used the disguise to get into a nearby building some hours
before a public appearance and planned a long-range head shot
from a high-floor window. He was using a silencer, so he could
get away afterwards. Could have worked, in theory. But the
story was set a long time ago. Before I was born. Early Sixties, I
think. General de Gaulle, after the Algerian crisis, wasn’t it? We
enforce far wider perimeters now. The movie was a factor in
that, I guess. Plus our own problems in the early Sixties, of
course.’
‘And In the Line of Fire?’ Reacher asked.
‘John Malkovich played a renegade CIA operative,’ she said.
‘He manufactured a plastic pistol in his basement so he could
beat the metal detectors and conned his way into a campaign
rally and intended to shoot the President from very close range.
Whereupon, as you say, we would have taken him down immediately.’
‘But old Clint jumped into th path of the bullet,’ Reacher
said. ‘Good movie, I thought.’
‘Implausible, we thought,’ Froelich answered, ff’wo main
faults. First, the idea that you can build a working pistol from
hobbyist material is absurd. We look at stuff like that all the
time. His gun would have exploded, blown his hand off at
the wrist. The bullet would have just fallen out of the wreckage
onto the floor. And second, he spent about a hundred thousand
dollars along the way. Lots and lots of travel, phony offices for
mail-drops, plus a fifty-thousand-dollar donation to the party
that got him into the campaign rally in the first place. Our
assessment was a maniac personality like that wouldn’t have big
bucks to spend. We dismissed it.’
53
‘It was only a movie,’ Reacher said. ‘But it was illustrative.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of the idea of getting into a rally and attacking the target
from close quarters, as opposed to the old idea of going for
long-distance safety.’
Froelich paused. Then she smiled, a little warily at first, like a
grave danger might be receding into the distance.
‘Is this all you’ve got?’ she said. ‘Ideas? You had me worried.’
‘Like the rally here on Thursday night,’ Reacher said.
‘A thousand guests. Time and place announced in advance.
Advertised, even.’
‘You found the transition’s web site?’
Reacher nodded. ‘It was very useful. Lots of information.’
‘We vet it all.’
‘But it still told me everyplace Armstrong’s going to be,’
Reacher said. ‘And when. And in what kind of a context. Like
the rally right here, Thursday night. With the thousand guests.’
‘What about them?’
‘One of them was a dark-haired woman who got hold of
Armstrong’s hand and pulled him a little off-balance.’
She stared at him. ‘You were there?’
He shook his head. ‘No, but I heard about it.’
‘How?’
He ignored the question. ‘Did you see it?’
‘Only on video,’ she said. ‘Afterwards.’
‘hat woman could have killed Armstrong. That was the first
opportunity. Up to that point you were doing real well. You
were scoring A-plus during the government stuff around the
Capitol.’
She smiled again, a little dismissively. ‘Could have? You’re
wasting my time, Reacher. I wanted better than could have. I mean, anything could happen. A bolt of lightning could hit the
building. A meteorite, even. The universe could stop expanding
and time could reverse. That woman was an invited guest.
She was a party contributor, she passed through two metal
detectors and she was ID-checked at the door.’
‘Like John Malkovich.’
‘We’ve been through that.’
‘Suppose she was a martial-arts expert. Maybe military
54
trained in black ops. She could have broken Armstrong’s neck
like you could break a pencil.’
‘Suppose, suppose.’
‘Suppose she was armed.’
‘She wasn’t. She passed through two metal detectors.’
Reacher put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and came out
with a slim brown object.
‘Ever seen one of these?’ he asked.
It looked like a penknife, maybe three and a half inches long. A curved handle. He clicked a button and a speckled brown
blade snapped outward.
if’his is entirely ceramic,’ he said. ‘Same basic stuff as
a bathroom tile. Harder than anything except a diamond.
Certainly harder than steel, and sharper than steel. And it