by Barry Eisler
He’d told Kanezaki that if Gant’s people were willing to live and let live, so was he. Well, they’d sure gotten past that point in a hurry. On the one hand, it was troubling. But on the other hand, it provided some clarity about what he had to do next.
Which was: make whoever was coming after him understand it was going to take more than some Zatōichi wannabe.
Especially now. Because now he was pissed.
5
Late that evening, Livia rode the Ducati straight to her loft. The sun was still way above the horizon, the air cool and dry. Perfect riding weather, but she wouldn’t take advantage of it this time. All day, as she’d worked her cases, interviewing witnesses, checking in with social workers, preparing to testify in an upcoming assault trial, she had thought about Little’s files. She’d been badly tempted to log in to the secure site he had given her, but she knew once she started, she might not be able to stop. And besides, she wanted to log in from behind her own VPN rather than over the Headquarters network. No concrete reason, exactly; more a precaution. She knew what she was going to do to Dirty Beard and Square Head if she found them, and she didn’t want to take a chance on anyone at Headquarters having a way to log her interest.
Of course, if his files had actionable information on two Thai cops who then died violently during her temporary duty there, it was possible Little might suspect. If anything went wrong, it might be worse than that. But she’d figure all that out. One thing at a time.
Her loft was in an industrial district—the top floor of a massive, hundred-year-old three-story building on a dead-end street badly misnamed South Garden. She loved it: isolated, empty at night when its machine-shop workers had gone home, the whole area nothing but brick and corrugated metal and razor wire, and not a fancy condo in sight. Investigating a burglary there when she had been a rookie had been one of her luckiest breaks ever. The owner was thrilled to have a cop living over the shop, and rented it to her cheap.
The sun was reflecting off the western windows as she dismounted, turning them into mirrors of the green Duwamish River and giving the façade the look of something both sentient and strangely stoic. She rolled the Ducati inside the first-floor corridor, locked the doors, and took the stairs to her loft. As much as she wanted to log in to Little’s secure site right away, she had to shower first. It was a ritual—not just for her, she knew, but for other sex-crimes detectives as well—the hot scrub a way to wash away the filth, real and metaphorical, of daily contact with sadists and rapists and child abusers, people so vile it was hard to believe they were really human. No one who did what she did could deny the existence of evil, or avoid worrying, on some level, that by virtue of prolonged contact she might have been polluted by it.
She dried off, changed into jiu-jitsu gi pants and a sweatshirt, picked up her Glock, and glanced at the shrine in the corner—a small wooden Buddha she had carved as a teenager, an incense brazier, and a photograph of her and Nason from when they had been girls in the forest. For sixteen years after they had been separated but before Livia learned of Nason’s death, she had spoken aloud to her sister every day, usually in front of the shrine. But since burying her little bird’s remains in Chiang Rai, she had been trying not to. It was silly, really. Even when she didn’t say anything out loud, the words were still in her mind. She no longer promised to never stop looking for Nason. Now she promised to never stop looking for the rest of the men who had hurt them.
You’re being silly.
It’s a ritual. There’s nothing wrong with a ritual. Like your scalding showers. And it makes you feel better.
She sighed and walked over to the shrine. She set the Glock on the mat next to her, lit a candle and a stick of incense, and placed her palms together at her forehead in the traditional wai, closing her eyes and dipping her head forward as she did so.
“I’m sorry, little bird,” she said. “Sorry I haven’t been talking to you as much. But . . . I think have some new information now. Information that might lead me to the rest of the men. I’m going to find them. I won’t stop looking. Ever. Not until every one of them is dead. Not until it’s finally done. Until it’s over.”
She picked up the Glock, grabbed a protein shake and a jar of mixed vegetables from the refrigerator, then went to her desk, where she fired up the laptop. She punched in the URL for the secure site, and a moment later the screen was filled with an eagle-and-shield seal and the words US Department of Homeland Security: Access Protected, Credentials Required.
She smiled. Credentials she had. She typed in the first of two passphrases Little had provided, then navigated submenus until she came to an HSI page that said Quis Custodiet.
It was from the Latin aphorism Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who guards the guardians?
She felt the familiar surge of strength and determination and hate. The dragon.
I do, she thought, and punched in the second passphrase.
It was everything she could have hoped for: a cross-referenced database of key suspects among the Royal Thai Police, including photographs and all particulars. And though her eagerness made it painful, she spent a half hour querying and tracking down the connections of random names, to conceal her real interest in case anyone was logging her activity through the passphrases Little had given her.
Only when she was satisfied that she’d created a sufficiently thick fog for anyone watching did she allow herself to search for Chanchai Vivavapit—Skull Face. He was listed as deceased, which she already knew, having killed him with her own hands—but there was also an extensive bio that included every unit he had worked in, all the way back to 1995, when he had joined the RTP. All she had to do was query the cross-referenced members of those units and she found exactly who she was looking for. She would never forget their faces, or their smell, or the things they had made her do on the greasy deck of the ship from Bangkok when she had been only thirteen and such horrors had been literally unimaginable to her.
Square Head was Sarawut Sakda. Dirty Beard was Krit Juntasa. Along with Skull Face, they had been in a unit in the RTP Border Patrol, then Narcotics Suppression, and finally the Central Investigation Bureau. Dirty Beard—Juntasa—was still active duty, and still had the wisps of greasy whiskers she remembered, though now they were as much gray as black. But Sakda, the unusual contours of his head unchanged by the years, was listed as on medical leave. She wondered what that might mean.
She spent hours glued to the monitor, periodically going random to obscure her true interest, her keystrokes echoing in the silence of the cavernous loft, unused machining tools hulking all around like silent sentries in the dark. She paused repeatedly to take screenshots of key pages, for fear that Little might change his mind and revoke her access. She forgot about the protein shake and the vegetables. She lost track of time. And then, deep in the night, she had a cop epiphany, so clean, so elemental, that she was shocked she hadn’t realized it sooner. She leaned back in her chair, eyes unfocused, mouth slightly agape as she tried to make sense of the outline of the new shape she could suddenly see.
All her life, she had believed that she and Nason had been taken randomly, just two unlucky girls sold by their impoverished parents from their village in the hills of Thailand, trafficked to America, repeatedly sexually assaulted in transit. When the ship transporting them had docked in Portland, they’d been separated. Livia had been put on another boat, a barge that continued inland all the way to Llewellyn, Idaho, where she had been rescued in a police raid. A local industrialist, Fred Lone, feared and admired throughout the town, had taken her in, to public accolades for his and his wife’s selflessness. And then Lone had begun systematically abusing her. This, too, she had attributed to bad luck, a hopeless karma. Even after she had killed him when she was seventeen, using a strangle she learned training in jiu-jitsu, she had never thought to question how someone’s karma could have been as bad as hers. Maybe on some level she assumed her karma was punishment for having failed to protect Nason. Maybe she had just be
en too young to see things more clearly, too traumatized. But for whatever reason, she had never wondered whether maybe what had happened to Nason and her hadn’t been karma at all.
Regardless, she had never stopped searching for Nason, never stopped waiting for the sole survivor of the police raid at Llewellyn, a white supremacist named Timothy “Weed” Tyler, to be released from prison. When he was, she squeezed new information out of him that made her realize she and her sister had not been abducted at random. Tyler’s information led her in new directions, opened up trails she had thought grown over. As boys, Fred Lone and his brother, Ezra, who went on to become a US senator, had with their father relentlessly sexually abused their own sisters, killing one and driving the other nearly to madness. And then the brothers had become adults, and one day decided they wanted teen sisters again, sisters who loved and were devoted to each other as their own had been, who would do anything to protect each other, any sick thing the brothers could devise.
So two months earlier, Livia had tracked the senator to Bangkok. Before she killed him there, she learned that he had disposed of Nason years earlier. Nason, her little bird. She had recovered the body from a potter’s field in Maryland, cremated the remains, and buried poor Nason in the emerald hills of Chiang Rai, where they had been girls together.
She leaned away from the monitor and blinked hard. Her tears fell to the floor. Then she blew out a long breath and started searching again.
She realized now that in the shock of learning the reality of their abduction, she had focused almost entirely on what had happened. Two sick brothers—one a wealthy businessman, the other a US senator with extensive contacts in Thailand because of his work on the Foreign Relations Committee and his focus on human trafficking. A craving to relive the depravity of their boyhood. A custom order to their contacts in Thailand for two sisters of the right age, the right appearance, the right level of mutual devotion.
Yes. Solving the imperative mystery of what had happened had distracted her from considering something secondary but also critical.
How.
How had the girls been procured? How was a custom order from the Lone brothers disseminated all the way from Washington and Llewellyn to the Lahu tribes in the jungles of Thailand’s Golden Triangle? Who brokered such a far-ranging, specific, unusual sale?
Ezra Lone’s contacts had been with the largest crime syndicate in Bangkok, a syndicate that had crushed its rivals in part due to Lone’s patronage, a syndicate that filled orders more by quantity than type. Fifty Thai girls under age twenty, for brothels in Europe. A hundred Rohingya men for the fishing boats in the Gulf. The syndicate was about mass market, not bespoke. And she and Nason, she had belatedly learned, were an exceedingly unusual order, delivered to the specifications of two men with exceedingly detailed demands.
She remembered how Skull Face and the others had come to her village with a photograph of her and Nason—a photograph they had obtained from the girls’ mother and transmitted to the Lones for their approval. Who could have had the reach to find two suitable Lahu sisters, and then get a photo of them to Washington and Llewellyn? And if the brothers had wanted to see the one photograph, they would have wanted others, as well, to ensure they were presented with a proper selection. Initially, she had thought the photo of her and Nason was just to confirm the men were taking the right girls. Now she realized the Lones must have wanted to compile a collection of prospects, so the brothers could have a variety to select from.
She continued with her queries, occasionally creating a screen grab, noting relationships, absorbing patterns, considering not just connections but also what might be missing.
The syndicate’s relationship with the senator had been incredibly valuable to them. With his help, they had created a virtual monopoly on human trafficking in Thailand. He had provided them with an unusual order, something they knew would delight him if they could fulfill it properly.
Who? Who would they have gone to for something outside their core trafficking competency? Who was the spider at the center of that web?
By the time gray light was creeping into the sky outside the windows, she thought she knew. There seemed to be just one man who had been around long enough. Whose contacts were far-flung enough. Who spoke enough languages and knew enough border officials and invested in enough properties to keep all the local politicians in his employ.
His name was Rithisak Sorm.
6
Two hours following the first and hopefully only sword fight of his life, Dox was downing a lunch of kuy teav rice-noodle soup at a street stall alongside the Olympic Market. He was the only foreigner in sight—the Russian Market, so named for its popularity with Russian expats in the ’80s, being the more popular tourist destination. He knew not everyone would want to know what went into Phnom Penh’s take on kuy teav—pigs’-blood jelly, for one thing, and various chopped and ground internal organs, on top of it—but he had an imperturbable stomach, and anyway, when it came to food, he believed in doing as the Romans do. So after an epic surveillance-detection route to make extra sure he was clear, he’d found himself a plastic-covered table in the shade of a tattered green awning, and enjoyed his soup to the staticky sounds of Cambodian pop coming from a nearby AM/FM radio, the clamor of surrounding hagglers and passing motorbikes and tuk-tuks providing an orchestral accompaniment.
The phone was off and in the shielded case, he’d taken exceptional precautions in his movements, but still he was having trouble feeling as relaxed as he ordinarily would. It was just spooky the way Zatōichi had appeared out of nowhere. Dox couldn’t figure out how the guy had found him. Meaning maybe someone else could find him the same way.
He lifted the bowl and drained the last of the broth, fired up the burner phone and logged on to the free Internet, and called Kanezaki. The thing with Zatōichi had spooked him, no doubt. And while he knew it was at least theoretically possible Kanezaki could have been behind it, he didn’t really believe it. When Dox had first met him, Kanezaki had been nothing but an Agency newbie, albeit obviously a talented one. Since then, they’d been through so much together. Dox had been there for Kanezaki’s first kill, and had talked him through it afterward. They’d worked on so many projects and accomplished a fair amount of good. Several times when the shit had hit the fan, they’d come through for each other, and in doing so had taken some serious personal risks. He just couldn’t believe the man would turn on him.
Or at least he didn’t want to believe it.
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” Kanezaki said when the call had gone through.
“Yeah,” Dox said, relieved despite himself to hear the familiar voice. “I’ve been keeping the phone off. You wouldn’t believe the day I had.”
He briefed him on Zatōichi. Maybe Kanezaki was a good actor, but he seemed genuinely surprised, concerned—and befuddled. He agreed that of course it had to be about Gant. And because it seemed hasty, improvised, and most of all, ineffective, they decided it was likely some sort of spasm, a last-ditch effort to eliminate Gant’s cutout per the original plan.
“But let me tell you what I’ve found out,” Kanezaki said. “Maybe that’ll shed some light.”
“That would be nice. I won’t lie, if you’ve never been attacked by a guy who thinks he’s a samurai, you might not be able to fully appreciate the way the experience stays with you.”
“My hunch was right. Gant was DIA.”
For whatever reason, Dox wasn’t completely surprised. Though he wasn’t exactly happy at the news, either. It really was beginning to look like Gant wasn’t such a pissant after all.
He got up and started pacing, making sure not to stray beyond the limits of the Wi-Fi connection. “DIA?” he said. “You think the Pentagon would assassinate a UN official just to protect a damn asset?”
“Let’s be careful to separate out what we know and what we think. We know Gant hired you to kill Vann, but told you he was Sorm. We think it was a DIA op, but it’s possible Gant was
freelancing, or fronting for another agency. And we think the op was about protecting Sorm, but so far, in that regard, we’re relying entirely on Gant’s claim. No corroborating sources.”
“That’s fair. But one thing I’m beginning to notice about old Gant was that he liked to mix a lot of truth with his lies. Remember, he wasn’t expecting me to live a long, happy life after our conversation. So on the assumption that this op really was about protecting Sorm—”
“The question would be, what could Sorm have been giving the Defense Intelligence Agency that was so good they’d go to such lengths to protect him?”
Dox considered. “Maybe it’s less a matter of what he gives them than it is of what he’s got on them.”
“Or both.”
Dox paused and looked around. Beyond a riot of telephone and utility wires, the sky was a cloudy pastel gray. He tugged on the tail of his wet shirt and unstuck it from his back. The humidity, of course, and the aftereffects of his recent sword battle, but the news wasn’t exactly cooling him off, either.
“Well,” he said, “this does seem to be a bit of a pickle I’m in, I’ll say that. I mean, if Gant’s people think he told me anything about his affiliations, or revealed anything about Sorm and how the op was about protecting him, they’re going to want to get that toothpaste back in the tube ASAP. Which is why they had those locals waiting by my motorbike in the dark after the hit. And maybe why I just had a damn sword fight. My lord, in the twenty-first century, too. Who could have imagined it?”
“The sword guy could have been exclusively Gant’s man. Though I agree, it seems more likely he was sent in by Gant’s people as a hasty Plan B when killing you right after the hit didn’t pan out.”
“Right, and you have to figure, since the plan was to kill me right after I killed Vann, they’re looking for maximum closure here. If I’m rating the odds of Gant’s people knowing about me at fifty-fifty, his people are likely giving similar odds about the chances of Gant having told me a little more than he ought to have. And why wouldn’t he? He expected me to be dead myself five minutes later. You think these people are going to look at odds like those and just walk away? I mean, would you?”