Without Fail - Lee Child [3]
“What kind of something?” Stuyvesant asked. He turned and placed the file he was carrying on his desk. His desk was large, topped with a slab of gray composite. High-end modern office furniture, obsessively cleaned and polished like an antique. He was famous for always keeping his desktop clear of paperwork and completely empty. The habit created an air of extreme efficiency.
“I want an outsider to do it,” Froelich said.
Stuyvesant squared the file on the desk corner and ran his fingers along the spine and the adjacent edge, like he was checking the angle was exact.
“You think that’s a good idea?” he asked.
Froelich said nothing.
“I suppose you’ve got somebody in mind?” he asked.
“An excellent prospect.”
“Who?”
Froelich shook her head.
“You should stay outside the loop,” she said. “Better that way.”
“Was he recommended?”
“Or she.”
Stuyvesant nodded again. The modern world.
“Was the person you have in mind recommended?”
“Yes, by an excellent source.”
“In-house?”
“Yes,” Froelich said again.
“So we’re already in the loop.”
“No, the source isn’t in-house anymore.”
Stuyvesant turned again and moved his file parallel to the long edge of the desk. Then back again parallel with the short edge.
“Let me play devil’s advocate,” he said. “I promoted you four months ago. Four months is a long time. Choosing to bring in an outsider now might be seen to betray a certain lack of self-confidence, mightn’t it? Wouldn’t you say?”
“I can’t worry about that.”
“Maybe you should,” Stuyvesant said. “This could hurt you. There were six guys who wanted your job. So if you do this and it leaks, then you’ve got real problems. You’ve got half a dozen vultures muttering told you so the whole rest of your career. Because you started second-guessing your own abilities.”
“Thing like this, I need to second-guess myself. I think.”
“You think?”
“No, I know. I don’t see an alternative.”
Stuyvesant said nothing.
“I’m not happy about it,” Froelich said. “Believe me. But I think it’s got to be done. And that’s my judgment call.”
The office went quiet. Stuyvesant said nothing.
“So will you authorize it?” Froelich asked.
Stuyvesant shrugged. “You shouldn’t be asking. You should have just gone ahead and done it regardless.”
“Not my way,” Froelich said.
“So don’t tell anybody else. And don’t put anything on paper.”
“I wouldn’t anyway. It would compromise effectiveness.”
Stuyvesant nodded vaguely. Then, like the good bureaucrat he had become, he arrived at the most important question of all.
“How much would this person cost?” he asked.
“Not much,” Froelich said. “Maybe nothing at all. Maybe expenses only. We’ve got some history together. Theoretically. Of a sort.”
“This could stall your career. No more promotions.”
“The alternative would finish my career.”
“You were my choice,” Stuyvesant said. “I picked you. Therefore anything that damages you damages me, too.”
“I understand that, sir.”
“So take a deep breath and count to ten. Then tell me that it’s really necessary.”
Froelich nodded, and took a breath and kept quiet, ten or eleven seconds.
“It’s really necessary,” she said.
Stuyvesant picked up his file.
“OK, do it,” he said.
She started immediately after the strategy meeting, suddenly aware that doing it was the hard part. Asking for permission had seemed like such a hurdle that she had characterized it in her mind as the most difficult stage of the whole project. But now that felt like nothing at all compared with actually hunting down her target. All she had was a last name and a sketchy biography that might or might not have been accurate and up to date eight years ago. If she even remembered the details correctly. They had been mentioned casually, playfully, late one night, by her lover, part of some drowsy pillow talk. She couldn’t even be sure she had been paying full attention. So she decided not to rely on the details. She would rely solely