There was a long pause.
"Do you approve of women in the military?" Deerfield asked.
Reacher's eyes moved across to him. "What?"
"Answer the question, Reacher. You approve of women in the military?"
"What's not to approve?"
Whispers: Interactive StoriesMake your own choices and decide what happens next!
"You think they make good fighters?"
"Stupid question," Reacher said. "You already know they do. "
"I do?"
"You were in ' Nam, right?"
"I was?"
"Sure you were," Reacher said. "Homicide detective in Arizona in 1976? Made it to the Bureau shortly afterward? Not too many draft dodgers could have managed that, not there, not back then. So you did your tour, maybe 1970, 1971. Eyesight like that, you weren't a pilot. Those eyeglasses probably put you right in the infantry. In which case you spent a year getting your ass kicked all over the jungle, and a good third of the people kicking it were women. Good snipers, right? Very committed, the way I heard it. "
Deerfield nodded slowly. "So you like women fighters? "
Reacher shrugged. "You need fighters, women can do it the same as anybody else. Russian front, World War Two? Women did pretty well there. You ever been to Israel? Women in the front line there too, and I wouldn't want to put too many U. S. units up against the Israeli defenses, at least not if it was going to be critical who won. "
"So, you got no problems at all?"
"Personally, no. "
"You got problems otherwise than personally?"
"There are military problems, I guess," Reacher said. "Evidence from Israel shows an inf
antryman is ten times more likely to stop his advance and help a wounded buddy if the buddy is a woman rather than a man. Slows the advance right down. It needs training out of them. "
"You don't think people should help each other?" Lamarr asked.
"Sure," Reacher said. "But not if there's an objective to capture first. "
"So if you and I were advancing together, you'd just leave me if I got wounded?"
Reacher smiled. "In your case, without a second thought. "
"How did you meet Amy Callan?" Deerfield asked.
"I'm sure you already know," Reacher said.
"Tell me anyway. For the record. "
"Are we on the record?"
"Sure we are. "
"Without reading me my rights?"
"The record will show you had your rights, any old time I say you had them. "
Reacher was silent.
"Tell me about Amy Callan," Deerfield said again.
"She came to me with a problem she was having in her unit," Reacher said.
"What problem?"
"Sexual harassment. "
"Were you sympathetic?"
"Yes, I was. "
"Why?"
"Because I was never abused because of my gender. I didn't see why she should have to be. "
"So what did you do?"
"I arrested the officer she was accusing. "
"And what did you do then?"
"Nothing. I was a policeman, not a prosecutor. It was out of my hands. "
"And what happened?"
"The officer won his case. Amy Callan left the service. "
"But the officer's career was ruined anyway. "
Reacher nodded. "Yes, it was. "
"How did you feel about that?"
Reacher shrugged. "Confused, I guess. As far as I knew, he was an OK guy. But in the end I believed Callan, not him. My opinion was he was guilty. So I guess I was happy he was gone. But it shouldn't work that way, ideally. A not-guilty verdict shouldn't ruin a career. "
"So you felt sorry for him?"
"No, I felt sorry for Callan. And I felt sorry for the Army. The whole thing was a mess. Two careers were ruined, where either way only one should have been. "
"What about Caroline Cooke?"
"Cooke was different. "
"Different how?"
"Different time, different place. It was overseas. She was having sex with some colonel. Had been for a year. It looked consensual to me. She only called it harassment later, when she didn't get promoted. "
"How is that different?"
"Because it was unconnected. The guy was screwing her because she was happy to let him, and he didn't promote her because she wasn't good enough at her job. The two things weren't connected. "
"Maybe she saw the year in bed as an implied bargain. "
"Then it was a contractual issue. Like a hooker who gets bilked. That's not harassment. "
"So you did nothing?"
Reacher shook his head. "No, I arrested the colonel, because by then there were rules. Sex between people of different rank was effectively outlawed. "
"And?"
"And he was dishonorably discharged and his wife dumped him and he killed himself. And Cooke quit anyway. "
"And what happened to you?"
"I transferred out of NATO HQ. "
"Why? Upset?"
"No, I was needed someplace else. "
"You were needed? Why you?"
"Because I was a good investigator. I was wasted in Belgium. Nothing much happens in Belgium. "
"You see much sexual harassment after that?"
"Sure. It became a very big thing. "
"Lots of good men getting their careers ruined?" Lamarr asked.
Reacher turned to face her. "Some. It became a witch-hunt. Most of the cases were genuine, in my opinion, but some innocent people were caught up. Plenty of normal relationships were suddenly exposed. The rules had suddenly changed on them. Some of the innocent victims were men. But some were women, too. "
"A mess, right?" Blake said. "All started by pesky little women like Callan and Cooke?"
Reacher said nothing. Cozo was drumming his fingers on the mahogany.
"I want to get back to the business with Petrosian," he said.
Reacher swiveled his gaze the other way. "There is no business with Petrosian. I never heard of anybody called Petrosian. "
Deerfield yawned and looked at his watch. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
"It's past midnight, you know that?" he said.
"Did you treat Callan and Cooke with courtesy?" Blake asked.
Reacher squinted through the glare at Cozo and then turned back to Blake. The hot yellow light from the ceiling was bouncing off the red tint of the mahogany and making his bloated face crimson.
"Yes, I treated them with courtesy. "
"Did you see them again after you turned their cases over to the prosecutor?"
"Once or twice, I guess, in passing. "
"Did they trust you?"
Reacher shrugged. "I guess so. It was my job to make them trust me. I had to get all kinds of intimate details from them. "
"You had to do that kind of thing with many women?"
"There were hundreds of cases. I handled a couple dozen, I guess, before they set up special units to deal with them all. "
"So give me a name of another woman whose case you handled. "
Reacher shrugged again and scanned back through a succession of offices in hot climates, cold climates, big desks, small desks, sun outside the window, cloud outside, hurt and outraged women stammering out the details of their betrayal.