Without Fail

morning a Navy steward found her at breakfast in the mess hall and plugged a telephone into a baseboard socket near her chair. Nobody uses cordless or cellular phones at Camp David. Too vulnerable to electronic eavesdropping.
    “Call transferred from your main office, ma’am,” the steward said.
    There was empty silence for a second, and then a voice.
    “We should get together,” Reacher said.
    “Why?”
    “Can’t tell you on the phone.”
    “Where have you been?”
    “Here and there.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “In a room at the hotel you used for the reception Thursday.”
    “You got something urgent for me?”
    “A conclusion.”
    “Already? It’s only been five days. You said ten.”
    “Five was enough.”
    Froelich cupped the phone. “What’s the conclusion?”
    Then she found herself holding her breath.
    “It’s impossible,” Reacher said.
    She breathed out and smiled. “Told you so.”
    “No, your job is impossible. You should get over here, right now.”

3
    She drove back to D.C. in her Suburban and argued with herself the whole way. If the news is really bad, when do I involve Stuyvesant? Now? Later? In the end she pulled over on Dupont Circle and called him at home and asked him the question direct.
    “I’ll get involved when I need to,” he said. “Who did you use?”
    “Joe Reacher’s brother.”
    “ Our Joe Reacher? I didn’t know he had a brother.”
    “Well, he did.”
    “What’s he like?”
    “Just like Joe, maybe a little rougher.”
    “Older or younger?”
    “Both,” Froelich said. “He started out younger, and now he’s older.”
    Stuyvesant went quiet for a moment.
    “Is he as smart as Joe?” he asked.
    “I don’t know yet,” Froelich said.
    Stuyvesant went quiet again. “So call me when you need to. But sooner rather than later, OK? And don’t say anything to anybody else.”
    She ended the call and threaded back into the Sunday traffic and drove the last mile and parked outside the hotel. The desk was expecting her and sent her straight up to 1201, twelfth floor. She followed a waiter through the door. He was carrying a tray with a pot of coffee and two upside-down cups on saucers. No milk, no sugar, no spoons, and a single pink rose in a narrow china vase. The room was standard-issue city hotel. Two queen beds, flowery prints at the window, bland lithographs on the walls, a table, two chairs, a desk with a complicated phone, a credenza with a television, a connecting door to the next room. Reacher was sitting on the nearer bed. He was wearing a black nylon warm-up jacket with a black T-shirt and black jeans and black shoes. He had an earpiece in his ear and a pretty good fake Secret Service pin in the collar of the jacket. He was clean shaven and his hair had been cut very short and was neatly combed.
    “What have you got for me?” she asked.
    “Later,” he said.
    The waiter put the tray on the table and backed silently out of the room. Froelich watched the door click shut behind him and turned back to Reacher. Paused a beat.
    “You look just like one of us,” she said.
    “You owe me lots of money,” he said.
    “Twenty grand?”
    He smiled. “Most of that. They told you about it?”
    She nodded. “But why a cashier’s check? That puzzled me.”
    “It won’t, soon.”
    He stood up and stepped across to the table. Righted the cups and picked up the pot and poured the coffee.
    “You timed the room service well,” she said.
    He smiled again. “I knew where you were, I knew you’d be driving back. It’s Sunday, no traffic. Easy enough to derive an ETA.”
    “So what have you got to tell me?”
    “That you’re good,” he said. “That you’re really, really good. That I don’t think anybody else could do this better than you.”
    She went quiet. “But?”
    “But you’re not good enough. You need to face that whoever it is out there could walk right in and get the job done.”
    “I never said there’s anybody out there.”
    He said nothing.
    “Just give me the information, Reacher.”
    “Three and a half,” he said.
    “Three and a half what? Out of ten?”
    “No, Armstrong’s dead, three and a half times over.”
    She stared at him. “Already?”
    “That’s how I score it,” he said.
    “What do you mean, a half?”
    “Three definites and one possible.”
    She stopped halfway to the table and just stood there, bewildered.
    “In five days ?” she said. “How? What aren’t we doing?”
    “Have some