Child, Lee – Without Fail

hours’ teaching. Then his detail rehearsed the full motorcade

exfiltration. They used an armoured Cadillac with two escort

Suburbans flanked by two cop cars and a motorcycle escort.

They drove him to Andrews Air Force Base for a midday flight

to New York City. As a courtesy the defeated incumbents had

allowed him the use of Air Force Two, although technically it

couldn’t use that call sign until it had a real inaugurated Vice

President in it, so for the moment it was just a comfortable

private aeroplane. It flew into La Guardia and three cars from

the Secret Service’s New York field office picked the party up

and drove them south to Wall Street, with an NYPD motorcycle

escort riding ahead of them.

Froelich was already in position inside the Stock Exchange.

The New York field office had plenty of experience working

with the NYPD and she was comfortable that the building

was adequately secure. Armstrong’s reassurance meetings were

held in a back office and lasted two hours, so she relaxed until

the photo call. The transition team’s media handlers wanted

news pictures on the sidewalk in front of the building’s pillars,

sometime after the closing bell. She had no chance whatever of

persuading them otherwise, because they desperately needed

the positive exposure. But she was profoundly unhappy about

44

her guy standing still in the open air for any period of time. She

had agents video the photographers for the record and check

their press credentials twice and search every camera bag

and every pocket of every vest. She checked in by radio with

the local NYPD lieutenant and confirmed that the perimeter

was definitively secured to a thousand feet on the ground

and five hundred vertically. Then she allowed Armstrong out

with the assorted brokers and bankers and they posed for

five whole agonizing minutes. The photographers crouched on

the sidewalk right at Armstrong’s feet so they could get group

head-and-shoulders shots with the New York Stock Exchan£e lintel inscription floating overhead. Too much proximity, Froelich thought. Armstrong and the financial guys stared

optimistically and resolutely into the middle distance, endlessly.

Then, mercifully, it was over. Armstrong gave his patented I’d-love-to-stay wave and backed away into the building. The

financiers followed him and the photographers dispersed.

Froelich relaxed again. Next up was a routine road trip back to

Air Force Two and a flight to North Dakota for the first of

Armstrong’s handover rallies the next day, which meant she

had maybe fourteen hours without major pressure.

Her cell phone rang in the car as they got close to La Guardia.

It was her senior colleague from the Treasury side of the

organization, at his desk in D.C.

if’hat bank account we’re tracking?’ he said. if’he customer

just called in again. He’s wiring twenty grand to Western Union

in Chicago.’

‘In cash?’

‘No, cashier’s cheque.’

‘A Western Union cashier’s cheque? For twenty grand? He’s

paying somebody for something. Goods or services. Got to be.’

Her colleague made no reply, and she clicked her phone off

and just held it in her hand for a second. Chicago? Armstrong

wasn’t going anywhere near Chicago.

Air Force Two landed in Bismarck and Armstrong went

home to join his wife and spend the night in his own bed in the

family house in the lake country south of the city. It was a big

45

old place with an apartment above the garage block that the

Secret Service took over as its own. Froelich withdrew Mrs

Armstrong’s personal detail to give the couple some privacy.

She gave all the personal agents the rest of the night off and

tasked four more to stake out the house, two in front, two

behind. State troopers made up the numbers, parked in cars on

a three-hundred-yard radius. She walked the whole area herself

as a final check, and her cell phone rang as she came back into

the driveway.

‘Froelich?’ Reacher said.

‘How did you get this number?’

‘I was a military cop. I can get numbers.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Don’t forget those musicians, OK? In Atlantic City? Tonight’s

the night.’

Then the phone went dead. She walked up to the apartment

above the garage and idled some time away. She called the

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