by Lee Child
She glanced ahead through the windshield. Then she turned and stared past him, through his side window, down the length of the tent. Flipped her phone open and spoke to people in her office again. She used abbreviations and a torrent of jargon he couldn’t follow. Finished the call and closed her phone.
“We’ll bring a Metro traffic chopper in,” she said. “Keep it low enough to be obvious. He’ll have to pass the Armenian Embassy, so we’ll put some extra cops there. They’ll blend in. I’ll follow him in the car on D Street fifty yards behind. I want you out ahead of him with your eyes wide open.”
“When are we doing this?”
“Within ten minutes. Go up the street and left.”
“OK,” he said. She restarted the car and rolled forward so he could step onto the sidewalk clear of the tent. He got out and zipped his jacket and walked away into the cold. Up First Street and left onto C Street. There was traffic on Delaware Avenue ahead of him and beyond it he could see Capitol Plaza. There were low bare trees and open brown lawns. Paths made from crushed sandstone. A fountain in the center. A pool to the right. To the left and farther on, some kind of an obelisk memorial to somebody.
He dodged cars and ran across Delaware. Walked on into the plaza. Grit crunched under his shoes. It was very cold. His soles were thin. It felt like there were ice crystals mixed in with the crushed stone underfoot. He stopped just short of the fountain. Looked around. Perimeters were good. To the north was open ground and then a semicircle of state flags and some other monument and the bulk of Union Station. To the south was nothing except for the Capitol Building itself far away across Constitution Avenue. Ahead to the west was a building he assumed was the Department of Labor. He looped around the fountain with his eyes focused on the middle distance and saw nothing that worried him. Poor cover, no close windows. There were people in the park, but no assassin hangs around all day just in case somebody’s schedule changes unexpectedly.
He walked on. C Street restarted on the far side of the plaza, just about opposite the obelisk. It was more of an upright slab, really. There was a sign pointing toward it: Taft Memorial. C Street crossed New Jersey Avenue and then Louisiana Avenue. There were crosswalks. Fast traffic. Armstrong was going to spend some time standing still waiting for lights. The Armenian Embassy was ahead on the left. A police cruiser was pulling up in front of it. It parked on the curb and four cops got out. He heard a distant helicopter. Turned around and saw it low in the north and west, skirting the prohibited airspace around the White House. The Department of Labor was dead ahead. There were plenty of convenient side doors.
He crossed C Street to the north sidewalk. Strolled back fifty yards to where he could see into the plaza. Waited. The helicopter was stationary in the air, low enough to be obvious, high enough not to be deafening. He saw Froelich’s Suburban come around the corner, tiny in the distance. It pulled over and waited at the curb. He watched people. Most of them were hurrying. It was too cold for loitering. He saw a group of men way on the far side of the fountain. Six guys in dark overcoats surrounded a seventh in a khaki raincoat. They walked in the center of the sandstone path. The two agents on point were alert. The others crowded tight, like a moving huddle. They passed the fountain and headed for New Jersey Avenue. Waited at the light. Armstrong was bareheaded. The wind blew his hair. Cars streamed past. Nobody paid attention. Drivers and pedestrians occupied different worlds, based on relative time and space. Froelich kept her distance. Her Suburban idled along in the gutter fifty yards back. The light changed and Armstrong and his team walked on. So far, so good. The operation was working well.
Then it wasn’t.
First the wind pushed the police helicopter slightly off station. Then Armstrong and his team were halfway across the narrow triangular spit of land between New Jersey Avenue and Louisiana Avenue when a lone pedestrian did a perfect double take from ten yards away. He was a middle-aged guy, lean from neglect, bearded, long-haired, unkempt. He was wearing a belted raincoat greasy with age. He stood completely still for a split second and then launched himself toward Armstrong with his legs taking long bouncing strides and his arms windmilling uselessly and his mouth wide open in a snarl. The two nearest agents jumped forward to intercept him and the other four pulled back and crowded around Armstrong himself. They jostled and maneuvered until they had all six bodies between the crazy guy and Armstrong. Which left Armstrong totally vulnerable from the opposite direction.
Reacher thought decoy and spun around. Nothing there. Nothing anywhere. Just the cityscape, still and cold and indifferent. He checked windows for movement. He looked for the flash of sun on glass. Nothing. Nothing at all. He looked at cars on the avenues. All of them oblivious and moving fast. None of them slowing. He turned back and saw the crazy guy on the ground with two agents holding him down and two more with guns covering him. He saw Froelich’s Suburban speeding up and taking the corner fast. She stopped hard on the curb and two agents bundled Armstrong straight across the sidewalk and into the backseat.
But the Suburban didn’t go anywhere. It just sat there with traffic spilling around it. The helicopter drifted back on station and lost a little altitude and came down for a closer look. Its noise beat the air. Nothing happened. Then Armstrong got back out of the car. The two agents got out with him and walked him over to the crazy guy on the ground. Armstrong squatted down. Rested his elbows on his knees. It looked like he was talking. Froelich left her motor running and joined him on the sidewalk. Raised her hand and spoke into her wrist microphone. After a long moment a Metro cruiser came around the corner and pulled up behind the Suburban. Armstrong stood up straight and watched the two agents with the guns put the guy in the back of the cop car. The cop car drove away and Froelich went back to her Suburban and Armstrong regrouped with his escort and walked on toward the Department of Labor. The helicopter drifted above them. As they finally crossed Louisiana Avenue one way Reacher crossed it the other and jogged down to Froelich in her car. She was sitting in the driver’s seat with her head turned to watch Armstrong walk away. Reacher tapped on the window and she whirled around in surprise. Saw who it was and buzzed the glass down.
“You OK?” he asked her.
She turned back again to watch Armstrong. “I must be nuts.”
“Who was the guy?”
“Just some street person. We’ll follow it up, but I can tell you right now it’s not connected. No way. If that guy had sent the messages we’d still be smelling the bourbon on the paper. Armstrong wanted to talk to him. Said he felt sorry for him. And then he insisted on sticking with the walkabout. He’s nuts. And I’m nuts for allowing it.”
“Is he going to walk back?”
“Probably. I need it to rain, Reacher. Why doesn’t it ever rain when you want it to? A real downpour an hour from now would help me out.”
He glanced up at the sky. It was gray and cold, but all the clouds were high and unthreatening. It wasn’t going to rain.
“You should tell him,” he said.
She shook her head and turned to face front. “We just don’t do that.”
“Then you should get one of his staff to call him back in a hurry. Like something’s real urgent. Then he’d have to ride.”
She shook her head again. “He’s running the transition. He sets the pace. Nothing’s urgent unless he says it is.”
“So tell him it’s another rehearsal. A new tactic or something.”
Froelich glanced across at him. “I guess I could do that. It’s still the pregame period. We’re entitled to rehearse with him. Maybe.”
“Try it,” he said. “The walk back is more dangerous than the walk there. There’ll be a couple hours for somebody to find out he’s going to do it.”
“Get in,” she said. “You look cold.”
He walked around the Suburban’s hood and climbed in on the passenger side. Unzipped his jacket and held it open to allow the warm air from the heater to funnel up inside it. They sat and watched until Armstrong and his minde
rs disappeared inside the Labor building. Froelich immediately called her office. Left instructions that she was to be informed before Armstrong moved again. Then she put the car in gear and took off south and west toward the East Wing of the National Gallery. She made a left and drove past the Capitol Building’s reflecting pool. Then a right onto Independence Avenue.
“Where are we going?” Reacher asked.
“Nowhere in particular,” she said. “I’m just killing time. And trying to decide if I should resign today or keep on beating my brains out.”
She drove past all the museums and made a left onto Fourteenth Street. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing rose up on their right, between them and the Tidal Basin. It was a big gray building. She pulled up at the curb opposite its main entrance. Kept the engine running and her foot on the brake. Gazed up at one of the high office windows.
“Joe spent time in there,” she said. “Back when they were designing the new hundred-dollar bill. He figured if he was going to have to protect it, he should have some input on it. A long time ago, now.”
Her head was tilted up. Reacher could see the curve of her throat. He could see the way it met the opening of her shirt. He said nothing.
“I used to meet him here sometimes,” she said. “Or on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. We’d walk around the Basin, late in the evening. In spring or summer.”
Reacher looked ahead to his right. The memorial crouched low among the bare trees and was reflected perfectly in the still water.
“I loved him, you know,” Froelich said.
Reacher said nothing. Just looked at her hand resting on the wheel. And her wrist. It was slim. The skin was perfect. There was a trace of a faded summer tan.
“And you’re very like him,” she said.
“Where did he live?”
She glanced at him. “Don’t you know?”
“I don’t think he ever told me.”
Silence in the idling car.
“He had an apartment in the Watergate,” she said.
“Rented?”
She nodded. “It was very bare. Like it was only temporary.”
“It would be. Reachers don’t own property. I don’t think we ever have.”
“Your mother’s family did. They had estates in France.”
“Did they?”
“You don’t know that either?”
He shrugged. “I know they were French, obviously. Not sure I ever heard about their real-estate situation.”
Froelich eased her foot off the brake and glanced in the mirror and gunned the motor and rejoined the traffic stream.
“You guys had a weird idea of family,” she said. “That’s for damn sure.”
“Seemed normal at the time,” he said. “We thought every family was like that.”
Her cell phone rang. A low electronic trill in the quiet of the car. She flipped it open. Listened for a moment and said OK and closed it up.
“Neagley,” she said. “She’s finished with the cleaners.”
“She get anything?”
“Didn’t say. She’s meeting us back at the office.”
She looped around south of the Mall and drove north on Fourteenth Street. Her phone rang again. She fumbled it open one-handed and listened as she drove. Said nothing and snapped it shut. Glanced at the traffic ahead on the street.
“Armstrong’s ready to get back,” she said. “I’m going to go try and make him ride with me. I’ll drop you in the garage.”
She drove down the ramp and stopped long enough for Reacher to jump out. Then she turned around in the crowded space and headed back up to the street. Reacher found the door with the wired glass porthole and walked up the stairs to the lobby with the single elevator. Rode it to the third floor and found Neagley waiting in the reception area. She was sitting upright on a leather chair.
“Stuyvesant around?” Reacher asked her.
She shook her head. “He went next door. To the White House.”
“I want to go look at that camera.”
They walked together past the counter toward the rear of the floor and came out in the square area outside Stuyvesant’s office. His secretary was at her desk with her purse open. She had a tiny tortoiseshell mirror and a stick of lip gloss in her hands. The pose made her look human. Efficient, for sure, but like an amiable old soul, too. She saw them coming and put her cosmetic equipment away fast, like she was embarrassed to be caught with it. Reacher looked over her head at the surveillance camera. Neagley looked at Stuyvesant’s door. Then she glanced at the secretary.
“Do you remember the morning the message showed up in there?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” the secretary said.
“Why did Mr. Stuyvesant leave his briefcase out here?”
The secretary thought for a moment. “Because it was a Thursday.”
“What happens on a Thursday? Does he have an early meeting?”
“No, his wife goes to Baltimore, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“How is that connected?”
“She volunteers at a hospital there.”
Neagley looked straight at her. “How does that affect her husband’s briefcase?”
“She drives,” the secretary said. “She takes their car. They only have one. No department vehicle either, because Mr. Stuyvesant isn’t operational anymore. So he has to come to work on the Metro.”
Neagley looked blank. “The subway?”
The secretary nodded. “He has a special briefcase for Tuesdays and Thursdays because he’s forced to place it on the floor of the subway car. He won’t do that with his regular briefcase, because he thinks it gets dirty.”
Neagley stood still. Reacher thought back to the videotapes, Stuyvesant leaving late on Wednesday evening, returning early on Thursday morning.
“I didn’t notice a difference,” he said. “Looked like the same case to me.”
The secretary nodded in agreement.
“They’re identical items,” she said. “Same make, same vintage. He doesn’t like for people to realize. But one is for his automobile and the other is for the subway car.”
“Why?”
“He hates dirt. I think he’s afraid of it. Tuesdays and Thursdays, he won’t take his subway-car briefcase into his office at all. He leaves it out here all day and I have to bring him things from it. If it’s been raining he leaves his shoes out here, too. Like his office was a Japanese temple.”
Neagley glanced at Reacher. Made a face.
“It’s a harmless eccentricity,” the secretary said. Then she lowered her voice, as if she might be overheard all the way from the White House. “And absolutely unnecessary, in my opinion. The D.C. Metro is famous for being the cleanest subway in the world.”
“OK,” Neagley said. “But weird.”
“It’s harmless,” the secretary said again.
Reacher lost interest and stepped behind her and looked at the fire door. It had a brushed-steel push bar at waist height, like the city construction codes no doubt required it to have. He put his fingers on it and it clicked back with silky precision. He pushed a little harder and it folded up against the painted wood and the door swung back. It was a heavy fireproof item and there were three large steel hinges carrying its weight. He stepped through to a small square stairwell. There were concrete stairs, newer than the stone fabric of the building. They ran up to the higher floors and down toward street level. They had steel handrails. There were dim emergency lights behind glass in wire cages. Clearly a narrow space had been appropriated in the back of the building during the modernization and dedicated to a full-bore fire escape system.
There was a regular knob on the back of the door that operated the same latch as the push bar. It had a keyhole, but it wasn’t locked. It turned easily. Makes sense, he thought. The building was secure as a whole. They didn’t need for every floor to be isolated as well. He let the door close behind him and waited in the gloom on the stairwell for a second. Turned the knob again and reope
ned the door and stepped back into the brightness of the secretarial area, one pace. Twisted and looked up at the surveillance camera. It was right there above his head, set so it would pick him up sometime during his second step. He inched forward and let the door close behind him. Checked the camera again. It would be seeing him by now. And he still had more than eight feet to go before he reached Stuyvesant’s door.
“The cleaners put the message there,” the secretary said. “There’s no other possible explanation.”
Then her phone rang and she excused herself politely and answered it. Reacher and Neagley walked back through the maze of corridors and found Froelich’s office. It was quiet and dark and empty. Neagley flicked the halogen lights on and sat down at the desk. There was no other chair, so Reacher sat on the floor with his legs straight out and his back propped against the side of a file cabinet.
“Tell me about the cleaners,” he said.
Neagley drummed a rhythm on the desk with her fingers. The click of her nails alternated with little papery thumps from the pads of her fingers.
“They’re all lawyered up,” she said. “The department sent them attorneys, one each. They’re all Mirandized, too. Their human rights are fully protected. Wonderful, isn’t it? The civilian world?”
“Terrific. What did they say?”
“Nothing much. They clammed up tight. Stubborn as hell. But worried as hell, too. They’re looking at a rock and a hard place. Obviously very frightened about revealing who told them to put the paper there, and equally frightened about losing their jobs and maybe going to jail. They can’t win. It wasn’t attractive.”
“You mention Stuyvesant’s name?”
“Loud and clear. They know his name, obviously, but I’m not sure they know who he is, specifically. They’re night workers. All they see is a bunch of offices. They don’t see people. They didn’t react to his name at all. They didn’t really react to anything. Just sat there, scared to death, looking at their lawyers, saying nothing.”
“You’re slipping. People used to eat out of your hand, the way I recall it.”
She nodded. “I told you, I’m getting old. I couldn’t get a handle on them anywhere. The lawyers wouldn’t let me, really. The civilian justice system is very off-putting. I never felt so disconnected.”