The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  “Well, I’d already been thinking of Arrington as a person of interest because he was Smith’s immediate superior and was ultimately in charge of the Child’s Play joint task force. And then, when the records person at Justice told me someone else had been asking about Secret Service agents referred for investigation and possible prosecution for child pornography, I knew it had to be someone from Justice, if whoever it was got access and then had the records sealed. It didn’t have to be Arrington, but it certainly could have been. And since you’d just gotten through updating me about OGE, I wondered if there might be some connection between Arrington and Oliver Graham.”

  He paused for dramatic effect, and though I badly wanted to hear the rest, I couldn’t blame him for the pause, either. He’d been smart and diligent, and had obviously sensed patterns the rest of us hadn’t.

  Larison was less patient. “What the fuck did you find?” he said.

  “That the two of them go way back,” Little said. “They were in the same unit, SEAL Team 8. They trained together at Coronado and were both deployed to Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, and Operation Noble Anvil in Kosovo.”

  Dox laughed. “My lord, why won’t someone hire me to name America’s military actions? I’d be so much better at it. Operation Mine’s Bigger. Operation No You Don’t. Operation—”

  “What’s Arrington’s interest?” I said, before Dox could build up a head of steam. “I mean, I get the Child’s Play thing is a Secret Service scandal, and that Homeland Security and especially the Secret Service itself would want to cover it up. But why would the Bureau care? Why would Arrington?”

  “That I don’t know,” Little said. “Arrington’s part of the Justice Department, so he had access to those files, and therefore now knows who was referred to Justice from the Secret Service on suspicion of involvement in child pornography. But as I said, those records are sealed now. And I’d call it a safe bet they no longer even exist.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Larison said, leaning in toward Little. “You’re putting your ass way out in the wind on this. You could face charges, maybe a lot worse. What’s your interest, anyway?”

  Most people would have shriveled from Larison’s danger vibe. But Little leaned right back, his eyes narrowing. “None of your fucking business,” he practically spat.

  “Back off,” Livia said to Larison, the command tone something she must have learned as a street cop. “I know his reasons and I trust his reasons. And if you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with me.”

  There was a long, tense pause. I thought Dox was going to say something funny to defuse it, but he didn’t. He just stared at Larison, and there was no good humor at all in his expression. His gal had thrown down, and he was going to follow her wherever that led.

  Finally, Larison leaned back. He nodded and said, “Okay.”

  Strangely enough, Larison didn’t look embarrassed at having backed down. He looked . . . comfortable. Satisfied. I wondered if what he had been looking for, consciously or otherwise, was less substantive information and more a sign of what Little was made of—and maybe Livia, too. I’d known people like that, most of all Crazy Jake from a long-ago lifetime. There were men who could respect only the few people they couldn’t frighten. Larison, I realized, was like that. I was surprised I hadn’t seen it sooner, and supposed the explanation was obvious: I was one of those few.

  “Anyway,” Livia said. “It tracks. My lieutenant told me SPD has been trying to get access to IAFIS—the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System run by the Bureau—to see if they could get a match on the prints of the two people who attacked me at the martial-arts academy. Ordinarily, the access is routine. This time, we’re getting a ton of static. It sounds like someone at the Bureau, maybe Arrington, is anticipating someone learning what he’s learned, and deleting the leads he followed.”

  “I don’t doubt the Bureau is behind this,” I said. “Most likely in the person of Arrington. But again, the question is why. In my experience with what passes for interagency cooperation, the Bureau would be more likely to make popcorn and laugh at another agency’s scandal than to try to cover it up.”

  “That’s true,” Horton said. He paused, then added, “Unless the scandal is bigger than just the one agency.”

  chapter

  thirty-two

  RAIN

  We headed north to a town called Culpeper—Horton, Larison, and I in the rental car, Livia and Dox in the van ahead of us. We’d sent Little off with the dead men’s phones and wallets so he could see what might be learned from them.

  Larison called Kanezaki from his satellite phone, leaning forward from the backseat and holding the unit up so we could all be heard over the speakerphone.

  “Tom, we have something for you,” I said. “You ever hear of a J. J. Arrington?”

  “Are you kidding?” Kanezaki said. “Arrington is mixed up in this?”

  Horton, in the passenger seat, glanced at me. “That sounds promising,” he said.

  “He’s former Agency,” Kanezaki said. “And a total nutjob. We managed to offload him to the Bureau. He was head of counterintelligence at the Agency and was ripping the place apart with his conspiracy theories. Everything was controlled by Russia, the Agency had been penetrated, the Kremlin had kompromat on every American politician . . . all that. Seriously, there’s nothing that happens of any geopolitical significance anywhere in the world this guy doesn’t think is a Kremlin plot.”

  “How did you get the Bureau to take him?” Horton said.

  “We didn’t share his psych evaluations,” Kanezaki said, “I can tell you that. But when the top counterintel position opened up at the Bureau, we sold him to the Bureau as a seasoned expert, cross pollination, interagency cooperation, that kind of thing. And we sold the Bureau to him as a chance for greater latitude to work domestically, where naturally the Kremlin was doing its worst meddling. He knew his days at the Agency were numbered anyway and was happy to make the switch. But within six months, the Bureau had wised up that this guy should be nowhere near counterintel, and they moved him to head of the Criminal Investigative Division, where he couldn’t do any harm.”

  Larison laughed. “The Bureau must love you guys.”

  “Believe me,” Kanezaki said, “they’ve fucked us plenty of times and just as hard.”

  “One of the things we recently learned,” Horton said, “is that Graham and Arrington go way back.”

  “Right,” Kanezaki said. “Now that you mention it, Arrington’s a former SEAL. What, did they serve together?”

  “Exactly,” Horton said.

  “So the inference,” Kanezaki said, “is that Arrington is the brains behind whatever’s been happening, and Graham is just the deniable-action arm?”

  Horton nodded. “I’d say it looks that way.”

  “But I don’t get it,” Kanezaki said. “Why would Arrington care about a Secret Service scandal? Let me tell you, the guy’s not an altruist. He’d have zero interest in protecting another agency from scandal. If anything, he’d look for a way to exploit it.”

  Horton said, “That is our question exactly—why would Arrington even care? But exploit it . . . that’s interesting. Exploit it how, I wonder? What would someone like Arrington want from the Secret Service? I don’t see it.”

  Larison looked at Horton. “That’s easy. You said it yourself. This isn’t just about the Secret Service.”

  Kanezaki told us he would keep digging and we clicked off. We drove on, and a little while later, we followed Dox and Livia into the parking lot of a Walmart at the edge of Culpeper. Everyone went in to use the bathroom and buy food, and then we all got into the van. Horton briefed Dox and Livia on what we’d just learned from Kanezaki.

  “I’ll check in with my lieutenant,” Livia said. “I wonder if Chief Best ever got through to Arrington, and what he might have said.”

  “Maybe this is a little audacious,” Larison said, “but if we’re reasonably
sure Arrington is the brains behind this thing, whatever it is, and Graham is just muscle, we might be able to end it instantly by taking out Arrington.”

  I saw advantages and disadvantages, and wanted to think them through before saying anything.

  But Livia didn’t wait. She said, “I really appreciate everyone’s involvement here. But I think you’re missing something incredibly important.”

  No one spoke, and she went on. “At the heart of this thing is a child-pornography ring operating out of the Secret Service. Even if we eliminate the people who are trying to cover it up—the people who blew up a plane and who’ve been trying to kill us, too—would that take down the ring?”

  Again, no one spoke. Larison was looking at her like she was speaking a foreign language. Horton was looking at her respectfully. And Dox . . . he was looking at her with an expression I’d never seen on him before. Like he would do anything for her.

  “You’re right,” I said, searching for a way to navigate all the different reactions I saw, while also articulating my own. “But . . . there might be some tension in play between what we can do to take down that ring, and what we have to do to protect ourselves.”

  “I see that,” she said. “And I’m just telling you, if you’re willing to let a group like Child’s Play continue to prey on children just to protect yourself, you’re no friend of mine. And even though I’m grateful for your help, I’m done with you.”

  Dox looked at me, and I could see he had no inclination to try to bridge the divide, or even just smooth it over with some outburst the way he usually did.

  Shit. We were going to fracture. And just when we seemed to be making real progress, too.

  “If you see a way we can do both,” I said, “I’d love to hear it.”

  We were all quiet again. Dox said, “I have an idea.”

  I thought, Thank God.

  He turned to Livia. “Livia, all of us have had our share of horror. But I know the rest of us haven’t seen what you described to me on the flight out here about the pictures and videos those Child’s Play people trade in. And create. You called it hurtcore, isn’t that right?”

  Livia nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  Dox returned the nod. “Why is it called that?”

  “Because the point is to cause so much pain the child is ruined by it. Left alive, but psychically crippled. For the people who get off on it, it’s not enough to dominate a body. They have to destroy a soul.”

  Dox looked at the rest of us, then back to Livia. “And can you describe for these gentlemen some of what gets posted on that site, the way you did for me?”

  Livia looked at the rest of us. “I can do better than that.”

  She pulled a laptop from her bag, found a store Wi-Fi connection, then worked the keyboard, saying, “Hang on, I need to do this through a VPN or it’ll look suspicious to anyone at the site with admin privileges. The Bureau canceled the operation, but I still have my fake credentials, so . . . yeah. Here we are. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

  The last words were spoken almost ritualistically, like someone trying to self-comfort. She exhaled forcefully, turned the laptop around, and pressed the “Play” button.

  Horton turned away instantly. Even Larison managed no more than a few seconds, which was maybe a second less than I could stand. I held up a hand and said, “You’ve made your point. Please, stop it.”

  Livia hit a button and the child in the video was cut off in mid scream. She looked at me, her nostrils flaring with her breathing, heat in her eyes.

  In my life, I’d known many killers. And all at once, it hit me.

  This woman was not just a cop.

  “You wanted it to stop, and it did,” she said, her voice rising. “Even though it was just a video. Even though you were just watching. But the children in those videos don’t get to say stop.”

  Her eyes filled and she brushed the back of a wrist against them furiously. She blew out a long breath, and then another. “So any plan you come up with that doesn’t involve taking down this ring, has nothing to do with me.”

  A long, silent moment went by.

  Larison spoke first. “I wouldn’t mind . . . doing something about that,” he said.

  Horton looked at Livia and nodded.

  Dox looked at me. “John?”

  For a moment, I felt ashamed for having overlooked the issue. And not just for the sake of the kids those Child’s Play monsters were preying on. For myself, too. Hadn’t I tried to sell Treven on the idea of getting some positive points on the karmic ledger? Did I mean that? Or was it all just bullshit?

  “You already know the answer,” I said.

  “I need a minute,” Livia said. She pulled open the door and got out.

  Dox hesitated, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

  chapter

  thirty-three

  LIVIA

  Livia walked toward the side of the building. She heard someone get out of the van behind her—Carl, no doubt, but she didn’t wait or look back.

  She turned the corner and headed down farther, then stopped and leaned against the wall. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She’d felt sick for a moment in the van. But it was cool over here on the shadowed side of the building, and quiet, and she started to feel better almost immediately.

  She heard Carl come around the corner. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

  “Hey,” he said. “If you’d rather be alone, you know that’s fine. I just wanted to check.”

  For anyone else, the answer most certainly would have been Yes, go away. But Carl knew about her past. He knew . . . he knew her.

  She gave him a weak smile. “Thanks for checking on me. It’s nice that you do that.”

  And then her eyes filled up again, and she looked away, furious. For the most part, she was so in control of herself. And then a small thing would happen, and it would dissolve her.

  Carl said, “If you were anybody else, this would be the moment where I put my arms around you and hold you tenderly.”

  She laughed and wiped her eyes. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “Would you mind terribly if I did it anyway? Just to be sure?”

  She didn’t know what she wanted, from him or anyone else. She wished for the thousandth time that she could just be normal.

  He came over and brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never seen someone take control of that band of killers and cutthroats the way you just did. Please don’t think I’m being condescending saying this, but you just make me so proud. I mean, Larison, I think he’s in awe of you now. And Larison’s the damn angel of death, he doesn’t do awe, not in my experience.”

  She laughed again, and cried more.

  His fingers were curled against her cheek. “Labee?”

  She sniffed. “Yeah?”

  “I think you better hit me with one of those judo throws. Because if you don’t, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from kissing you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “Because we’re in a Walmart parking lot? All the best romances happen in places like this. I read it somewhere once.”

  She laughed. “You did not.”

  “I did. Okay, I wrote it down first. Then I read it. But still.”

  She laughed again. She loved the way he made her laugh. But it also always made her sad.

  “I’m sorry I’m so . . . weird,” she said, her eyes filling up again.

  He shook his head. “You’re not weird. You’re beautiful.”

  And he leaned in and kissed her very softly. It didn’t bother her. It was actually nice. She liked the way he smelled. Which only confused her and made her cry harder.

  He pulled back. “Was it that bad?” But he was wearing a cute, dopey smile and she knew he was joking.

  “It was nice,” she said.

  “Really? I honestly think that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She reached out and brushed h
er fingers against his cheek. The gesture felt strange, but she liked when he did it to her.

  “Be careful,” he said, smiling. “I could get used to that.”

  That made her sad again. “I don’t think you should.”

  “I’ll take the chance if you will,” he said, and kissed her again, softly like the last time, but also a little longer.

  She felt herself getting aroused, but it confused her, because this wasn’t ever how she liked it. She liked it the way it had been between them in that Rayong beach place in Thailand, when they’d been on the run and barely knew each other and she’d been completely in control.

  She broke the kiss. “We should . . . we should go back,” she said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s not you, it’s not that. I just feel . . . a little overwhelmed.”

  “I get it. I’m sorry if I was pushing. But when I’m around you? I can feel a little overwhelmed myself.”

  They were quiet for a moment. She looked down, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid of what she might see in them or how it would make her feel.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s table this conversation until the next time we’re in a romantic Walmart parking lot. For now, we’ll get back to the van. I have an idea for how we can get the intel we need to dismantle this Child’s Play atrocity, while also killing every last creature behind it. But John’s not going to like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It involves working with a woman in Paris. An old flame of his. And let me tell you, he can protest all he wants, but those flames are still plenty hot.”

  chapter

  thirty-four

  RAIN

  Larison, Horton, and I were working out the advantages and disadvantages of going after Graham first versus Arrington first. Larison, in keeping with his general approach to the world, still favored cutting off the head, meaning Arrington. Horton favored attacking the flanks, meaning Graham.

  “We have more intel on Graham,” I said.

  “Some of which might be tainted by Treven,” Larison said. “And besides, we haven’t even started focusing on Arrington yet. He might turn out to be a soft target.”