Second task was to stroke Wall Street. A change of administration
was a sensitive thing, financially. No real reason why
there should be anything but smooth continuity, but temporary
nerves and jitters could snowball fast, and market instability
could cripple a new presidency from the get-go. So a lot of effort
went into investor reassurance. The President-elect handled
most of it himself, with the crucial players getting extensive
personal face-time in D.C., but Armstrong was slated to handle
the second-division people up in New York. There were five
separate trips planned during the ten-week period.
But Armstrong’s first and most important task of all was to
run the transition team. A new administration needs a roster of
nearly eight thousand people, and about eight hundred of them
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need confirmation by the Senate, of which about eighty are
really key players. Armstrong’s job was to participate in their
selection, and then use his Senate connections to grease
their way through the upcoming confirmation process. The
transition operation was based in the official space on G Street,
but it made sense for Armstrong to lead it from his old Senate
office. All in all, it wasn’t fun. It was grunt work, but that’s the
difference between being first and second on the ticket.
So the third week after the election went like this: Armstrong
spent the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday inside the Belt
way, working with the transition team. His wife was taking a
well-earned post-election break at home in North Dakota, so he
was temporarily living alone in his Georgetown row house.
Froelich packed his protection detail with her best agents and
kept them all on high alert.
He had four agents camping out with him in the house and
four Metro cops permanently stationed outside in cars, two in
front and two in the alley behind. A Secret Service limo picked
him up every morning and drove him to the Senate offices, with
a second car following. The gun car, it was called. There was
the usual efficient transfer across the sidewalks at both ends.
Then three agents stayed with him throughout the day. His
personal detail, three tall men, dark suits, white shirts, quiet
ties, sunglasses even in November. They kept him inside a
tight unobtrusive triangle of protection, always unsmiling, eyes
always roving, physical placement always subtly adjusting.
Sometimes he could hear faint sounds from their radio ear
pieces. They wore microphones on their wrists and carried
automatic weapons under their jackets. He thought the whole
experience was impressive, but he-knew he was in no real
danger inside the office building. There were D.C. cops outside,
the Hill’s own security inside, permanent metal detectors on all
the street doors, and all the people he saw were either elected
members or their staffers, who had been security-cleared many
times over.
But Froelich wasn’t as sanguine as he was.- She watched for
Reacher in Georgetown and on the Hill, and saw no sign of him.
He wasn’t there. Neither was anybody else worth worrying
about. It should have relaxed her, but it didn’t.
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The first scheduled reception for mid-level donors was held
on the Thursday evening, in the ballroom of a big chain hotel.
The whole building was swept by dogs during the afternoon,
and key interior positions were occupied by Metro cops who
would stay put until Armstrong finally left many hours later.
Froelich put two Secret Service agents on the door, six in the
lobby, and eight in the ballroom itself. Another four secured
the loading dock, which was where Armstrong would enter.
Discreet video cameras covered the whole of the lobby and the
whole of the ballroom and each was connected to its own
recorder. The recorders were all slaved to a master timecode
generator, so there would be a permanent real-time record of
the whole event.
The guest list was a thousand people long. November
weather meant they couldn’t line up on the sidewalk and the
tenor of the event meant security had to be pleasantly unobtrusive,
so the standard winter protocol applied, which was to
get the guests in off the street and into the lobby immediately
through a temporary metal detector placed inside the frame of