Without Fail

none, but she kept on worrying anyway. She saw no sign of Reacher. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or annoyed about that. Was he doing it or not? She thought about cheating and issuing his description to her team. Then she thought better of it. Win or lose, I need to know , she thought.
    Armstrong’s two-car convoy entered the loading dock a half hour later, by which time the guests had drunk a couple of glasses of cheap sparkling wine and eaten as many soggy canapés as they wanted. His personal three-man detail brought him in through a rear passageway and kept to a ten-foot radius for the duration. His appearance was timed to last two hours, which gave him an average of a little over seven seconds per guest. On a rope line seven seconds would be an eternity, but this situation was different, primarily in the handshaking method. A campaigning politician learns very quickly to fumble a handshake and grip the back of the recipient’s hand, not the palm. It creates a breathless so-much-support-here-I’ve-got-to-be-quick type of drama, and better still it means it’s strictly the pol’s choice when he lets go, not the supporter’s. But in an event of this nature, Armstrong couldn’t use that tactic. So he had to shake properly and work fast to keep to seven seconds each. Some guests were content with brevity and others hung on a little longer, gushing their congratulations like maybe he hadn’t experienced any before. There were some men who went for the two-handed forearm grip. Some put their arms around his shoulders for private photographs. Some were disappointed that his wife wasn’t there. Some weren’t. There was one woman in particular who took his hand in a firm grip and held on for ten or twelve seconds, even pulling him nice and close and whispering something in his ear. She was surprisingly strong and nearly pulled him off balance. He didn’t really hear what she whispered. Maybe her room number. But she was slim and pretty, with dark hair and a great smile, so he wasn’t too upset about it. He just smiled back gratefully and moved on. His Secret Service detail didn’t bat an eye.
    He worked a complete circle around the room, eating nothing, drinking nothing, and made it back out of the rear door after two hours and eleven minutes. His personal detail put him back in his car and drove him home. The sidewalk crossing was completely uneventful and another eight minutes later his house was locked down for the night and secure. Back at the hotel the rest of the security detail withdrew unnoticed and the thousand guests left over the next hour or so.

    Froelich drove straight back to her office and called Stuyvesant at home just before midnight. He answered right away and sounded like he had been holding his breath and waiting for the phone to ring.
    “Secure,” she said.
    “OK,” he replied. “Any problems?”
    “None that I saw.”
    “You should review the video anyway. Look for faces.”
    “I plan to.”
    “Happy about tomorrow?”
    “I’m not happy about anything.”
    “Your outsider working yet?”
    “Waste of time. Three full days and he’s nowhere to be seen.”
    “What did I tell you? It wasn’t necessary.”

    There was nothing to accomplish in D.C. on the Friday morning so Armstrong stayed home and had his CIA guy come in for two hours’ teaching. Then his detail rehearsed the full motorcade exfiltration. They used an armored Cadillac with two escort Suburbans flanked by two cop cars and a motorcycle escort. They drove him to Andrews Air Force Base for a midday flight to New York City. As a courtesy the defeated incumbents had allowed him the use of Air Force Two, although technically it couldn’t use that call sign until it had a real inaugurated Vice President in it, so for the moment it was just a comfortable private airplane. It flew into La Guardia and three cars from the Secret Service’s New York Field Office picked the party up and drove them south to Wall Street, with an NYPD motorcycle escort riding ahead of them.
    Froelich was already in position inside the Stock Exchange. The New York Field Office had plenty of experience working with the NYPD and she was comfortable that the building was adequately secure. Armstrong’s reassurance meetings were held in a back office and lasted two hours, so she relaxed until the photo call. The transition team’s media handlers wanted news pictures on the sidewalk in front of the building’s pillars, sometime after