Bismarck then they must own two Vaimes, one there, one stashed here. And if both guys were in Bismarck but they own only one Vaime, then somebody else drove it in from Minnesota for them, in which case we’re dealing with three guys, not two.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’m going back to see Swain,” Reacher said. “I’ll walk. It’ll do me good.”
“I’ll come with you,” Neagley said.
It was a fast half mile west on Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was still cloudless, which made the night air cold. There were some stars visible through the faint city smog and the orange glow of street lighting. There was a small moon, far away. No traffic. They walked past the Federal Triangle and the bulk of the Treasury Building came closer. The White House roadblocks had gone. The city was back to normal. It was like nothing had ever happened.
“You OK?” Neagley asked.
“Facing reality,” Reacher said. “I’m getting old. Slowing up, mentally. I was pretty pleased about getting to Nendick as fast as I did, but I was supposed to get there right away. So in fact I was terrible. Same with the thumbprint. We spent hours boxing around that damn print. Days and days. We twisted and turned to accommodate it. Never saw the actual intention.”
“But we got there in the end.”
“And I’m feeling guilty, as usual.”
“Why?”
“I told Froelich she was doing well,” Reacher said. “But I should have told her to double the sentries on the roof. One guy on the edge, one in the stairwell. Might have saved her.”
Neagley was silent. Six strides, seven.
“It was her job, not yours,” she said. “Don’t feel guilty. You’re not responsible for everybody in the world.”
Reacher said nothing. Just walked.
“And they were masquerading as cops,” Neagley said. “They’d have walked through two sentries just the same as one. They’d have walked through a dozen sentries. Fact is, they did walk through a dozen sentries. More than that. They must have. The whole area was crawling with agents. There’s nothing anybody could have done different. Shit happens.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Two sentries, they’d both have gotten killed,” Neagley said. “Another casualty wouldn’t have helped anybody.”
“You think Bannon looks like a cop?” Reacher asked.
“You think there are three guys?” Neagley asked back.
“No. Not a chance. This is a two-guy thing. Bannon’s missing something very obvious. Occupational hazard with a mind like his.”
“What’s he missing?”
“You think he looks like a cop?”
Neagley smiled, briefly.
“Exactly like a cop,” she said. “He probably was a cop before he joined the Bureau.”
“What makes him look like a cop?”
“Everything. Every single thing. It’s in his pores.”
Reacher went quiet. Walked on.
“Something in Froelich’s pep talk,” he said. “Just before Armstrong showed up. She was warning her people. She said it’s very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very difficult to look exactly like a homeless person. I think it’s the same with cops. If I put a tweed sport coat on and gray pants and plain shoes and held up a gold badge, would I look like a cop?”
“A little. But not exactly.”
“But these guys do look exactly like cops. I saw one of them and never thought twice. And they’re in and out of everywhere without a single question.”
“It would explain a lot of things,” Neagley said. “They were right at home in the cop bar with Nendick. And with Andretti.”
“Like Bannon’s duck test,” Reacher said. “They look like cops, they walk like cops, they talk like cops.”
“And it would explain how they knew about DNA on envelopes, and the NCIC computer thing. Cops would know that the FBI networks all that information.”
“And the weapons. They might filter through to second-tier SWAT teams or State Police specialists. Especially refurbished items with nonstandard scopes.”
“But we know they aren’t cops. You went through ninety-four mug shots.”
“We know they aren’t Bismarck cops,” Reacher said. “Maybe they’re cops from someplace else.”
Swain was still waiting for them. He looked unhappy. Not necessarily with the waiting. He looked like a man with bad news to hear, and bad news to give. He looked a question at Reacher, and Reacher nodded, once.
“His name was Andretti,” he said. “Same situation as Nendick, basically. He’s holding up better, but he’s not going to talk, either.”
Swain said nothing.
“Your score,” Reacher said. “You made the connection. And the rifle was a Vaime with a Hensoldt scope where a Bushnell should be.”
“I don’t specialize in firearms,” Swain said.
“You need to tell us what you know about the campaign. Who got mad at Armstrong?”
There was a short silence. Then Swain looked away.
“Nobody,” he said. “What I said in there wasn’t true. Thing is, I finished the analysis days ago. He upset people, for sure. But nobody very significant. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So why say it?”
“I wanted to get the FBI off their track, was all. I don’t think it was one of us. I don’t like to see our agency getting abused that way.”
Reacher said nothing.
“It was for Froelich and Crosetti,” Swain said. “They deserve better than that.”
“So you’ve got a feeling and we’ve got a hyphen,” Reacher said. “Most cases I ever dealt with had stronger foundations than that.”
“What do we do now?”
“We look somewhere else,” Neagley said. “If it’s not political it must be personal.”
“I’m not sure if I can show you that stuff,” Swain said. “It’s supposed to be confidential.”
“Is there anything bad in it?”
“No, or you’d have heard about it during the campaign.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Is he faithful to his wife?” Reacher asked.
“Yes,” Swain said.
“Is she faithful to him?”
“Yes.”
“Is he kosher financially?”
“Yes.”
“So everything else is deep background. How can it hurt to let us take a look?”
“I guess it can’t.”
“So let’s go.”
They headed through the back corridors toward the library, but when they got there the phone was ringing. Swain picked it up and then handed it to Reacher.
“Stuyvesant, for you,” he said.
Reacher listened for a minute and then put the phone down.
“Armstrong’s coming in,” he said. “He’s upset and restless and wants to talk to everybody he can find who was there today.”
They left Swain in the library and walked back to the conference room. Stuyvesant came in a minute later. He was still in his golf clothes. He still had Froelich’s blood on his shoes. It was splashed up on the welts, bl
ack and dry. He looked close to exhaustion. And mentally shattered. Reacher had seen it before. A guy goes twenty-five years, and it all falls apart in one terrible day. A suicide bombing will do it, or a helicopter crash or a secrets leak or a furlough rampage. Then the retributive machinery clanks into action and a flawless career spent garnering nothing but praise is trashed at the stroke of a pen, because it all has to be somebody’s fault. Shit happens, but never in an official inquiry commission’s final report.
“We’re going to be thin on the ground,” Stuyvesant said. “I gave most people twenty-four hours and I’m not dragging them back in just because the protectee can’t sleep.”
Two more guys came in five minutes later. Reacher recognized one of them as a rooftop sharpshooter and the other as one of the agent screen around the food line. They nodded tired greetings and turned around and went and got coffee. Came back in with a plastic cup for everybody.
Armstrong’s security preceded him like the edge of an invisible bubble. There was radio communication with the building while he was still a mile away. There was a second call when he reached the garage. His progress into the elevator was reported. One of his personal detail entered the reception area and announced an all-clear. The other two brought Armstrong inside. The procedure was repeated at the conference room door. The first agent came in, glanced around, spoke into his cuff, and Armstrong leapfrogged past him into the room.
He had changed into casual clothes that didn’t suit him. He was in corduroy pants and a patterned sweater and a suede jacket. All the colors matched and all the fabrics were stiff and new. It was the first false note Reacher had seen from him. It was like he had asked himself what would a Vice President wear? instead of just grabbing whatever was at the front of his closet. He nodded somber greetings all around and moved toward the table. Didn’t speak to anybody. He seemed awkward. The silence grew. It reached the point where it was embarrassing.
“How’s your wife, sir?” the sharpshooter asked.
It was the perfect political question, Reacher thought. It was an invitation to talk about somebody else’s feelings, which was always easier than talking about your own. It was collegial, in that it said we all are on the inside here, so let’s talk about somebody who isn’t. And it said: here’s your chance to thank us for saving her ass, and yours.
“She’s very shaken,” Armstrong said. “It was a terrible thing. She wants you to know how sorry she is. She’s been giving me a hard time, actually. She says it’s wrong of me to be putting you people at risk.”
It was the perfect political answer, Reacher thought. It invited only one reply: Just doing our job, sir.
“It’s our job, sir,” Stuyvesant said. “If it wasn’t you, it would be somebody else.”
“Thank you,” Armstrong said. “For being so gracious. And thank you for performing so superbly well today. From both of us. From the bottom of our hearts. I’m not a superstitious guy, but I kind of feel I owe you now. Like I won’t be free of an obligation until I’ve done something for you. So don’t hesitate to ask me. Anything at all, formal or informal, collective or individual. I’m your friend for life.”
Nobody spoke.
“Tell me about Crosetti,” Armstrong said. “Did he have family?”
The sharpshooter nodded.
“A wife and a son,” he said. “The boy is eight, I think.”
Armstrong looked away.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Silence in the room.
“Is there anything I can do for them?” Armstrong asked.
“They’ll be looked after,” Stuyvesant said.
“Froelich had parents in Wyoming,” Armstrong said. “That’s all. She wasn’t married. No brothers or sisters. I spoke with her folks earlier today. After I saw you at the White House. I felt I ought to offer my condolences personally. And I felt I should clear my statement with them, you know, before I spoke to the television people. I felt I couldn’t misrepresent the situation without their permission, just for the sake of a decoy scheme. But they liked the idea of a memorial service on Sunday. So much so that they’re going to go ahead with it, in fact. So there will be a service, after all.”
Nobody spoke. Armstrong picked a spot on the wall, and looked hard at it.
“I want to attend it,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to attend it.”
“I can’t permit that,” Stuyvesant said.
Armstrong said nothing.
“I mean, I advise against it,” Stuyvesant said.
“She was killed because of me. I want to attend her service. It’s the least I can do. I want to speak there, actually. I guess I should talk to her folks again.”
“I’m sure they’d be honored, but there are security issues.”
“I respect your judgment, of course,” Armstrong said. “But it isn’t negotiable. I’ll go on my own, if I have to. I might prefer to go on my own.”
“That isn’t possible,” Stuyvesant said.
Armstrong nodded. “So find three agents who want to be there with me. And only three. We can’t turn it into a circus. We’ll get in and out fast, unannounced.”
“You announced it on national television.”
“It isn’t negotiable,” Armstrong said again. “They won’t want to turn the whole thing into a circus. That wouldn’t be fair. So, no media and no television. Just us.”
Stuyvesant said nothing.
“I’m going to her service,” Armstrong said. “She was killed because of me.”
“She knew the risks,” Stuyvesant said. “We all know the risks. We’re here because we want to be.”
Armstrong nodded. “I spoke with the director of the FBI. He told me the suspects got away.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” Stuyvesant said.
“My daughter is in the Antarctic,” Armstrong said. “It’s coming up to midsummer down there. The temperature is up to twenty below zero. It’ll peak at maybe eighteen below in a week or two. We just spoke on the satellite phone. She’s says it feels unbelievably warm. We’ve had the same conversation for the last two years straight. I used to take it as a kind of metaphor. You know, everything’s relative, nothing’s that bad, you can get used to anything. But now I don’t know anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever get over today. I’m alive only because another person is dead.”
Silence in the room.
“She knew what she was doing,” Stuyvesant said. “We’re all volunteers.”
“She was terrific, wasn’t she?”
“Let me know when you want to meet with her replacement.”
“Not yet,” Armstrong said. “Tomorrow, maybe. And ask around about Sunday. Three volunteers. Friends of hers who would want to be there anyway.”
Stuyvesant was silent. Then he shrugged.
“OK,” he said.
Armstrong nodded. “Thank you for that. And thank you for today. Thank you all. From both of us. That’s really all I came here to say.”
His personal detail picked up the cue and moved him to the door. The invisible security bubble rolled out with him, probing forward, checking sideways, checking backward. Three minutes later a radio call came in from his car. He was secure and mobile north and west toward Georgetown.
“Shit,” Stuyvesant said. “Now Sunday is going to be a damn nightmare on top of everything else.”
Nobody looked at Reacher, except Neagley. They walked out alone and found Swain in the reception area. He had his coat on.
“I’m going home,” he said.
“In an hour,” Reacher said. “First you’re going to show us your files.”
16
The files were biographical. There were twelve in total. Eleven were bundles of raw data like newspaper cuttings and interviews and depositions and other first-generation paperwork. The twelfth was a comprehensive summary of the first eleven. It was as thick as a medieval Bible and it read like a book. It narrated the whole story of Brook Armstrong’s life, and every substantive fact had a number
following it in parentheses. The number indicated on a scale of one to ten how solidly the fact had been authenticated. Most of the numbers were tens.
The story started on page one with his parents. His mother had grown up in Oregon, moved to Washington State for college, returned to Oregon to start work as a pharmacist. Her own parents and siblings were sketched in, and the whole of her education was listed from kindergarten to postgraduate school. Her early employers were listed in sequence, and the start-up of her own pharmacy business had three pages all to itself. She still owned it and still took income from it, but she was now retired and sick with something that was feared to be terminal.
His father’s education was listed. His military service had a start date and a medical discharge date, but there were no details beyond that. He was an Oregon native who married the pharmacist on his return to civilian life. They moved to an isolated village in the southwest corner of the state and he used family money to buy himself a lumber business. The newlyweds had a daughter soon afterward and Brook Armstrong himself was born two years later. The family business prospered and grew to a decent size. Its progress and development had several pages all to itself. It provided a pleasant provincial lifestyle.
The sister’s biography was a half inch thick itself so Reacher skipped over it and started in on Brook’s education. It began like everybody else’s in kindergarten. There were endless details. Too many to pay close attention to, so he leafed ahead and skimmed. Armstrong went all the way through the local school system. He was good at sports. He got excellent grades. The father had a stroke and died just after Armstrong left home for college. The lumber business was sold. The pharmacy continued to prosper. Armstrong himself spent seven years in two different universities, first Cornell in upstate New York and then Stanford in California. He had long hair but no proven drug use. He met a Bismarck girl at Stanford. They were both political science postgraduates. They got married. They made their home in North Dakota and he started his political career with a campaign for a seat in the State legislature.
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