Without Fail (15 page)

"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 towards 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 yesterday'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 two-line message nearly centred 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 armoured 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 neighbourhood, you might be too busy to spot him. And he'll have to be in the neighbourhood 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 glanced 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 the way 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 neighbourhood? Impossible to answer those questions without long habituation to the 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 exhaust 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-storey 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 armoured stretch limo. The guy would need an anti-tank missile for that. Of which there were plenty to choose from. The AT-4 would be favourite. It was a three-foot disposable fibreglass tube that fired a six-and-a-half-pound projectile through eleven inches of armour. Then the BASE principle took over. Behind Armour 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 armour 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 kerb. 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 kerb 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 armoured car without ever being visible to an observer.

Reacher walked a circle round the group of curious people. They looked unthreatening. Neighbours, mostly, he guessed. Dressed like they weren't going far. He moved back up the street and continued the search for open upper-storey 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 kerb 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 station 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 centre 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 armoured 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. Tyres squealed on the blacktop. The cars accelerated. He watched them disappear. Then he turned back and watched the small crowd in the street disperse. The whole neighbourhood 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 web site 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 towards 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 armoured car."

Reacher nodded. "Makes rifles out of the equation."

"Not entirely," Neagley said. "A.50 sniper rifle would get through the armour. With the Browning AP round, or the API."

He made a face. Either bullet was a formidable proposition. The standard armour-piercing item just blasted through steel plate, and the alternative armour-piercing incendiary burned its way through. But in the end he shook his head.