The Chaos Kind

by Barry Eisler

  He reached the apex of the structure and looked down at the maze of concrete. They’d told him it had to look natural, or at least reasonably natural. Well, it wouldn’t be hard for someone running through here to fall. The pavement was wet, the stairs slick in places. The fall itself might be enough. If he had to do more, he would.

  But he hoped he wouldn’t.

  ONE WEEK EARLIER

  chapter

  one

  HOBBS

  All right,” the president said, coming to his feet. “See you all next week.”

  As though a switch had been flipped, the attendees all rose, and the hushed room was suddenly filled with the simultaneous creak of dozens of leather chairs and a collective murmur of “Thank you, Mr. President.” To Hobbs, who had visited numerous black congregations when he’d been considering a run for Congress in South Carolina’s first district, the refrain always sounded like some weird cousin of call and response. Well, certainly there was enough ambient reverence in the White House Cabinet Room to make you feel you might be in church.

  There was a moment of silence—another unconscious echo of religious devotion—as the president headed briskly toward his private exit at the south end of the room, his footfalls noiseless on the plush carpet. On those infrequent occasions when the president lingered, everyone else did, too, vying for a scrap of his attention. But the instant he was gone, all the august personalities who served at his pleasure would devolve into gossiping, backbiting courtiers, and as he closed the mahogany door behind him and the heavy brass latch clacked into place, the room erupted into a dozen scheming conversations. Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

  The secretary of the interior saw his opportunity and zeroed in on the vice president, whose traditional position was directly opposite the president’s and on whose left it was Hobbs’s place as attorney general to sit. Hobbs caught the vice president’s wince at the Interior guy’s approach, probably in preparation for turning down a golf outing or some other invitation. Most of the time, the vice president would stick around after a meeting to enjoy the attention he received in the president’s absence, but if he left now it would be bad. It would elevate Hobbs himself as a beacon for the cabinet’s various lesser barons, and while ordinarily Hobbs was indifferent to their attention, today it would be a hindrance.

  But no, the danger of the vice president exiting too soon was moot, because there was Devereaux, the director of National Intelligence, coming around the north end of the table, half a head taller than the people he was passing, a factotum on his heels. Perfect. Hobbs slipped past the small queue lining up behind the Interior guy and pulled abreast of Devereaux as he passed through one of the exits. Devereaux wasn’t walking particularly quickly, but the man had a long stride, and Hobbs struggled to match his pace.

  “Pierce,” Hobbs said, keeping his voice low. “Have you got a few minutes? There’s something I think might interest you.” It wasn’t so much that Hobbs was worried about someone overhearing; more that he wanted to signal the delicacy of the topic he needed to broach. And of course, a conspiratorial tone was engaging in its own right—engaging to anyone, and especially to America’s top spy.

  Devereaux stopped and glanced at his watch. Hobbs knew the reflex was theater. Information came with a price tag, and the shrewd players were careful to conceal their eagerness to buy.

  Devereaux tilted his head lower and looked at Hobbs through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. “What’s on your mind, Uriah?”

  Hobbs, the shortest male cabinet member, was used to people towering over him. He’d hated it when he was young. But now he was the country’s top lawyer, and that was the view that mattered.

  He paused while the chief of staff, another favored target of the sycophants because his office was in the White House and he was the president’s gatekeeper, passed by, the secretaries of Commerce and Labor attached to him like suckerfish. The pause was another small signal that Hobbs’s information was valuable. Besides which, Devereaux’s glance at his watch deserved to be answered with a gesture equally nonchalant.

  “Not here,” Hobbs said, when the chief of staff and the hangers-on were out of earshot. “I think you’ll want to be sitting down for this.”

  chapter

  two

  LIVIA

  Now underhook the ankle,” Livia said, circling around and leaning forward. “No, not your hand, catch it in the crook of your elbow! Tighter! It’s not his ankle anymore, it’s yours!”

  Jorge, a muscular former gangbanger and one of Livia’s brown belts, had nearly fifty pounds on Diaz, but the ankle hook instantly stopped him from lifting her more than a few inches off the mat. He strained for a moment, Diaz’s legs crossed behind his waist, then settled back into her.

  “Again!” Livia said. Jorge crowded in, spread his feet, took hold of Diaz’s gi collar, and started to arch toward the ceiling. But before he could get anywhere, Diaz hooked the ankle and stopped him cold.

  Livia patted Jorge on the shoulder. “Okay.”

  Jorge disengaged and scooted back. Diaz sat up.

  “You see?” Livia said.

  Diaz nodded, but she looked more worried than pleased. Livia, who had worked with dozens of victims as a Seattle PD sex-crimes detective and who lived with her own childhood wounds, recognized what Diaz was trying to work through. Especially for trauma victims, it could take years of familiarity before the mind began to accept that a weapon would actually work. Even Livia, who had begun training in jiu-jitsu as a teenager and who in college had been an alternate on the US Olympic judo team, sometimes had dreams where an attacker would laugh off her arm bars and strangles and spine locks, or where bullets would plop uselessly from the muzzle of her duty weapon and the knife she carried would turn to rubber. When she had those dreams, she would hit the mat extra hard the next day, or spend hours at the range, or hang a cut of meat from a tree branch and slash and stab it to pieces.

  “And remember,” Livia said, “you can also just open your guard. Because what does Jorge need to slam you?”

  “He needs to lift me.”

  “Right. And what does he need to lift you?”

  “My closed guard.”

  “Yes. You decide whether someone can slam you.”

  Diaz looked at Jorge as though she wasn’t buying it. “Were you really trying?”

  Jorge laughed. “Órale jefita, I almost gave myself a hernia.” He stood and started heading toward the door, shrugging off his gi top along the way. “Okay, ladies, gotta run. Promised the little one a bedtime story.”

  “Thanks for being a good attacker,” Livia called after him. “And for sticking around after class.”

  Jorge stuffed the gi top into a gym bag and smiled. “Anything for you, Livia.” He pulled on a tee-shirt, stepped into a pair of flip-flops, and slipped through the door, pulling it closed with a loud thud behind him.

  The room was suddenly silent. A half hour earlier, the mats had been crowded, the small space reverberating with the shouts of twenty women students and of the three men who’d stuck around after their MMA class to serve as attackers. But now it was just Livia and Diaz.

  Livia sat. “You’re getting the hang of it. But if you want it to mean anything, you have to train with men.”

  “I just trained with Jorge.”

  “You spent the whole class avoiding him. I had to inflict him on you as he was trying to leave.”

  Diaz chuckled. “Someone should write a story about the power of jiu-jitsu to bridge human divides. Look at you and Jorge. Woman and man. Thai and Mexican. Detective Livia Lone and Jorge, former criminal gang enforcer.”

  Before being trafficked to America at thirteen with her little sister, Nason, and then being serially abused by Fred Lone, the wealthy Llewellyn town father who had “rescued” her, Livia had grown up in the forests of Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. She was ethnic Lahu, not Thai, but
the difference wasn’t relevant to Diaz’s point. Beyond which, Livia didn’t talk about her childhood.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “No, really. And you’d be a good-looking couple, too, if he weren’t married. Pretty and petite . . . I heard that’s Jorge’s speed.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Diaz dropped her head. “I’m working on it, okay?”

  Livia looked at her. At a glance, Diaz would have been easy to underestimate. She was on the shorter side, with jet-black hair and a beautiful face, and though she was thirty-two, in casual clothes or a gi she could have passed for a college student. But when she put on a suit and heels for court, she radiated competence, focus, and smarts. She was known for her dedication to her work. But Livia knew it went deeper than that. Alcoholics needed to attend meetings. People like Diaz needed to put predators behind bars. Just as Livia sometimes needed to put them in the ground.

  Livia had taken all the psych classes in college and understood that being a cop, and punishing rapists, whether through the law or on her own, was all just sublimation, a primitive part of her mind trying to propitiate her guilt over having failed to protect Nason. Over having inadvertently doomed her. Trauma never went away. You could try to block it, or bury it, or bludgeon it into submission. But something with that much power couldn’t really be contained. The best you could hope for was a way to channel it.

  So Livia could guess at what was behind Diaz’s choice of career, and her bravery in bringing cases against rapists no matter what, and her attraction to jiu-jitsu and simultaneous discomfort rolling with men. But Livia respected Diaz’s secrets, as she insisted on keeping her own.

  Livia smacked her on the leg and Diaz looked up. “Hey. I wouldn’t push if I didn’t think you could handle it.”

  “I know. I’m just not very . . . confident on the mat.”

  “Were you confident the first time you argued in front of a judge?”

  Diaz laughed. “I almost puked.”

  “But now?”

  “Well, I still almost puke. But only before. Never during.”

  Livia laughed, then glanced around, even though she knew it was just the two of them. She leaned closer. “Any more fallout about Schrader?”

  “No, it seems under control. I told you, my boss was pissed. But you were right about making sure the arrest got a lot of press. After Epstein, no one wants to be seen doing favors for another rich child rapist. Especially one as connected as Schrader.”

  chapter

  three

  HOBBS

  Andrew Schrader,” Hobbs said, leaning closer. “You know the name?”

  Devereaux sipped his coffee. “Sure, the investor. He was arrested recently.”

  They were seated in a discreet corner table of the White House Mess, a wood-paneled basement restaurant next to the Situation Room and run by the Navy. The space had a low acoustic ceiling, thick wall-to-wall carpet, and tables covered in patterned linen, all of which served to dampen noise even when the restaurant was full. But it was late now for breakfast, and lunch was still an hour away, so the usual crowd of commissioned officers and Cabinet secretaries and their guests and hangers-on was currently sparse.

  “Do you know anything else about him?”

  Devereaux shrugged. “Got his start with a software company he sold for a ton of money. Politically connected. Owns a bunch of trophy properties and likes to throw parties. A weakness for beautiful women.”

  Was Devereaux being just a touch too nonchalant? Hobbs couldn’t be sure, but he thought so. Good.

  “Well,” Hobbs said, “he does like to appear at parties with models half his age or younger. But that’s a smokescreen. His real interest is in girls. As in, underage girls.”

  Other than a judicious sip of coffee, Devereaux didn’t react. Hobbs admired his discipline. You had to be careful with these intel types. Devereaux had been career CIA before his ascension to the top job, and he understood the power of silence to loosen tongues.

  Or to conceal his own fear.

  “In fact,” Hobbs went on, “six years ago, he was indicted in South Carolina. A joint FBI-local law-enforcement investigation. He was having teenaged girls brought to his Kiawah Island mansion at an almost industrial scale. The indictment wasn’t just for sex with underage girls. It was for trafficking.”

  Devereaux peered at him over his glasses. “Wasn’t that when you were the US Attorney in that district?”

  Hobbs was glad for the riposte. It felt fearful, like a veiled Maybe I’m implicated, but then so are you.

  “Level with me,” Hobbs said. “Have you ever heard of Schrader’s indictment?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good. Because we buried it. We let him plead out—one charge of solicitation of a minor. A non-prosecution agreement. No prison time. No publicity.”

  Devereaux set down his coffee and cocked his head, as though unsure why Hobbs would offer up something so incriminating. “Like what they did with Epstein in Florida.”

  Hobbs nodded. Everyone knew about Jeffrey Epstein. Which was of course part of Hobbs’s concern about Schrader. “Something like that.”

  “That would have been a big case for you, if you could have made it stick. A celebrity prosecution like that.”

  “You want to know why I buried it?”

  Devereaux offered a tight smile at the directness of the question. “Sure.”

  “Schrader is one of the world’s great networkers. A lot of powerful friends he’s been collecting for decades. Politicians. Corporate titans. Media barons. Friends of ours.”

  Devereaux nodded in appreciation of the gravity of what he had just heard. The thing was, what he thought he understood wasn’t the half of it.

  “What, then?” Devereaux said. “You were protecting the innocent from embarrassment? Guilt by association?”

  “I was protecting them from videos.”

  Devereaux’s expression was neutral, but Hobbs detected the effort behind it. I’ve got you, you son of a bitch, he thought.

  But Devereaux said nothing, so Hobbs continued. “Schrader had hidden cameras installed in every bedroom of his six homes, to which he was always happy to fly his rich and powerful friends on his private jet.”

  “That’s appalling.”

  Hobbs wasn’t sure whether Devereaux was referring to the cameras, to the behavior they recorded, or to the stupidity of anyone who would allow himself to be captured in such compromising circumstances. Probably there was self-reproach in the mix, as well.

  “But how did you know . . . ,” Devereaux started to say, then caught himself.

  Hobbs offered a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay, Pierce. This is explosive stuff. If you want to pretend it doesn’t matter to you, it’s fine, but I’ll know you’re full of shit.”

  Devereaux gave him a touché laugh. “Fair enough. You saw these videos?”

  “Highlights. Yes.”

  A beat. Hobbs thought he might ask directly, but Devereaux was too canny, and said only “How bad?”

  Hobbs couldn’t help admiring the performance. It was a close imitation of someone who was concerned about the tapes only in general. Not specifically that he himself was in them.

  “Professional quality. Every kind of depravity. With girls as young as thirteen.”

  Devereaux looked at him and for a moment said nothing. Not in a power of silence way—the man was simply speechless. Then he shook his head as though to clear it. “These videos . . . they’re extant?”

  “Very much so. Including one of a man who, when the video was made, had been only a lowly senator. But who at the time of the indictment happened to be president of the United States.”

  chapter

  four

  LIVIA

  As was often the case, things seemingly going smoothly made Livia uneasy. “What about Meekler?” she said.

  “Oh, he was definitely trying to scare me off. But no way he was going to openly order me to not indict.
”

  “Wait, let me guess: ‘Alondra, you’ve got such a bright future with the department . . . I just want to make sure you’re not getting out over your ski tips on this . . .’”

  Diaz laughed. “You know our US Attorney, right down to the clichés. It was all, ‘Schrader is rich, he’ll have an army of thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyers . . . One tiny mistake and they’ll shred you.’ But then we reviewed my witness list, the trafficking and racketeering elements . . . And when he saw how extensive the case is, he backed off. Those girls you interviewed—their testimony is going to be devastating.”

  “Did he say he wants to meet with them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can you prevent him?”

  “No. But I’ve prepped them. They know what he’s going to say: ‘We’re all so grateful to you . . . Schrader is going to sic private investigators on you and your family, he’s going to drag your name through the mud . . . Most girls in your position are afraid to testify, but you’re so brave!’ Like he’s their friend and just trying to warn them.”

  Livia knew the Meeklers of the system well. And hated them. “When in fact he’s trying to warn them off.”

  “Yeah. Most of the girls I contacted were already too scared to come forward. The ones who are cooperating are terrified, too. Meekler knows he might be able to scare them into withdrawing their testimony. Cut the legs out from under my case.”

  “Any chance it’ll work?”

  There was a beat while Diaz considered—or struggled with something. Then she said, “I told them what they’re going to hear from Meekler . . . It’s all true. It really will happen. And that men like Schrader—and Meekler—count on the threat of the secondary assault, the publicity assault, to intimidate us into silence.”

  Of course, us might have referred simply to women. But Livia sensed Diaz was using the plural pronoun to signal something more particular than just gender.

  “They’ll testify,” she said. “For you.”

  “And for you,” Diaz said. “I know you could have gone with King County, but I’m glad you brought it to me. The interstate aspects are going to be the most damning, and we needed the Bureau’s resources.”