their pattern and slept properly. So we saw them go in on
Wednesday and come out on a completely different night.’
‘But the date was correct,’ Froelich said. ‘It was definitely
Thursday’s date.’
Reacher nodded. ‘Nendick planned it ahead of time.’
‘Nendick?’
‘Your tape guy,’ Reacher said. ‘My guess is for a whole week
he had that particular camera’s midnight-to-six tape set up to
show that particular Thursday’s date. Maybe two whole weeks.
Because he needed three options. Either the cleaners would be
in and out before midnight, or in before midnight and out after
midnight, or in and out after midnight. He had to wait to match
his options. If they’d been in and out before midnight, he’d have
given you a matching tape showing nothing at all between
midnight and six. If they’d been in and out after midnight, that’s
what you’d have seen. But the way it happened, he had to use
one that showed them leaving only.’
‘Nendick left the letter?’ Stuyvesant asked.
Reacher nodded. ‘Nendick is the insider. Not the cleaners.
What that particular camera really recorded that night was the
cleaners leaving just after midnight and then sometime before
six in the morning Nendick himself stepping in through the fire
door with gloves on and the letter in his hand. Probably around
five thirty, I would guess, so he wouldn’t have to wait long
before trashing the real tape and choosing his substitute.’
‘But it showed me arriving in the morning. My secretary, tOO.’
qhat was the third tape. There was another change at six
a.m., back to the real thing. Only the middle tape was swapped.’
Silence in the room.
‘He probably described the garage cameras for them too,’
Reacher said. ‘For the Sunday night delivery.’
‘How did you spot it?’ Stuyvesant asked. rhe hair?’
‘Partly. It was Neagley’s ass, really. Nendick was so nervous
185
around the tapes he didn’t pay attention to Neagley’s ass. She
noticed. She told me that’s very unusual.’
Stuyvesant blushed again, like maybe he was able to vouch
for that fact personally.
‘So we should let the cleaners go,’ Reacher said. ¢Fhen we
should talk to Nendick. He’s the one who’s met with these
guys.’
Stuyvesant nodded. ‘And been threatened by them, presumably.’
‘I hope so,’ Reacher said. ‘I hope he’s not involved of his own
free will.’
Stuyvesant used his master key and entered the video recording
room with the duty officer as a witness. They found that ten
consecutive midnight-to-six tapes were missing prior to the
Thursday in question. Nendick had entered them in a technical
log as faulty recordings. Then they picked a dozen random
tapes from the last three months and watched parts of them.
They confirmed that the cleaners never spent more than nine
minutes in his office. So Stuyvesant made a call and secured
their immediate release.
Then there were three options: call Nendick in on a pretext,
or send agents out to arrest him, or drive themselves over to
his house and get some questioning started before the Sixth
Amendment kicked in and began to complicate things.
‘We should go right now,’ Reacher said. ‘Exploit the element
of surprise.’
He was expecting resistance, but Stuyvesant just nodded
blankly. He looked pale and tired. He looked like a man
with problems. Like a man juggling a sense of betrayal and
righteous anger against the standard Beltway instinct for
concealment. And the instinct for concealment was going to
be much stronger with a guy like Nendick than with the
cleaners. Cleaners would be regarded as mere ciphers. Sooner
or later somebody could spin it hey, cleaners, what can you
do. But a guy like Nendick was different. A guy like that was a
main component in an organization that should know better.
So Stuyvesant booted up his secretary’s computer and found
Nendick’s home address. It was in a suburb ten miles out in
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Virginia. It took twenty minutes to get there. He lived on a
quiet winding street in a subdivision. The subdivision was old
enough for the trees and the foundation plantings to be mature
but new enough for the whole place still to look smart and well
kept. It was a medium-priced area. There were foreign cars on