Ли Чайлд - Without Fail

No reaction. Another long silence.

“Are we going to get fired?” Maria asked.

“Aren’t you listening?” Neagley said. “You’re going to jail, unless you tell us who it was.”

Maria’s face went still, like a stone. And Anita’s, and Julio’s. Still faces, blank eyes, stoic miserable expressions straight from a thousand years of peasant experience: sooner or later, the harvest always fails .

“Let’s go,” Reacher said.

They stood up and stepped through to the hallway. Climbed over the seesaw and let themselves out into the night. Made it back to the Suburban in time to see Froelich snapping her cell phone shut. There was panic in her eyes.

“What?” Reacher asked.

“We got another one,” she said. “Ten minutes ago. And it’s worse.”

It was waiting for them in the center of the long table in the conference room. A small crowd of people had gathered around it. The halogen spots in the ceiling lit it perfectly. There was a brown nine-by-twelve envelope with a metal closure and a torn flap. And a single sheet of white letter-size paper. On it were printed ten words: The day upon which Armstrong will die is fast approaching . The message was split into two lines, exactly centered between the margins and set slightly above the middle of the paper. There was nothing else visible. People stared at it in silence. The guy in the suit from the reception desk pushed backward through the crowd and spoke to Froelich.

“I handled the envelope,” he said. “I didn’t touch the letter. Just spilled it out.”

“How did it arrive?” she asked.

“The garage guard took a bathroom break. Came back and found it on the ledge inside his booth. He brought it straight up to me. So I guess his prints are on the envelope too.”

“When, exactly?”

“Half hour ago.”

“How does the garage guard work his breaks?” Reacher asked.

The room went quiet. People turned toward the new voice. The desk guy started in with a fierce who-the-hell-are-you look. But then he saw Froelich’s face and shrugged and answered obediently.

“He locks the barrier down,” he said. “That’s how. Runs to the bathroom, runs back. Maybe two or three times a shift. He’s down there eight hours at a stretch.”

Froelich nodded. “Nobody’s blaming him. Anybody call a forensic team yet?”

“We waited for you.”

“OK, leave it on the table, nobody touch it, and seal this room tight.”

“Is there a camera in the garage?” Reacher asked.

“Yes, there is.”

“So get Nendick to bring us tonight’s tape, right now.”

Neagley craned over the table. “Rather florid wording, don’t you think? And ‘fast’ definitely takes the prediction defense away, I would say. Turns the whole thing into an overt threat.”

Froelich nodded.

“You got that right,” she said slowly. “If this is somebody’s idea of a game or a joke, it just turned very serious very suddenly.”

She said it loud and clear and Reacher caught her purpose fast enough to watch the faces in the room. There was absolutely no reaction on any of them. Froelich checked her watch.

“Armstrong’s in the air,” she said. “On his way home to Georgetown.”

Then she was quiet for a beat.

“Call out an extra team,” she said. “Half to Andrews, half to Armstrong’s house. And put an extra vehicle in the convoy. And take an indirect route back.”

There was a split second of hesitation and then people started moving with the practiced efficiency of an elite team readying itself for action. Reacher watched them carefully, and he liked what he saw. Then he and Neagley followed Froelich back to her office. She called an FBI number and asked for a forensic team, urgent. Listened to the reply and hung up.

“Not that there’s much doubt about what they’ll find,” she said, to nobody in particular. Then Nendick knocked and came in, carrying two videotapes.

“Two cameras,” he said. “One is inside the booth, high up, looking down and sideways, supposed to ID individual drivers in their cars. The other is outside, looking straight up the alley, supposed to pick up approaching vehicles.”

He put both cassettes on the desk and went back out. Froelich picked up the first tape and scooted her chair over to her television set. Put the tape in and pressed play. It was the sideways view from inside the booth. The angle was high, but it was about right to catch a driver framed in a car window. She wound back thirty-five minutes. Pressed play again. The guard was shown sitting on his stool with the back of his left shoulder in shot. Doing nothing. She fast-wound forward until he stood up. He touched a couple of buttons and disappeared. Nothing happened for thirty seconds. Then an arm snaked into view from the extreme right edge of the picture. Just an arm, in a heavy soft sleeve. A tweed overcoat, maybe. The hand on the end of it was gloved in leather. There was an envelope in the hand. It was pushed through the half-closed sliding window and dropped onto the ledge. Then the arm disappeared.

“He knew about the camera,” Froelich said.

“Clearly,” Neagley said. “He was a yard shy of the booth, stretching out.”

“But did he know about the other camera?” Reacher asked.

Froelich ejected the first tape and inserted the second. Wound backward thirty-five minutes. Pressed play. The view was straight up the alley. The quality was poor. There were pools of light from outdoor spotlights and the contrast with areas of darkness was vivid. The shadows lacked detail. The angle was high and tight. The top of the picture cut off well before the street end of the alley. The bottom of the shot stopped maybe six feet in front of the booth. But the width was good. Very good. Both walls of the alley were clearly in view. There was no way of approaching the garage entrance without passing through the camera’s field of vision.

The tape ran. Nothing happened. They watched the timecode counter until it reached a point twenty seconds before the arm had appeared. Then they watched the screen. A figure appeared at the top. Definitely male. No doubt about it. There was no mistaking the shoulders or the walk. He was wearing a heavy tweed overcoat, maybe gray or dark brown. Dark pants, heavy shoes, a muffler around his neck. And a hat on his head. A wide-brimmed hat, dark in color, tilted way down in front. He walked with his chin tucked down. The video picked up a perfect view of the crown of his hat, all the way down the alley.

“He knew about the second camera,” Reacher said.

The tape ran on. The guy walked fast, but purposefully, not hurrying, not running, not out of control. He had the envelope in his right hand, holding it flat against his body. He disappeared out of the bottom of the shot and reappeared three seconds later. Without the envelope. He walked at the same purposeful pace all the way back up the alley and out of shot at the top of the screen.

Froelich froze the tape. “Description?”

“Impossible,” Neagley said. “Male, a little short and squat. Right-handed, probably. No visible limp. Apart from that we don’t know diddly. We saw nothing.”

“Maybe not too squat,” Reacher said. “The angle foreshortens things a little.”

“He had inside knowledge,” Froelich said. “He knew about the cameras and the bathroom breaks. So he’s one of us.”

“Not necessarily,” Reacher said. “He could be an outsider who staked you out. The exterior camera must be visible if you’re looking for it. And he could assume the interior camera. Most places have them. And a couple of nights’ surveillance would teach him the bathroom break procedure. But you know what? Insider or outsider, we drove right past him. We must have. When we went out to see the cleaners. Because even if he’s an insider, he needed to time the bathroom break exactly right. So he needed to be watching. He must have been across the street for a couple of hours, looking down the alley. Maybe with binoculars.”