by Lee Child
“Who are they?” Reacher asked.
“Direct government employees,” Froelich said. “Most office cleaners in this city are contract people, minimum wage, no benefits, high-turnover nobodies. Same in any city. But we hire our own. The FBI, too. We need a high degree of reliability, obviously. We keep two crews at all times. They’re properly interviewed, they’re background-checked, and they don’t get in the door unless they’re good people. Then we pay them real well, and give them full health plans, and dental, and paid vacations, the whole nine yards. They’re department members, same as anybody else.”
“And they respond?”
She nodded. “They’re terrific, generally.”
“But you think this crew smuggled the letter in.”
“No other conclusion to come to.”
Reacher pointed at the screen. “So where is it now?”
“Could be in the garbage bag, in a stiff envelope. Could be in a page protector, taped underneath one of the trays or the shelves. Could be taped to the guy’s back, under his overalls.”
She hit play and the cleaners continued onward into Stuyvesant’s office. The door swung shut behind them. The camera stared forward blankly. The time counter ticked on, five minutes, seven, eight. Then the tape ran out.
“Midnight,” Froelich said.
She ejected the cassette and put the second tape in. Pressed play and the date changed to Thursday and the timer restarted at midnight exactly. It crawled onward, two minutes, four, six.
“They certainly do a thorough job,” Neagley said. “Our office cleaners would have done the whole building by now. A lick and a promise.”
“Stuyvesant likes a clean working environment,” Froelich said.
At seven minutes past midnight the door opened and the crew filed out.
“So now you figure the letter is there on the desk,” Reacher said.
Froelich nodded. The video showed the cleaners starting work around the secretarial station. They missed nothing. Everything was energetically dusted and wiped and polished. Every inch of carpet was vacuumed. Garbage was emptied into the black bag. It had bellied out to twice its size. The man looked a little disheveled by his efforts. He pushed the cart backward foot by foot and the women retreated with him. Sixteen minutes past midnight, they backed away into the gloom and left the picture still and quiet, as it had been before they came.
“That’s it,” Froelich said. “Nothing more for the next five hours and forty-four minutes. Then we change tapes again and find nothing at all from six A.M. until eight, when the secretary comes in, and then it goes down exactly as she and Stuyvesant claimed it did.”
“As one might expect,” said a voice from the door. “I think our word can be trusted. After all, I’ve been in government service for twenty-five years, and my secretary even longer than that, I believe.”
5
The guy at the door was Stuyvesant, no doubt about that. Reacher recognized him from his appearance on the tape. He was tall, broad-shouldered, over fifty, still in reasonable shape. A handsome face, tired eyes. He was wearing a suit and a tie, on a Sunday. Froelich was looking at him, worried. But he in turn was staring straight at Neagley.
“You’re the woman on the video,” he said. “In the ballroom, Thursday night.”
He was clearly thinking hard. Running conclusions through his head and then nodding imperceptibly to himself whenever they made sense. After a moment he moved his gaze from Neagley to Reacher and stepped right into the room.
“And you’re Joe Reacher’s brother,” he said. “You look just like him.”
Reacher nodded.
“Jack Reacher,” he said, and offered his hand.
Stuyvesant took it.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “Five years late, I know, but the Treasury Department still remembers your brother with affection.”
Reacher nodded again.
“This is Frances Neagley,” he said.
“Reacher brought her in to help with the audit,” Froelich said.
Stuyvesant smiled a brief smile.
“I gathered that,” he said. “Smart move. What were the results?”
The office went quiet.
“I apologize if I offended you, sir,” Froelich said. “You know, before. Talking about the tape like that. I was just explaining the situation.”
“What were the audit results?” Stuyvesant asked again.
She said nothing back.
“That bad?” Stuyvesant said to her. “Well, I certainly hope so. I knew Joe Reacher too. Not as well as you did, but we came into contact, time to time. He was impressive. I’m assuming his brother is at least half as smart. Ms. Neagley, probably smarter still. In which case they must have found ways through. Am I right?”
“Three definites,” Froelich said.
Stuyvesant nodded.
“The ballroom, obviously,” he said. “Probably the family house and that damn outdoors event in Bismarck too. Am I right?”
“Yes,” Froelich said.
“Extreme levels of performance,” Neagley said. “Unlikely to be duplicated.”
Stuyvesant held up his hand and cut her off.
“Let’s go to the conference room,” he said. “I want to talk about baseball.”
He led them through narrow winding corridors to a relatively spacious room in the heart of the complex. It had a long table in it with ten chairs, five to a side. No windows. The same gray synthetic carpet underfoot and the same white acoustic tile overhead. The same bright halogen light. There was a low cabinet against one wall. It had closed doors and three telephones on it. Two were white and one was red. Stuyvesant sat down and waved to the chairs on the other side of the table. Reacher glanced at a huge notice board full of memos labeled confidential.
“I’m going to be uncharacteristically frank,” Stuyvesant said. “Just temporarily, you understand, because I think we owe you an explanation, and because Froelich involved you with my initial approval, and because Joe Reacher’s brother is family, so to speak, and therefore his colleague is too.”
“We worked together in the military,” Neagley said.
Stuyvesant nodded, like that was an inference he had drawn long ago.
“Let’s talk about baseball,” he said. “You follow the game?”
They all waited.
“The Washington Senators had already gone when I hit town,” he said. “So I’ve had to make do with the Baltimore Orioles, which has been a mixed bag in terms of fun. But do you understand what’s unique about the game?”
“The length of the season,” Reacher said. “The win percentages.”
Stuyvesant smiled, like he was conferring praise.
“Maybe you’re better than half as smart,” he said. “The thing about baseball is that the regular season is one hundred sixty-two games long. Way, way longer than any other sport. Any other sport has about half as many games as baseball. Basketball, hockey, football, soccer, anything. Any other sport, the players can start out thinking they can win every single game all season long. It’s just about a realistic motiva tional goal. It’s even been achieved, here and there, now and then. But it’s impossible in baseball. The very best teams, the greatest champions, they all lose around a third of their games. They lose fifty or sixty times a year, at least. Imagine what that feels like, from a psychological perspective. You’re a superb athlete, you’re fanatically competitive, but you know for sure you’re going to lose repeatedly. You have to make mental adjustments, or you couldn’t cope with it. And presidential protection is exactly the same thing. That’s my point. We can’t win every day. So we get used to it.”
“You only lost once,” Neagley said. “Back in 1963.”
“No,” Stuyvesant said. “We lose repeatedly. But not every loss is significant. Just like baseball. Not every hit they get produces a run against you, not every defeat they inflict loses you the World Series. And with us, not every mistake kills our guy.”
“So what
are you saying?” Neagley asked.
Stuyvesant sat forward. “I’m saying despite what your audit might have revealed you should still have considerable faith in us. Not every error costs us a run. Now, I completely understand that kind of so-what self-confidence must seem very offhand to an outsider. But you must understand we’re forced to think that way. Your audit showed up a few holes, and what we have to do now is judge whether it’s possible to fill them. Whether it’s reasonable. I’m going to leave that to Froelich’s own judgment. It’s her show. But what I’m suggesting is that you get rid of any sense of doubt you’re feeling about us. As private citizens. Any sense of our failure. Because we’re not failing. There are always going to be holes. Part of the job. This is a democracy. Get used to it.”
Then he sat back, like he was finished.
“What about this specific threat?” Reacher asked him.
Stuyvesant paused, and then he shook his head. His face had changed. The mood in the whole room had changed.
“That’s precisely where I stop being frank,” he said. “I told you it was a temporary indulgence. And it was a very serious lapse on Froelich’s part to reveal the existence of any threat at all. All I’m prepared to say is we intercept a lot of threats. Then we deal with them. How we deal with them is entirely confidential. Therefore I would ask you to understand you are now under an absolute obligation never to mention this situation to anybody after you leave here tonight. Or any aspect of our procedures. That obligation is rooted in federal statute. There are sanctions available to me.”
There was silence. Reacher said nothing. Neagley sat quiet. Froelich looked upset. Stuyvesant ignored her completely and gazed hard at Reacher and Neagley, at first hostile, and then suddenly pensive. He started thinking hard again. He stood up and walked over to the low cabinet with the telephones on it. Squatted down in front of it. Opened the doors and took out two yellow legal pads and two ballpoint pens. Walked back and dropped one of each in front of Reacher and one of each in front of Neagley. Circled around the head of the table again and sat back down in his chair.
“Write your full names,” he said. “All and any aliases, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, military ID numbers, and current addresses.”
“What for?” Reacher asked.
“Just do it,” Stuyvesant said.
Reacher paused and picked up his pen. Froelich looked at him, anxiously. Neagley glanced at him and shrugged and started writing on her pad. Reacher waited a beat and then followed her example. He was finished well before her. He had no middle name and no current address. Stuyvesant walked around behind them and scooped the pads off the table. Said nothing and walked straight out of the room with the pads held tight under his arm. The door slammed loudly behind him.
“I’m in trouble,” Froelich said. “And I’ve made trouble for you guys, too.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Reacher said. “He’s going to make us sign some kind of confidentiality agreement, is all. He’s gone to get them typed up, I guess.”
“But what’s he going to do to me?”
“Nothing, probably.”
“Demote me? Fire me?”
“He authorized the audit. The audit was necessary because of the threats. The two things were connected. We’ll tell him we pushed you with questions.”
“He’ll demote me,” Froelich said. “He wasn’t happy about me running the audit in the first place. Told me it indicated a lack of self-confidence.”
“Bullshit,” Reacher said. “We did stuff like that all the time.”
“Audits build self-confidence,” Neagley said. “That was our experience. Better to know something for sure than just hope for the best.”
Froelich looked away. Didn’t reply. The room went quiet. They all waited, five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Reacher stood up and stretched. Stepped over to the low cabinet and looked at the red phone. He picked it up and held it to his ear. There was no dial tone. He put it back and scanned the confidential memos on the notice board. The ceiling was low and he could feel heat on his head from the halogen lights. He sat down again and turned his chair and tilted it back and put his feet on the next one in line. Glanced at his watch. Stuyvesant had been gone twenty minutes.
“Hell is he doing?” he said. “Typing them himself?”
“Maybe he’s calling his agents,” Neagley said. “Maybe we’re all going to jail, to guarantee our everlasting silence forever.”
Reacher yawned and smiled. “We’ll give him ten more minutes. Then we’re leaving. We’ll all go out and get some dinner.”
Stuyvesant came back after five more. He walked into the room and closed the door. He was carrying no papers. He stepped over and sat down in his original seat and placed his hands flat on the table. Drummed a staccato little rhythm with his fingertips.
“OK,” he said. “Where were we? Reacher had a question, I think.”
Reacher took his feet off the chair and turned to face front.
“Did I?” he said.
Stuyvesant nodded. “You asked about this specific threat. Well, it’s either an inside job or it’s an outside job. It’s got to be one or the other, obviously.”
“We’re discussing this now?”
“Yes, we are,” Stuyvesant said.
“Why? What changed?”
Stuyvesant ignored the question. “If it’s an outside job, should we necessarily worry? Perhaps not, because that’s like baseball, too. If the Yankees come to town saying they’re going to beat the Orioles, does that mean it’s true? Boasting about it is not the same thing as actually doing it.”
Nobody spoke.
“I’m asking for your input here,” Stuyvesant said.
Reacher shrugged.
“OK,” he said. “You think it is an outside threat?”
“No, I think it’s inside intimidation intended to damage Froelich’s career. Now ask me what I’m going to do about it.”
Reacher glanced at him. Glanced at his watch. Glanced at the wall. Twenty-five minutes, a Sunday evening, deep inside the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia triangle.
“I know what you’re going to do about it,” he said.
“Do you?”
“You’re going to hire me and Neagley for an internal investigation.”
“Am I?”
Reacher nodded. “If you’re worried about inside intimidation then you need an internal investigation. That’s clear. And you can’t use one of your own people, because you might hit on the bad guy by chance. And you don’t want to bring the FBI in, because that’s not how Washington works. Nobody washes their dirty linen in public. So you need some other outsider. And you’ve got two of them sitting right in front of you. They’re already involved, because Froelich just involved them. So either you terminate that involvement, or you choose to expand on it. You’d prefer to expand on it, because that way you don’t have to find fault with an excellent agent you just promoted. So can you use us? Of course you can. Who better than Joe Reacher’s little brother? Inside Treasury, Joe Reacher is practically a saint. So your ass is covered. And mine is too. Because of Joe I’ll get automatic credibility from the start. And I was a good investigator in the military. So was Neagley. You know that, because you just checked. My guess is you just spent twenty-five minutes talking to the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. That’s why you wanted those details. They ran us through their computers and we came out clean. More than clean, probably, because I’m sure our security clearances are still on file, and I’m sure they’re still way higher than you actually need them to be.”
Stuyvesant nodded. He looked satisfied.
“An excellent analysis,” he said. “You get the job, just as soon as I get hard copies of those clearances. They should be here in an hour or two.”
“You can do this?” Neagley said.
“I can do what I want,” Stuyvesant said. “Presidents tend to give a lot of authority to the people they hope will keep them alive.”
Silence in th
e room.
“Will I be a suspect?” Stuyvesant asked.
“No,” Reacher said.
“Maybe I should be. Maybe I should be your number-one suspect. Perhaps I felt forced to promote a woman because of contemporary pressures to do so, but I secretly resent it, so I’m working behind her back to panic her and thereby discredit her.”
Reacher said nothing.
“I could have found a friend or a relative who had never been fingerprinted. I could have placed the paper on my desk at seven-thirty Wednesday evening and instructed my secretary not to notice it. She’d have followed my orders. Or I could have instructed the cleaners to smuggle it in that night. They’d have followed my orders, too. But they’d have followed Froelich’s orders equally. She should be your number-two suspect, probably. Maybe she has a friend or a relative with no prints on file either, and maybe she’s setting this whole thing up in order to deal with it spectacularly and earn some enhanced credibility.”
“Except I’m not setting it up,” Froelich said.