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