decided to follow Joe’s advice, now that it’s my call. I decided to
try a security audit. And you were recommended, so to speak.
All those years ago, by somebody I trusted very much. So I’m
here to ask you if you’ll do it.’
‘You want to get a cup of coffee?’
She looked surprised, like coffee wasn’t on the agenda, qhis
is urgent business,’ she said.
‘Nothing’s too urgent for coffee,’ he said. I’hat’s been my
experience. Drive me back to my motel and I’ll take you to the
downstairs lounge. Coffee’s OK, and it’s a very dark room. Just
right for a conversation like this.’
The government Suburban had a DVD-based navigation system
built into the dash, and Reacher watched her fire it up and pick
the motel’s street address off a long list of potential Atlantic City
destinations.
‘I could have told you where it is,’ he said.
‘I’m used to this thing,’ she said. ‘It talks to me.’
‘I wasn’t going to use hand signals,’ he said.
She smiled again and pulled out into the traffic. There wasn’t
much. Evening gloom was falling. The wind was still blowing.
The casinos might do OK, but the boardwalk and the piers and
the beaches weren’t go.ng to see much business for the next six
months. He sat still next to her in the warmth from the heater
and thought about her with his dead brother for a moment.
Then he just watched her drive. She was pretty good at it. She
parked outside the motel door and he led her inside and down a
half-flight of stairs to the lounge. It smelled stale and sticky, but
32
it was warm and there was a flask of coffee on the machine
behind the bar. He pointed at it, and then at himself and
Froelich, and the barman got busy. Then he walked to a corner
booth and slid in across the vinyl with his back to the wall and
the whole room in sight. Old habits. Froelich clearly had the
same habits because she did the same thing, so they ended up
close together and side by side. Their shoulders were almost
touching.
‘You’re very similar to him,’ she said.
‘In some ways,’ he said. ‘Not in others. Like, I’m still alive.’
‘You weren’t at his funeral.’
‘It came at an inopportune time.’
‘You sound just the same.’
‘Brothers often do.’
The barman brought the coffee, on a beer-stained cork tray.
Two cups, black, little plastic pots of fake milk, little paper
packets of sugar. Two cheap little spoons, pressed out of stainless
steel.
‘People liked him,’ Froelich said.
‘He was OK, I guess.’
‘Is that all?’
I’hat’s a compliment, one brother to another.”
He lifted his cup and tipped the milk and the sugar and the
spoon off his saucer.
‘You drink it black,’ Froelich said. ‘Just like Joe.’
Reacher nodded, q3aing I can’t get my head around is I was
always the kid brother, but now I’m three years older than he
ever got to be.’
Froelich looked away. ‘I know. He just stopped being there,
but the world carried on anyway. It should have changed, just a
little bit.’
She sipped her coffee. Black, no sugar. Just like Joe.
‘Nobody ever think of doing it, apart from him?’ Reacher
asked. ‘Using an outsider for a security audit?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Secret Service is a relatively old organization.’
‘So?’
‘So I’m going to ask you an obvious question.’
She nodded. ‘President Lincoln signed us into existence just
33
after lunch on April the fourteenth, 1865. Then he went to the
theatre that same night and got assassinated.’
‘Ironic.’
‘From our perspective, now. But back then we were
only supposed to protect the currency. Then McKinley was
assassinated in 1901 and they figured they should have some
body looking out for the President full time, and we got the job.’
‘Because there was no FBI until the 1930s.’
She shook her head. ‘Actually there was an early incarnation
called the Office of the Chief Examiner, founded in 1908. It
became the FBI in 1935.’
q’hat sounds like the sort of pedantic stuff Joe would know.’
‘I think it was him who told me.’