Gfilvez just shook his head.
‘You sure?’ Reacher asked. ‘Nobody watching them, no
strangers around?’
Gfilvez shook his head again.
‘We can fix it,’ Reacher said. ‘If you’re worried about anything,
you should go ahead and tell us right now. We’ll take
care of it.’
Gfilvez just looked bl.ank. Reacher watched his eyes. He had
spent his career watching eyes, and these two were innocent. A
little disconcerted, a little puzzled, but the guy wasn’t hiding
anything. He had no secrets.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’re sorry to have interrupted your evening.’
He kept very quiet on the drive back to the office.
178
They used the conference room again. It seemed to be the only
facility with seating for more than three. Neagley let Froelich
put herself next to Reacher. She sat with Stuyvesant on the
opposite side of the table. Froelich got on the radio net and
heard that Armstrong was about to leave the hotel. He was
cutting the evening short. Nobody seemed to mind. It worked
both ways. Spend a lot of time with them, and they’re naturally
thrilled about it. Rush it through, and they’re equally delighted
such a busy and important guy found any time for them at all.
Froelich listened to her earpiece and tracked him all the way
out of the ballroom, through the kitchens, into the loading bay,
into the limo. Then she relaxed. All that was left was a high
speed convoy out to Georgetown and a transfer through the
tent in the darkness. She fiddled behind her back and turned
the earpiece volume down a little. Sat back and glanced at the
others, questions in her eyes.
‘Makes no sense to me,’ Neagley said. ‘It implies there’s
something they’re more worried about than their children.’
‘Which would be what?’ Froelich asked.
‘Green cards? Are they legal?’
Stuyvesant nodded. ‘Of course they are. They’re United
States Secret Service employees, same as anybody else in this
building. Background-checked from here to hell and back. We
snoop on their financial situation and everything. They were
clean, far as we knew.’
Reacher let the talk drift into the background. He rubbed
the back of his neck with the palm of his hand. The stubble
from his haircut was growing out. It felt softer. He glanced at
Neagley. Stared down at the carpet. It was grey nylon, ribbed,
somewhere between fine and coarse. He could see individual
hairy strands glittering in the halogen light. It was an immaculately
clean carpet. He closed his eyes. Thought hard. Ran the
surveillance video in his head all over again. Watched it like
there was a screen inside his eyelids. It went like this: eight
minutes before midnight, the cleaners enter the picture. They
walk into Stuyvesant’s office. Seven minutes past midnight, they
come out. They spend nine minutes cleaning the secretarial
station. They shuffle off the way they had come at sixteen
179
minutes past midnight. He ran it again, forward and then backward.
Concentrated on every frame. Every movement. Then he
opened his eyes. Everybody was staring at him like he had been
ignoring their questions. He glanced at his watch. It was almost
nine o’clock. He smiled. A wide, happy grin.
‘I liked Mr Glvez,’ he said. ‘He seemed really happy to be
a father, didn’t he? All those lunch boxes lined up? I bet they
get wholewheat bread. Fruit, too, probably. All kinds of good
nutrition.’
They all looked at him.
‘I was an army kid,’ he said. ‘I had a lunch box. Mine was an
old ammunition case. We all had them. It was considered the
thing back then, on the bases. I stencilled my name on it, with a
real army stencil. My mother hated it. Thought it was way
too militaristic, for a kid. But she gave me good stuff to eat
anyway.’
Neagley stared at him. ‘Reacher, we’ve got big problems
here, two people are dead, and you’re talking about lunch
boxes?’
He nodded. Falking about lunch boxes, and thinking about
haircuts. Mr Glvez had just been to the barber, you notice
that?’
‘So?’
‘And with the greatest possible respect, Neagley, I’m thinking
about your ass.’
Froelich stared at him. Neagley blushed.