by Lee Child
“Which is very weird,” Reacher said. “He signs the note with his thumbprint, which he’s happy to do because his prints aren’t on file anywhere, but he goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure his prints don’t appear anywhere else on the letter or the envelope. Why?”
“Effect?” Neagley said. “Drama? Neatness?”
“But it explains the expensive paper,” Reacher said. “The smooth coating holds the print. Cheap paper would be too porous.”
“What did they use at the lab?” Neagley asked. “Iodine fuming? Ninhydrin?”
Froelich shook her head. “It came right up on the fluoroscope.”
Reacher was quiet for a spell, just looking at the photograph. Full dark had fallen outside the window. Shiny, damp, city dark.
“What else?” he said to Froelich. “Why are you so uptight?”
“Should she need something else?” Neagley asked him.
He nodded. You know how these organizations work, he had told her.
“There has to be something else,” he said. “I mean, OK, this is scary and challenging and intriguing, I guess, but she’s really panicking here.”
Froelich sighed and picked up her envelope and slid out a second item. It was identical to the first in almost every respect. A plastic page protector, with an eight-by-ten color photograph inside it. The photograph showed a sheet of white paper. There were eight words printed on it: Vice-President-elect Armstrong is going to die. The paper was lying on a different surface, and it had a different ruler next to it. The surface was gray laminate, and the ruler was clear plastic.
“It’s virtually identical,” Froelich said. “The forensics are the same, and it’s got the same thumbprint for a signature.”
“And?”
“It showed up on my boss’s desk,” Froelich said. “One morning, it was just there. No envelope, no nothing. And absolutely no way of telling how it got there.”
Reacher stood up and moved to the window. Found the track cord and pulled the drapes closed. No real reason. It just felt like the appropriate thing to do.
“When did it show up?” he asked.
“Three days after the first one came in the mail,” Froelich said.
“Aimed at you,” Neagley said. “Rather than Armstrong himself. Why? To make sure you take the first one seriously?”
“We were already taking it seriously,” Froelich said.
“When does Armstrong leave Camp David?” Reacher asked.
“They’ll have dinner there tonight,” Froelich said. “Probably shoot the breeze for a spell. They’ll fly back after midnight, I guess.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Guy called Stuyvesant,” Froelich said. “Like the cigarette.”
“You tell him about the last five days?”
Froelich shook her head. “I decided not to.”
“Wise,” Reacher said. “Exactly what do you want us to do?”
Froelich was quiet for a spell.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “I’ve asked myself that for six days, ever since I decided to find you. I asked myself, in a situation like this, what do I really want? And you know what? I really want to talk to somebody. Specifically, I really want to talk to Joe. Because there are complexities here, aren’t there? You can see that, right? And Joe would find a way through them. He was smart like that.”
“You want me to be Joe?” Reacher said.
“No, I want Joe to be still alive.”
Reacher nodded. “You and me both. But he ain’t.”
“So maybe you could be the next best thing.”
Then she was quiet again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That didn’t come out very well.”
“Tell me about the Neanderthals,” Reacher said. “In your office.”
She nodded. “That was my first thought, too.”
“It’s a definite possibility,” he said. “Some guy gets all jealous and resentful, lays all this stuff on you and hopes you’ll crack up and look stupid.”
“My first thought,” she said again.
“Any likely candidates in particular?”
She shrugged. “On the surface, none of them. Below the surface, any of them. There are six guys on my old pay grade who got passed over when I got the promotion. Each one of them has got friends and allies and supporters in the grades below. Like networks inside networks. Could be anybody.”
“Gut feeling?”
She shook her head. “I can’t come up with a favorite. And all their prints are on file. Condition of employment for us too. And this period between the election and the inauguration is very busy. We’re stretched. Nobody’s had time for a weekend in Vegas.”
“Didn’t have to be a weekend. Could have been in and out in a single day.”
Froelich said nothing.
“What about discipline problems?” Reacher asked. “Anybody resent the way you’re leading the team? You had to yell at anybody yet? Anybody underperforming?”
She shook her head. “I’ve changed a few things. Spoken to a couple of people. But I’ve been tactful. And the thumbprint doesn’t match anybody anyway, whether I’ve spoken to them or not. So I think it’s a genuine threat from out there in the world.”
“Me too,” Neagley said. “But there’s some insider involvement, right? Like, who else could wander around your building and leave something on your boss’s desk?”
Froelich nodded.
“I need you to come see the office,” she said.
They rode the short distance in the government Suburban. Reacher sprawled in the back and Neagley rode with Froelich in the front. The night air was damp, suspended somewhere between drizzle and evening mist. The roads were glossy with water and orange light. The tires hissed and the windshield wipers thumped back and forth. Reacher glimpsed the White House railings and the front of the Treasury Building before Froelich turned a corner and drove into a narrow alley and headed for a garage entrance straight ahead. There was a steep ramp and a guard in a glass booth and a bright wash of white light. There were low ceilings and thick concrete pillars. She parked the Suburban on the end of a row of six identical models. There were Lincoln Town Cars here and there, and Cadillacs of various vintages and sizes with awkward rebuilt frames around the windows where bulletproof glass had been installed. Every vehicle was black and shiny and the whole garage was painted glossy white, walls and ceiling and floor alike. The place looked like a monochrome photograph. There was a door with a small porthole of wired glass. Froelich led them through it and up a narrow mahogany staircase into a small first-floor lobby. There were marble pilasters and a single elevator door.
“You two shouldn’t really be here,” Froelich said. “So say nothing, stick close to me and walk fast, OK?”
Then she paused a beat. “But come look at something first.”
She led them through another inconspicuous door and around a corner into a vast dark hall that felt the size of a football field.
“The building’s main lobby,” she said. Her voice echoed in the marble emptiness. The light was dim. White stone looked gray in the gloom.
“Here,” she said.
The walls had giant raised panels carved out of marble, reeded at the edges in the classical style. The one they were standing under was engraved at the top: The United States Department Of The Treasury. The inscription ran laterally for eight or nine feet. Underneath it was another inscription: Roll Of Honor. Then starting in the top left corner of the panel was an engraved list of dates and names. Maybe three or four dozen of them. The next-to-last name on the list was J. Reacher, 1997. Last was M. B. Gordon, 1997. Then there was plenty of empty space. Maybe a column and a half.
“That’s Joe,” Froelich said. “Our tribute.”
Reacher looked up at his brother’s name. It was neatly chis eled. Each letter was maybe two inches high and was inlaid with gold leaf. The marble looked cold, and it was veined and flecked like marble everywhere. Then he caught a glimpse in hi
s mind of Joe’s face, maybe twelve years old, maybe at the dinner table or the breakfast table, always a millisecond faster than anyone else to see a joke, always a millisecond slower to start a smile. Then a glimpse of him leaving home, which at that time was a service bungalow somewhere hot, his shirt wet with sweat, his kitbag on his shoulder, heading out to the flight line and a ten-thousand-mile journey to West Point. Then at the graveside at their mother’s funeral, which was the last time he had seen him alive. He’d met Molly Beth Gordon, too. About fifteen seconds before she died. She had been a bright, vivacious blond woman. Not so very different from Froelich herself.
“No, that’s not Joe,” he said. “Or Molly Beth. Those are just names.”
Neagley glanced at him and Froelich said nothing and led them back to the small lobby with the single elevator. They went up three floors to a different world. It was full of narrow corridors and low ceilings and businesslike adaptations. Acoustic tile overhead, halogen light, white linoleum and gray carpet on the floors, offices divided into cubicles with shoulder-high padded fabric panels on adjustable feet. Banks of phones, fax machines, piles of paper, computers everywhere. There was a literal hum of activity built from the whine of hard drives and cooling fans and the muted screech of modems and the soft ringing of phones. Inside the main door was a reception counter with a man in a suit sitting behind it. He had a phone cradled in his shoulder and was writing something on a message log and couldn’t manage more than a puzzled glance and a distracted nod of greeting.
“Duty officer,” Froelich said. “They work a three-shift system around the clock. This desk is always manned.”
“Is this the only way in?” Reacher asked.
“There are fire stairs way in back,” Froelich said. “But don’t get ahead of yourself. See the cameras?”
She pointed to the ceiling. There were miniature surveillance cameras everywhere there needed to be to cover every corridor.
“Take them into account,” she said.
She led them deeper into the complex, turning left and right until they ended up at what must have been the back of the floor. There was a long narrow corridor that opened out into a windowless square space. Against the side wall of the square was a secretarial station with room for one person, with a desk and file cabinets and shelves loaded with three-ring binders and piles of loose memos. There was a portrait of the current President on the wall and a furled Stars and Stripes in a corner. A coatrack next to the flag. Nothing else. Everything was tidy. Nothing was out of place. Behind the secretary’s desk was the fire exit. It was a stout door with an acetate plaque showing a green man running. Above the exit was a surveillance camera. It stared forward like an unblinking glass eye. Opposite the secretarial station was a single blank door. It was closed.
“Stuyvesant’s office,” Froelich said.
She opened the door and led them inside. Flicked a switch and bright halogen light filled the room. It was a reasonably small office. Smaller than the square anteroom outside it. There was a window, with white fabric blinds closed against the night.
“Does the window open?” Neagley asked.
“No,” Froelich said. “And it faces Pennsylvania Avenue, anyway. Some burglar climbs up three floors on a rope, somebody’s going to notice, believe me.”
The office was dominated by a huge desk with a gray composite top. It was completely empty. There was a leather chair pushed exactly square against it.
“Doesn’t he use a phone?” Reacher asked.
“Keeps it in the drawer,” Froelich said. “He likes the desktop clear.”
There were tall cabinets against the wall, faced with the same gray laminate as the desk. There were two visitor chairs made of leather. Apart from that, nothing. It was a serene space. It spoke of a tidy mind.
“OK,” Froelich said. “The mail threat came on the Monday in the week after the election. Then, on the Wednesday evening, Stuyvesant went home about seven-thirty. Left his desk clear. His secretary left a half hour later. Popped her head in the door just before she went, like she always does. She confirms that the desk was clear. And she’d notice, right? If there was a sheet of paper on the desk, it would stand out.”
Reacher nodded. The desktop looked like the foredeck of a battleship made ready for inspection by an admiral. A speck of dust would have stood out.
“Eight o’clock Thursday morning, the secretary comes in again,” Froelich said. “She walks straight to her own desk and starts work. Doesn’t open Stuyvesant’s door at all. Ten after eight, Stuyvesant himself shows up. He’s carrying a briefcase and wearing a raincoat. He takes off the raincoat and hangs it up on the coatrack. His secretary speaks to him and he sets his briefcase upright on her desk and confers with her about something. Then he opens his door and walks into his office. He’s not carrying anything. He’s left his briefcase on the secretary’s desk. About four or five seconds later he comes back out. Calls his secretary in. They both confirm that at that point, the sheet of paper was there on the desk.”
Neagley glanced around the office, at the door, at the desk, at the distance between the door and the desk.
“Is this just their testimony?” she asked. “Or do the surveillance cameras record to videotape?”
“Both,” Froelich said. “All the cameras record to separate tapes. I’ve looked at this one, and everything happens exactly as they describe it, coming and going.”
“So unless they’re in it together, neither of them put the paper there.”
Froelich nodded. “That’s the way I see it.”
“So who did?” Reacher asked. “What else does the tape show?”
“The cleaning crew,” Froelich said.
She led them back to her own office and took three video-cassettes out of her desk drawer. Stepped over to a bank of shelves, where a small Sony television with a built-in VCR nestled between a printer and a fax machine.
“These are copies,” she said. “The originals are locked away. The recorders work on timers, six hours on each tape. Six in the morning until noon, noon until six, six until midnight, midnight until six, and start again.”
She found the remote in a drawer and switched the television on. Put the first tape in the mechanism. It clicked and whirred and a dim picture settled on the screen.
“This is the Wednesday evening,” she said. “Six P.M. onward.”
The picture was gray and milky and the detail definition was soft, but the clarity was completely adequate. The camera showed the whole square area from behind the secretary’s head. She was at her desk, on the phone. She looked old. She had white hair. Stuyvesant’s door was on the right of the picture. It was closed. There was a date and time burned into the picture at the bottom left. Froelich hit fast wind and the motion sped up. The secretary’s white head moved with comical jerkiness. Her hand batted up and down as she finished calls and fielded new ones. Some person bustled into shot and delivered a stack of internal mail and turned and bustled away. The secretary sorted the mail with the speed of a machine. She opened every envelope and piled the contents neatly and took out a stamp and ink pad and stamped every new letter at the top.
“What’s she doing?” Reacher asked.
“Date of receipt,” Froelich said. “This whole operation runs on accurate paperwork. Always has.”
The secretary was using her left hand to curl each sheet back and her right to stamp the date. The tape’s fast motion made her look frantic. In the bottom corner of the picture the date held steady and the time unspooled just about fast enough to read. Reacher turned away from the screen and looked around Froelich’s office. It was a typical government space, pretty much the civilian equivalent of the offices he’d spent his time in, aggressively plain and expensively shoe horned into a fine old building. Tough gray nylon carpet, laminate furniture, IT wiring routed carefully in white plastic conduit. Foot-high piles of paper everywhere, reports and memoranda tacked to the walls. There was a glass-fronted cabinet with a yard of procedure manuals
inside. There was no window in the room. But she still had a plant. It was in a plastic pot on the desk, pale and dry and struggling to survive. There were no photographs. No mementos. Nothing personal at all except a faint trace of her perfume in the air and the fabric of her chair.
“OK, this is where Stuyvesant goes home,” she said.
Reacher looked back at the screen and saw the time counter race through seven-thirty, and then seven-thirty-one. Stuyvesant stepped out of his office at triple speed. He was a tall man, wide across the shoulders, slightly stooped, graying at the temples. He was carrying a slim briefcase. The video made him move with absurd energy. He raced across to the coat rack and took down a black raincoat. Hurled it onto his shoulders and raced back to the secretary’s desk. Bent abruptly and said something and raced away again out of sight. Froelich pressed the fast wind button harder and the speed redoubled again. The secretary jerked and swayed in her seat. The time counter blurred. As the seven turned to an eight the secretary jumped up and Froelich slowed the tape back to triple speed in time to catch her opening Stuyvesant’s door for a second. She held on to the handle and leaned inside with one foot off the ground and turned immediately and closed the door. Rushed around the square space and collected her purse and an umbrella and a coat and disappeared into the gloom at the far end of the corridor. Froelich doubled the playback speed once again and the time counter unspooled faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by.
“When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked.
“Just before midnight,” Froelich said.
“That late?”
“They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.”
“And there’s nothing else visible before then?”
“Nothing at all.”
“So spool ahead. We get the picture.”
Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on her back like a pack. It had a long hose with a broad nozzle. The other woman was carrying a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. The mop had a square foam pad on the head and a complicated hinge halfway up the handle, for squeezing excess water away. All three of them were wearing rubber gloves. The gloves looked pale on their hands. Maybe clear plastic, maybe light yellow. All three of them looked tired. Like night workers. But they looked neat and clean and professional. They had tidy haircuts and their expressions said: we know this ain’t the world’s most exciting job, but we’re going to do it properly. Froelich paused the tape and froze them as they approached Stuyvesant’s door.
