Without Fail

There was silence for a beat.

“And there’s nothing under the suit,” she said.

“I need to confirm those things for myself,” he said. “It’s a caution thing. Purely genetic, you understand.”

He undid the first button on her jacket. Then the second. Slipped his hand inside. Her skin was warm and smooth.

They got a wake-up call from the motel desk at six o’clock in the morning. Stuyvesant must have arranged it last night, Reacher thought. I wish he’d forgotten. Froelich stirred at his side. Then her eyes snapped open and she sat up, wide awake.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

“I hope it will be,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling about today. I think it’s the day we win or lose.”

“I like that kind of a day.”

“You do?”

“Sure,” he said. “Losing is not an option, which means it’s the day we win.”

She pushed back the covers. The room had gone from too cold to too hot.

“Dress casual,” she said. “Suits don’t look right on a holiday at a soup kitchen. Will you tell Neagley?”

“You tell her. You’ll be passing her door. She won’t bite.”

“She won’t?”

“No,” he said.

She put her suit back on and left. He padded over to the closet and pulled out the bag full of his Atlantic City clothes. He spilled them on the bed and did his best to flatten out the wrinkles. Then he showered without shaving. She wanted me to look casual, he thought. He found Neagley in the lobby. She was wearing her jeans and her sweatshirt with a battered leather jacket over it. There was a buffet table with coffee and muffins. The U.S. marshals had already eaten most of them.

“You two kiss and make up?” Neagley asked.

“A little of each, I guess,” he said.

He took a cup and filled it with coffee. Selected a raisin bran muffin. Then Froelich showed up, newly showered and wearing black denim jeans with a black polo shirt and a black nylon jacket. They ate and drank whatever the marshals had left and then they walked out together to Stuyvesant’s Suburban. It was before seven in the morning on Thanksgiving Day and the city looked like it had been evacuated the night before. There was silence everywhere. It was cold, but the air was still and soft. The sun was up and the sky was pale blue. The stone buildings looked golden. The roads were completely empty. It took no time at all to reach the office. Stuyvesant was waiting for them in the conference room. His interpretation of casual was a pair of pressed gray pants and a pink sweater under a bright blue golf jacket. Reacher guessed all the labels said Brooks Brothers, and he guessed Mrs. Stuyvesant had gone to the Baltimore hospital as was usual on a Thursday, Thanksgiving Day or not. Ba

“Let’s get to it,” Stuyvesant said. “We’ve got a big agenda.”

“First item,” Ba

“Cancellation is out of the question,” Stuyvesant said. “Free turkey at a homeless shelter might sound trivial, but this is a town that runs on symbols. If Armstrong pulled out the political damage would be catastrophic.”

“OK, then we’re going to be there on the ground with you,” Ba

“Any specific information?” Froelich asked.

Ba

“None,” he said. “Just a feeling. But I would urge you to take it very seriously.”

“I’m taking everything very seriously,” Froelich said. “In fact, I’m changing the whole plan. I’m moving the event outdoors.”

“Outdoors?” Ba

“No,” Froelich said. “On balance, it’s better. It’s a long low room, basically. Kitchen at the back. It’s going to get very crowded. We’ve got no realistic chance of using metal detectors on the doors. It’s the end of November, and most of these people are going to be wearing five layers and carrying God knows what kind of metal stuff. We can’t search them. It would take forever and God knows how many diseases my people would catch. We can’t wear gloves to do it because that would be seen as insulting. So we have to concede there’s a fair chance that the bad guys could mingle in and get close, and we have to concede we’ve got no real way of stopping them.”

“So how does it help to be outdoors?”

“There’s a side yard. We’ll put the serving tables in a long line at right angles to the wall of the building. Pass stuff out through the kitchen window. Behind the serving table is the wall of the yard. We’ll put Armstrong and his wife and four agents in a line behind the serving table, backs to the wall. We’ll have the guests approach from the left, single file through a screen of more agents. They’ll get their food and walk on inside to sit down and eat it. The television people will like it better, too. Outside is always better for them. And there’ll be orderly movement. Left to right along the table. Turkey from Armstrong, stuffing from Mrs. Armstrong. Move along, sit down to eat. Easier to portray, visually.”

“Upside?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Extensive,” Froelich said. “Much better crowd security. Nobody can pull a weapon before they get near Armstrong, because they’re filtering through an agent screen the whole time until they’re right across the table from him. Whereupon if they wait to do it at that point, he’s got four agents right alongside him.”

“Downside?”

“Limited. We’ll be screened on three sides by walls. But the yard is open at the front. There’s a block of five-story buildings directly across the street. Old warehousing. The windows are boarded, which is a huge bonus. But we’ll need to put an agent on every roof. So we’ll have to forget the budget.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “We can do that. Good plan.”

“The weather helped us for once,” Froelich said.

“Is this basically a conventional plan?” Ba

“I don’t really want to comment on that,” Froelich said. “Secret Service doesn’t discuss procedure.”

“Work with me, ma’am,” Ba

“You can tell him,” Stuyvesant said. “We’re already in hip-deep.”

Froelich shrugged.

“OK,” she said. “I guess it’s a conventional plan. Place like that, we’re pretty limited for options. Why are you asking?”

“Because we’ve done a lot of work on this,” Ba

“And?” Stuyvesant said.

“We’re looking at four specific factors here. First, this all started seventeen days ago, correct?”

Stuyvesant nodded.

“And who’s hurting?” Ba

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying all four factors point in one single direction.”

“What direction?”

“What’s the purpose behind the messages?”

“They’re threats,” Froelich said.

“Who are they threatening?”

“Armstrong, of course.”

“Are they? Some were addressed to you, and some were addressed to him. But has he seen any of them? Even the ones addressed directly to him? Does he even know anything about them?”

“We never tell our protectees. That’s policy, always has been.”

“So Armstrong’s not sweating, is he? Who’s sweating?”