Lee Child - Without Fail

“You fix watches?” he asked.

“What have you got?” the old guy said. He had an accent. Russian, probably.

“A question,” Reacher said.

“I thought you had a watch to fix. That was my business, originally. Before quartz.”

“My watch is fine,” Reacher said. “Sorry.”

He pulled back his cuff to check the time. Quarter past eleven.

“Let me see that,” the old guy said.

Reacher extended his wrist.

“Bulova,” the old guy said. “American military issue before the Gulf War. A good watch. You buy it from a soldier?”

“No, I was a soldier.”

The old guy nodded. “So was I. In the Red Army. What’s the question?”

“You ever heard of squalene?”

“It’s a lubricant.”

“You use it?”

“Time to time. I don’t fix so many watches now. Not since quartz.”

“Where do you get it?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No,” Reacher said. “I’m asking a question.”

“You want to know where I get my squalene?”

“That’s what questions are for. They seek to elicit information.”

The old guy smiled. “I carry it around with me.”

“Where?”

“You’re looking at it.”

“Am I?”

The old guy nodded. “And I’m looking at yours.”

“My what?”

“Your supply of squalene.”

“I haven’t got any squalene,” Reacher said. “It comes from sharks’ livers. Long time since I was next to a shark.”

The old man shook his head. “You see, the Soviet system was very frequently criticized, and believe me I’ve always been happy to tell the truth about it. But at least we had education. Especially in the natural sciences.”

“C-thirty H-fifty,” Reacher said. “It’s an acyclic hydrocarbon. Which when hydrogenated becomes squalane with an a .”

“You understand any of that?”

“No,” Reacher said. “Not really.”

“Squalene is an oil,” the old guy said. “It occurs naturally in only two places in the known biosphere. One is inside a shark’s liver. The other is as a sebaceous product on the skin around the human nose.”

Reacher touched his nose. “Same stuff? Sharks’ livers and people’s noses?”

The old guy nodded. “Identical molecular structure. So if I need squalene to lubricate a watch, I just dab some off on my fingertip. Like this.”

He wiped his wet hand on his pant leg and extended a finger and rubbed it down where his nose joined his face. Then he held up the fingertip for inspection.

“Put that on the gear wheel and you’re OK,” he said.

“I see,” Reacher said.

“You want to sell the Bulova?”

Reacher shook his head.

“Sentimental value,” he said.

“From the Army?” the old guy said. “You’re nekulturniy .”

He turned back to his task and Reacher walked on.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Reacher called. There was no reply. He met Neagley a block from the shelter. She was walking in from the opposite direction. She turned around and walked back with him, keeping her customary distance from his shoulder.

“Beautiful day,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“How would you do it?”

“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Not here. Not in Washington D.C. This is their backyard. I’d wait for a better chance someplace else.”

“Me too,” she said. “But they missed in Bismarck. Wall Street in ten days is no good to them. Then they’re deep into December, and the next thing is more holidays and then the inauguration. So they’re running out of opportunities. And we know they’re right here in town.”

Reacher said nothing. They walked past Bannon. He was sitting in his car.

They arrived back at the shelter at noon exactly. Stuyvesant was standing near the entrance. He nodded a cautious greeting. Inside the yard everything was ready. The serving tables were lined up. They were draped with pure white cloths that hung down to the floor. They were loaded with food warmers laid out in a line. There were ladles and long-handled spoons neatly arrayed. The kitchen window opened directly into the pen behind the tables. The shelter hall itself was set up for dining. There were police sawhorses arranged so that the crowd would be funneled down the left edge of the yard. Then there was a right turn across the face of the serving area. Then another right along the wall of the shelter and in through the door. Froelich was detailing positions for each of the general-duty agents. Four would be at the entrance to the yard. Six would line the approach to the serving area. One would secure each end of the pen, from the outside. Three would patrol the exit line.

“OK, listen up,” Froelich called. “Remember, it’s very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very hard to look exactly like a homeless person. Watch their feet. Are their shoes right? Look at their hands. We want to see gloves, or ingrained dirt. Look at their faces. They need to be lean. Hollow cheeks. We want to see dirty hair. Hair that hasn’t been washed for a month or a year. We want to see clothes that are molded to the body. Any questions?”

Nobody spoke.

“Any doubt at all, act first and think later,” Froelich called. “I’m going to be serving behind the tables with the Armstrongs and the personal detail. We’re depending on you not to send us anybody you don’t like, OK?”

She checked her watch.

“Five past twelve,” she said. “Fifty-five minutes to go.”

Reacher squeezed through at the left-hand end of the serving tables and stood in the pen. Behind him was a wall. To his right was a wall. To his left were the shelter windows. Ahead to his right was the approach line. Any individual would pass four agents at the yard entrance and six more as he shuffled along. Ten suspicious pairs of eyes before anybody got face-to-face with Armstrong himself. Ahead to the left was the exit line. Three agents funneling people into the hall. He raised his eyes. Dead ahead were the warehouses. Five sentries on five roofs. Crosetti waved. He waved back.

“OK?” Froelich asked.

She was standing across the serving table from him. He smiled.

“Dark or light?” he asked.

“We’ll eat later,” she said. “I want you and Neagley freelance in the yard. Stay near the exit line, so you get a wide view.”

“OK,” he said.

“Still think I’m doing well?”

He pointed left.

“I don’t like those windows,” he said. “Suppose somebody bides his time all the way through the line, keeps his head down, behaves himself, picks up his food, makes it inside, sits down, and then pulls a gun and fires back through the window?”

She nodded.

“Already thought about it,” she said. “I’m bringing three cops in from the perimeter. Putting one in each window, standing up, facing the room.”

“That should do it,” he said. “Great job.”

“And we’re going to be wearing vests,” she said. “Everybody in the pen. The Armstrongs, too.”

She checked her watch again.

“Forty-five minutes,” she said. “Walk with me.”

They walked out of the yard and across the street to where she had parked her Suburban. It was in a deep shadow made by the warehouse wall. She unlocked the tailgate and swung it open. The shadow and the tinted glass made it dark inside. The load bay was neatly packed with equipment. But the backseat was empty.

“We could get in,” Reacher said. “You know, fool around a little.”

“We could not.”

“You said it was fun, fooling around at work.”

“I meant the office.”

“Is that an invitation?”

She paused. Straightened up. Smiled.

“OK,” she said. “Why not? I might like that.”