the entrance door. Then they milled around inside the lobby
and eventually made their way to the ballroom door. Once
there, their printed invitations were checked and they were
asked for photo-ID. The invitations were laid face down on a
glass sheet for a moment, and then handed back as souvenirs.
Under the glass sheet was a video camera working to the same
timecode as the others, so names and faces were permanently
tied together in the visual record. Finally, they passed through
a second metal detector and onward into the ballroom.
Froelich’s crew were serious but good-humoured, and made
it seem as if they were protecting the guests themselves from
some thrilling unspecified danger, rather than protecting Armstrong
from them.
Froelich spent her time staring at the video monitors, looking
for faces that didn’t fit. $he saw none, but she kept on worrying
anyway. She saw no sign of Reacher. She wasn’t sure whether
to be relieved or annoyed about that. Was he doing it or not? She thought about cheating and issuing his description to her
team. Then she thought better of it. Win or lose, I need to know, she thought.
42
Armstrong’s two-car convoy entered the loading dock a half
hour later, by which time the guests had drunk a couple of
glasses of cheap sparkling wine and eaten as many soggy
canapes as they wanted. His personal three-man detail brought
him in through a rear passageway and kept to a ten-foot radius
for the duration. His appearance was timed to last two hours,
which gave him an average of a little over seven seconds
per guest. On a rope line seven seconds would be an eternity,
but this situation was different, primarily in the handshaking
method. A campaigning politician learns vei-y quickly to fumble
a handshake and grip the back of the recipient’s hand, not the
palm. It creates a breathless so-much-support-here-I’ve-got-to-be
quick type of drama, and better still it means it’s strictly the
pol’s choice when he lets go, not the supporter’s. But in an
event of this nature, Armstrong couldn’t use that tactic. So he
had to shake properly and work fast to keep to seven seconds
each. Some guests were content with brevity and others hung
on a little longer, gushing their congratulations as if maybe he
hadn’t experienced any before. There were some men who
went for the two-handed forearm grip. Some put their arms
round his shoulders for private photographs. Some were disappointed
that his wife wasn’t there. Some weren’t. There was one
woman in particular who took his hand in a firm grip and held
on for ten or twelve seconds, even pulling him nice and close
and whispering something in his ear. She was surprisingly
strong and nearly pulled him off, balance. He didn’t really hear
what she whispered. Maybe her room number. But she was
slim and pretty, with dark hair and a great smile, so he wasn’t
too upset about it. He just smiled back gratefully and moved on.
His Secret Service detail didn’t bat an eye.
He worked a complete circle round the room, eating nothing,
drinking nothing, and made it back out of the rear door after
two hours and eleven minutes. His personal detail put him
back in his car and drove him home. The sidewalk crossing
was completely uneventful and another eight minutes later his
house was locked down for the night and secure. Back at the
hotel the rest of the security detail withdrew unnoticed and
the thousand guests left over the next hour or so.
43
Froelich drove straight back to her office and called Stuyvesant
at home just before midnight. He answered right away and
sounded like he had been holding his breath and waiting for the
phone to ring.
‘Secure,’ she said.
‘OK,’ he replied. ‘Any problems?’
‘None that I saw.’
‘You should review the video anyway. Look for faces.’
‘I plan to.’
‘Happy about tomorrow?’
‘I’m not happy about anything.’
‘Your outsider working yet?’
‘Waste of time. Three full days and he’s nowhere to be seen.’
‘What did I tell you? It wasn’t necessary.’
There was nothing to accomplish in D.C. on the Friday morning
so Armstrong stayed home and had his CIA guy come in for two