They laid it on the conference room table. It was a familiar
brown envelope, gummed flap, metal closure. A computer
printed self-adhesive address label. Brook Armstrong, United
States Senate, Washington D.C. Clear black-on-white Times New
Roman lettering. Bannon opened his briefcase and took out a
pair of white cotton gloves. Pulled them on, right hand, left
hand. Tightened them over his fingers.
‘Got these from the lab,’ he said. ‘Special circumstances. We
don’t want to use latex. Don’t want to confuse the talcum
traces.’
The gloves were clumsy. He had to slide the envelope to the
edge of the table to pick it up. He held it with one hand and
looked for something to open it with. Reacher took his ceramic
knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. Offered it handle
first. Bannon took it and eased the tip of the blade under the
corner of the flap. Moved the envelope backward and the knife
forward. The blade cut the paper like cutting air. He handed the
knife back to Reacher and pressed on the sides of the envelope
so it made a mouth. Glanced inside. Turned the envelope over
and tipped something out.
It was a single sheet of letter-size paper. Heavyweight white
stock. It landed and skidded an inch on the polished wood and
settled flat. It had a question printed over two lines, centred
between the margins, a little higher than halfway up the sheet.
198
Five words, in the familiar severe typeface: Did you like the
demonstration? The last word was the only word on the second
line. That isolation gave it some kind of extra emphasis.
Bannon turned the envelope over and checked the postmark.
‘Vegas again,’ he said. ‘Saturday. They’re real confident,
aren’t they? They’re asking if he liked the demonstration three
days before they staged it.’
‘We have to move out now,’ Froelich said. ‘Lift-off at ten. I
want Reacher and Neagley with me. They’ve been there before.
They know the ground.’
Stuyvesant raised his hand. A vague gesture. Either OK or whatever or don’t bother me, Reacher couldn’t tell.
‘I want twice-daily meetings,’ Bannon said. ‘In here, seven
every morning and maybe ten at night?’
‘If we’re in town,’ Froelich said. She headed for the door.
Reacher and Neagley followed her out of the room. Reacher
caught her and nudged her elbow and steered her left instead
of right, down the corridor towards her office.
‘Do the database search,’ he whispered.
She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s way too slow.’
‘So start it now and let it compile all day.’
‘Won’t Bannon do it?’
‘Probably. But double-checking never hurt anybody.’
She paused. Then she turned and headed for the interior of
the floor. Lit up her office and turned on her computer. The
NCIC database had a complex search protocol. She entered her
password and clicked the cursor into the box and typed thumbprint.
‘Be more specific,’ Reacher said. I’hat’s going to give you ten
zillion plain-vanilla fingerprint cases.’
She tabbed backward and typed thumbprint + document +
letter ÷ signature.
‘OK?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I was born before these things were invented.’
‘It’s a start,’ Neagley said. ‘We can refine it later if we need to.’
So Froelich clicked on search and the hard disk chattered and
the enquiry box disappeared from the screen.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
199
Moving a threatened vice president-elect from the District of
Columbia to the great state of North Dakota was a complicated
undertaking. It required eight separate Secret Service vehicles,
four police cars, a total of twenty agents, and an aeroplane.
Staging the local political rally itself required twelve agents,
forty local police officers, four State Police vehicles, and two
local canine units. Froelich spent a total of four hours on the
radio in order to co-ordinate the whole operation.
She left her own Suburban in the garage and used a stretched
Town Car with a driver so she could be free to concentrate on
giving orders. Reacher and Neagley sat with her in the back and they drove out to Georgetown and parked near Armstrong’s
house. Thirty minutes later they were joined by the gun car and
two Suburbans. Fifteen minutes after that, an armoured Cadillac