by Barry Eisler
The words sounded strange as they came out, like something she would have heard in a movie. She had an odd feeling of dissociation. Was any of this really happening?
The hands went higher. She could see arms. Then a pair of eyes. The eyes took in the way she was holding the gun. The man slowly stood. He was Asian. He wasn’t big, but there was something . . . physical about him. As though he might be stronger than he looked. Or faster.
“Can you lower the gun more?” he said, his hands still up.
And then her urge to check on Dash overwhelmed her. She took her left hand off the gun and pulled Dash to her body, touching his head, his shoulders, his back. But he seemed barely to notice. His feet were planted solidly, and he held the table leg across his body with his right hand at the thin end and his left palm up under the fat end, like the sheriff in that movie Walking Tall. Her little boy was suddenly gone. She’d been protecting him, and now he was protecting her.
“Do you believe me?” the man said. “Can I come out from behind this desk?”
“Yes,” she said, crying. “Yes.” She couldn’t sign with the gun, so she put it on the floor and explained to Dash what was happening. His eyes shifted from her hands to the man and back again.
The man stopped a respectful distance away. Evie signed, Do you think he’s telling the truth?
Dash watched the man for a moment longer. Then he nodded.
Evie looked at the man. “Are there others?”
The man glanced at the doors. “I think it was just the two of them. If there had been more, they’d be here by now.”
“What about our house?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I think you have two choices. You can take your chances with the police. Or you can come with me.”
Dash had been intent on the man’s face while he’d been talking, reading his lips. He said, “You’re Marvin’s friend?”
“No,” the man said. “A friend of a friend.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rain. Listen, I can’t stay here. Your next move is up to you.”
Dash looked at Evie. But not a searching look. Or a frightened or confused one. He nodded his head. And that decided it for her.
“All right,” she said. “We’re coming with you.”
chapter
fifty
MAYA
Maya sat in the rear driver-side seat of the car, Frodo in her lap. Her forehead was pressed against the window, and she stared out as trees and signs and streetlamps went past. It reminded her of when she had been a girl, in the back of her parents’ car. Just a passenger, secure that everything was fine and always would be, free to stare out the window, her mind wandering as the world rolled by, while her parents took care of her and everything else. Only now, the feeling of just being along for the ride was bewildering and anything but secure. She didn’t even know where they were going, and almost didn’t care. She thought of Ali, lying motionless on the ground, police tape and flashers all over the street. All of it felt exactly like a nightmare. Except she knew she wasn’t dreaming.
She’d said hi to the woman and the boy when they got in the car, and the routineness of the interaction was itself deeply bizarre. The boy, sliding over to the middle seat, gave her a small wave, looked at Frodo, and said in a slightly strange voice, “He’s cute.” The woman came in behind the boy, nodded, and said hello. Frodo didn’t bark, or even make a sound. He just licked Maya’s face, trying with all his little might to make both of them feel better.
Rain stood by the door while the boy and the woman were getting in, and Maya had seen he was holding his pistol. Delilah reached across and opened Rain’s door, and was pulling away the second he was in. Maya was no gunfighter, but she’d done the training at the Farm and knew the smell of gun smoke, and as soon as all the doors were closed, she recognized it. Rain had shot someone. The boy and the woman, who Maya could tell was his mother, started signing furiously. The boy must have been deaf. “What happened?” Delilah said, and Rain told her there had been two men waiting, and they were both dead now. And Maya had turned to the window.
They kept driving. Eventually they’d get somewhere. And maybe some of this would start to make sense.
“Hey,” she heard Rain say. “We’ve got them all. Everyone’s fine.”
She looked over at him. He had placed a satellite hotspot on the dashboard, and was talking on a cellphone. Probably to Tom. She listened as he retold what had happened at the school. She turned away and stared out the window again.
“Yes,” Rain said. “She’s right here. Hold on.” There was a pause, and he said, “Maya.” She turned, and he held out the phone to her.
She didn’t want to talk to Tom. Or anyone. She wanted to go to sleep. Or to wake up. Whatever it took for none of this to have happened.
But she took the phone. “Hello.”
“You okay?” It was Tom, as she’d thought.
“Yeah.”
“They’re good people. They’ll take care of you. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“I don’t care.” It sounded childish as she said it. But she felt like a child. Her eyes welled up. Frodo started licking the tears.
“Listen,” he said. “I think I have a way to solve this. But I need your help. I’m sorry to ask you again, because your helping me is what put you in danger. And got Ali killed.”
Maya’s face scrunched up and a tiny whimper escaped her throat. Then the tears were coming and for a moment, she couldn’t speak. She closed her eyes and sat there, silently shaking in a car full of strangers.
When she opened her eyes, the boy was holding a tissue, extended to her. She shook her head, embarrassed. She was such a wreck that a kid was trying to comfort her. “It’s okay,” he said, a little too loudly. “It’s clean.” And his expression was so earnest that Maya couldn’t help but laugh, that he thought she didn’t want the tissue because she was afraid it was used.
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I have more if you need them. I have allergies.”
“Okay. Thanks again.”
He glanced at Frodo. “What’s your dog’s name?”
“Frodo.”
“Like in The Lord of the Rings?”
“Yes.”
Frodo barked, and the boy must have realized it because he laughed. “I’m Dash.”
“Maya.”
“Can I hold him?”
She nodded and handed him Frodo, who immediately began licking his face. He laughed again, obviously delighted.
Tom said, “Are you there?”
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Took a deep breath and let it out.
Then she said to Tom, “Tell me what you need.”
chapter
fifty-one
DEVEREAUX
Devereaux had given the contractors strict instructions to check in every thirty minutes. It had now been over an hour, and the only explanation was that something had gone wrong.
He took a swig of Mylanta straight from the bottle, grimacing at the powdery taste. His stomach was killing him, and he’d barely slept since this thing had begun. He’d always known there would be a price to pay for what he’d done, hadn’t he? For the . . . temptation he’d succumbed to. He just hadn’t imagined it would be this.
He leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, and covered his face with his hands. There had to be a way to turn this around. There had to be.
He sat like that for a few minutes. His office, the mighty command center of America’s entire intelligence community, had always seemed so secure to him. So stalwart. But now it felt flimsy. As though its walls were paper, about to be shredded, leaving him helpless and exposed, to be pulled down and torn apart from all sides.
When he opened his eyes, he saw activity on the police channel he was monitoring. Reports of a shooting. Montgomery County police officers dispatched to the deaf school. Two b
odies, both white males.
He laughed, more sickened than shocked. Because of course. A woman and her teenaged deaf son. Against two ex-military contractors. They must have had help. But who? Manus, back from the West Coast?
But that was a question for later. What mattered now was that the leverage he had hoped to gain over Manus had just evaporated. He needed another move. A new plan.
Well, Plan A had been to prevent the videos from ever even seeing the light of day. Even after the texts he and Hobbs had received on the Mall, he’d still believed they could stop the release.
But now, he had to be realistic. He had to mitigate. Just in case.
Okay. He had half a dozen reporters who would print virtually anything he told them on background. Rispel had probably been playing him with her talk about the Russians and Chinese. He’d been so distraught at the time that he’d bought it. But it didn’t matter if it was bullshit. The truth was, it was a good idea. There was no reason he shouldn’t use it . . . and every reason he should.
But that was defense. Were there any other offensive plays left to him?
Rispel had been a step ahead of him so far. That much was clear. He had been a fool to take her gratitude, her loyalty, for granted. He should have foreseen the possibility that, confronted with the potential power of those videos, she would seek to acquire them for her own purposes.
Fine. But how had she been outplaying him?
She was closer to the action, of course. She reported to him, yes, but he knew from experience that being nearer the nuts and bolts of fieldwork had its advantages. A mayor was better positioned to address potholes than a governor.
But that didn’t mean the governor was powerless. Far from it.
Devereaux had been DCI before Rispel. He’d been elevated, but his network was still there. The biggest change, really, was that his ability to reward and punish had been enhanced.
Rispel couldn’t make big moves on her own. Whether for intel or for ops, she’d be moving pieces on the board. Asking for favors. And calling in some, too.
It wasn’t so difficult to imagine who she’d be relying on. And in a game of threats and favors, it would be no contest. Rispel reported to him. He reported to the president of the United States. All it would take would be a reminder to certain key people—people who were already in his network, after all—of how grateful he would be to know if Rispel seemed to be up to anything unusual. And how displeased he would be to learn he had been kept in the dark.
He thought of the way she’d told him to sit, like she was talking to a dog. And threatened to have him escorted out—from what she called her building, no less.
Well, she’d had her fun. He hoped she’d enjoyed her little games. Because now she was going to find out exactly who she was playing with.
chapter
fifty-two
MANUS
Manus watched from the lobby of the Shenandoah University Health & Life Sciences Building as the cab turned around. He waited until it had left the parking lot and disappeared down the street. Then he headed out and started walking west. The morning sky was gray, the air cold and humid. It felt good to be outside after the long, sleepless flight.
Before Manus had left, Dox had said to him, “You saved my ass at the hotel. Don’t think I don’t know it, and don’t think I’ll forget. And if I’m ever in a position to return the favor, I hope you believe I will.”
The strange thing was, Manus did believe him.
His cellphone was too risky to even turn on, let alone use, and Dox had given him the credentials to a secure site. After landing and clearing security at Dulles Airport, he’d borrowed a phone from a sympathetic barista—I’m deaf, I lost my speech-to-text device, could I use your phone to access my account—and had found a message. Evie and Dash were safe. They were with Rain, the man Dox had sent to protect them. They were in a room at the Winchester Hilton. Rain would be waiting in the hotel restaurant. Manus should use the same bona fides he had given Rain to use with Evie and Dash.
As worried as Manus still was, and as eager as he was to get to them, it would have been a mistake to have the driver take him to his actual destination. So he’d asked the man to drop him off at the university instead, and was now walking the half mile to the hotel, navigating with a paper map he’d bought at the airport. Route 50 was already thick with early rush-hour traffic, and he doubted another cab would even have saved time.
He reached the grounds of the hotel in a little over ten minutes and circled the parking lot. He didn’t see any problems and went in through the restaurant entrance, head swiveling, alert to danger.
A young woman was standing by the door. She picked up a menu and said something, but Manus didn’t catch it—he was too intent on the room. About half the tables were filled, mostly by solitary people absorbed in their electronic devices, obviously business travelers. In a corner table, back to the wall, sat an Asian man, a coffee mug before him but no electronic device. Manus’s gaze almost skipped over the man because there was something so still about his presence. To someone else, the man might have seemed lost in thought. But Manus sensed something else: a person exceptionally attuned to his surroundings, his transmission dial set to bland, the reception dial wide open. A long-ago instructor had told Manus of a Zen concept called mushin—literally meaning “no-mind,” but in fact a description of a relaxed mind, a mind open to everything and therefore able to instantly react to anything. He hadn’t thought of the concept in years, but something about the man made him remember it now.
He glanced at the receptionist. She said, “Just one?”
Manus shook his head and looked at the Asian man again. “Meeting someone.”
He walked forward, keeping his hands where the man could see them. The man kept his hands in plain sight, too, his fingertips resting on the table.
Manus stopped a couple of feet before he reached the man’s position and stood off to the side. They’d been reassuring each other so far, and this was another way of doing so—not blocking the man’s view of the room, leaving him space to maneuver. “The Orioles should never have traded Machado to Los Angeles,” Manus said.
The man laughed. Manus was confused by the reaction. Then he saw why—a woman at the adjacent table had overheard, and had looked up at the incongruous greeting.
“I’ve been saying that forever,” the man said. “Do we have time for a coffee? Or should we get going?”
“We should get going.”
The man nodded. “Good enough.” He finished what was in his mug, stood, and left some bills on the table.
Back out in the parking lot and around the corner of the restaurant, they stopped. The man said, “Manus?”
Manus nodded and checked their flanks. “Rain?”
“Yes.”
“Are they okay?”
“They’re fine. We had a problem, but they’re fine.”
Manus’s heart was suddenly pounding. “A problem?”
“Earlier this morning. But really, they’re fine. They’re in a room inside, waiting for you.”
For a moment, Manus had to focus on the word fine, which was being drowned out in his mind by the word problem.
“You . . . helped them?”
Rain nodded and did a quick scan of the lot. “But they did a good job of helping themselves. That’s a brave boy you’ve got. Evie, too.”
Did Rain think Dash was his son?
Manus was suddenly fighting back tears. This was all his fault. Something terrible could have happened, almost did happen . . .
They’re fine. They’re fine.
He was desperate to see them. But he dreaded having to explain.
A moment passed. When he felt more in control of himself, he said, “Thank you.”
Rain nodded. “So you know, there are two more people in the room with them—a woman I’m with, named Delilah, and a young woman we’re taking care of, named Maya. And Maya’s dog. I’d suggest you and I go in one of the side entrances and I’ll
take you to them. Is that okay with you?”
Manus was impressed both by the man’s calm and by his manners. Offering someone options was a good way to create confidence. Trying to hem someone in tended to cause suspicion, and suspicion between dangerous people could escalate fast. Having dealt with Dox, Manus wasn’t surprised that Rain knew what he was doing. But it was reassuring regardless—especially because just hours earlier he’d entrusted Evie and Dash to this man’s care. And knew now they might be alive because of it.
“Yes,” Manus said. “Please.”
Rain used a keycard to let them in through a side entrance. They took an internal staircase to the second floor. Halfway down the corridor, Rain stopped at a door and gave a single knock. The peephole was dark—probably they had covered it, to prevent anyone from knowing if someone inside was looking out.
The door opened. It was an attractive blonde, her right hand concealed behind her back. She must have been the woman Rain mentioned, Delilah. Manus, no longer suspicious, wasn’t concerned. He was glad they were armed.
Dash and Evie were standing alongside one of the two twin beds. Dash was holding a small dog. He set the dog on the floor, ran over, threw his arms around Manus’s back, and buried his face in his chest. Manus put his arms around the boy and looked at Evie, speechless. She smiled, then started crying. She walked over and hugged him, Dash in between them.
Manus looked around the room. He saw a young woman sitting in the desk chair—the one Rain had mentioned, Maya. A laptop was open in front of her and she was intent on it. He glanced back. The blonde—Delilah—had closed the door and was talking to Rain.
He could feel Dash shaking. He must have been crying. They’re fine, he told himself. They’re fine. But what had happened?
After a few moments, they disengaged. Dash wiped his face and began signing. A man had come for them at the school. Evie had hit him with a cart of books. And Dash had hit him with a table leg. Dash held up his hand so Manus could see he’d torn up his fingers getting the bolts loose so he could detach the leg. And then Evie had taken the man’s gun and killed him. And Mr. Rain had killed another man. And then they came here. Manus looked from Dash’s signing to Evie’s face and back again, rocked by a storm of emotions.