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Without Fail

"OK, here we go," she said. "This one either wins me the gold medal, or it’ll keep us here all night long."

She typed a single word: thumb. Hit search. The inquiry box disappeared and the screen paused for a whole second and came back with a single entry. A single short paragraph. It was a police report from Sacramento in California. An emergency room doctor from a city hospital had notified the local police department five weeks ago that he had treated a man who had severed his thumb in a carpentry accident. But the doctor was convinced by the nature of the wound that it had been deliberate albeit amateur surgery. The cops had followed up and the victim had assured them it had indeed been an accident with a power saw. Case closed, report filed.

"Weird stuff in this system," Froelich said.

"Let’s go eat," Reacher said again.

"Maybe we should try vegetarian," Neagley said.

They drove out to Dupont Circle and ate at an Armenian restaurant. Reacher had lamb and Froelich and Neagley stuck to various chickpea concoctions. They had baklava for dessert and three small cups each of strong muddy coffee. They talked a lot, but about nothing. Nobody wanted to talk about Armstrong, or Nendick, or his wife, or men capable of frightening a person to the point of death and then shooting down two innocent civilians who happened to share a name. Froelich didn’t want to talk about Joe in front of Reacher, Neagley didn’t want to talk about Reacher in front of Froelich. So they talked about politics, like everybody else in the restaurant and probably everybody else in the city. But talking about politics in late November was pretty much impossible without mentioning the new administration, which led back toward Armstrong, so they generalized it away again toward personal views and beliefs. That needed background information, and before long Froelich was asking Neagley about her life and career.

Reacher tuned it out. He knew she wouldn’t answer questions about her life. She never did. Never had. He had known her many years, and had discovered absolutely nothing about her background. He assumed there was some unhappiness there. It was pretty common among Army people. Some join because they need a job or want to learn a trade, some join because they want to shoot heavy weapons and blow things up. Some like Reacher himself join because it’s preordained. But most join because they’re looking for cohesion and trust and loyalty and camaraderie. They’re looking for the brothers and the sisters and the parents they haven’t got anyplace else.

So Neagley skipped her early life and ran through her service career for Froelich and Reacher ignored it and looked around the restaurant. It was busy. Lots of couples and families. He guessed people who were cooking big Thanksgiving meals tomorrow didn’t want to cook tonight. There were a couple of faces he almost recognized. Maybe they were politicians or television reporters. He tuned the conversation back in again when Neagley started talking about her new career in Chicago. It sounded pretty good. She was partnered with a bunch of people from law enforcement and the military. It was a big firm. They offered a whole range of services from computer security to kidnap protection for traveling executives overseas. If you had to live in one place and go to work every day, that was probably the way to do it. She sounded satisfied with her life.

They were about to order a fourth cup of coffee when Froelich’s cell phone rang. It was just after nine o’clock. The restaurant had gotten noisy and they missed it at first. Then they became aware of the low insistent trilling inside her purse. Froelich got the phone out and answered the call. Reacher watched her face. Saw puzzlement, and then a little concern.

"OK," she said, and closed the phone. Looked across at Reacher. "Stuyvesant wants you back in the office, right now, immediately."

"Me?" Reacher said. "Why?"

"He didn’t say."

Stuyvesant was waiting for them behind one end of the reception counter just inside the main door. The duty officer was busy at the other end. Everything looked completely normal except for a telephone directly in front of Stuyvesant. It had been dragged up out of position and was sitting on the front part of the counter, facing outward, trailing its wire behind it. Stuyvesant was staring at it.

"We got a call," he said.

"Who from?" Froelich asked.

"Didn’t get a name. Or a number. Caller ID was blocked. Male voice, no particular accent. He called the switchboard and asked to speak with the big guy. Something in the voice made the duty officer take it seriously, so he patched it through, thinking perhaps the big guy was me, you know, the boss. But it wasn’t. The caller didn’t want to speak with me. He wanted the big guy he’s been seeing around recently."

"Me?" Reacher said.

"You’re the only big guy new on the scene."

"Why would he want to speak with me?"

"We’re about to find out. He’s calling back at nine-thirty."

Reacher glanced at his watch. Twenty-two minutes past.

"It’s them," Froelich said. "They saw you in the church."

"That’s my guess," Stuyvesant said. "This is our first real contact. We’ve got a recorder set up. We’ll get a voice print. And we’ve got a trace on the line. You need to talk for as long as you can."

Reacher glanced at Neagley. She looked at her watch. Shook her head.

"Not enough time now," she said.

Reacher nodded. "Can we get a weather report for Chicago?"

"I could call Andrews," Froelich said. "But why?"

"Just do it, OK?"

She stepped away to use another line. The Air Force meteorological people took four minutes to tell her Chicago was cold but clear and expected to stay that way. Reacher glanced at his watch again. Nine twenty-seven.

"OK," he said.

"Remember, talk as long as you can," Stuyvesant said. "They can’t explain you. They don’t know who you are. They’re worried about that."

"Is the Thanksgiving thing on the website?" Reacher asked.

"Yes," Froelich said.

"Specific location?"

"Yes," she said again.

Nine twenty-eight.

"What else is upcoming?" Reacher asked.

"Wall Street again in ten days," Froelich said. "That’s all."

"What about this weekend?"

"Back to North Dakota with his wife. Late tomorrow afternoon."

"Is that on the website?"

Froelich shook her head.

"No, that’s completely private," she said. "We haven’t announced it anywhere."

Nine twenty-nine.

"OK," Reacher said again.

Then the phone rang, very loud in the silence.

"A little early," Reacher said. "Somebody’s anxious."

"Talk as long as you can," Stuyvesant said. "Use their curiosity against them. Keep it going."

Reacher picked up the phone.

"Hello," he said.

"You won’t get that lucky again," a voice said.

Reacher ignored it and listened hard to the background sounds.

"Hey," the voice said. "I want to talk to you."

"But I don’t want to talk to you, asshole," Reacher said, and put the phone down.

Stuyvesant and Froelich just stared at him.

"Hell are you doing?" Stuyvesant asked.

"I wasn’t feeling very talkative," Reacher said.

"I told you to talk as long as you could."

Reacher shrugged. "You wanted it done different, you should have done it yourself. You could have pretended to be me. Talked to your heart’s content."

"That was deliberate sabotage."

"No, it wasn’t. It was a move in a game."

"This isn’t a damn game."

"That’s exactly what it is."

"We needed information."

"Get real," Reacher said. "You were never going to get information."

Stuyvesant was silent.

"I want a cup of coffee," Reacher said. "You dragged us out of the restaurant before we were finished."

"We’re staying here," Stuyvesant said. "They might call back."

"They won’t," Reacher said.

They waited five minutes at the reception counter and then gave it up and took plastic cups of coffee with them to the conference room. Neagley was keeping herself to herself. Froelich was very quiet. Stuyvesant was very angry.

"Explain," he said.

Reacher sat down alone at one end of the table. Neagley occupied neutral territory halfway down one side. Froelich and Stuyvesant sat together at the far end.

"These guys use faucet water to seal their envelopes," Reacher said.

"So?" Stuyvesant said.

"So there’s not one chance in a million they’re going to make a traceable call to the main office of the United States Secret Service, for God’s sake. They would have cut the call short. I didn’t want to let them have the satisfaction. They need to know if they’re tangling with me, then I take the upper hand, not them."

"You blew it because you think you’re in a pissing contest?"

"I didn’t blow anything," Reacher said. "We got all the information we were ever going to get."

"We got absolutely nothing."

"No, you got a voice print. The guy said thirteen words. All the vowel sounds, most of the consonants. You got the sibilant characteristics, and some of the fricatives."

"We needed to know where they were, you idiot."

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