Without Fail

waited a beat and then followed her example. He was finished well before her. He had no middle name and no current address. Stuyvesant walked around behind them and scooped the pads off the table. Said nothing and walked straight out of the room with the pads held tight under his arm. The door slammed loudly behind him.
    “I’m in trouble,” Froelich said. “And I’ve made trouble for you guys, too.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Reacher said. “He’s going to make us sign some kind of confidentiality agreement, is all. He’s gone to get them typed up, I guess.”
    “But what’s he going to do to me?”
    “Nothing, probably.”
    “Demote me? Fire me?”
    “He authorized the audit. The audit was necessary because of the threats. The two things were connected. We’ll tell him we pushed you with questions.”
    “He’ll demote me,” Froelich said. “He wasn’t happy about me running the audit in the first place. Told me it indicated a lack of self-confidence.”
    “Bullshit,” Reacher said. “We did stuff like that all the time.”
    “Audits build self-confidence,” Neagley said. “That was our experience. Better to know something for sure than just hope for the best.”
    Froelich looked away. Didn’t reply. The room went quiet. They all waited, five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Reacher stood up and stretched. Stepped over to the low cabinet and looked at the red phone. He picked it up and held it to his ear. There was no dial tone. He put it back and scanned the confidential memos on the notice board. The ceiling was low and he could feel heat on his head from the halogen lights. He sat down again and turned his chair and tilted it back and put his feet on the next one in line. Glanced at his watch. Stuyvesant had been gone twenty minutes.
    “Hell is he doing?” he said. “Typing them himself?”
    “Maybe he’s calling his agents,” Neagley said. “Maybe we’re all going to jail, to guarantee our everlasting silence forever.”
    Reacher yawned and smiled. “We’ll give him ten more minutes. Then we’re leaving. We’ll all go out and get some dinner.”
    Stuyvesant came back after five more. He walked into the room and closed the door. He was carrying no papers. He stepped over and sat down in his original seat and placed his hands flat on the table. Drummed a staccato little rhythm with his fingertips.
    “OK,” he said. “Where were we? Reacher had a question, I think.”
    Reacher took his feet off the chair and turned to face front.
    “Did I?” he said.
    Stuyvesant nodded. “You asked about this specific threat. Well, it’s either an inside job or it’s an outside job. It’s got to be one or the other, obviously.”
    “We’re discussing this now?”
    “Yes, we are,” Stuyvesant said.
    “Why? What changed?”
    Stuyvesant ignored the question. “If it’s an outside job, should we necessarily worry? Perhaps not, because that’s like baseball, too. If the Yankees come to town saying they’re going to beat the Orioles, does that mean it’s true? Boasting about it is not the same thing as actually doing it.”
    Nobody spoke.
    “I’m asking for your input here,” Stuyvesant said.
    Reacher shrugged.
    “OK,” he said. “You think it is an outside threat?”
    “No, I think it’s inside intimidation intended to damage Froelich’s career. Now ask me what I’m going to do about it.”
    Reacher glanced at him. Glanced at his watch. Glanced at the wall. Twenty-five minutes, a Sunday evening, deep inside the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia triangle .
    “I know what you’re going to do about it,” he said.
    “Do you?”
    “You’re going to hire me and Neagley for an internal investigation.”
    “Am I?”
    Reacher nodded. “If you’re worried about inside intimidation then you need an internal investigation. That’s clear. And you can’t use one of your own people, because you might hit on the bad guy by chance. And you don’t want to bring the FBI in, because that’s not how Washington works. Nobody washes their dirty linen in public. So you need some other outsider. And you’ve got two of them sitting right in front of you. They’re already involved, because Froelich just involved them. So either you terminate that involvement, or you choose to expand on it. You’d prefer to expand on it, because that way you don’t have to find fault with an excellent agent you just promoted. So can you use us? Of course you can. Who better than Joe Reacher’s little