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“Who was your client?” Turner asked.
“Now I’m not really sure about this,” Hugo said. “Do you really mean it? Or am I being played for a fool?”
Elwood said, “Son, I’m a colonel in the United States Army. Which means anything I say is automatically the gospel truth. Like it was chiseled in stone by your savior himself. You name names, you get out of the car, you walk away.”
Turner asked again, “Who was your client?”
Hugo took a breath.
And another.
He said, “The CEO of an artificial intelligence start-up named EEF Corporation.”
Turner paused a beat.
She said, “Where are they located?”
“In Mountain View.”
“I never heard of them.”
“They’re huge in the tech world right now. On the cutting edge. Supernatural capabilities.”
“Did they hack our computer?”
“Yes,” Hugo said. “They claim to be all the way inside. They know who you are. General Susan Turner and Colonel Dexter Elwood, G-99 Section.”
“Do they know who I am?” Reacher asked.
“No.”
“Not all that supernatural, then.”
“Plus they have a boring name,” Elwood said.
“EEF stands for Everything Everywhere Forever. It’s a symbolic statement. They plan to dominate the world.”
“I heard those words before,” Reacher said. “From the getaway driver in Summertown. He was quoting the brothers from Denver. They said they were shutting down the cameras for the Bisley job because they had to assume everything is everywhere forever. The driver said they kind of laughed about it, like it was funny to them.”
“There’s nothing funny about it when you hear them talk. They say they want to get so big they blot out the sky.”
“The brothers from Denver spoke with your client directly, didn’t they? Five minutes after you asked them to take his call.”
“Yes,” Hugo said.
“Your client must have mentioned the company name. Maybe he gave them the whole sales pitch. Would he come across as weird to a couple of cowboys?”
“Yes,” Hugo said again. “For sure.”
“They were laughing at him behind his back.”
“What’s his name?” Turner asked.
“Axel Brill.”
—
Turner looked a question at Reacher. Are we done? Reacher nodded yes. She looked at Elwood. Are we done? Elwood nodded yes.
