by Barry Eisler
“But what if he doesn’t abort? Then we’re back to they know that we know that they know . . . you know what I mean. What kind of Night Market approach could we come up with then?”
“Look, Sorm’s not going to abort, because he’s not going to hear about Leekpai. Their phones are off, he’s expecting no contact until after nine. But if I’m wrong, and he does somehow hear about Leekpai, he won’t try to set us up. He’ll run. Think about it. Between us, we’ve killed Gant. Those Khmers. Skull Face. The senator and the senator’s man. Square Head. Dirty Beard. The sword guy. The three Pattaya bodyguards. The three DIA contractors. And now Leekpai and his bodyguards.”
He smiled. “Well, that is an impressive list. And hell, half of it was before we started working together. Imagine all we can accomplish now.”
“That’s my point. You really think after all that’s happened, Sorm would fight us rather than run? Dillon, maybe. But not Sorm. So our worst case is, Sorm aborts. But at that point, what do we have to lose? Do you want to set up at the port instead? If we miss him there, we’re done, he’s on a boat to who knows where and we’re out of leads. And Dillon is still at large, gunning for us.”
He sensed she was right, but still didn’t like the uncertainty. And then she said, “Wait. I might be able to confirm.”
“How?”
“Little. My handler. His files on the Royal Thai Police are extensive. He might have some insight into what they’re thinking about what happened at the port today.”
“That would be a comfort, I won’t deny.”
“But we have to go no matter what. Those kids.”
He nodded. “Don’t you worry about that. I’m not trying to figure out whether. Just how.”
29
They stopped at an electronics store, where Carl bought a big tablet computer. While he was inside, Livia called Little.
“Did you ever find out anything about those three English speakers in Pattaya?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” he told her. “No one’s even claimed the bodies. Whoever they were, they were beyond deniable. No return address at all.”
If they were Dillon’s men, as she expected, that made sense.
“Was that all?” he asked.
“No. There’s something else.”
“Good. Tell me how I can help.”
She hesitated, then said, “Your files on the Royal Thai Police are . . . impressive.”
“Yes, they are.”
“I’m curious. What are your capabilities in real time?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“There was a shooting at the port in Bangkok a few hours ago. I want to know what the police make of it.”
“What’s going on out there, Livia?”
She knew he was going to ask. “Look, my time here has gone in some unexpected directions. And I’ve developed some unexpected leads. I’ll give you a full report when I’m back. Right now, I just need the information.”
“I’m asking why you need it.”
She thought of the children in that container. Of how hot it must be, even with air holes and dry ice. “You’re always saying we’re a team,” she said, trying to control her frustration. “Can you just answer my questions? Why does everything have to be a negotiation with you?”
“It’s not a negotiation. You asked me a question, now I’m asking you one.”
Her patience broke. “Listen, Little. B. D. If you think you’re going to stare me down and I’m going to blink, you’re wrong. All that’s going to happen is I’ll remember that when I asked you for help, you fucked me. And I will never forget that. And everything I’ve learned out here, you can fuck off, you’ll never get any of it. And you can find someone else to work with on whatever the hell you’re really up to on top of it.”
There was a long pause. Little said, “Call me back in thirty minutes.”
She clicked off and powered down the phone. Still seething, she briefed Carl when he came out of the store. They rode off, parked again on a quiet street, and waited. At thirty minutes, she called back. Her heart was beating hard.
“The working theory is a drug heist,” he said. “The two dead men are known to be involved in narcotics.”
She was so relieved she almost felt dizzy. She hadn’t believed the police would know so quickly it had been about Leekpai. But if they had, it would have blown everything at the Night Market. She would never find that little girl.
“Thank you,” she managed to say.
“You’re welcome. I wish you’d believe me when I say we’re a team.”
“I have to go. I’ll check in later.”
“Livia—”
She ended the call and powered down the phone.
She briefed Carl again. Then they found another business hotel. Livia could barely keep her eyes open. It wasn’t just the port. Or killing Leekpai. Or even worrying about the children in that container. Telling Carl what she had told him . . . She had tried not to feel what she was saying, tried to detach her mind from the memories as the words flowed out of her. She thought maybe she’d been partly successful, because the contours of the conversation were hazy now, fragmenting like remnants from a dream. She had told him, hadn’t she? Somehow she had. But the effort had just . . . drained her. All she wanted was sleep. Sleep, hell, she wanted oblivion.
But only for a while. Because what she wanted more than anything was to kill Sorm. Save those kids.
And find that little girl.
When she woke, she had no recollection of having slept. It felt more like she’d been unconscious. She waited for a moment, reconnecting with her limbs, aware of the mattress under her, the sense of being in a room.
She opened her eyes. The lights were off, but the windows were open to the setting sun. Carl was studying the tablet closely. His expression interested her. It was both relaxed to the point of placidity, and also somehow extremely focused. She wondered if this was what he looked like behind a riflescope. If so, she wouldn’t want to be on the other end. At any distance.
She must have moved, because he looked up. “Hey there,” he said.
“Hey.”
“How you feeling?”
“Better.”
“Nothing like a nap, I always say. When this bullshit is done, I’m going to take one every day for a month.”
She rubbed her eyes, then got up and walked over. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, just learning everything I can through Google Earth and otherwise about the world-famous Rot Fai Night Market.”
“Any conclusions?”
“A few. One is, being that old Dillon is a fellow sniper, and a damn proficient one, we will not be using the main entrance no matter what. The overall market doesn’t offer any good sniping opportunities—way too crowded, I imagine, and with all those tents, there’s no clear field of fire—but the entrance would work. And that Golf Alley parking area, which seems to be our best intel at the moment, could be a possibility. But I don’t think even Kanezaki and Fallon could get me a rifle and night-vision scope that fast. Plus, I’d need time to zero it. Wish I could see the actual terrain beforehand, though.”
“I’ve been there.”
“You have? Why didn’t you say so? It’s been killing me that we can’t have a firsthand look, but that’s how they sicced Zatōichi on me—they knew I’d be doing recon around Vann’s office and probably had one of those bird drones deployed in the area. Can’t take the chance again.”
“I should have thought to mention it. There’s just been . . . a lot of other shit.”
“Don’t worry, nothing lost. Walk me through it now. You be my eyes and ears. And we should look at some photos of Dillon, too. There’s plenty online. He got semifamous back in the day, and he’s pretty high-profile now as the deputy director of DIA.”
They started with photos of Dillon, then moved on to the Night Market. She told him everything she could remember, using various maps and photos and videos they found online as guides. His questions were
helpful, all of them obviously geared to means of infiltration, ambush, evasion, and escape.
“What do you think?” she asked when they’d been through all of it.
“Well, avoiding the entrance should be easy enough. The whole place is fenced off, but I don’t think it’s much. The fences seem more intended to mark off the boundaries of the market and prevent spillover than to provide any kind of security. I mean, who’d want to break into or out of a night market anyway?”
“I had the same thought. It’s what happens inside that’s tricky. Because—”
“Because we don’t know what Dillon and Sorm have in mind, yeah. We’re supposed to figure it out, though. That’ll make us confident in our conclusions. That’s Dillon’s game.”
She considered. “We know Sorm’s likely to have a new burner. Or if he doesn’t, we have the number he used with Leekpai.”
Carl nodded. “I sure hope it’s the second.”
“Well, what if it’s the first? Can Kanezaki do anything with information like that? A burner that gets turned on at a certain time and certain place?”
He looked at her. “You know what? Let’s find out. You and I had a breakthrough when we put our heads together. I think it’s time we did the same with Kanezaki You all right with that?”
“I’m all right with it. Will he be?”
He smiled. “Those CIA types have a saying: ‘Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission.’ So I don’t think he could reasonably object.”
They sat on the bed. Carl made the call, switched to speakerphone, and tossed the phone on the mattress between them.
One ring, then a voice. “Hey. I’ve been hoping you would call. It makes me crazy that I can’t reach you when—”
“Before we go any further,” Carl said, “I’ve got you on speakerphone so I can introduce you to my partner, who I’ll just call L. for Lovely Lady.”
There was a pause. Kanezaki said, “What?”
Livia glanced at Carl, then at the phone. “Hi. I understand your name is K.”
There was another pause. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll brief you over a beer sometime,” Carl said. “For now, suffice to say that L. wants the same thing we do. And in pursuit of that thing, saved my ass from that ambush in Pattaya. Imagine the guilt you’d be suffering right now if I’d died there. Well, L. is the reason I didn’t. I believe she deserves some gratitude.”
There was a pause. Kanezaki said, “Half the time I can’t tell when he’s messing with me. But if he’s serious . . . L., thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So . . . you two are working together.”
Carl smiled. “And very effectively, too, I might add. We put our heads together, and realized the bad guys knew we’d become a team and would act accordingly. And then we realized—if two heads are good, three ought to be even better. So here we are. I’ve briefed L. on everything you’ve told me.”
“Everything?”
“I’m sorry, amigo, but this compartmentalization bullshit can go too far. Didn’t y’all decide it was information siloing that led to 9/11?”
“That was one thing, yes.”
“Well, let’s not make that mistake again. Anyway. L. and I have been thinking about your intel. Dillon told Sorm to buy a burner and not turn it on until Sorm was at the Night Market. Is that the kind of thing you could make real-time operational use of?”
“Are you joking? Yes. Of course.”
“How?”
“How many phones do you think will be left powered down, maybe even kept in shielded cases, until they get turned on at the Night Market? Maybe . . . one?”
“Damn,” Carl said. “I see your point.”
“And even if it were more than one, only one is going to call Dillon.”
“But what if—”
“My guys can instantly determine if the numbers that are calling each other have ever called any other numbers. If the answer is no, which looks likely here, then we have two pristine burners, being used to carry out something clandestine.”
“Meaning, on this particular night, Sorm and Dillon.”
“Correct.”
“Dillon knows your capabilities,” Livia said. “Is that right?”
“He knows them well,” Kanezaki said. “I don’t like to admit it, but some of the technology we use was invented at DIA.”
She looked at Carl. “Then this is what Dillon knows we know. They’re meeting at the Night Market. They’ll each have a burner we can identify and track. Of course, we have the other number Sorm might use to call Leekpai.”
Carl nodded. “Speaking of which, text me that photo you took. K., I’m going to text you a photo of a recent-calls log. We have reason to believe the latest entry is a number Sorm might be using.”
“Okay. Good.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Carl said, “You ever find out anything about those three English speakers L. and I dropped at Les Nuits?”
“Nothing. Absolute ghosts.”
“Right,” Carl said, nodding to Livia at the congruence with Little’s information. “I figured. Dillon’s men for sure. And with his bench cleared, I believe Mr. Dillon is about to take the field himself. From what I know of him, I’ll bet he’s missed the action. Does that make sense?”
“More than you know,” Kanezaki said. “We have a whole psych profile on Dillon.”
“Why am I even surprised?”
“I’m too tired to argue about sources and methods,” Kanezaki said. “L., I trust this man with my life. He’s telling me I should trust you. So I’m going to.”
“I’ll try to trust you, too,” Livia said.
There was a pause, maybe while Kanezaki digested the slight lack of parallelism in their assurances. Then he said, “Anyway, yes, CIA has personality profiles on every significant political, business, and media figure in America. The ostensible rationale is that the Russians are doing the same, and we need to be able to see our people’s vulnerabilities the same way our adversaries do. The reality, of course—”
“The reality,” Carl said, “is that CIA exploits those vulnerabilities for its own ends.”
“Well,” Kanezaki said, “you didn’t hear it from me.”
“I’m sure we’ll all forget this conversation ever even happened,” Carl said. “For now, I just want your insights about Dillon. I already told you, he’s a badass with brains. But what else?”
“Dillon has three key personality elements. One, he’s a control freak and hates to delegate. Two, he’s constantly looking for a more efficient solution, something elegant, a way to kill two birds with one stone. And three, when things aren’t going the way he thinks they should, he’s quick to intervene and take matters into his own hands.”
“That invention of his,” Carl said. “With the APCs.”
“Yes, that really was elegant—it doubled the effective number of armored carriers in any given theater.”
“Damn,” Carl said, “if he’s such a control freak and hates to delegate, I can only imagine the psychic price he must have paid to bring in someone like old Zatōichi. I hope your government health insurance is generous when it comes to therapy.”
Livia looked at him. “It’s not just any one of those personality elements that are in play here. It’s all three. Think about what this whole debacle must be costing Dillon. First, Gant screws up and gets killed. And then those Khmers waiting for you in the dark, too. Sorm’s freaking out now, and Dillon sends in the sword guy.”
“Yeah,” Carl said, “But I think he must have known Zatōichi was a long shot.”
“Sure, it was a long shot and the only piece Dillon had at that moment on that part of the board, but still, Zatōichi gets killed, too. So this control freak, who hates to delegate anyway, flies out with a picked three-man team. They kill Vann, so okay, things are finally going his way and reinforcing his belief that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. And then the three picked men ambush you i
n Pattaya—and yet again, you walk away clean, and Dillon’s team is dead.”
“Speaking of which,” Carl said, “thank you again.”
She nodded. “So even if Dillon had more people he could quickly draw on locally—and he probably doesn’t, otherwise, again, why would he have turned to someone like the sword guy—would he trust them? Or would this former Delta badass say, ‘Fuck it, I’ll handle it myself’?”
They were quiet for a moment. Carl said, “Told you we all needed to put our heads together. Still, what’s Dillon planning? How do we get to him?”
They were quiet again. Livia could feel that all the pieces were there. She just couldn’t quite see it yet. But she knew that feeling, that cop feeling of being on the edge of epiphany.
“What if . . .” She paused again, then said, “I’m just thinking about Vann’s indictment. Of course it was terrifying to Sorm. It’s why he demanded that Gant kill Vann. And Gant agreed. That’s a huge risk for DIA, but they took it.”
Carl said, “And carried it out, even after things had gone wrong.”
“Which brings us back to the same question,” Kanezaki said. “The trade. What is Sorm giving them, or what has he got on them, in exchange for that kind of protection? That kind of risk?”
“That’s what I’m getting at,” Livia said. “Assume it’s both. For DIA—or anyone, for that matter—to get in bed with Sorm, to risk exposure of that relationship, they’d have to be getting a lot. And because of Sorm’s own nature, he would inherently have something over them, isn’t that right? I mean, you’re the intelligence expert. You tell me.”
“No, that’s right,” Kanezaki said. “Which is part of the reason CIA cut him loose. He had some periodic intel on Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah and other Southeast Asian terrorist and separatist groups, but what we were getting wasn’t worth the potential scandal.”
Dox smiled. “K. says the Agency has more scruples than other members of the community.”
Livia nodded. She was so close . . . but she still couldn’t quite see it. “But does it really make sense,” she said, more to herself than to them, “to believe that anyone—CIA, DIA, anyone in your ‘community’—would risk continued involvement with someone like Sorm just for some marginally interesting intelligence?”