Lee Child - Without Fail

“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 minders 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.