The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  “It doesn’t matter how it was put,” Rain said.

  The other men looked at him, obviously waiting for him to continue. Again, Livia was struck by their deference. Horton was a colonel, or at least a former one, and had trained Larison. And yet it was Rain who, in his unassuming way, seemed to be in charge. Not by rank or position, so apparently by some sort of implicit . . . recognition. She wondered what it was about him that would make a colonel, and especially a man like Larison, accept him as a leader in a situation like this one.

  “What matters,” Rain went on, “is whether the intel is trustworthy. If Treven can’t account for that, then Horton, respectfully, what he’s feeding us is as likely to be a setup as it is actionable intel.”

  “More likely, I’d say,” Larison added.

  “I have an idea,” Carl said. “Colonel, why don’t you follow up with Treven yourself tomorrow. We can always suspect and even reject whatever else he tells us. But it can only help to have more intel to assess, even if all it does is give us more lies to tease apart. And I’ll call K. again, tell him about Graham going to Paris, see if there’s anything to what Treven told us. Maybe in addition to whatever else he has, K. can give us something we can use to corroborate. That make sense to everyone?”

  Larison and Horton glanced at Rain. Rain nodded.

  “Okay,” Carl said, “I’m glad we have a plan. Because I have a meeting early tomorrow and I badly need a few hours’ rest.”

  “We’ll meet your guy K. together,” Horton said. “John’s right. Private conversations are just going to lead to suspicions.”

  Carl looked at Rain.

  Rain shrugged. “Well, it’s not as though K. has never sprung a surprise on us.”

  chapter

  twenty-eight

  LIVIA

  Livia and Carl left and went back to their room, Livia scanning the parking lot and the woods beyond as they walked, her hand on the grip of the Glock. The night was quiet, nothing but the crickets in the grass and the wind in the trees, not even the sounds of any distant highway traffic. The three cars she saw had all been there when she and Carl had arrived, their hoods dewy with moisture.

  It had been tense at times with the others, but she’d gotten used to it. And now that they were separated, she felt nervous again, far from home and out of her element. She was glad to be with Carl.

  He unlocked the door and started to open it, but she stopped him. “Let me,” she said, the Glock out.

  He looked at the gun. “Well, if you put it that way.”

  He swung open the door. The light was on, the closet door open, just as they had left it. She moved in, the Glock up. By the time Carl had closed and bolted the door behind them, she had cleared the bathroom. Carl checked under the beds. Everything was okay.

  “Well,” he said, sitting on one of the beds and unlacing his boots, “what did you make of the gang?”

  She sat on the bed opposite, still feeling tense. “They seem a little . . . fractious.”

  “Hah. You should have seen us last time. It was some kind of miracle we didn’t all just kill each other.”

  “You and Rain?”

  “No, not John. He and I got past all that nonsense years ago and have worked together well ever since, though he does sometimes have a tendency to micromanage. But last time, Horton was on the other side of the table. And that Larison is like nitroglycerin—you have to handle him carefully. And the other guy you heard about, Treven, he’s difficult, too, and conflicted in his allegiances.”

  She nodded.

  He got off his boots and flexed his toes. “Are you feeling all right?” he asked. “This is a lot, I know, even for a certified badass such as yourself.”

  “Just feel a little . . . I don’t know. Disconnected. Surreal.”

  “I think I get it. But on the plus side, here we are, sharing danger and adventure, back in a hotel room together . . . it’s like old times.”

  She smiled. “Don’t even think it.”

  He smiled back. “Too late for that. But I’ll try not to.”

  “Good.”

  “Hey, I only promised to try.”

  She couldn’t help smiling. She’d never known someone who made her smile the way he did. Sean, she supposed. But that was so long ago.

  “Anyway,” he said, getting his socks off now, “you mind taking first watch? I feel bad asking, but I’m going on forty-eight hours at this point and in danger of hallucinations. I don’t need more than an hour or two, just a while to shut down and reboot.”

  “I don’t mind at all. Okay if I just take a quick shower first? It’s been a long day.”

  “Sure thing. I might do the same when you’re done, or I might pass out instantly, it’s fifty-fifty. Leave me the gun while you’re in there?”

  She handed him the Glock, grip first. “Hey,” she said, “should I not have called you Carl in front of the others? You’ve been calling me Livia, so . . .”

  “Ah, it doesn’t matter. They’ll probably just give me a hard time. Rain especially, because he doesn’t get many opportunities, so when he does, my God, the man is merciless. Anyway, it’s not a security thing. Dox is just a nickname, a nom de guerre, if you will, and no one but my folks calls me Carl anymore. Well, my folks and you, that is.”

  She nodded. “I like calling you that.” She didn’t add that she liked that no one else was allowed to.

  “I like it, too. And I like knowing you as Labee. But I thought you’d prefer Livia in front of the others.”

  “I do. Only you get to call me Labee. Okay?”

  He nodded. “Go on, go take that shower before I start saying things you’ll regret, all right?”

  She looked at him, and it was the strangest thing. She wanted to touch him. Just his hand, or his face. Something.

  But the feeling was so unfamiliar it unnerved her. She nodded and headed to the bathroom.

  In the shower, she tried to piece together everything that was happening, everything she was feeling. But she quickly gave up. There was just too much. She knew from working cases that sometimes you had to step back for a while and let go. And come at it later from a fresh angle.

  She’d checked the weather in Seattle earlier. The city was in the midst of an unusual string of dry days. But that wouldn’t last forever. She needed to wrap this thing up fast. And not just so she could get back and focus on the park rapist. But to find a way to restart the Child’s Play op as well.

  Things could have been worse. After all, only a day ago she was practically alone. Now she was with Carl and the others, all of whom had access to sources a cop wouldn’t dream of. Only a day ago she had nothing but a vague idea of who was behind the attack at the self-defense academy. Now they knew about OGE’s involvement.

  As for Carl, the only thing she knew for sure was that he made her feel safe.

  Though of all the frightening things that had been happening to her, that felt the most unsettling of all.

  chapter

  twenty-nine

  RAIN

  Per the plan, we met Kanezaki in the parking lot of the Lake Anna Winery. Dox had given him a heads-up that it wasn’t going to be just the three of us. And while Kanezaki had indeed been discomfited by the slight change of plans, it seemed the opportunity to expand his informal, off-the-books intelligence-and-action network was too good to pass up.

  Kanezaki was standing next to a gray Toyota Camry when the five of us pulled up—Larison, Horton, and I in the car Larison and I had rented at Dulles; Livia and Dox in the passenger van. Having long ago come to accept that Kanezaki was no threat to me, I was able to admire him for having learned that the person earliest to arrive to a meeting was also the one most likely to leave it.

  We stepped out in front of what looked like a converted barn. The morning air was cool enough to fog our breath, but the sky was already blue in the east, and daylight was beginning to peek through the treetops behind the building. All around us were green fields and woodland and birdsong, a
nd the breeze smelled of earth and cut grass. It was a quintessential Virginia morning, and I thought I could understand Horton’s attachment to the region.

  We walked over, our footfalls loud on the gravel in the early stillness of the day. “Tom,” Dox called out. “In the flesh and more handsome than ever.”

  Kanezaki held out a hand, which Dox shook while pulling him in for the customary hug.

  When Dox had released him, I shook his hand. “I heard you’re running the place now,” I said.

  He smiled, which made him look more like the Agency greenhorn I’d met so many years back, and less like the seasoned—and blooded—operator he’d become. “Not quite. Just a division chief.”

  I nodded. “Tatsu would be proud.”

  Tatsu had been a friend of mine, a formidable cop with Japan’s Keisatsuchō, the national police force. Before his death from cancer, he had taken quite a shine to Kanezaki, treating him in some ways as a substitute son. And the affection, I knew, had been mutual.

  “Thanks for that,” Kanezaki said. “I miss him.”

  Livia, who had been notably guarded in the hotel room the night before, was surprisingly warm with Kanezaki. “I feel like I should call you K.,” she said, shaking his hand.

  Kanezaki smiled. “I’ve been called worse.”

  She smiled back. “Thank you for all your help. Now, of course. But before, too.”

  I wondered if she understood that the help wasn’t a favor. And that at some point, Kanezaki was likely to request some form of help in return.

  With Larison, it was also warm. The two of them had come to respect each other while Larison and I had been part of the detachment—Kanezaki’s backing of which had been critical.

  With Horton, it was a little stiffer. Horton must have realized it had been Kanezaki backing Dox, Larison, and me during what Horton now preferred to refer to as the Late Unpleasantness. And Kanezaki of course knew that Horton’s political heroics from the time were tainted, to say the least.

  When the greetings were done, Kanezaki extended a gym bag to Dox. “I hope this isn’t like school, where I’m supposed to have brought enough for everyone,” he said.

  Dox took the bag and unzipped it. “Nope, some of the kids brought their own chewing gum. It’s just John and me who are light.” He looked inside and smiled. “Thank you, Santa, it’s always fine when Christmas comes early.”

  He pulled out a bellyband holster and tossed it to me. I secured it inside my waistband and under my shirt and said to Kanezaki, “Anything on Graham?”

  He nodded. “The Paris angle was a big help. And it sounds real.”

  Dox handed me a Wilson Combat .45. I checked the load and eased it into the holster. “Real how?” I said.

  “Graham bought his plane tickets over a month ago,” Kanezaki said. “First class, round-trip, Dulles to de Gaulle. So if his presence in Paris is nothing but a setup, he put it in motion before even reaching out to you. Which seems unlikely.”

  Horton glanced at Larison. “What’d I tell you?”

  “This isn’t corroboration,” I said, looking at Horton. “Graham’s not stupid enough to feed us something we might confirm was cooked up yesterday. He’d weave the false intel into an existing tapestry. Just like you would.”

  “Just like you did,” Larison added, staring at Horton.

  “Hey,” Dox said quickly, “we’re going to focus on the future, remember?”

  I kept my eyes on Horton. “We need to be dispassionate. We all have our own motivations for believing or disbelieving. But we’re going to set that shit aside and evaluate the patterns. Okay?”

  “All I’m saying,” Horton said, “is that it looks good. But you’re right, it’s not dispositive.”

  I turned to Kanezaki. “Why Paris?”

  “Graham does business development all over Europe. And the Middle East. These days even Beijing and Moscow. But Paris is a thing for him. He’s in Paris several times a year. You might say he likes Paris.”

  He obviously wanted me to bite, so I did. “Okay, what’s the special draw?”

  “As far as I can tell, there are a number of things. There’s the business development, as I mentioned. And he has a million-dollar Burgundy collection, and always sets aside a few days to acquire more while he’s in the country. He seems to love the Ritz hotel, because he stays there every time he’s in town.”

  “With that much money,” Dox said, “and so much time in-country, why doesn’t he just buy himself a fancy pied-à-terre?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Kanezaki said. “But my guess is, he likes the convenience and the prestige. The hotel keeps his things for him, and when he arrives, his room is always ready, with his clothes laundered and pressed, the refrigerator full of his favorite local cheeses, and a selection of some of the Burgundies the hotel stores for him. He always stays in one of the prestige suites, usually the Mansart on the top floor with ‘a magical view of the rooftops of Paris,’ at seven thousand euros a night.”

  “Interesting,” Dox said. “If he’s got a view of the rooftops of Paris, the rooftops of Paris have a view of him, too.”

  “How do you know all this?” I said.

  “Good lord, don’t ask him,” Dox said. “It’s just an opportunity for him to feel smug about his ‘sources and methods.’”

  Kanezaki smiled. “Well, in this case, I wouldn’t be giving away anything that hasn’t already been reported based on the Snowden revelations, and accurately speculated on in some of the more informed spy fiction. Mostly it’s about credit-card receipts and cellphone location records. Things like that. Now, if you want to know about the programs that give us access to everything a person buys other than with cash, and everyplace a person goes, and who he meets with unless he and everyone associated with him leaves their cellphones at home, and everything a person searches for on the Internet, and everyone a person knows and interacts with through social media . . .”

  He paused, obviously for dramatic effect. For whatever reason, Livia was looking at him intently. Maybe she didn’t know about these programs or hadn’t imagined how far-reaching they could be. I wondered if she was horrified at her first glimpse of what most civilians preferred to pretend didn’t exist.

  “. . . then I’ll just have to say those programs are either classified,” he went on, “or that they don’t even exist.”

  “What did I tell you?” Dox said.

  “Don’t complain,” Kanezaki said. “I haven’t even gotten to the best part.”

  Dox smiled. “I love when there’s a best part.”

  “He has a mistress. Dominique Deneuve. Forty-one, former fashion model. He brings her to his business meetings.”

  “Why his business meetings?” Larison said.

  Kanezaki shrugged. “Some men like to conduct their business in the presence of beautiful women. In Japan, it’s a big thing—the geisha houses of old, the hostess clubs of today. John can tell you all about it. And some of the clients Graham wines and dines in Paris are from the Middle East, where sophisticated blondes are considered particularly desirable.”

  “Interesting,” Horton said. “I was part of a meeting with Graham some years ago in London. And another in Brussels. On both occasions, he had quite a stunning blonde on his arm.”

  Dox gave me a look. “So he’s got a thing for blondes,” he said, as though just musing.

  I ignored the look.

  Kanezaki nodded. “It sure sounds like it.”

  Dox continued looking at me. I continued to ignore him.

  “Anyway,” Kanezaki said, “Graham being in Paris looks legit. But whether your intel about his presence there is fundamentally a leak, or he wants you to know it as part of a setup, I can’t say.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Larison said. “Put Dox up on one of those rooftops with the right hardware, problem solved.”

  I shook my head. “Only part of the problem. I doubt in the end that Graham is more than muscle.”

  Larison loo
ked at Horton. “Helicopter gunships are the kind of muscle I’d prefer not to have to fight.”

  “If it comes to that,” I said. “First the intel. Then the action. Tom, anything else we can work with?”

  “Maybe. He likes the Hemingway Bar in the hotel. His drink is the clean dirty martini. And he uses the private dining room of the restaurant to entertain.”

  “Can you get his schedule?” Horton asked.

  “I’m working on it,” Kanezaki said. “But it’s one thing to put together credit-card receipts, cellphone locations . . . things that have already happened, already been logged. For things that haven’t happened yet, I need to get into other networks. It becomes more of an interagency thing, so harder for me to do without leaving fingerprints.”

  “Well,” Horton said, “as you’ve noted, worst case there’s the Dominique Deneuve angle. Assuming she’s just a civilian, wherever Graham is, at some point she should lead us right to him.”

  “That’s fine work, Tom,” Dox said. “We’re all grateful. And no, you don’t have to ask, as soon as we figure out what this is all about and where it’s coming from, we’ll let you know. Also, sometime down the road, when you want a bad person deniably removed, I know you’ll feel free to call on us.”

  Kanezaki nodded, probably pleased that we no longer had to haggle about these matters. “You need to be careful,” he said. “Graham has a lot of powerful friends in and out of government. Don’t assume that the kinds of programs I used to put this intel together aren’t available to him, one way or the other. Speaking of which, I need to go. My phone’s been off since I left this morning. I want to get it back on before people start wondering where I am.”

  We waited until he was gone, then drove off in our separate vehicles. We hit a McDonald’s drive-through for coffee and breakfast, and then continued to the state park. Livia’s contact, Little, would be arriving soon, and I wanted plenty of time to get in position with Larison in case he wasn’t alone.

  chapter

  thirty

  LARISON