by Barry Eisler
Dox, his eyes still closed, said, “What’s on your mind, son?”
Christ, did the guy read minds, too? “What do you mean?”
Dox opened his eyes. “Well, either you’re trying to wear out the carpet in our luxury suite here, or something’s making you antsy.”
“It’s nothing. I just don’t like waiting.”
“I thought you ISA studs could outwait a rock. You trying to disabuse me?”
Treven chuckled. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s all right. I’m feeling antsy myself.”
Treven looked at him. Propped serenely on the bed, he looked about as antsy as a statue.
“That’s how you act when you’re antsy?”
Dox grinned. “Oh, yeah. My blood pressure’s way up at the moment. When I’m feeling relaxed, I’m practically invisible.”
Treven couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “Well, what’s bugging you?”
“Your friend, to be honest.”
“Larison?”
Dox nodded and turned to Kei, who, though she hadn’t said or done anything different since they started talking, somehow seemed to be following their conversation with interest.
“Darlin’,” he said, “would you mind wearing the headphones for a few minutes? Nothing special, just the dreaded OpSec, which is what we badasses call operational security.”
“I don’t mind listening,” Kei said.
Dox smiled a little sadly. “I know you don’t. Would you trust me, though?”
Amazingly, Kei nodded as though she indeed did trust him. Dox, Treven decided, just had a way with people. Those kids in the minivan at the Capital Hilton had practically fallen in love with him inside five minutes. And now, he’d somehow gotten a woman who he’d helped kidnap to apparently believe he had her best interests at heart. Treven wished he knew the trick. He would have liked to be able to do it himself.
Dox got up and put the headphones on Kei, then walked over to Treven. “Let me ask you something,” he said quietly. “How well do you know that hombre?”
Treven wondered where he was going with this. “Not that well. I tracked him down in Costa Rica for Hort, and then we wound up working together on this fucked-up op.”
“Then you don’t really know him.”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m just trying to get a handle on him. I’m usually good at reading people, but when I try to read Larison, it’s like the pages are blank. That, or it’s too dark to see them.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“What do you think he’s thinking right now?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, if you were him, and you just found out the diamonds are real, and Horton is now a civilian, and you don’t give a shit about schoolchildren being murdered, what do you do?”
Treven didn’t answer. He’d been half-consciously grappling with the same question.
Dox waited, then said, “Do you just take your cut of the diamonds and walk away?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cause that’s a lot of loose ends you’re leaving behind.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And that’s just the cold-hearted calculus of the cold-hearted operator I’m trying to imagine. It could be even worse.”
“How?”
“You think Larison has any…secrets?”
Treven was suddenly and profoundly aware that, this whole time, he’d been wrongly assuming Dox was a little bit dull. And, equally suddenly and profoundly, that he’d been completely, dangerously wrong about that. He wondered how many people had come to the same realization in the moment before Dox put out their lights forever. He supposed he should count himself lucky, for having learned the lesson so cheaply.
“Secrets?” he said, hoping his expression hadn’t betrayed anything.
Dox looked at him, the hillbilly gone, the expression more akin to that of a human polygraph. “Secrets,” Dox said again. “Because, if he had any, and he had reason to believe that we might know or even suspect those secrets, I’m a little concerned about what conclusions he might draw.”
Treven didn’t answer. He thought Dox was right, but wasn’t sure about the implications of acknowledging it.
“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Dox said. “And that’s why you’re not answering. You think I’m wrong?”
Treven shook his head. “No.”
“Well, we can handle Larison. One way or the other. But one thing I cannot abide is what he might do to this girl here. If those diamonds are legit, we don’t need her anymore. And we’ve put her through enough. I say we let her go. What do you say to that?”
“Just let her go?”
Dox nodded. “Right now. Before the angel of death gets back here and starts trying to implement whatever conclusions he might have arrived at during this morning’s absence.”
Treven thought. He didn’t want to be a party to the girl’s death anymore than Dox did. But it was also dangerous to do this kind of thing without even an attempt at consensus.
“Look,” he said, “even if I agreed with you, and I’m not saying I don’t, we can’t just let her walk out of here right now. Rain and Larison aren’t back yet, and we have to assume she’d go straight to the police.”
“She doesn’t even know where she is,” Dox said. “I could take her out blindfolded, drop her off wherever, and drive away, and that would be that.”
“Are you that sure she couldn’t find her way back here? There are sounds, smells…some identifying thing we missed in this room. Or a sense of the turns you make and the distances you go. She’s smart. I can see that, and so can you.”
“All right then, what would you say if I drove her someplace and waited for you all to call me? I could let her go then, with plenty of time for all of us to vamoose.”
“What if the diamonds aren’t real? We don’t know yet.”
“What if they’re not? Look at her. You going to put a bullet in her head? Or watch while Larison does?”
Treven didn’t answer.
“Of course you’re not,” Dox said. “And you should be proud and relieved that you couldn’t—that your parents didn’t raise someone who could. Now, this has gone on long enough. If Horton has called our bluff, I say so be it. We’ve got other things to do, like stopping a group of ruthless zealots from massacring a bunch of schoolchildren in the name of the greater good.”
The reference to his parents, both long gone, hit home. For a moment, Treven wondered whether Dox had deliberately seemed to suggest the impractical idea that they let Kei go immediately because he knew it would get Treven to object on practical, and therefore persuadable, grounds. He realized Dox must have been waiting for the right moment to initiate this whole conversation. He’d probably been hoping Treven would give him an opening, and, when he sensed they were likely running out of time, he’d found one himself. Treven felt like an idiot for having thought the man was dull. If there was a dull one in the room, it was himself.
“Christ,” he said. “Larison’s going to get back here and go postal. And Rain might, too.”
“Rain’ll be just fine. I know him. As for Larison, well, he’s unarmed for the moment. I recommend we keep him that way, until we’re sure he’s had time to properly adjust to our new circumstances.”
Treven thought for a moment. “If the diamonds are real,” he said, “I think Larison will get over this. I think.”
Dox nodded as though already knowing where Treven was going. And approving of it.
“But if they’re not real,” Treven said, “and he feels like Hort fucked him again, and we were complicit, we’re going to have to kill him. Because if we don’t, he’ll kill us.”
Dox nodded again, and again Treven had the uncomfortable sense that he’d been guided along to his conclusions by exceptionally deft hands.
But that didn’t change the essential accuracy of the conclusions themselves. “All right,�
�� he said. “Get her out of here. You better hurry. They could be back soon.”
Dox looked at him, then held out his hand. “Ben Treven, I’m glad to know you’re one of the good guys.”
Treven shook his hand. “I wouldn’t go that far. Now go.”
Rain and Larison got back about an hour after Dox had left with Kei. Treven unlocked the door and let them in with his left hand. In his right, he held the Glock.
They came in and he locked the door behind them. They glanced around the room and at the open bathroom door. Treven braced himself.
“Where’s the girl?” Larison said.
“With Dox,” Treven said.
“Oh, shit,” Rain said, putting his fingers to his temples like a man struggling with a migraine. “I knew this was going to happen.”
“Knew what was going to happen?” Larison said. He turned to Treven. “Where are they?”
Rain said, “He took her, didn’t he?”
Treven nodded.
Larison’s face darkened. “Took her? What the fuck is going on?”
Treven looked at Larison. “I’ll tell you the truth. He thought you were going to come back here and kill her. And you know what? I agreed with him.”
“What if I was?” Larison said. “Hort was supposed to call off the dogs. Instead, he neutered himself. He broke the deal. That means he pays the price.”
“Are the diamonds real?” Treven said.
Rain nodded. “They’re real.”
“Good,” Treven said, still looking at Larison. “That’s more than enough. We’re not going to kill some innocent girl because of your grudge against her father. I don’t care what you call it. That’s what it is.”
Rain said, “All right, let’s be practical for a minute. We can all kill each other afterward, if we still want to. What did you work out with Dox?”
“I’m supposed to call him when you two are back,” Treven said. “And then the four of us are supposed to meet at some café you like in Beverly Hills.”
“Shit,” Rain said, “we just came from Beverly Hills. What café? Urth?”
“That’s the one. The guy is pretty particular about his food.”
“He has one of the cell phones?”
“Yes.”
“All right, call him. But best to use a payphone. No sense blowing more than one of the phones.”
“You want me to change the location?”
“No, I don’t want to say anything about where we’re meeting on an open line. Urth is fine. We paid up for the room?”
“We’re paid up.”
“What’s Dox driving?”
“The Honda I boosted.”
“Then the truck’s still here?”
Treven nodded his head toward the bed stand. “Keys are right there.”
“All right. There’s a payphone on the northwest corner of Lincoln and Pico. Call Dox, tell him we’ll meet him as planned as soon as we can.”
“Where’s my gun?” Larison said.
“Top dresser drawer,” Treven said. “Yours and his.” He waited a moment, but Larison didn’t move for the dresser. That was good. If he had, Treven was going to shoot him right then and there. He wondered if Larison understood that.
“We’ll pull the truck around in about fifteen minutes,” Rain said. He seemed to know exactly what was going on, and Treven wondered what he had planned. Talk to Larison? Kill him? He couldn’t read Rain much better than he could read Larison.
Whichever it was, he hoped Rain knew what he was doing. He nodded and went out.
Larison wanted to go to the dresser and get the Glock. He wasn’t even sure what he was going to do with it, but he felt so outplayed and so boxed in that he just needed to be holding a weapon. It was like this sometimes when he woke from one of the dreams, arms shaking and heart hammering and torso slicked with sweat, and the only thing that could bring him down was the feel of a weapon in one hand and solid objects, totems of the waking world, under the other. But Rain was standing between him and the dresser, and he didn’t know what Rain would do if he made a move. Would Rain try to stop him? Larison had sixty pounds on the man, maybe more, but he’d watched Rain take out those contractors in Tokyo and they were even bigger than Larison. Anyway, even if he could beat Rain hand-to-hand, there wouldn’t be much value to reaching the gun if he got to it with a broken arm, or worse. He decided the safer course was to stand down, for now.
Rain was watching him, and Larison had the sense the man knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Well?” Rain said. “What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean?” he said, telling himself he was playing for time.
“What would you say if I told you about a four-man team, three of whom independently came to the same conclusion about the fourth member?”
Larison didn’t answer.
“In case I’m not being clear,” Rain went on, “the conclusion I’m referring to is that you were going to come back here and punch that girl’s ticket.”
“So what?”
“Were we right?”
“What difference does it make?”
“In a way, none. Because when you have three people out of four thinking the worst of you, there’s a problem even if the three people are mistaken. And that problem is you.”
Larison didn’t answer. Christ, if he only had that gun. Just the feel of it in his hand. To hold all this shit at bay.
Rain watched him. “You want to know what Treven didn’t say?”
Again, Larison didn’t answer. The dresser was eight feet away. Could Rain really stop him?
“He didn’t say the other thing we were all thinking. Which is that you weren’t just going to punch Kei’s ticket. You were going to try to punch everyone’s.”
Larison gritted his teeth. He’d never felt so exposed. They knew too much about him. They’d seen through him. Somehow he’d faltered. It was all out in the open now. All of it.
“Were we wrong?” Rain asked.
Larison looked at him. “Stop fucking around. You want to finish this, let’s finish it.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“You’re trying to fuck with my head, and I don’t like it.”
Rain walked over to the dresser.
Larison, distracted by his own inner turmoil, was slow to react. He said, “Don’t!” But in the time it took him to get the word out, Rain had already opened the drawer. Rain glanced back at him, then reached in and came out with the Glock.
Larison watched, fascinated. A weird placidity settled over him. He tried to think of something to say. Nothing came out. There was a moment of weakness in his knees, but he thought that was relief more than fear. Yes, relief.
Rain checked the load in the Glock. He held the gun and looked at Larison. His expression was grimly purposeful.
Larison smiled. It seemed important to let Rain know he wasn’t afraid. That, on some level, he was even complicit.
Rain tossed him the gun. Larison was so astonished he almost couldn’t react. At the last instant, he got his hands up and caught it. He stood staring at it for a moment in shock.
“What a waste,” Rain said. “Overall, we’ve been a pretty solid detachment. We’ve survived two ambushes and a hunt by the national security state; we’ve scored a hundred million dollars; our biggest enemy just neutered himself, as you put it…and we’re going to cash all that in because we just can’t help killing each other. Does that make sense to you?”
Larison blinked. Was Rain fucking with him? He could tell by the Glock’s weight the magazine was full. Still, he racked the slide to be sure. A bullet ejected. Larison caught it in the air and looked at it. Standard nine-millimeter round. The gun was loaded.
“What are you doing?” Larison said. He was holding the gun, but he felt suddenly terrified.
“I’m doing for you what Dox once did for me. The thing I told you about in Vienna—Kwai Chung.”
“You told me he saved your life.”
“That was the obvious part. He also proved to me I could trust somebody. Of the two, I think the second had the more lasting effect.”
Larison tried to think of something to say and couldn’t access the words.
“How do you think Horton wants it?” Rain said. “You think he wants you killing everyone who might know your secrets? Or trusting people to watch your back?”
Larison looked at him. He wanted to ask what Rain meant by “secrets.” But to ask would be to reveal. And besides, he could sense, on some deep, unexplainable level, that Rain…already knew. The same way he could sense that he also didn’t care.
“What about the others?” he heard himself say. Christ, it sounded so weak. So pleading.
“Dox expects people to act honorably,” Rain said. “If you let him down in that regard, he also believes the honorable thing is to track you down and shoot you. But he does like to give people the benefit of the doubt.”
“I can’t figure him out.”
“He grows on you. Anyway, you think Dox or Treven cares about you as anything other than a friend or a foe? Each of us just pocketed more money than we can ever spend. The trick now is to live to enjoy it. And we have a better chance of doing that watching each other’s backs than we do trying to preemptively kill each other. Isn’t that what you told me in Vienna you wished you had? Someone who really had your back? Well, how are you going to get that if you reflexively kill people because you’re terrified of trusting them?”
Larison blew out a long breath. Then another. He felt like he was going to jump out of his skin and told himself to Calm. The Fuck. Down.
Rain looked at him. “You mind if I take my gun out of the dresser?”
Larison shook his head. A minute ago, he would have killed Rain to stop him. Now…it didn’t matter.
Rain took out the Wilson Combat, checked the load, and eased it into his waistband.
“What’s the plan?” Larison said, unable to let go of his own gun, though he had no intention of using it.
“Well, it might be selfish,” Rain said, “but I’m pretty sure the three of us are going to Nebraska to try to stop a massacre.”
“Why is that selfish?”