Without Fail (Page 52)

"Where are you going to be?" Reacher asked.

Crosetti glanced all around his little piece of real estate and pointed.

"Over there, I guess," he said. "Tight in the far corner. I’ll face parallel with the front wall. Slight turn to my left and I’m covering the yard. Slight turn to my right, I’m covering the head of the stairwell."

"Good plan," Reacher said. "You need anything?"

Crosetti shook his head.

"OK," Reacher said. "I’ll leave you to it. Try to stay awake."

Crosetti smiled. "I usually do."

"Good," Reacher said. "I like that in a sentry."

He went back down five flights through the darkness and stepped out into the sun. Walked across the street and glanced up. Saw Crosetti nestled comfortably in the angle of the corner. His head and his knees were visible. So was his rifle barrel. It was jutting upward against the bright sky at a relaxed forty-five degrees. He waved. Crosetti waved back. He walked on and found Stuyvesant in the yard. He was hard to miss, given the color of his sweater and the brightness of the daylight.

"It’s OK up there," Reacher said. "Hell of a firing platform, but as long as your guys hold it we’re safe enough."

Stuyvesant nodded and turned around and scanned upward. All five warehouse roofs were visible from the yard. All five were occupied by sharpshooters. Five silhouetted heads, five silhouetted rifle barrels.

"Froelich is looking for you," Stuyvesant said.

Nearer the building, staff and agents were hauling long trestle tables into place. The idea was to form a barrier with them. The right-hand end would be hard against the shelter’s wall. The left-hand end would be three feet from the yard wall opposite. There would be a pen six feet deep behind the line of tables. Armstrong and his wife would be in the pen with four agents. Directly behind them would be the execution wall. Up close it didn’t look so bad. The old bricks looked warmed by the sun. Rustic, even friendly. He turned his back on them and looked up at the warehouse roofs. Crosetti waved again. I’m still awake, the wave said.

"Reacher," Froelich called.

He turned around and found her walking out of the shelter toward him. She was carrying a clipboard thick with paper. She was up on her toes, busy, in charge, in command. She looked magnificent. The black clothes emphasized her litheness and made her eyes blaze with blue. Dozens of agents and scores of cops swirled all around her, every one of them under her personal control.

"We’re doing fine here," she said. "So I want you to take a stroll. Just check around. Neagley’s already out there. You know what to look for."

"Feels good, doesn’t it?" he asked.

"What?"

"Doing something really well," he said. "Taking charge."

"Think I’m doing well?"

"You’re the best," he said. "This is tremendous. Armstrong’s a lucky man."

"I hope," she said.

"Believe it," he said.

She smiled, quickly and shyly, and moved on, leafing through her paperwork. He turned the other way and walked back out to the street. Turned right and planned a route in his head that would keep him on a block-and-a-half radius.

There were cops on the corner and the beginnings of a ragged crowd of people waiting for the free lunch. There were two television trucks setting up fifty yards down the street from the shelter. Hydraulic masts were unfolding themselves and satellite dishes were rotating. Technicians were unrolling cable and shouldering cameras. He saw Bannon with six men and a woman he guessed were the FBI task force. They had just arrived. Bannon had a map unrolled on the hood of his car and his agents were clustered around looking at it. Reacher waved to Bannon and turned left and passed the end of an alley that led down behind the warehouses. He could hear a train on the tracks ahead of him. The mouth of the alley was manned by a D.C. cop, facing outward, standing easy. There was a police cruiser parked nearby. Another cop in it. Cops everywhere. The overtime bill was going to be something to see.

There were broken-down stores here and there, but they were all closed for the holiday. Some of the storefronts were churches, also closed. There were auto body shops nearer the railroad tracks, all shuttered and still. There was a pawnshop with a very old guy outside washing the windows. He was the only thing moving on the street. His store was tall and narrow and had concertina barriers inside the glass. The display space was crammed with junk of every description. There were clocks, coats, musical instruments, alarm radios, hats, record players, car stereos, binoculars, strings of Christmas lights. There was writing on the windows, offering to buy just about any article ever manufactured. If it didn’t grow in the ground or move by itself, this guy would give you money for it. He also offered services. He would cash checks, appraise jewelry, repair watches. There was a tray of watches on view. They were mostly old-fashioned wind-up items, with bulging crystals and big square luminescent figures and sculpted hands. Reacher glanced again at the sign: Watches Repaired. Then he glanced again at the old guy. He was up to his elbows in soap suds.

"You fix watches?" he asked.

"What have you got?" the old guy said. He had an accent. Russian, probably.

"A question," Reacher said.

"I thought you had a watch to fix. That was my business, originally. Before quartz."

"My watch is fine," Reacher said. "Sorry."

He pulled back his cuff to check the time. Quarter past eleven.

"Let me see that," the old guy said.

Reacher extended his wrist.

"Bulova," the old guy said. "American military issue before the Gulf War. A good watch. You buy it from a soldier?"

"No, I was a soldier."

The old guy nodded. "So was I. In the Red Army. What’s the question?"

"You ever heard of squalene?"

"It’s a lubricant."

"You use it?"

"Time to time. I don’t fix so many watches now. Not since quartz."

"Where do you get it?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No," Reacher said. "I’m asking a question."

"You want to know where I get my squalene?"

"That’s what questions are for. They seek to elicit information."

The old guy smiled. "I carry it around with me."

"Where?"

"You’re looking at it."

"Am I?"

The old guy nodded. "And I’m looking at yours."

"My what?"

"Your supply of squalene."

"I haven’t got any squalene," Reacher said. "It comes from sharks’ livers. Long time since I was next to a shark."

The old man shook his head. "You see, the Soviet system was very frequently criticized, and believe me I’ve always been happy to tell the truth about it. But at least we had education. Especially in the natural sciences."

"C-thirty H-fifty," Reacher said. "It’s an acyclic hydrocarbon. Which when hydrogenated becomes squalane with an a."

"You understand any of that?"

"No," Reacher said. "Not really."

"Squalene is an oil," the old guy said. "It occurs naturally in only two places in the known biosphere. One is inside a shark’s liver. The other is as a sebaceous product on the skin around the human nose."

Reacher touched his nose. "Same stuff? Sharks’ livers and people’s noses?"

The old guy nodded. "Identical molecular structure. So if I need squalene to lubricate a watch, I just dab some off on my fingertip. Like this."

He wiped his wet hand on his pant leg and extended a finger and rubbed it down where his nose joined his face. Then he held up the fingertip for inspection.

"Put that on the gear wheel and you’re OK," he said.

"I see," Reacher said.

"You want to sell the Bulova?"

Reacher shook his head.

"Sentimental value," he said.

"From the Army?" the old guy said. "You’re nekulturniy."

He turned back to his task and Reacher walked on.

"Happy Thanksgiving," Reacher called. There was no reply. He met Neagley a block from the shelter. She was walking in from the opposite direction. She turned around and walked back with him, keeping her customary distance from his shoulder.

"Beautiful day," she said. "Isn’t it?"

"I don’t know," he said.

"How would you do it?"

"I wouldn’t," he said. "Not here. Not in Washington D.C. This is their backyard. I’d wait for a better chance someplace else."

"Me too," she said. "But they missed in Bismarck. Wall Street in ten days is no good to them. Then they’re deep into December, and the next thing is more holidays and then the inauguration. So they’re running out of opportunities. And we know they’re right here in town."

Reacher said nothing. They walked past Bannon. He was sitting in his car.

They arrived back at the shelter at noon exactly. Stuyvesant was standing near the entrance. He nodded a cautious greeting. Inside the yard everything was ready. The serving tables were lined up. They were draped with pure white cloths that hung down to the floor. They were loaded with food warmers laid out in a line. There were ladles and long-handled spoons neatly arrayed. The kitchen window opened directly into the pen behind the tables. The shelter hall itself was set up for dining. There were police sawhorses arranged so that the crowd would be funneled down the left edge of the yard. Then there was a right turn across the face of the serving area. Then another right along the wall of the shelter and in through the door. Froelich was detailing positions for each of the general-duty agents. Four would be at the entrance to the yard. Six would line the approach to the serving area. One would secure each end of the pen, from the outside. Three would patrol the exit line.