Without Fail

“You a

“It isn’t negotiable,” Armstrong said again. “They won’t want to turn the whole thing into a circus. That wouldn’t be fair. So, no media and no television. Just us.”

Stuyvesant said nothing.

“I’m going to her service,” Armstrong said. “She was killed because of me.”

“She knew the risks,” Stuyvesant said. “We all know the risks. We’re here because we want to be.”

Armstrong nodded. “I spoke with the director of the FBI. He told me the suspects got away.”

“It’s just a matter of time,” Stuyvesant said.

“My daughter is in the Antarctic,” Armstrong said. “It’s coming up to midsummer down there. The temperature is up to twenty below zero. It’ll peak at maybe eighteen below in a week or two. We just spoke on the satellite phone. She’s says it feels unbelievably warm. We’ve had the same conversation for the last two years straight. I used to take it as a kind of metaphor. You know, everything’s relative, nothing’s that bad, you can get used to anything. But now I don’t know anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever get over today. I’m alive only because another person is dead.”

Silence in the room.

“She knew what she was doing,” Stuyvesant said. “We’re all volunteers.”

“She was terrific, wasn’t she?”

“Let me know when you want to meet with her replacement.”

“Not yet,” Armstrong said. “Tomorrow, maybe. And ask around about Sunday. Three volunteers. Friends of hers who would want to be there anyway.”

Stuyvesant was silent. Then he shrugged.

“OK,” he said.

Armstrong nodded. “Thank you for that. And thank you for today. Thank you all. From both of us. That’s really all I came here to say.”

His personal detail picked up the cue and moved him to the door. The invisible security bubble rolled out with him, probing forward, checking sideways, checking backward. Three minutes later a radio call came in from his car. He was secure and mobile north and west toward Georgetown.

“Shit,” Stuyvesant said. “Now Sunday is going to be a damn nightmare on top of everything else.”

Nobody looked at Reacher, except Neagley. They walked out alone and found Swain in the reception area. He had his coat on.

“I’m going home,” he said.

“In an hour,” Reacher said. “First you’re going to show us your files.”

16

The files were biographical. There were twelve in total. Eleven were bundles of raw data like newspaper cuttings and interviews and depositions and other first-generation paperwork. The twelfth was a comprehensive summary of the first eleven. It was as thick as a medieval Bible and it read like a book. It narrated the whole story of Brook Armstrong’s life, and every substantive fact had a number following it in parentheses. The number indicated on a scale of one to ten how solidly the fact had been authenticated. Most of the numbers were tens.

The story started on page one with his parents. His mother had grown up in Oregon, moved to Washington State for college, returned to Oregon to start work as a pharmacist. Her own parents and siblings were sketched in, and the whole of her education was listed from kindergarten to postgraduate school. Her early employers were listed in sequence, and the start-up of her own pharmacy business had three pages all to itself. She still owned it and still took income from it, but she was now retired and sick with something that was feared to be terminal.

His father’s education was listed. His military service had a start date and a medical discharge date, but there were no details beyond that. He was an Oregon native who married the pharmacist on his return to civilian life. They moved to an isolated village in the southwest corner of the state and he used family money to buy himself a lumber business. The newlyweds had a daughter soon afterward and Brook Armstrong himself was born two years later. The family business prospered and grew to a decent size. Its progress and development had several pages all to itself. It provided a pleasant provincial lifestyle.

The sister’s biography was a half inch thick itself so Reacher skipped over it and started in on Brook’s education. It began like everybody else’s in kindergarten. There were endless details. Too many to pay close attention to, so he leafed ahead and skimmed. Armstrong went all the way through the local school system. He was good at sports. He got excellent grades. The father had a stroke and died just after Armstrong left home for college. The lumber business was sold. The pharmacy continued to prosper. Armstrong himself spent seven years in two different universities, first Cornell in upstate New York and then Stanford in California. He had long hair but no proven drug use. He met a Bismarck girl at Stanford. They were both political science postgraduates. They got married. They made their home in North Dakota and he started his political career with a campaign for a seat in the State legislature.

“I need to get home,” Swain said. “It’s Thanksgiving and I’ve got kids and my wife is going to kill me.”

Reacher looked ahead at the rest of the file. Armstrong was just starting in on his first minor election and there were six more inches of paperwork to go. He fa

“Nothing here to worry us?” he asked.

“Nothing anywhere,” Swain said.

“Does this level of detail continue throughout?”

“It gets worse.”

“Am I going to find anything if I read all night?”

“No.”

“Was all of it used in this summer’s campaign?”

Swain nodded. “Sure. It’s a great bio. That’s why he was picked in the first place. Actually we got a lot of the detail from the campaign.”

“And you’re sure nobody in particular was upset by the campaign?”

“I’m sure.”

“So where exactly does your feeling come from? Who hates Armstrong that bad and why?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Swain said. “It’s just a feeling.”

Reacher nodded.

“OK,” he said. “Go home.”

Swain picked up his coat and left in a hurry and Reacher sampled his way through the remaining years. Neagley leafed through the endless source material. They both gave it up after an hour.

“Conclusions?” Neagley asked.

“Swain has got a very boring job,” Reacher said.

She smiled.

“Agreed,” she said.

“But something kind of jumps out at me. Something that’s not here, rather than something that is here. Campaigns are cynical, right? These people will use any old thing that puts them in a good light. So for instance, we’ve got his mother. We’ve got endless detail about her college degrees and her pharmacy thing. Why?”

“To appeal to independent women and small-business people.”

“OK, and then we’ve got stuff about her getting sick. Why?”

“So Armstrong looks like a caring son. Very dutiful and full of family values. It humanizes him. And it authenticates his issues about health care.”

“And we’ve got plenty of stuff about his dad’s lumber company.”

“For the business lobby again. And it touches on environmental concerns. You know, trees and logging and all that kind of thing. Armstrong can say he’s got practical knowledge. He’s walked the walk, at one remove.”

“Exactly,” Reacher said. “Whatever the issue, whatever the constituency, they find a bone to throw.”

“So?”

“They took a pass on military service. And usually they love all that stuff, in a campaign. Normally if your dad was in the Army, you’d shout it from the rooftops to wrap up another whole bunch of issues. But there’s no detail at all. He joined, he got discharged. That’s all we know. See what I mean? We’re drowning in detail everywhere else, but not there. It stands out.”

“The father died ages ago.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’d have been all over it if there was something to be gained. And what was the medical discharge for? If it had been a wound they’d have made something out of it, for sure. Even a training accident. The guy would have been a big hero. And you know what? I don’t like to see unexplained medical discharges. You know how it was. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”