The Chaos Kind

by Barry Eisler

  As Dash finished relaying the story, Evie signed, You should have seen him with that table leg. Our brave boy.

  This time, when Manus tried to suppress the tears, he couldn’t.

  Dash signed, Why are you crying, Marvin?

  Because I’m proud of you. You protected your mom.

  Dash smiled. You would have protected her, too. Probably better than I did.

  But I didn’t. He looked at Evie. I put you in danger.

  Dash shook his head in confusion. How?

  Manus no longer towered over Dash as he had when the boy had been younger, but it felt wrong to be looking down at him now. He squatted and met Dash’s eyes. No, this wasn’t a little boy before him. It was a strong young man. Who was old enough to make up his own mind. And Manus would have to live with what he decided. One way or the other.

  Some people wanted me to do a bad thing. They told me if I didn’t . . . they would tell you I used to be a bad man.

  Dash shook his head again. What bad thing?

  They wanted me to kill someone.

  Dash’s eyes widened. Did you?

  Manus shook his head. No.

  Then you’re not a bad man.

  But I was. I . . .

  He stopped, his fingers frozen in a kind of purgatory. Then he forced himself to go on. I did kill people before. For the government.

  I don’t care about before.

  You should.

  Why?

  For a moment, Manus was stuck for an answer. I just . . . I thought you would.

  Not if you’re good now. You are, aren’t you?

  Manus didn’t want to lie to him. But he didn’t know what was true, either.

  I don’t know.

  But you won’t kill anyone anymore, will you?

  I will if they try to hurt you or your mom.

  That’s different. Anyway, don’t you want to be good?

  Manus thought for a moment. And then remembered what he had been thinking about in the park, just yesterday morning but seeming much longer ago.

  I want to be . . . who you see when you look at me the way you are now.

  Dash gave him a beautiful, unself-conscious smile. That’s easy. You already are.

  Manus wiped his face and tousled Dash’s hair. Dash hugged him.

  Manus looked at Evie and signed, I’m sorry. I was so afraid . . . they would tell him. All of it. All the things I told you.

  She glanced at Dash, then back to Manus. She smiled. You didn’t have to worry. He loves you.

  Manus nodded and started crying again. He would have signed I love him, too, but he was holding Dash too tightly.

  chapter

  fifty-three

  DOX

  Dox was lying on the bed next to Labee, watching her face in the dim glow from the bathroom light. He wondered when he’d see her again after this thing was over. Maybe months. Maybe never. He’d put on a brave face when she’d been asking him all those questions, partly because he didn’t want her to feel pressured, partly to protect his own dignity. But the truth was, it wasn’t easy for him. He wanted to be with her. All the time. He’d never thought he’d reach a point where he wasn’t interested in other women. But here he was. All that nonsense in the poems and songs and movies . . . It had happened to him.

  And my God, it had been good just now, too. He’d been thinking about it for a while, how maybe his natural protectiveness for her was blinding him to her needs. Not that she required protecting, by him or anyone else. It was just that knowing her history, and the way she had entrusted it to him . . . It made him look at her a certain way. But he was glad he’d gotten past that.

  Maybe it was foolish to worry about what would happen next. Life was short, and he was with her now. And if he ever had a chance at the end of his life to think back to the most magical times, he knew this would be one of them. Lying in this bed, watching her beautiful, sleeping face, and wondering at the strangeness of it all. He was glad he understood how special the moment was now, that it wouldn’t be only in retrospect.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Hey.”

  He reached out and touched her cheek. “Hey there. I thought you were sleeping.”

  She sighed. “On and off. You’re not?”

  “Almost. It was an eventful day.”

  She closed her eyes and smiled. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Eventful night, too.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Was it good like that?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. God, she was so lovely in this light, half-awake, half-asleep. “You know it was,” she said.

  “You know, you can tell me. If there are things you want to do.”

  “I think it works better when you figure it out on your own.”

  “Oh. Well, you could give me some hints.”

  “You don’t think I have been?”

  He couldn’t help laughing at that. “Oh, shit. I hate when I’m dumb.”

  She smiled and touched his cheek the way he liked. “But apparently not ineducable.”

  They were quiet for a moment. She said, “You going to sleep?”

  “Yeah, in a few. I just like looking at you. I don’t get so many opportunities.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I mean . . . I’m too happy to go to sleep. I don’t want to waste it.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Just the truth.”

  “You know,” she said, “if you’re really going to be up, might be worth checking the secure site. It’s morning on the East Coast. Rain and Delilah have probably landed, and Kanezaki might have found something.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good point. Tell you what. You doze off if you like, and I’ll lie here looking at you for another minute or so. Then I’ll check the site.”

  She smiled and closed her eyes. “Wake me if there’s anything.”

  He watched her for a little while longer. It would have been nice to just drop off lying next to her, but she was right: better to check the site first just in case.

  He set up the satellite hotspot in front of the window and used a burner to log in. There was a message from Kanezaki: I know where they have Schrader.

  Well, shit. So much for the rest of their idyllic night in the Silver Cloud Inn.

  chapter

  fifty-four

  LARISON

  Larison was dozing in a chair he’d carried to the corner of the room near the door, the Glock in his hand. He hadn’t wanted to alarm Diaz, but she’d taken the precaution in stride. In fact, after hearing his explanation, she’d dragged one of the mattresses off the box frame and onto the floor. “If someone breaches a room,” he’d told her, “you don’t want to be in the first place they look. Randomness can buy you a second. And if you don’t think a second’s a long time, you’ve never been in a gunfight.”

  There was a soft tap at the door, and he was instantly awake. He stood, padded over, and looked through the peephole. It was Dox and Livia. He checked his watch. Not quite six.

  He unbolted and opened the door. “Everything all right?”

  “Fresh intel,” Dox said quietly. “Sorry to wake you.”

  “I don’t sleep. Come on in.”

  He closed and bolted the door behind them. Diaz was already awake and sitting up. “Is everything okay?” she said.

  “Everything’s fine,” Livia said. “New information from Kanezaki. He located Schrader. We need to decide what to do about it.”

  “Bunking down on the floor,” Dox said to Diaz. “I see you’ve been taking lessons from Mr. Larison. And let me tell you, you could do a lot worse for a teacher.”

  They pulled the mattress back onto the box spring and sat across from each other on the two beds, Dox next to Livia, Larison next to Diaz. “First of all,” Dox said, “John and Delilah landed outside Washington. Manus made it back, too. John and Delilah ran into some opposition picking up Manus’s woman, Evie, and his boy, Dash, but they
’re all together and everyone’s fine.”

  “Opposition?” Diaz said. “You mean that UPS driver Manus was worried about?”

  Dox nodded. “Apparently so. There were two of them, and when they couldn’t find Manus’s people at his house, they showed up looking for them at the school where Evie teaches and Dash is a student. Sounds like John got there just in time, though I gather Evie and Dash acquitted themselves well. Anyway, now it’s two fewer we’re up against, and that’s always good. But the main thing now is Schrader. Whoever took him is holding him in a house. In a place called Lake Tapps.”

  Diaz looked at Livia. “That’s twenty miles from here.”

  Livia nodded. “That’s right.”

  “What do we do?” Diaz said. “Call the marshals?”

  “That’s one possibility,” Livia said. “We’re considering something else.”

  Larison had a notion of what something else might be. He doubted he was going to like it. “What do we know about where he’s being kept?” he said.

  “It’s just an Airbnb place,” Dox said. “Detached single-family house, backed by woods, rented yesterday morning.”

  “Who’s guarding him?”

  “Three men. We don’t know their backgrounds, but we can assume they’re capable.”

  Larison didn’t respond to that. It was his habit to assume everyone was capable, until after he’d killed them. “Countermeasures?”

  “No way to be sure, but unlikely to be anything extensive. Feels like a hurry-up operation.”

  “Hmmm,” Larison said. “That sounds familiar.”

  Dox laughed. “Fair. Still, it’s good to get a little corroboration that busting Schrader out of jail was a Plan B. We’re not the only ones improvising here.”

  Larison wouldn’t have admitted it, but he liked being around Dox because, in addition to being extremely capable, the man was always cheerful. Even when—especially when—the shit hit the fan. But at the moment he seemed a little too eager. Larison figured he must have gotten laid. He wasn’t picking up anything from Livia, but she tended to be more of a closed book. Well, he was happy for them. But that had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

  Diaz looked at Dox. “How does Kanezaki know this?”

  “You promise not to tell anyone?” Dox said, his expression mock-serious.

  Diaz nodded.

  Dox shrugged. “Okay, I’d call that officially top-secret cleared. So here’s the deal. To keep us all safe, the government developed a program called Guardian Angel. It was originally called God’s Eye, but that upset the civil libertarians among us, so the people behind the program changed the name. The government always starts off with bad names, I don’t know why. Carnivore, Total Information Awareness . . . I mean, the Defense Department was originally called the War Department, which seemed to be giving people the idea it was responsible for fighting wars or something. And then—”

  “How does Kanezaki know?” Larison said. He was familiar with Dox’s occasionally discursive style.

  “Right, right. Anyway, Guardian Angel sucks in all the electronic exhaust we modern humans emit in our daily lives—what we search for on the Internet, use credit cards for, who we call, who we associate with, where our cellphones go . . . everything. It’s how old Rispel knew you like to jog in the morning at Freeway Park.”

  “Jesus,” Diaz said.

  “Yeah, it’s a powerful tool, no doubt. But Kanezaki has a young tech whiz—Maya, the one whose friend got killed last night—who built some kind of back door into the system, so Kanezaki could see what other people were searching for, and particularly what searches were getting deleted in violation of what passes for the law these days. That’s how he uncovered the plot to take you out, and how he knew to send Larison and me in to foil it.”

  Diaz shook her head. “I can’t believe this shit goes on.”

  “I know, it’s a lot to get your head around. But like Blade said, ‘The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping.’”

  Diaz looked at him, obviously not getting the reference.

  “A movie,” Larison said. “Wesley Snipes. Telling a human about vampires.”

  Dox smiled. “This is one of the reasons I like partnering with you, amigo. John never gets my cinematic references. I mean, you were the only one in the room who was with me that time when I did Cleavon Little. If you hadn’t laughed, we’d probably all be dead right now.”

  “It was pretty funny.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You want to finish explaining how Kanezaki got this intel?”

  “Right. Well, Maya got back into the system remotely. I don’t know all the details, but according to Kanezaki, using Guardian Angel to maximum effect is as much an art as it is a science, and he says Maya is quite the artist. She used cellphone data, satellite imagery, Bayesian probability, and who knows what else. Apparently Evie helped—she was some kind of tech wizard at NSA. But the gist of it is, they have three guys holding Schrader right now in a house just twenty miles from here. And the question is, what do we do about it?”

  “Why do we need to do anything?” Larison said. He knew the question might come across as aggressive. He didn’t care. He liked to test people. If they folded from a little pushing, what would they do when they were being shot at?

  Livia looked at him. “What do you propose instead?”

  “I’m not sure I’m proposing anything. They’ll torture Schrader, and either they’ll get what they want from him, or they won’t. Either way, it plays out and the storm passes. I mean, Diaz isn’t in danger anymore. That was only when she was going to prosecute Schrader.”

  “I don’t want this to be about me,” Diaz said.

  “Fine,” Larison said. “We can make it about me.”

  “Nobody’s keeping you here,” Livia said.

  Not for the first time, Larison admired her balls. “I never said otherwise. But here’s the way I see it. If you call the marshals and they recover Schrader, we’re right back where we started, with Diaz a target. And maybe all the publicity about Schrader’s release and recapture will offer some protection in that regard, but maybe it won’t. Or we can just do nothing. Schrader’s the focus now. The people holding him will either get control of the videos, or the videos will be uploaded. And Schrader is toast either way. Why do we care?”

  Diaz looked at him. “You don’t care about powerful men trafficking children?”

  That annoyed him. “What, are you going to try to shame me now? You know what these two are about to pitch, right? The three of us go to this house, kick down some doors, get in a gunfight, and drag Schrader out, sirens howling behind us.” He looked at Dox and Livia. “Is that about right?”

  “Hopefully absent the sirens,” Dox said. “With surprise and violence of action, I think we could be in and out faster than that.”

  “Oh, well, that’s great. Count me in, then. These things always work according to plan. I mean, look at how it went in the park yesterday.”

  “Look,” Dox said, “I’m not saying we didn’t have to adapt—”

  “‘Adapt’? If Manus had reacted a second earlier, that fucking sword he carries would have a new sheath. Your body.”

  Dox grinned. “That’s why I had us hold hands. Told you it would work.”

  Larison shook his head. Fucking Dox. There was just no arguing with him. It could be endearing, but it could make you crazy, too.

  “I don’t know how to kick down doors,” Diaz said. “So I can’t help you. I would if I could. For what it’s worth, I say we call the marshals. I have a case and I want to prosecute. I’m not afraid of the risks.”

  Larison looked at her. It would have been easier if he didn’t like her.

  “You should be,” he said. “You have no idea how lucky you got yesterday.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “I do know. I’m just not going to let it stop me.”

  “Christ,” Larison said, “am I the only person in this crew who ever makes any se
nse?”

  “Maya and Evie uncovered plenty more,” Dox said. “How about if I finish the briefing, and then everyone can offer somewhat more informed opinions.”

  No one said anything, and he went on. “It turns out that yesterday evening Washington time, a series of text messages and emails were simultaneously delivered to a whole passel of powerful men. Captains of industry, politicians, Director of National Intelligence Pierce Devereaux, and—wait for it—our very own attorney general, Uriah Hobbs.”

  “Holy shit,” Larison said. “The dead-man switch?”

  Livia nodded. “It’s real.”

  Larison looked at her. “What were the messages?”

  “Nothing incriminating this time,” Livia said. “Just photos of empty rooms. Guest rooms. Maya matched them to archived real-estate advertisements. They’re all in Schrader’s houses. And a text, warning that the next message will have people in it, and will be widely disseminated.”

  Larison tried to think it through. “The shot across the bow Schrader told Diaz about.”

  “Exactly,” Dox said. “And the people who got those messages got the message. ‘You better get me out of prison right quick if you don’t want video of you raping little girls all over the Internet.’”

  Larison considered. “We know who Schrader is threatening now. So we can infer—”

  “Right,” Dox said. “My guess is, after Hamilton had her meeting with Hobbs, Hobbs went to Devereaux. Devereaux went to Rispel. And Rispel went to us—through Kanezaki, of course.”

  That made sense to Larison. “Can Maya and Evie reverse-engineer the distribution? See what servers the videos reside on, that kind of thing?”

  Dox shook his head. “I asked the same question. Apparently it’s architected in some super-distributed way, and routed through Tor.”

  “Fine,” Larison said. “But look, this reinforces what I was saying before. The bad news is, the opposition is even more formidable than we’d feared. But the good news is, there really is a dead-man switch. Either Schrader gives up those videos, and we’re off the hook, or they get released, and we’re off the hook. What am I missing?”