Without Fail

A staffer from the Office of Protection Research was waiting when Reacher and Neagley and Stuyvesant got back to the Treasury Building. He was standing in the reception area wearing a knitted sweater and blue pants, like he had run straight in from the family dinner table. He was about Reacher's age and looked like a university professor except for his eyes. They were wise and wary, like he had seen a few things, and heard about plenty more. His name was Swain. Stuyvesant introduced him all around and disappeared. Swain led Reacher and Neagley through corridors they hadn't used before to an area that clearly doubled as a library and a lecture room. It had a dozen chairs set facing a podium and was lined on three walls with bookshelves. The fourth wall had a row of hutches with computers on desks. A printer next to each computer.



"I heard what the FBI is saying," Swain said.



"You believe it?" Reacher asked.



Swain just shrugged.



"Yes or no?" Reacher asked.



"I guess it's not impossible," Swain said. "But there's no reason to believe it's likely. Just as likely that it's ex-FBI agents. Or current FBI agents. As an agency we're better than they are. Maybe they're trying to bring us down."



"Think we should look in that direction?"



"You're Joe Reacher's brother, aren't you?"



Reacher nodded.



"I worked with him," Swain said. "Way back."



"And?"



"He used to encourage random observations."



"So do I," Reacher said. "You got any?"



"My job is strictly academic," Swain said. "You understand? I'm purely a researcher. A scholar, really. I'm here to analyze."



"And?"



"This situation feels different from anything else I've seen. The hatred is very visible. Assassinations fall into two groups, ideological or functional. A functional assassination is where you need to get rid of a guy for some specific political or economic reason. An ideological assassination is where you murder a guy because you hate him, basically. There have been plenty of attempts along those lines, over the years. I can't tell you about any of them except to say that most don't get very far. And that there's certainly always plenty of hatred involved. But usually it's well hidden, down at the conspirator level. They whisper among themselves. All we ever see is the result. But this time the hatred is right there in our face. They've gone to a lot of trouble and taken a lot of risks to make sure we know all about it."



"So what's your conclusion?"



"I just think the early phase was extraordinary. The messages? Think about the risks. Think about the energy required to minimize those risks. They put unbelievable resources into the early phase. So I have to assume they felt it was worthwhile."



"But it wasn't," Neagley said. "Armstrong has never even seen any of the messages. They were wasting their time."



"Simple ignorance," Swain said. "Were you aware we absolutely won't discuss threats with a protectee?"



"No," Neagley said. "I was surprised."



"Nobody's aware," Swain said. "Everybody's surprised. These guys thought they were getting right to him. So I'm convinced it's personal. Aimed at him, not us."



"So are we," Reacher said. "You got a specific reason?"



"You'll think I'm naive," Swain said. "But I don't believe anybody who works or has worked for us would have killed the other two Armstrongs. Not just like that."



Reacher shrugged. "Maybe you're naive. Maybe you aren't. But it doesn't matter. We're convinced anyway."



"What's your reason?"



"The hyphen in the second message."



"The hyphen?" Swain said. Then he paused. "Yes, I see. Plausible, but a little circumstantial, wouldn't you say?"



"Whatever, we're working with the assumption it was personal."



"OK, but why? Only possible answer is they absolutely hate him. They wanted to taunt him, scare him, make him suffer first. Just shooting him isn't enough for them."



"So who are they? Who hates him that bad?"



Swain made a gesture with his hand, like he was pushing that question aside.



"Something else," he said. "This is a little off the wall, but I think we're miscounting. How many messages have there been?"



"Six," Reacher said.



"No," Swain said. "I think there have been seven."



"Where's the seventh?"



"Nendick," Swain said. "I think Nendick delivered the second message, and was the third message. You see, you got here and forty-eight hours later you got to Nendick, which was pretty quick. But with respect, we'd have gotten there anyway, sooner or later. It was inevitable. If it wasn't the cleaners, it had to be the tapes. So we'd have gotten there. And what was waiting for us? Nendick wasn't just a delivery system. He was a message in himself. He showed what these people are capable of. Assuming Armstrong was in the loop, he'd have been getting pretty shaky by that point."



"Then there are nine messages," Neagley said. "On that basis, we should add in the Minnesota and the Colorado situations."



"Absolutely," Swain said. "You see what I mean? Everything has fear as its purpose. Every single thing. Suppose Armstrong was in the loop all along. He gets the first message, he's worried. We get the second message, he's more worried. We trace its source, and he starts to feel better, but no, it gets even worse, because we find Nendick paralyzed with fear. Then we get the demonstration threat, he's worried some more. Then the demonstration happens, and he's devastated by how ruthless it was."



Reacher said nothing. Just stared at the floor.



"You think I'm overanalytical," Swain said.



Reacher shook his head, still looking at the floor. "No, I think I'm underanalytical. Maybe. Possibly. Because what are the thumbprints about?"



"They're a taunt of a different sort," Swain said. "They're a boast. A puzzle. A tease. Can't catch me sort of thing."



"How long did you work with my brother?"



"Five years. I worked for him, really. I say with him as a vain attempt at status."



"Was he a good boss?"



"He was a great boss," Swain said. "Great guy all around."



"And he ran random-observation sessions?"



Swain nodded. "They were fun. Anybody could say anything."



"Did he join in?"



"He was very lateral."



Reacher looked up. "You just said everything has fear as its purpose, every single thing. Then you said the thumbprints are a taunt of a different sort. So not everything is the same, right? Something's different."



Swain shrugged. "I could stretch it. The thumbprints induce the fear that these guys are too clever to be caught. Different sort of fear, but it's still fear."



Reacher looked away. Went quiet. Thirty seconds, a whole minute.



"I'm going to cave in," he said. "Finally. I'm going to be like Joe. I'm wearing his suit. I was sleeping with his girlfriend. I keep meeting his old colleagues. So now I'm going to make a lateral random off-the-wall observation, just like he did, apparently."



"What is it?" Neagley said.



"I think we missed something," Reacher said. "Just skated right on by it."



"What?"



"I've got all these weird images going around in my head. Like for instance, Stuyvesant's secretary doing things at her desk."



"What things?"



"I think we've got the thumbprint exactly ass-backward. All along we've assumed they knew it was untraceable. But I think we're completely wrong. I think it's just the opposite. I think they expected it would be traceable."



"Why?"



"Because I think the thumbprint thing is exactly the same as the Nendick thing. I met a watchmaker today. He told me where squalene comes from."



"Sharks' livers," Neagley said.



"And people's noses," Reacher said. "Same stuff. That gunk you wake up with in the morning is squalene. Same chemical exactly."



"So?"



"So I think our guys gambled and got unlucky. Suppose you picked a random male person aged about sixty or seventy. What are the chances he'd have been fingerprinted at least once in his lifetime?"



"Pretty good, I guess," Neagley said. "All immigrants are printed. American born, he'd have been drafted for Korea or Vietnam and printed even if he didn't go. He'd have been printed if he'd ever been arrested or worked for the government."



"Or for some private corporations," Swain said. "Plenty of them require prints. Banks, retailers, people like that."



"OK," Reacher said. "So here's the thing. I don't think the thumbprint comes from one of the guys themselves. I think it comes from somebody else entirely. From some innocent bystander. From somebody they picked out at random. And it was supposed to lead us directly to that somebody."



The room went quiet. Neagley stared at Reacher.



"What for?" she said.



"So we could find another Nendick," he said. "The thumbprint was on every message, and the guy it came from was a message, just like Swain says Nendick was. We were supposed to trace the print and find the guy and find an exact replica of the Nendick situation. Some terrified victim, too scared to open his mouth and tell us anything. A message in himself. But by pure accident our guys hit on somebody who had never been printed, so we couldn't find him."



"But there were six paper messages," Swain said. "Probably twenty days between the first one going in the mail and the last one being delivered to Froelich's house. So what does that mean? All the messages were prepared in advance? That's way too much planning ahead, surely."



"It's possible," Neagley said. "They could have printed dozens of variations, one for every eventuality."



"No," Reacher said. "I think they printed them up as they went along. I think they kept the thumbprint available to them at all times."



"How?" Swain asked. "They abducted some guy and took him hostage? They've stashed him somewhere? They're taking him everywhere with them?"



"Couldn't work," Neagley said. "Can't expect us to find him if he's not home."



"He's home," Reacher said. "But his thumb isn't."



Nobody spoke.



"Fire up a computer," Reacher said. "Search NCIC for the word thumb."



"We've got a big field office in Sacramento," Bannon said. "Three agents are already mobile. A doctor, too. We'll know in an hour."



This time Bannon had come to them. They were in the Secret Service conference room, Stuyvesant at the head of the table, Reacher and Neagley and Swain together on one side, Bannon alone on the other.



"It's a bizarre idea," Bannon said. "What would they do? Keep it in the freezer?"



"Probably," Reacher said. "Thaw it a bit, rub it down their nose, print it on the paper. Just like Stuyvesant's secretary with her rubber stamp. It's probably drying out a bit with age, which is why the squalene percentage keeps getting higher."



"What are the implications?" Stuyvesant said. "Assuming you're right?"



Reacher made a face. "We can change one major assumption. Now I would guess they've both got prints on file, and they've both been wearing the latex gloves."



"Two renegades," Bannon said.



"Not necessarily ours," Stuyvesant said.



"So explain the other factors," Bannon said.



Nobody spoke. Bannon shrugged.



"Come on," he said. "We've got an hour. And I don't want to be looking in the wrong place. So convince me. Show me these are private citizens gunning for Armstrong personally."



Stuyvesant glanced at Swain, but Swain said nothing.



"Time is ticking by," Bannon said.



"This isn't an ideal context," Swain said.



Bannon smiled. "What, you only preach to the choir?"



Nobody spoke.



"You've got no case," Bannon said. "I mean, who cares about a Vice President? They're nobodies. What was it, a bucket of warm spit?"



"It was a pitcher," Swain said. "John Nance Garner said the Vice Presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm spit. He also called it a spare tire on the automobile of government. He was FDR's first running mate. John Adams called it the most insignificant office man had ever invented, and he was the first Vice President of all."



"So who cares enough to shoot a spare tire or an insignificant pitcher of spit?"



"Let me start from the beginning," Swain said. "What does a Vice President do?"



"He sits around," Bannon says. "Hopes the big guy dies."



Swain nodded. "Somebody else said the Vice President's job is merely about waiting. In case the President dies, sure, but more often for the nomination in his own right eight years down the track. But in the short term, what is the Vice President for?"



"Beats the hell out of me," Bannon said.



"He's there to be a candidate," Swain said. "That's the bottom line. His design life lasts from when he's tapped in the summer until election day. He's useful for four or five months, tops. He starts out as a pick-me-up for the campaign. Everybody's bored to death with the presidential nominees by midsummer, so the VP picks put a jolt into the campaigns. Suddenly we've all got something else to talk about. Somebody else to analyze. We look at their qualities and their records. We figure out how well they balance the tickets. That's their initial function. Balance and contrast. Whatever the presidential nominee isn't, the VP nominee is, and vice versa. Young, old, racy, dull, northern, southern, dumb, smart, hard, soft, rich, poor."



"We get the picture," Bannon said.



"So he's there for what he is," Swain said. "Initially he's just a photograph and a biography. He's a concept. Then his duties start. He's got to have campaigning skills, obviously. Because he's there to be the attack dog. He's got to be able to say the stuff the presidential candidate isn't allowed to say himself. If the campaign scripts an attack or a put-down, it's the VP candidate they get to deliver it. Meanwhile the presidential candidate stands around somewhere else looking all statesmanlike. Then the election happens and the presidential candidate goes to the White House and the VP gets put away in a closet. His usefulness is over, first Tuesday in November."



"Was Armstrong good at that kind of stuff?"



"He was excellent. The truth is he was a very negative campaigner, but the polls didn't really show it because he kept that nice smile on his face the whole time. Truth is he was deadly."



"And you think he trod on enough toes to get himself assassinated for it?"



Swain nodded. "That's what I'm working on now. I'm analyzing every speech and comment, matching up his attacks against the profile of the people he was attacking."



"The timing is persuasive," Stuyvesant said. "Nobody can argue with that. He was in the House for six years and the Senate for another six and barely got a nasty letter. This whole thing was triggered by something recent."



"And his recent history is the campaign," Swain said.



"Nothing way in his background?" Bannon asked.



Swain shook his head.



"We're covered four ways," he said. "First and most recent was your own FBI check when he was nominated. We've got a copy and it shows nothing. Then we've got opposition research from the other campaign from this time around and from both of his congressional races. Those guys dig up way more stuff than you do. And he's clean."



"North Dakota sources?"



"Nothing," Swain said. "We talked to all the papers up there, matter of course. Local journalists know everything, and there's nothing wrong with the guy."



"So it was the campaign," Stuyvesant said. "He pissed somebody off."



"Somebody who owns Secret Service weapons," Bannon said. "Somebody who knows about the interface between the Secret Service and the FBI. Somebody who knows you can't mail something to the Vice President without it going through the Secret Service office first. Somebody who knew where Froelich lived. You ever heard of the duck test? If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, walks like a duck?"



Stuyvesant said nothing. Bannon checked his watch. Took his cell phone out of his pocket and laid it on the table in front of him. It sat there, silent.



"I'm sticking with the theory," he said. "Except now I'm listing both of the bad guys as yours. If this phone rings and Reacher turns out to be right, that is."



The phone rang right then. He had the ringer set to a squeaky little rendition of some famous classical overture. It sounded ludicrous in the somber stillness of the room. He picked it up and clicked it on. The fatuous tune died. Somebody must have said chief? because he said yeah and then just listened, not more than eight or nine seconds. Then he clicked the phone off and dropped it back in his jacket pocket.



"Sacramento?" Stuyvesant asked.



"No," Bannon said. "Local. They found the rifle."



They left Swain behind and headed over to the FBI labs inside the Hoover Building. An expert staff was assembling. They all looked a lot like Swain himself, academic and scientific types dragged in from home. They were dressed like family men who had expected to remain inert in front of the football game for the rest of the day. A couple of them had already enjoyed a couple of beers. That was clear. Neagley knew one of them, vaguely, from her training stint in the labs many years before.



"Was it a Vaime Mk2?" Bannon asked.



"Without a doubt," one of the techs said.



"Serial number on it?"



The guy shook his head. "Removed with acid."



"Anything you can do?"



The guy shook his head again.



"No," he said. "If it was a stamped number, we could go down under it and find enough distressed crystals in the metal to recover the number, but Vaime uses engraving instead of stamping. Nothing we can do."



"So where is it now?"



"We're fuming it for prints," the guy said. "But it's hopeless. We got nothing on the fluoroscope. Nothing on the laser. It's been wiped."



"Where was it found?"



"In the warehouse. Behind the door of one of the third-floor rooms."



"I guess they waited in there," Bannon said. "Maybe five minutes, slipped out at the height of the mayhem. Cool heads."



"Shell cases?" Neagley asked.



"None," the tech said. "They must have collected their brass. But we've got all four bullets. The three from today are wrecked from impact on hard surfaces. But the Minnesota sample is intact. The mud preserved it."



He walked to a lab bench where the bullets were laid out on a sheet of clean white butcher paper. Three of them were crushed to distorted blobs by impact. One of the three was clean. That was the one that had missed Armstrong and hit the wall. The other two were smeared with black residue from Crosetti's brains and Froelich's blood, respectively. The remains of the human tissue had printed on the copper jackets and burned on the hot surface in characteristic lacy patterns. Then the patterns had collapsed after the bullets had flown on and impacted whatever came next. The back wall, in Froelich's case. The interior hallway wall, presumably, in Crosetti's. The Minnesota bullet looked new. Its passage through the farmyard mud had scoured it clean.



"Get the rifle," Bannon said.



It came out of the laboratory still smelling of the hot super-glue fumes that had been blown all over it in the hope of finding latent fingerprints. It was a dull, boxy, undramatic weapon. It was painted all over in factory-finish black epoxy paint. It had a short stubby bolt and a relatively short barrel made much longer by the fat suppressor. It had a powerful scope fixed to the sight mounts.



"That's the wrong scope," Reacher said. "That's a Hensoldt. Vaime uses Bushnell scopes."



"Yeah, it's been modified," one of the techs said. "We already logged that."



"By the factory?"



The guy shook his head.



"I don't think so," he said. "High standard, but it's not factory workmanship."



"So what does that mean?" Bannon asked.



"I'm not sure," Reacher said.



"Is a Hensoldt better than a Bushnell?"



"Not really. They're both fine scopes. Like BMW and Mercedes. Like Canon and Nikon."



"So a person might have a preference?"



"Not a government person," Reacher said. "Like, what would you say if one of your crime scene photographers came to you and said, I want a Canon instead of this Nikon you gave me?"



"I'd probably tell him to get lost."



"Exactly. He works with what he's got. So I don't see somebody going to their department armorer and asking him to junk a thousand-dollar Bushnell just because he prefers the feel of a thousand-dollar Hensoldt."



"So why the switch?"



"I'm not sure," Reacher said again. "Damage, maybe. If you drop a rifle you can damage a sniper scope pretty easily. But a government repairer would use another Bushnell. They don't just buy the rifles. They buy crateloads of spare parts along with them."



"Suppose they were short? Suppose the scopes got damaged a lot?"



"Then they might use a Hensoldt, I guess. Hensoldts usually come with SIG rifles. You need to look at your lists again. Find out if there's anybody who buys Vaimes and SIGs for their snipers."



"Is the SIG silenced too?"



"No," Reacher said.



"So there you go," Bannon said. "Some agency needs two types of sniper rifles, it buys Vaimes as the silenced option and SIGs as the unsilenced option. Two types of scope in the spare-parts bins. They run out of Bushnells, they start in on the Hensoldts."



"Possible," Reacher said. "You should make the inquiries. You should ask specifically if anybody has fitted a Hensoldt scope to a Vaime rifle. And if they haven't, you should start asking commercial gunsmiths. Start with the expensive ones. These are rare pieces. This could be important."



Stuyvesant was staring into the distance. Worry in the slope of his shoulders.



"What?" Reacher asked.



Stuyvesant focused, and shook his head. A defeated little gesture.



"I'm afraid we bought SIGs," he said, quietly. "We had a batch of SG550s about five years ago. Unsilenced semiautomatics, as an alternative option. But we don't use them much because the automatic mechanism makes them a little inaccurate for close crowd situations. They're mostly stored. We use the Vaimes everywhere now. So I'm sure the SIG parts bins are still full."



The room was quiet for a moment. Then Bannon's phone rang again. The insane little overture trilled into the silence. He clicked it on and put it to his ear and said yeah and listened.



"I see," he said. Listened some more.



"The doctor agree?" he asked. Listened some more.



"I see," he said, and listened.



"I guess," he said, and listened.



"Two?" he asked, and listened.



"OK," he said, and clicked the phone off.



"Upstairs," he said. He was pale.



Stuyvesant and Reacher and Neagley followed him out to the elevator and rode with him up to the conference room. He sat at the head of the table and the others stayed together toward the other end, like they didn't want to get too close to the news. The sky was full dark outside the windows. Thanksgiving Day was grinding to a close.



"His name is Andretti," Bannon said. "Age seventy-three, retired carpenter, retired volunteer firefighter. He's got granddaughters. That's where the pressure came from."



"Is he talking?" Neagley asked.



"Some," Bannon said. "Sounds like he's made of slightly sterner stuff than Nendick."



"So how did it go down?"



"He frequents a cop bar outside of Sacramento, from his firefighting days. He met two guys in there."



"Were they cops?" Reacher asked.



"Cop-like," Bannon said. "That was his description. They got to talking, they got to showing each other pictures of the family. They got to talking about what a rotten world it is, and what they would do to protect their families from it. It was gradual, he said."



"And?"



"He clammed up on us for a spell, but then our doctor took a look at his hand. The left thumb has been surgically removed. Well, not really surgically. Somewhere between severed and hacked off, our guy said. But there was an attempt at neatness. Andretti stuck to his carpentry story. Our doctor said, no way was that a saw. Like, no way. Andretti seemed pleased to be contradicted, and he talked some more."



"And?"



"He lives alone. Widower. The two cop-like guys had wormed an invitation home with him. They were asking him, what would you do to protect your family? Like, what would you do? How far would you go? It was all rhetorical at first, and then it got practical fast. They told him he would have to give up his thumb or his granddaughters. His choice. They held him down and did it. They took his photographs and his address book. Told him now they knew what his granddaughters looked like and where they lived. Told him they'd take out their ovaries the same way they'd taken off his thumb. And he was ready to believe them, obviously. He would be, right? They'd just done it to him. They stole a cooler from the kitchen and some ice from the refrigerator to transport the thumb. They left and he made it to the hospital."



Silence in the room.



"Descriptions?" Stuyvesant asked.



Bannon shook his head.



"Too scared," he said. "My guys talked about Witness Protection for the whole family, but he's not going to bite. My guess is we've got all we're going to get."



"Forensics in the house?"



"Andretti cleaned it thoroughly. They made him. They watched him do it."



"What about the bar? Anybody see them talking?"



"We'll ask. But this was nearly six weeks ago. Don't hold your breath."



Nobody spoke for a long time.



"Reacher?" Neagley said.



"What?"



"What are you thinking?"



He shrugged.



"I'm thinking about Dostoyevsky," he said. "I just found a copy of Crime and Punishment that I sent Joe for a birthday present. I remember I almost sent him The Brothers Karamazov instead, but I decided against it. You ever read that book?"



Neagley shook her head.



"Part of it is about what the Turks did in Bulgaria," he said. "There was all kinds of rape and pillage going on. They hanged prisoners in the mornings after making them spend their last night nailed to a fence by their ears. They threw babies in the air and caught them on bayonets. They said the best part was doing it in front of the mothers. Ivan Karamazov was seriously disillusioned by it all. He said no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. Then I was thinking about these guys making Andretti clean his house while they watched. I guess he had to do it one-handed. He probably struggled with it. Dostoyevsky put his feelings in a book. I don't have his talent. So now I'm thinking I'm going to find these guys and impress on them the error of their ways in whatever manner my own talent allows."



"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 amp; 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, black 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."