Lee Child - Without Fail

“Me?” Reacher said. “Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

Stuyvesant was waiting for them behind one end of the reception counter just inside the main door. The duty officer was busy at the other end. Everything looked completely normal except for a telephone directly in front of Stuyvesant. It had been dragged up out of position and was sitting on the front part of the counter, facing outward, trailing its wire behind it. Stuyvesant was staring at it.

“We got a call,” he said.

“Who from?” Froelich asked.

“Didn’t get a name. Or a number. Caller ID was blocked. Male voice, no particular accent. He called the switchboard and asked to speak with the big guy. Something in the voice made the duty officer take it seriously, so he patched it through, thinking perhaps the big guy was me, you know, the boss. But it wasn’t. The caller didn’t want to speak with me. He wanted the big guy he’s been seeing around recently.”

“Me?” Reacher said.

“You’re the only big guy new on the scene.”

“Why would he want to speak with me?”

“We’re about to find out. He’s calling back at nine-thirty.”

Reacher glanced at his watch. Twenty-two minutes past.

“It’s them,” Froelich said. “They saw you in the church.”

“That’s my guess,” Stuyvesant said. “This is our first real contact. We’ve got a recorder set up. We’ll get a voice print. And we’ve got a trace on the line. You need to talk for as long as you can.”

Reacher glanced at Neagley. She looked at her watch. Shook her head.

“Not enough time now,” she said.

Reacher nodded. “Can we get a weather report for Chicago?”

“I could call Andrews,” Froelich said. “But why?”

“Just do it, OK?”

She stepped away to use another line. The Air Force meteorological people took four minutes to tell her Chicago was cold but clear and expected to stay that way. Reacher glanced at his watch again. Nine twenty-seven.

“OK,” he said.

“Remember, talk as long as you can,” Stuyvesant said. “They can’t explain you. They don’t know who you are. They’re worried about that.”

“Is the Thanksgiving thing on the website?” Reacher asked.

“Yes,” Froelich said.

“Specific location?”

“Yes,” she said again.

Nine twenty-eight.

“What else is upcoming?” Reacher asked.

“Wall Street again in ten days,” Froelich said. “That’s all.”

“What about this weekend?”

“Back to North Dakota with his wife. Late tomorrow afternoon.”

“Is that on the website?”

Froelich shook her head.

“No, that’s completely private,” she said. “We haven’t announced it anywhere.”

Nine twenty-nine.

“OK,” Reacher said again.

Then the phone rang, very loud in the silence.

“A little early,” Reacher said. “Somebody’s anxious.”

“Talk as long as you can,” Stuyvesant said. “Use their curiosity against them. Keep it going.”

Reacher picked up the phone.

“Hello,” he said.

“You won’t get that lucky again,” a voice said.

Reacher ignored it and listened hard to the background sounds.

“Hey,” the voice said. “I want to talk to you.”

“But I don’t want to talk to you, asshole,” Reacher said, and put the phone down.

Stuyvesant and Froelich just stared at him.

“Hell are you doing?” Stuyvesant asked.

“I wasn’t feeling very talkative,” Reacher said.

“I told you to talk as long as you could.”

Reacher shrugged. “You wanted it done different, you should have done it yourself. You could have pretended to be me. Talked to your heart’s content.”

“That was deliberate sabotage.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was a move in a game.”

“This isn’t a damn game .”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“We needed information.”

“Get real,” Reacher said. “You were never going to get information.”

Stuyvesant was silent.

“I want a cup of coffee,” Reacher said. “You dragged us out of the restaurant before we were finished.”

“We’re staying here,” Stuyvesant said. “They might call back.”

“They won’t,” Reacher said.

They waited five minutes at the reception counter and then gave it up and took plastic cups of coffee with them to the conference room. Neagley was keeping herself to herself. Froelich was very quiet. Stuyvesant was very angry.

“Explain,” he said.

Reacher sat down alone at one end of the table. Neagley occupied neutral territory halfway down one side. Froelich and Stuyvesant sat together at the far end.

“These guys use faucet water to seal their envelopes,” Reacher said.

“So?” Stuyvesant said.

“So there’s not one chance in a million they’re going to make a traceable call to the main office of the United States Secret Service, for God’s sake. They would have cut the call short. I didn’t want to let them have the satisfaction. They need to know if they’re tangling with me, then I take the upper hand, not them.”

“You blew it because you think you’re in a pissing contest?”

“I didn’t blow anything,” Reacher said. “We got all the information we were ever going to get.”

“We got absolutely nothing.”

“No, you got a voice print. The guy said thirteen words. All the vowel sounds, most of the consonants. You got the sibilant characteristics, and some of the fricatives.”

“We needed to know where they were, you idiot.”

“They were at a pay phone with caller ID blocked. Somewhere in the Midwest. Think about it, Stuyvesant. They were in Bismarck today with heavy weapons. Therefore they’re driving. They’re on a four-hundred-mile radius by now. They’re somewhere in one of about six huge states, in a bar or a country store, using the pay phone. And anybody smart enough to use faucet water to seal an envelope knows exactly how short to keep a phone call to make it untraceable.”

“You don’t know they’re driving.”

“No,” Reacher said. “You’re quite right. I don’t know for sure. There is a slight possibility that they were frustrated about today’s outcome. Annoyed, even. And they know from the website that there’s another chance tomorrow, right here. And then nothing much for a spell. So it’s possible they ditched their weapons and aimed to fly in tonight. In which case they might be at O’Hare right now, waiting for a connection. It might have been worthwhile putting some cops in place to see who’s using the pay phones. But I only had eight minutes. If you had thought about it earlier it might have been practical. You had a whole half hour. They gave you notice, for God’s sake. You could have arranged something easily. In which case I would have talked their damn ears off, to let the cops get a good look around. But you didn’t think about it. You didn’t arrange it. You didn’t arrange anything. So don’t talk to me about sabotage. Don’t be telling me I’m the one who blew something here.”

Stuyvesant looked down. Said nothing.

“Now ask him why he wanted the weather report,” Neagley said.

Stuyvesant said nothing.

“Why did you want the weather report?” Froelich asked.

“Because there might still have been time to get something together. If the weather was bad the night before Thanksgiving in Chicago the airport would be so backed up they’d be sitting around there for hours. In which case I would have provoked some kind of a call-back later, for after we got some cops in place. But the weather was OK. Therefore no delays, therefore no time.”

Stuyvesant said nothing.

“Accent?” Froelich asked, quietly. “Did the thirteen words you granted them give you a chance to pick anything out?”