Running Blind by Lee Child Page A

Forever."
    She dropped into a chair and crossed her legs. Put her head back and shook her hair until it fell behind her shoulders. She was everything Julia Lamarr was not. A visitor from outer space would categorize them both as women, with the same parts in the same quantities, hair and eyes and mouths and arms and legs, but one was a dream and the other was a nightmare.
    "It just went too far," he said. "My fault, absolutely. I was jerking them around, because I just didn't like her at all, from the start. So I figured I'd tease them a little, keep it going, and then eventually say yes. But they dropped this on me, before I could get around to it."
    "So get them to take it back. Start over. Cooperate."
    He shook his head. "No, threatening me is one thing. You, that's way over the line. They're prepared to even think a thing like that, then to hell with them."
    "But were they really serious?" she said again.
    "Safest strategy is assume they might be."
    She nodded. "So I'm scared. And I guess I'd still be a little scared, even if they took it back."
    "Exactly," he said. "What's done is done."
    "But why? Why are they so desperate? Why the threats?"
    "History," he said. "You know what it's like. Everybody hates everybody else. Blake said that to me. And it's true. MPs wouldn't piss on Quantico if it was on fire. Because of Vietnam. Your dad could have told you all about it. He's an example."
    "What happened about Vietnam?"
    "There was a rule of thumb, draft dodgers were the Bureau's business, and deserters were ours. Different categories, right? And we knew how to handle deserters. Some of them went to the slammer, but some of them got a little TLC. The jungle wasn't a lot of fun for the grunts, and the recruiting depots weren't exactly bulging at the seams, remember? So the MPs would calm the good ones down and send them back, but nine times out of ten the Bureau would arrest them again anyway, on the way to the airport. Drove the MPs crazy. Hoover was unbearable. It was a turf war like you never saw. Result was a perfectly reasonable guy like Leon would hardly even speak to the FBI ever again. Wouldn't take calls, didn't bust a gut answering the mail."
    "And it's still the same?"
    He nodded. "Institutions have long memories. That stuff is like yesterday. Never forgive, never forget."
    "Even though women are in danger?"
    He shrugged. "Nobody ever said institutional thinking is rational."
    "So they really need somebody?"
    "If they want to get anywhere."
    "But why you?"
    "Lots of reasons. I was involved with a couple of the cases, they could find me, I was senior enough to know where to look for things, senior enough that the current generation probably still owes me a few favors."
    She nodded. "So put it all together, they probably are serious."
    He said nothing.
    "So what are we going to do?"
    He paused.
    "We could think laterally," he said into the silence.
    "How?"
    "You could come with me."
    She shook her head. "They wouldn't let me come with you. And I can't, anyway. Could be weeks, right? I have to work. The partnership decision is coming up."
    He nodded. "We could do it another way."
    "OK, how?"
    "I could go take Petrosian out."
    She stared at him. Said nothing.
    "No more threat," he said. "Like trumping their ace."
    She turned her stare to the ceiling, and then she shook her head again, slowly.
    "We have a thing at the firm," she said. "We call it the so what else rule. Suppose we've got some bankrupt guy we're looking after. Sometimes we dig around and find he's got some funds stashed away that he's not telling us about. He's hiding them from us. He's cheating. First thing we do, we say so what else. What else is he doing? What else has he got?"
    "So?"
    "So what are they really doing here? Maybe this is not about the women at all. Maybe this is about Petrosian. He's presumably a smart, slippery guy. Maybe there's nothing to pin on him. No evidence, no witnesses. So maybe Cozo is using Blake and Lamarr to get you to get