06 - Without Fail by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Secret service - United States
ISBN: 9780515144314
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2008-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

Froelich raised her wrist. "Move now, move now. Bring him tight against the tower wall. Cover on all three sides. Stand by with the cars. Now, people."

She listened to the response. Nodded. Armstrong was coming close to the tower on the other side, maybe a hundred feet away from them, out of their line of sight.

"You go," Reacher said. "I'll check the church."

She raised her wrist.

"Now keep him there," she said. "I'm coming by."

She headed straight back toward the field without another word. Reacher was left alone at the church gate. He stepped through and headed onward toward the building itself. Waited at the door. It was a huge thing, carved oak, maybe four inches thick. It had iron bands and hinges. Big black nail heads. Above it the tower rose seventy feet vertically into the sky. There was a flag and a lightning rod and a weather vane on the top. The weather vane was not moving. The flag was limp. The air was completely still. Cold, dense air, no breeze at all. The sort of air that takes a bullet and wraps around it and holds it lovingly, straight and true.

A minute later there was the noise of shoes on the gravel and he looked back at the gate and saw the church warden approaching. He was a small man in a black surplice that reached his feet. He had a cashmere coat over it. A fur hat with earflaps tied under his chin. Thick eyeglasses in gold frames. A huge wire hoop in his hand with a huge iron key hanging off it. It was so big it looked like a prop for a comic movie about medieval jails. He held it out and Reacher took it from him.

"That's the original key," the warden said. "From 1870."

"I'll bring it back to you," Reacher said. "Go wait for me on the field."

"I can wait right here," the guy said.

"On the field," Reacher said again. "Better that way."

The guy's eyes were wide and magnified behind his glasses. He turned around and walked back the way he had come. Reacher hefted the big old key in his hand. Stepped to the door and lined it up with the hole. Put it in the lock. Turned it hard. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He paused. Tried the handle.

The door was not locked.

It swung open six inches with a squeal from the old iron hinges. He remembered the noise. It had sounded much louder when he opened the door at five in the morning. Now it was lost in the low-level hubbub coming from three hundred people on the field.

He pushed the door all the way open. Paused again and then stepped quietly through into the gloom inside. The building was a simple wooden structure with a vaulted roof. The walls were painted a faded parchment white. The pews were worn and polished to a shine. There was stained glass in the windows. At one end there was an altar and a high lectern with steps leading up to it.

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