by Barry Eisler
At that point, it seemed Little had managed to make no connections. Apparently, Bradley was being careful, the childhood If I can find it, so can others lesson perhaps having been learned. But the situation was untenable. Eventually, Bradley would make a mistake, or this man Little would get lucky, or both.
Well. Depriving Bradley of his illicit materials had worked once before. Kane understood he simply needed to do it again. The difference being that this time, he would leave no note. Bradley wouldn’t even know what had happened. His son would simply find himself no longer in the presence of what tempted him, and, absent that temptation, he would finally grow up.
And it had worked. Snake had gone to prison and was no longer a baneful influence. Bradley left the army, won the special election for the seat Kane was vacating, and went on to win two more elections on his own thereafter. Kane’s Quantico contact continued to keep him posted. Little was still indulging his nocturnal ViCAP hobby, but there were no new entries that might be attributed to Bradley. Which was exactly as Kane had foreseen. After all, he knew firsthand that being a congressman didn’t leave much time for extracurricular interests.
But now Snake had been paroled. Surely it was no coincidence that shortly thereafter, the Campo girl, Hannah Cuero, had gone missing. Nor was it a coincidence that the little accusatory slut Noreen Prentis had herself disappeared.
It was ironic, he supposed. It seemed Bradley was cleaning up one kind of mess—the one he had created as a boy. While leaving it to his father to clean up another kind, the one Bradley had gone back to creating today. Well, plus ça change. The fact that it was ironic didn’t make it any less pressing.
Kane’s contact at HSI had filled him in about the connection between Little and this Seattle police detective. It seemed Little had involved the woman in some sort of anti-trafficking task force in Thailand. Maybe that had been a favor. Or else Little had something on her. And it seemed they were likely connected in another way—the recent indictments of three senators, including Walter Barkley, the now-erstwhile presidential frontrunner—for involvement in a child-pornography ring. Lone had been part of a joint FBI-SPD task force investigating the ring. And Little had received documents about Secret Service ring members, documents Little claimed were from an anonymous Justice Department whistle-blower. Little had then used those documents to press for indictments.
Whatever the nature of their connection, what mattered was that the woman had been willing to do Little an exceptional service—traveling to Campo to investigate in his stead.
He wondered for a moment how much Little would have told her. Quite a bit of how Kane might proceed depended on that.
Everything, he decided. Little would have told her everything. Because how else could she have hoped to conduct a meaningful investigation in Campo?
The more he considered, the more difficult the situation began to seem. Lone’s reputation and her record were outstanding, and obviously the woman was formidable. Chop’s dead men were testimony to that. On top of which, it seemed she had recently survived some sort of assassination attempt in Seattle, killing her two attackers and being cleared in the investigation that followed. Kane sensed the woman might present more trouble even than Little himself. Murphy’s law in action, he supposed. Kane’s connections at HSI had managed to quarantine Little, and in doing so had caused Little to infect someone else with his suspicions and his knowledge. Meaning that now Kane had to deal with two adversaries, the new one even more dangerous than the first.
The conundrum was that removing them both would be national news. Either an assassinated cop or an assassinated HSI investigator would be a lot. But both, and at the same time? That would be newsworthy indeed. Especially because people at SPD would know about the Thailand task force, and the child-pornography ring, and therefore about the Little-Lone connection.
Yes, it was a delicate situation. Moving against one would warn the other. Moving against them simultaneously would be so damn attention-getting. And reducing attention was the point of the entire exercise.
On the other hand . . .
If they were both involved in that anti-trafficking task force . . . and had exposed the child-pornography scandal that caused the resignations, and in the fullness of time possibly the imprisonment, of three senators . . . then they both had enemies. Powerful enemies.
Most importantly, common enemies.
And Little was in Seattle right now. The HSI people were keeping extra-close tabs on him, making sure he got nowhere near Campo. None of that had done any good in the end, but perhaps some good could come of it.
The right personnel would be essential this time. Chop’s men had obviously not been equal to the task. Either because they were sloppy, or because they had underestimated the woman, or both, it didn’t matter. The naval mountain-warfare center had been close to Campo, and Kane and Chop went way back. That combination, along with the security advantages of siloing different aspects of Kane’s activities, had led to a bad call. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again. This time, he would use picked men. He would brief them carefully: Don’t underestimate these two—especially the woman. And forget about interrogation—this is no longer about intelligence gathering, it’s about neutralization. Not a kill-or-capture, just a kill.
But damn it, there would be a lot of attention. He had to find a way to mitigate that. He couldn’t use his own people. He needed an intermediary. A fall guy.
And then it hit him. He’d heard the rumors. That Oliver Graham Enterprises—OGE, these days doing business as Percivallian—had been involved with the child-pornography ring. That OGE had even caused the civilian plane crash in which an FBI contractor investigating the ring had died. If that were true, it might be that the attack Lone had survived in Seattle had also been an OGE operation. Certainly it was hard to believe Oliver Graham’s subsequent abduction and assassination in Paris was unconnected to all that. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, he wondered where Lone had been when Graham died. In Paris? CBP could confirm that.
If she had been in Paris, it would hardly be proof. But it would be further evidence that this woman was not just formidable, but also formidably connected.
It didn’t really matter, though. Whether the woman was involved with Graham’s death, whether OGE had been involved with the plane crash and the various attacks . . . the rumors would be enough to get people looking in the wrong direction. Which, from Kane’s perspective, would be the right direction.
The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. If Lone and Little were to die violently now, OGE—or, rather, Percivallian—might easily be the primary suspect. Especially with a few judicious leaks to favored contacts in the media fueling the proper speculation.
It felt right. He’d been focusing so much on how to take care of it discreetly. But with enough misdirection, discretion might not really matter. In fact, misdirection might be even better.
OGE. Kane knew plenty of people there. They’d done work for him before.
He swung his feet to the floor, picked up the secure unit, and punched in a number.
14
Livia flipped up the hood of her Gore-Tex jacket and started heading toward Lake View Cemetery in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Fremont Canal Park was fine, but she thought more than two meetings in the same place might be unwise, and had proposed the change before finishing up with Little the night before.
She’d made sure Lieutenant Strangeland had seen her that morning—at roll call, of course, but also afterward. The lieutenant hadn’t commented on the previous day’s absence. Livia could have handled it—her detective’s schedule was flexible enough, and irregular enough, to explain time away from the office. But it was better that she didn’t have to.
The cemetery was a little under three miles from headquarters, most of it uphill, and she walked fast, sweating despite a steady downpour, needing to burn off the stress. She hoped Little had learned something. They had to come to grips with this thing
, whatever it was. Get off defense and on offense. And not just for their own sakes. For Mrs. Cuero’s, too.
No matter what, she had to make sure her own name stayed out of it. She couldn’t afford the scrutiny. How long had it taken her to revert to the very behavior Strangeland had specifically warned against? She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so worried, because there hadn’t been even a day’s hiatus. She’d had that talk with Strangeland not ten feet from the burner Little had deposited. The next day, she’d killed two men who ambushed her. And here she was, on her way to meet Little again, her own phone back at headquarters in case anyone was trying to track it.
She was still angry at him, though maybe not quite as intensely as she ought to be. He hadn’t been completely wrong when he said she owed him, for one thing. Without the files he’d given her, she never would have been able to track down the rest of the gang that had trafficked her and Nason. Yes, he had his own reasons for sharing those files, but it was also true she had benefited. Enormously.
But whether or how much she owed him was really the least of it. The truth was, she couldn’t help herself. Not knowing what had become of someone you loved, not even knowing whether she was alive or dead . . . She couldn’t think of anything worse. She’d lived that nightmare for sixteen years. If she could help assuage someone else’s similar anguish, she had no real choice. And how could she resent Little for something that was ultimately intrinsic to her?
She entered the cemetery on the northwest side through a hole she knew of in the fence. It was noon, and she was a half hour early. But one of the things she’d learned in Paris from Carl’s partner, Rain, was that arriving at a meeting on time was generally a bad idea. In fact, it was one of the world’s most effective ways of letting the opposition set up an ambush. And while she wasn’t concerned about Little in that regard, she understood that the habits you practiced in low-danger environments would shape your behavior in high-danger ones as well.
She walked the perimeter clockwise, noting nothing out of place. A few dog walkers, a few retirees trudging along, out for their daily exercise despite the weather. On a clear summer day, there would be more people—the cemetery was named for its spectacular view of Lake Washington, after all. But in the cold autumn rain, she and Little would have it mostly to themselves. The main attraction was the Brandon Lee and Bruce Lee gravesite, where at least a few tourists could generally be found paying their respects. That was where she and Little would meet. It would give him what she knew spies called “cover for action,” and from there the two of them could stroll anywhere—the adjacent GAR Cemetery, Boren Park, Interlaken Park . . . This part of the city was quiet during the day, and heavily wooded, and would offer plenty of options for privacy.
She was in the southeast corner, next to a maintenance structure, when she saw Little walking in from the entrance, holding an umbrella aloft. She smiled. For whatever reason—maybe because it rained on and off so often—Seattleites tended not to bother carrying umbrellas, preferring rain jackets and hoods instead.
She headed north, then ghosted in behind him. He seemed to be alone. But as careful as he was about cellphone security, in Virginia he would have led two OGE operators right to their position if Rain and Larison hadn’t spotted the problem and dealt with it. That had been a good lesson for her, and she thought it was worth employing now.
They were almost at the Lee gravesite when he glanced behind him. He saw her, gave a nearly imperceptible nod, and kept going. Okay, he was checking his back, albeit not as often as she would have liked.
There was a tall row of thick shrubbery facing the two markers. Little disappeared around it. Livia continued on to the circular road behind the monument and approached from that direction. She wasn’t concerned about anything in particular. It was just better not to come from the direction someone was expecting.
She moved up alongside him and they stood quietly for a moment, facing the markers, a couple of martial-arts pilgrims visiting the site.
“All good?” she said after a moment.
“Yeah.”
“Anything about the naval base?”
He glanced around. “Maybe. All I could get was a report of a training accident.”
“What kind of training accident?”
“I don’t know. The executive officer I spoke with told me his commander wasn’t available.”
“Why?”
“The XO wouldn’t say, other than that the commander was attending to the aforementioned training accident. When I asked him for more about this training accident, it turned into a pissing match about the nature of my interest, military and civilian jurisdiction, etc.”
“Under the circumstances, aren’t your questions going to be a red flag?”
“Under the circumstances, do you think I care?”
They were quiet for a moment. Livia said, “What do you make of it?”
“Oh, they’re hiding something.”
“Something like two bodies?”
“Yeah. Along with the effort to make it seem like the men in question died on the base in a ‘training accident’ rather than by the side of the road at the hands of a cop they were trying to abduct. That’s what my gut tells me, though for the moment I don’t have anything resembling proof.”
A man walked by on the road behind the markers. He was wearing a boonie hat and an old-school trench coat, and he held an umbrella over his head with one hand and an aluminum attaché case by his side in the other. He glanced at them as he passed, his expression neutral, detached.
Livia watched as he headed back toward the cemetery entrance. “How did you get here?” she said to Little, feeling uneasy.
“I drove.”
The man disappeared behind some trees.
“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”
Even as she said it, she realized the question was pointless. Even if he claimed to be positive, she wouldn’t trust his judgment.
He glanced around. “I was careful.”
“Because that guy felt odd to me.”
“Odd how?”
It was too much to discuss right then, and she wasn’t sure she could articulate all of it regardless. Some of it had to do with things Rain had told her in Paris—about how not to get noticed in an urban environment. Some of it involved the incongruities. The umbrella suggested he was from out of town. But why bother carrying it if he was also wearing a hat? At best, it was suspenders and a belt. Sure, maybe explainable. And maybe his presence was explainable, too. But if he was an out-of-towner here for homage to Bruce and Brandon Lee, why had he not lingered close by? His glance at them would have been explainable if he’d thought, Oh, there are people here, I’ll wait until they depart before paying my own respects. But he’d just looked at Little and her and then headed out. And anyway, why would he be toting around an aluminum attaché case on a walk in the rain?
“We need to move,” she said. “Now.”
“Are you sure?” he said, but she was already walking fast toward the hole in the fence where she’d come in.
She came to the hole and waited impatiently. When he’d caught up, she pointed through the hole to the street below them. “Climb down,” she said. “Go right. Then another right on East Howe, and right again on Fifteenth. Back to the entrance where you came in.”
“Where are you going?” he said, breathing a little hard.
“Same place, other direction. Just do it. Be watchful, okay? I think someone followed you.”
“I’m pretty sure—”
“Just do it,” she said. She turned and ran through the trees along the western perimeter, vaulted over the chain-link fence in the southwest corner, then sprinted east along the muddy, tree-lined path that cut between the cemetery and Volunteer Park just south of it.
What was that? she thought. It was something. I know it. But what?
She came to the end of the path and slowed, hanging back behind a clump of trees for concealment. A few cars passed on Fifteenth, their
tires splashing rainwater onto the sidewalk. Otherwise, the area was deserted.
She darted across Fifteenth, continuing east on Galer, then made a quick left on Grandview. Heading north now, parallel to the cemetery but one street over. To her left were small apartment buildings; on the right, single-family houses. No traffic. No pedestrians. There were cars parked on the right side of the narrow street, but she ignored them. If this was an ambush, no one would have expected her over here.
She stopped at the end of the street, crouching along a low concrete wall, and peeked left along Garfield. The street rose on a steady incline to the cemetery across Fifteenth. More parked cars. Nothing out of place.
She looked right. The street declined steadily until it was out of sight. Again, nothing.
But she hadn’t been wrong. She knew it.
Where did he go? What was he doing?
If he, or a team, had followed Little, why the walk-by in the cemetery?
To confirm. Your presence, your identity, your location. And then—
She crept left on Garfield, staying low along the concrete wall, parked cars to her right offering some concealment from Fifteenth Street and the cemetery. She saw movement through the trees on the other side of Garfield. A flash of something metallic.
The Louisa Boren Lookout. A little urban oasis with views of Lake Washington and the Cascades. She ducked lower, alongside one of the parked cars, looked more closely, and—
It was him. Standing next to one of the columns of the sculpture on the lookout—a twenty-foot-high collection of rusting steel-covered monoliths. Lurking under one of the horizontal blocks. To get out of the rain? While staying close to the cemetery, where he’d confirmed her and Little’s presence? Why?
The man knelt, facing the cemetery, and set the attaché case on the ground. Worked an integral combination lock. Opened the case. Began manipulating something inside it.
The weather was bad, true, but even on a gray day no one on the lookout would stand—or kneel—facing the street. The spot was all about the views, and the views were all in the other direction. But this guy wasn’t here for that. His mind was on the cemetery, and his posture was mirroring his focus.