Without Fail

“The spook just got here,” he said. “They’ll be into Spying 101 by now.”

“Should be 201 by now, surely,” Froelich said. “He’s been doing it long enough.”

“No, CIA stuff is awful complicated,” the guy said. “For plain folks, anyway.”

Froelich smiled and the guy walked away. Took up station again on the sidewalk. Froelich buzzed her window up and half-turned to face Reacher and Neagley equally.

“Foot patrol?” she said.

“Why I wore my coat,” Reacher said.

“Four eyes are better than two,” Neagley said.

They got out together and left Froelich in the warmth of the car. The street side of the house was quiet and well covered so they walked north and turned right to get a view of the back. There were cop cars top and bottom of the alley. Nothing was happening. Everything was buttoned up tight against the cold. They walked onward to the next street. There were cop cars there, too.

“Waste of time,” Neagley said. “Nobody’s going to get him in his house. I assume the police would notice somebody hauling in an artillery piece.”

“So let’s get breakfast,” Reacher said. They walked back to the cross street and found a doughnut shop. Bought coffee and crullers and perched on stools in front of a long counter built inside the store window. The window was misted with condensation. Neagley used a napkin and wiped crescent shapes to see through.

“Different tie,” she said.

He glanced down at it.

“Different suit,” she said.

“You like it?”

“I would if we still lived in the 1990s,” she said.

He said nothing. She smiled.

“So,” she said.

“What?”

“Ms. Froelich collected the set.”

“You could tell?”

“Unmistakable.”

“Free will on my part,” Reacher said.

Neagley smiled again. “I didn’t think she raped you.”

“You going to be all judgmental now?”

“Hey, your call. She’s a nice lady. But so am I. And you never come on to me.”

“You ever wanted me to?”

“No.”

“That’s the point. I like my interest to be welcome.”

“Which must limit your options some.”

“Some,” he said. “But not completely.”

“Apparently not,” Neagley said.

“You disapprove?”

“Hell no. Be my guest. Why do you think I stayed on in the hotel? I didn’t want to get in her way, is all.”

“Her way? Was it that obvious?”

“Oh please,” Neagley said.

Reacher sipped his coffee. Ate a cruller. He was hungry and it tasted great. Iced hard on the outside, light in the middle. He ate another and sucked his fingertips clean. Felt the caffeine and the sugar hit his bloodstream.

“So who are these guys?” Neagley asked. “You got any feelings?”

“Some,” Reacher said. “I’d have to concentrate hard to line them up. Not worth starting with that until we know if we’re staying on the job.”

“We won’t be,” Neagley said. “Our job ends with the cleaners. And that’s a waste of time in itself. No way will they have a name for us. Or if they do, it’ll be phony. Best we’ll get is a description. Which is bound to be useless.”

Reacher nodded. Finished his coffee.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Once around the block for form’s sake.”

They walked as slowly as they could bear to in the cold. Nothing was happening. Everything was quiet. There were cop cars or Secret Service vehicles on every street. Their exhaust fumes clouded white and drifted in the still air. Apart from that absolutely nothing was moving. They turned corners and came up on Armstrong’s street from the south. The white tent was ahead of them on the right. Froelich was out of her car, waving to them urgently. They hurried up the sidewalk to meet her.

“Change of plan,” she said. “There was a problem on the Hill. He cut the CIA thing short and headed up there.”

“He left already?” Reacher asked.

Froelich nodded. “He’s rolling now.”

Then she paused and listened to a voice in her earpiece.

“He’s arriving,” she said.

She lifted her wrist and spoke into her microphone.

“Situation report, over,” she said, and listened again.

There was a wait. Thirty seconds. Forty.

“OK, he’s inside,” she said. “Secure.”

“So what now?” Reacher said.

Froelich shrugged. “Now we wait. That’s what this job is. It’s about waiting.”

They drove back to the office and waited the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Froelich received regular situation reports. Reacher built up a pretty good picture of how things were organized. Metro cops were stationed outside the Senate Office buildings in cars. Secret Service agents held the sidewalk. Inside the street doors were members of the Capitol’s own police force, one officer ma

At four o’clock they drove over to Neagley’s hotel, which was being used again for the contributor function. Start time was scheduled for seven in the evening, which gave them three hours to secure the building. Froelich had a prepla

“Ask for two forms of ID this time,” Neagley said. “Driver’s license and a credit card, maybe.”

“Don’t worry,” Froelich said. “I plan to.”

Reacher stood in the ballroom doorway and glanced around the room. It was a vast space, but a thousand people were going to crowd it out to the point of discomfort.

Armstrong took the elevator down from his office and turned a tight left in the lobby. Pushed through an unmarked door that led to a rear exit. He was wearing a raincoat and carrying a briefcase. The corridor behind the unmarked door was a plain narrow space that smelled of janitorial supplies. Some kind of strong detergent cleaner. He had to squeeze past two stacks of cartons. One of the stacks was neat and new, made up from recent deliveries. The other was unsteady and ragged, made up of empty boxes waiting for the trash collector. He turned his body sideways to get past the second pile. Held his briefcase out behind him and led with his right forearm. He pushed open the exit door and stepped out into the cold.

There was a small square internal courtyard, partly open on the north side. It was an unglamorous space. Tin trunking for the building’s ventilation system was clipped to the walls above head height. There were red-painted pipes and brass-collared valves at shin level, feeding the fire sprinklers. There was a line of three trash containers painted dark blue. They were large steel boxes the size of automobiles. Armstrong had to walk past them to get to the back street. He got past the first one. He got past the second one. Then a quiet voice called to him.

“Hey,” it said. He turned and saw a man cramped into the small space between the second and the third containers. He registered a dark coat and a hat and some kind of brutal weapon. It was short and fat and black. It came up and coughed.