queen beds, flowery prints at the window, bland lithographs on
the walls, a table, two chairs, a desk with a complicated phone,
a credenza with a television, a connecting door to the next
room. Reacher was sitting on the nearer bed. He was wearing a
black nylon warm-up jacket with a black T-shirt and black jeans
and black shoes. He had an earpiece in his ear and a pretty
good fake Secret Service pin in the collar of the jacket. He was
clean shaven and his hair had been cut very short and was
neatly combed.
‘What have you got for me?’ she asked.
‘Later,’ he said.
The waiter put the tray on the table and backed silently out of
the room. Froelich watched the door click shut behind him and
turned back to Reacher. Paused.
‘You look just like one of us,’ she said.
‘You owe me lots of money,’ he said.
I’wenty grand?’
He smiled. ‘Most of that. They told you about it?’
She nodded. ‘But why a cashier’s cheque? That puzzled me.’
‘It won’t, soon.’
He stood up and stepped across to the table. Righted the cups
and picked up the pot and poured the coffee.
‘You timed the room service well,’ she said.
He smiled again. ‘I knew where you were, I knew you’d be
driving back. It’s Sunday, no traffic. Easy enough to derive an
ETA.’
‘So what have you got to tell me?’
I’hat you’re good,’ he said. That you’re really, really good.
That I don’t think anybody else could do this better than you.’
She went quiet. ‘But?’
‘But you’re not good enough. You need to face that whoever
it is out there could walk right in and get the job done.’
‘I never said there’s anybody out there.’
51
He said nothing.
‘Just give me the information, Reacher.’
¢Fhree and a half,’ he said.
¢I’hree and a half what? Out of ten?’
‘No, Armstrong’s dead, three and a half times over.’
She stared at him. ‘Already?’
Fhat’s how I score it,’ he said.
‘What do you mean, a half?’
fftree definites and one possible.’
She stopped halfway to the table and just stood there, bewildered.
‘In five days?’ she said. ‘How? What aren’t we doing?’
‘Have some coffee,’ he said.
She moved towards the table like an automaton. He handed
her a cup. She took it and backed away to the bed. The cup
rattled in the saucer.
¢I’wo main approaches,’ Reacher said. ‘Like in the movies,
John Malkovich or Edward Fox. You’ve seen those movies?’
She nodded blankly. ‘We have a guy monitoring the
movies. In the Office of Protection Research. He analyses all the assassination movies. John Malkovich made In the Line of
Fire with Clint Eastwood.’
‘And Rene Russo,’ Reacher said. ‘She was pretty good.’
‘Edward Fox was in The Day of the Jackal, way back.’
Reacher nodded. ‘John Malkovich was looking to take out the
President of the United States, and Edward Fox was looking to
take out the President of France. Two competent assassins,
working solo. But there was a fundamental difference between
them. John Malkovich knew all along he wasn’t going to survive
the mission. He knew he’d die a second after the President. But
Edward Fox aimed to get away with it.’
‘He didn’t, though.’
‘It was a movie, Froelich. Had to end that way. He could have
gotten away with it, easy as anything.’
‘So?’
‘It gives us two strategies to consider. A close-up suicide
mission, or a clean long-distance job.’
‘We know all that. I told you, we have a person working on it.
We get transcripts, analysis, memos, position papers. We talk to
52
the screenwriters sometimes, if there’s new stuff. We want to
know where they get their ideas from.’
‘Learn anything?’
She shrugged and sipped her coffee and he saw her trawl
back through her memory, like she had all the transcripts and
all the memos and all the position papers stashed away in a
mental filing cabinet.
‘The Day of the Jackal impressed us, I think,’ she said.
‘Edward Fox played a pro shooter who had a rifle built so it
could be disguised as a crutch for a handicapped veteran. He