Without Fail

deal?”
    “Are you kidding? CIA had a problem with that Ames guy, remember? The Bureau got hold of it and they laughed up their sleeves for years. Then they had their own problems with that Hanssen guy, and they didn’t look so smart after all. This is the big leagues, Reacher. Right now the Secret Service is number one, by a very healthy margin. We’ve only recorded one defeat in our entire history, and that was almost forty years ago. So we’re not about to take a dive down the league table just for the fun of it.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “And don’t get all superior with me,” Stuyvesant said. “Don’t tell me the Army reacted any different. I don’t recall you guys running to the Bureau for assistance. I don’t recall your embarrassing little secrets all over the Washington Post .”
    Reacher nodded. Most of the Army’s embarrassments were cremated. Or six feet under. Or sitting in a stockade somewhere, too scared even to open their mouths. Or back home, too scared to tell their own mothers why. He had arranged some of those circumstances himself.
    “So we’ll take it a step at a time,” Stuyvesant said. “Prove these guys are outsiders. Get their names from the cleaners. Lawyers or no lawyers.”
    Froelich shook her head. “First priority is getting Armstrong to midnight alive.”
    “It’s only going to be a demonstration,” Reacher said.
    “I heard you before,” she said. “But it’s my call. And you’re just guessing. All we’ve got is nine words on a piece of paper. And your interpretation might be plain wrong. I mean, what better demonstration would there be than actually doing it? Really getting to him would demonstrate his vulnerability, wouldn’t it? I mean, what better way is there of demonstrating it?”
    Neagley nodded. “And it would be a way of hedging their bets, also. An attempt that fails could be passed off as a demonstration, maybe. You know, to save face.”
    “If you’re right to begin with,” Stuyvesant said.
    Reacher said nothing. The meeting came to an end a couple of minutes later. Stuyvesant made Froelich run through Armstrong’s schedule for the day. It was an amalgam of familiar parts. First, intelligence briefings from the CIA at home, like on Friday morning. Then afternoon transition meetings on the Hill, the same as most days. Then the evening reception at the same hotel as Thursday. Stuyvesant noted it all down and went home just before two-thirty in the morning. Left Froelich on her own at the long table in the bright light and the silence, opposite Reacher and Neagley.
    “Advice?” she said.
    “Go home and sleep,” Reacher said.
    “Great.”
    “And then do exactly what you’ve been doing,” Neagley said. “He’s OK in his house. He’s OK in his office. Keep the tents in place and the transfers are OK too.”
    “What about the hotel reception?”
    “Keep it short and take a lot of care.”
    Froelich nodded. “All I can do, I guess.”
    “Are you good at your job?” Neagley asked.
    Froelich paused.
    “Yes,” she said. “I’m pretty good.”
    “No, you’re not,” Reacher said. “You’re the best. The absolute best there has ever been. You’re so damn good it’s unbelievable.”
    “That’s how you’ve got to think,” Neagley said. “Pump yourself up. Get to the point where it’s impossible to think that these jerky guys with their silly notes are going to get within a million miles of you.”
    Froelich smiled, briefly. “Is this military-style training?”
    “For me it was,” Neagley said. “Reacher was born thinking that way.”
    Froelich smiled again.
    “OK,” she said. “Home and sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

    Washington, D.C., is quiet and empty in the middle of the night and it took just two minutes to reach Neagley’s hotel and only another ten to get back to Froelich’s house. Her street was crowded with parked cars. They looked like they were asleep, dark and still and inert and heavily dewed with cold mist. The Suburban was more than eighteen feet long and they had to go two whole blocks before they found a space big enough for it. They locked it up and walked back together in the chill. Made it to the house and opened the door and stepped inside. The lights were still on. The heating was still running hard. Froelich paused in the hallway.
    “Are we OK?” she asked. “About earlier?”
    “We’re fine,” he said.
    “I just don’t want us to get our signals mixed.”
    “I don’t think