by Lee Child
“It’s OK up there,” Reacher said. “Hell of a firing platform, but as long as your guys hold it we’re safe enough.”
Stuyvesant nodded and turned around and scanned upward. All five warehouse roofs were visible from the yard. All five were occupied by sharpshooters. Five silhouetted heads, five silhouetted rifle barrels.
“Froelich is looking for you,” Stuyvesant said.
Nearer the building, staff and agents were hauling long trestle tables into place. The idea was to form a barrier with them. The right-hand end would be hard against the shelter’s wall. The left-hand end would be three feet from the yard wall opposite. There would be a pen six feet deep behind the line of tables. Armstrong and his wife would be in the pen with four agents. Directly behind them would be the execution wall. Up close it didn’t look so bad. The old bricks looked warmed by the sun. Rustic, even friendly. He turned his back on them and looked up at the warehouse roofs. Crosetti waved again. I’m still awake, the wave said.
“Reacher,” Froelich called.
He turned around and found her walking out of the shelter toward him. She was carrying a clipboard thick with paper. She was up on her toes, busy, in charge, in command. She looked magnificent. The black clothes emphasized her litheness and made her eyes blaze with blue. Dozens of agents and scores of cops swirled all around her, every one of them under her personal control.
“We’re doing fine here,” she said. “So I want you to take a stroll. Just check around. Neagley’s already out there. You know what to look for.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“What?”
“Doing something really well,” he said. “Taking charge.”
“Think I’m doing well?”
“You’re the best,” he said. “This is tremendous. Armstrong’s a lucky man.”
“I hope,” she said.
“Believe it,” he said.
She smiled, quickly and shyly, and moved on, leafing through her paperwork. He turned the other way and walked back out to the street. Turned right and planned a route in his head that would keep him on a block-and-a-half radius.
There were cops on the corner and the beginnings of a ragged crowd of people waiting for the free lunch. There were two television trucks setting up fifty yards down the street from the shelter. Hydraulic masts were unfolding themselves and satellite dishes were rotating. Technicians were unrolling cable and shouldering cameras. He saw Bannon with six men and a woman he guessed were the FBI task force. They had just arrived. Bannon had a map unrolled on the hood of his car and his agents were clustered around looking at it. Reacher waved to Bannon and turned left and passed the end of an alley that led down behind the warehouses. He could hear a train on the tracks ahead of him. The mouth of the alley was manned by a D.C. cop, facing outward, standing easy. There was a police cruiser parked nearby. Another cop in it. Cops everywhere. The overtime bill was going to be something to see.
There were broken-down stores here and there, but they were all closed for the holiday. Some of the storefronts were churches, also closed. There were auto body shops nearer the railroad tracks, all shuttered and still. There was a pawnshop with a very old guy outside washing the windows. He was the only thing moving on the street. His store was tall and narrow and had concertina barriers inside the glass. The display space was crammed with junk of every description. There were clocks, coats, musical instruments, alarm radios, hats, record players, car stereos, binoculars, strings of Christmas lights. There was writing on the windows, offering to buy just about any article ever manufactured. If it didn’t grow in the ground or move by itself, this guy would give you money for it. He also offered services. He would cash checks, appraise jewelry, repair watches. There was a tray of watches on view. They were mostly old-fashioned wind-up items, with bulging crystals and big square luminescent figures and sculpted hands. Reacher glanced again at the sign: Watches Repaired. Then he glanced again at the old guy. He was up to his elbows in soap suds.
“You fix watches?” he asked.
“What have you got?” the old guy said. He had an accent. Russian, probably.
“A question,” Reacher said.
“I thought you had a watch to fix. That was my business, originally. Before quartz.”
“My watch is fine,” Reacher said. “Sorry.”
He pulled back his cuff to check the time. Quarter past eleven.
“Let me see that,” the old guy said.
Reacher extended his wrist.
“Bulova,” the old guy said. “American military issue before the Gulf War. A good watch. You buy it from a soldier?”
“No, I was a soldier.”
The old guy nodded. “So was I. In the Red Army. What’s the question?”
“You ever heard of squalene?”
“It’s a lubricant.”
“You use it?”
“Time to time. I don’t fix so many watches now. Not since quartz.”
“Where do you get it?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No,” Reacher said. “I’m asking a question.”
“You want to know where I get my squalene?”
“That’s what questions are for. They seek to elicit information.”
The old guy smiled. “I carry it around with me.”
“Where?”
“You’re looking at it.”
“Am I?”
The old guy nodded. “And I’m looking at yours.”
“My what?”
“Your supply of squalene.”
“I haven’t got any squalene,” Reacher said. “It comes from sharks’ livers. Long time since I was next to a shark.”
The old man shook his head. “You see, the Soviet system was very frequently criticized, and believe me I’ve always been happy to tell the truth about it. But at least we had education. Especially in the natural sciences.”
“C-thirty H-fifty,” Reacher said. “It’s an acyclic hydrocarbon. Which when hydrogenated becomes squalane with an a.”
“You understand any of that?”
“No,” Reacher said. “Not really.”
“Squalene is an oil,” the old guy said. “It occurs naturally in only two places in the known biosphere. One is inside a shark’s liver. The other is as a sebaceous product on the skin around the human nose.”
Reacher touched his nose. “Same stuff? Sharks’ livers and people’s noses?”
The old guy nodded. “Identical molecular structure. So if I need squalene to lubricate a watch, I just dab some off on my fingertip. Like this.”
He wiped his wet hand on his pant leg and extended a finger and rubbed it down where his nose joined his face. Then he held up the fingertip for inspection.
“Put that on the gear wheel and you’re OK,” he said.
“I see,” Reacher said.
“You want to sell the Bulova?”
Reacher shook his head.
“Sentimental value,” he said.
“From the Army?” the old guy said. “You’re nekulturniy.”
He turned back to his task and Reacher walked on.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Reacher called. There was no reply. He met Neagley a block from the shelter. She was walking in from the opposite direction. She turned around and walked back with him, keeping her customary distance from his shoulder.
“Beautiful day,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How would you do it?”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Not here. Not in Washington D.C. This is their backyard. I’d wait for a better chance someplace else.”
“Me too,” she said. “But they missed in Bismarck. Wall Street in ten days is no good to them. Then they’re deep into December, and the next thing is more holidays and then the inauguration. So they’re running out of opportunities. And we know they’re right here in town.”
Reacher said nothing. They walked past Bannon. He was sitting in his car.
> They arrived back at the shelter at noon exactly. Stuyvesant was standing near the entrance. He nodded a cautious greeting. Inside the yard everything was ready. The serving tables were lined up. They were draped with pure white cloths that hung down to the floor. They were loaded with food warmers laid out in a line. There were ladles and long-handled spoons neatly arrayed. The kitchen window opened directly into the pen behind the tables. The shelter hall itself was set up for dining. There were police sawhorses arranged so that the crowd would be funneled down the left edge of the yard. Then there was a right turn across the face of the serving area. Then another right along the wall of the shelter and in through the door. Froelich was detailing positions for each of the general-duty agents. Four would be at the entrance to the yard. Six would line the approach to the serving area. One would secure each end of the pen, from the outside. Three would patrol the exit line.
“OK, listen up,” Froelich called. “Remember, it’s very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very hard to look exactly like a homeless person. Watch their feet. Are their shoes right? Look at their hands. We want to see gloves, or ingrained dirt. Look at their faces. They need to be lean. Hollow cheeks. We want to see dirty hair. Hair that hasn’t been washed for a month or a year. We want to see clothes that are molded to the body. Any questions?”
Nobody spoke.
“Any doubt at all, act first and think later,” Froelich called. “I’m going to be serving behind the tables with the Armstrongs and the personal detail. We’re depending on you not to send us anybody you don’t like, OK?”
She checked her watch.
“Five past twelve,” she said. “Fifty-five minutes to go.”
Reacher squeezed through at the left-hand end of the serving tables and stood in the pen. Behind him was a wall. To his right was a wall. To his left were the shelter windows. Ahead to his right was the approach line. Any individual would pass four agents at the yard entrance and six more as he shuffled along. Ten suspicious pairs of eyes before anybody got face-to-face with Armstrong himself. Ahead to the left was the exit line. Three agents funneling people into the hall. He raised his eyes. Dead ahead were the warehouses. Five sentries on five roofs. Crosetti waved. He waved back.
“OK?” Froelich asked.
She was standing across the serving table from him. He smiled.
“Dark or light?” he asked.
“We’ll eat later,” she said. “I want you and Neagley freelance in the yard. Stay near the exit line, so you get a wide view.”
“OK,” he said.
“Still think I’m doing well?”
He pointed left.
“I don’t like those windows,” he said. “Suppose somebody bides his time all the way through the line, keeps his head down, behaves himself, picks up his food, makes it inside, sits down, and then pulls a gun and fires back through the window?”
She nodded.
“Already thought about it,” she said. “I’m bringing three cops in from the perimeter. Putting one in each window, standing up, facing the room.”
“That should do it,” he said. “Great job.”
“And we’re going to be wearing vests,” she said. “Everybody in the pen. The Armstrongs, too.”
She checked her watch again.
“Forty-five minutes,” she said. “Walk with me.”
They walked out of the yard and across the street to where she had parked her Suburban. It was in a deep shadow made by the warehouse wall. She unlocked the tailgate and swung it open. The shadow and the tinted glass made it dark inside. The load bay was neatly packed with equipment. But the backseat was empty.
“We could get in,” Reacher said. “You know, fool around a little.”
“We could not.”
“You said it was fun, fooling around at work.”
“I meant the office.”
“Is that an invitation?”
She paused. Straightened up. Smiled.
“OK,” she said. “Why not? I might like that.”
Then she smiled wider.
“OK,” she said again. “Soon as Armstrong is secure, we’ll go do it on Stuyvesant’s desk. As a celebration.”
She leaned in and grabbed her vest and stretched up and kissed him on the cheek. Then she ducked away and headed back. He slammed the tailgate and she locked it from forty feet away with the remote.
With thirty minutes to go she put her vest on under her jacket and ran a radio check. She told the police commander he could start marshaling the crowd near the entrance. Told the media they could come into the yard and start the tapes rolling. With fifteen minutes to go she announced that the Armstrongs were on their way.
“Get the food out,” she called.
The kitchen crew swarmed into the pen and the cooks passed pans of food out through the kitchen window. Reacher leaned on the shelter wall at the end of the line of serving tables, on the public side. He put his back flat on the bricks between the kitchen window and the first hall window. He would be looking straight down the food line. A half-turn to his left, he would be looking at the approach line. A half-turn to his right, he would be looking into the pen. People would have to skirt around him with their loaded plates. He wanted a close-up view. Neagley stood six feet away, in the body of the yard, in the angle the sawhorses made. Froelich paced near her, nervous, thinking through the last-minute checks for the hundredth time.
“Arrival imminent,” she said into her wrist microphone. “Driver says they’re two blocks away. You guys on the roof see them yet?”
She listened to her earpiece and then spoke again.
“Two blocks away,” she repeated.
The kitchen crew finished loading the food warmers and disappeared. Reacher couldn’t see because of the brick walls but he heard the motorcade. Several powerful engines, wide tires on the pavement, approaching fast, slowing hard. A Metro cruiser pulled past the entrance, then a Suburban, then a Cadillac limo that stopped square in the gateway. An agent stepped forward and opened the door. Armstrong stepped out and turned back and offered his hand to his wife. Cameramen pressed forward. The Armstrongs stood up straight together and paused a beat by the limo’s door and smiled for the lenses. Mrs. Armstrong was a tall blond woman whose genes had come all the way from Scandinavia a couple of hundred years ago. That was clear. She was wearing pressed jeans and a puffed-up goose-down jacket a size too large to accommodate her vest. Her hair was lacquered back into a frame around her face. She looked a little uncomfortable in the jeans, like she wasn’t accustomed to wearing them.
Armstrong was in jeans too, but his were worn like he lived in them. He had a red plaid jacket buttoned tight. It was a little too small to conceal the shape of the vest from an expert eye. He was bareheaded, but his hair was brushed. His personal detail surrounded them and eased them into the yard. Cameras panned as they walked past. The personal agents were dressed like Froelich. Black denim, black nylon jackets zipped over vests. Two of them were wearing sunglasses. One of them was wearing a black ball cap. All of them had earpieces and bulges at their waists where their handguns were.
Froelich led them into the pen behind the serving tables. One agent took each end and stood with arms folded for nothing but crowd surveillance. The third agent and Froelich and the Armstrongs themselves took the middle to do the serving. They milled around for a second and then arranged themselves with the third agent on the left, then Armstrong, then Froelich, then Armstrong’s wife on the right. Armstrong picked up a ladle in one hand and a spoon in the other. Checked the cameras were on him and raised the utensils high, like weapons.
“Happy Thanksgiving, everybody,” he called.
The crowd swarmed slowly through the gateway. They were a subdued bunch. They moved lethargically and didn’t talk much. No excited chatter, no buzz of sound. Nothing like the hotel lobby at the donor reception. Most of them were swaddled in several heavy layers. Some of them had rope belts. They had hats and fingerless gloves and downcast faces. Ea
ch had to pass left and right and left and right through the six screening agents. The first recipient looped past the last agent and took a plastic plate from the first server and was subjected to the full brilliance of Armstrong’s smile. Armstrong spooned a turkey leg onto the plate. The guy shuffled along and Froelich gave him vegetables. Armstrong’s wife added the stuffing. Then the guy shuffled past Reacher and headed inside for the tables. The food smelled good and the guy smelled bad.
It continued like that for five minutes. Every time a pan of food was emptied it was replaced by a new one passed out through the kitchen window. Armstrong was smiling like he was enjoying himself. The line of homeless people shuffled forward. The cameras rolled. The only sound was the clatter of metal utensils in the serving dishes and the repeated banalities from the servers. Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving! Thanks for coming by!
Reacher glanced at Neagley. She raised her eyebrows. He glanced up at the warehouse roofs. Glanced at Froelich, busy with her long-handled spoon. Looked at the television people. They were clearly bored. They were taping a whole hour and they knew it would be edited to eight seconds maximum with boilerplate commentary laid over it. Vice President-elect Armstrong served the traditional Thanksgiving turkey today at a homeless shelter here in Washington D.C. Cut to first-quarter football highlights.
The line was still thirty people long when it happened.
Reacher sensed a dull chalky impact nearby and something stung him on the right cheek. In the corner of his eye he saw a puff of dust around a small cratered chip on the surface of the back wall. No sound. No sound at all. A split second later his brain told him: Bullet. Silencer. He looked at the line. Nobody moving. He snapped his head to the left and up. The roof. Crosetti wasn’t there. Crosetti was there. He was twenty feet out of position. He was shooting. It wasn’t Crosetti.
Then he tried to defeat time and move faster than the awful slow motion of panic would allow him. He pushed off the wall and filled his lungs with air and turned toward Froelich as slowly as a man running through a swimming pool. His mouth opened and desperate words formed in his throat and he tried to shout them out. But she was already well ahead of him.