by Barry Eisler
“This wouldn’t be Wat Phnom, would it?” the man said, the bona fides Dox had been told to expect.
“No, you’ll probably want to get a tuk-tuk for that,” Dox replied, the other half of the prearranged exchange.
The man held out his hand. “Dox?”
They shook. Dox noted a reasonably firm grip that told him little about the man on the other end of it. “And you would be…?”
The man smiled, apparently in amusement at the additional precaution. “Gant,” he said. “Why don’t we sit?”
They did. Dox kept his tactical seat and Gant made no protest about having his back put toward the approach to the table. Again, Dox was struck by the man’s confidence. Whoever this guy was, he must have been exceptionally connected to carry himself like no one would ever dare make a run at him.
“Enjoying Phnom Penh?” Gant asked, pleasantly enough.
Dox couldn’t place his accent. American, and not from anywhere in Texas, where Dox had grown up, and nowhere else in the south, either. But beyond that, it could have been from anywhere, much like Gant himself.
“Sure, I like it fine. How about you?”
Gant waved an insect away. “I get tired of these third-world pissholes. I keep waiting for a problem to crop up in London, or the Côte d’Azur. Someplace where the tap water won’t kill you and they know how to make a proper martini.”
Not that a proper martini wasn’t important, but Dox thought the guy sounded like a dipshit. “Well, you’ve got your priorities,” he said, wanting to stay noncommittal.
Gant raised his eyebrows. “What about you?”
“How do you mean?”
“Your priorities.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Paid and laid, and I’m usually pretty happy.”
Gant smiled. “A simple man.”
Dox smiled back. “That’s what people say.” He could have added, That’s what I like them to think.
“In Phnom Penh, I doubt you’ll need my help getting laid. As for getting paid, you’ve received the deposit?”
Dox nodded. “Twenty percent, plus travel expenses.”
“Good. Now let’s talk about getting you the balance. What do you need from me?”
“Well, unless you’re carrying a thumb drive or something, I assume you’ve uploaded the file to the secure site?”
“I don’t think you’ll need a file.”
“How am I going to find the subject?”
“I can tell you exactly where he’ll be, and when he’ll be there.”
“How am I going to recognize him?”
“It shouldn’t be hard. He’ll be sitting next to me.”
Dox looked at Gant, wondering if he was serious. “You want to be sitting right next to this guy when it goes down?”
“It seems the surest and most uncomplicated way of doing things, don’t you think?”
Dox considered suggesting, I think you don’t know a damn thing about what it’s like to be talking to a guy one moment and having his brains all over you the next.
Instead, he said, “Well, who is the guy?”
Gant frowned. “Is that… something you ordinarily need to know?”
Dox didn’t answer right away. The truth was, ordinarily he didn’t need to know much: a name; known locations, acquaintances, and habits; a photograph. The people who hired him didn’t want him to know more than necessary, and that suited him, too. Learning too much could make the target become too human. The more human the target became, the harder the job got. “If it inhabits your mind, it will inhibit your trigger finger,” an instructor had once told him, and he’d found the admonition to be true.
Still, he’d never been brought onto a job and been told flat-out nothing. It was disconcerting, and he realized that until now he’d always been relying on some minimum amount of information about the target to feel comfortable taking the job. Maybe it was a rationalization, but the people he killed, one way or another, they were all in the game. If you wanted to be in the game, you had to accept the risks. An ordinary bare-bones target file was always enough to confirm, however incidentally, that the target fit the “in the game, knew the risks” profile. But killing some guy he didn’t know the first thing about… that just didn’t feel right.
“Mister Gant—”
“Call me Mike if you like.”
“Whatever. The point is, I don’t even know you. I’ve got a buddy who vouched for you, and okay, that’s worth a lot, but I don’t know what outfit you’re with and I don’t know shit about what you’re mixed up in. For all I know, the guy you’re having a problem with is the damn prime minister of Cambodia.”
“What if he were?”
Dox smiled. “Well, then I priced the job too low and we’d need to fix that.”
There was a long silence. If Gant thought the silence was working on Dox, making him want to talk more, he was wrong. Silence and patience were some of Dox’s best friends.
Finally, Gant said, “How much do you know about this country?”
“I know the tap water can kill you and they can’t make a proper martini.”
Gant laughed. “All right, let me fill you in. Our man is named Rithisak Sorm. He’s former Khmer Rouge—”
“Those folks are still running around?”
“Oh, yes. Many of them make their home in Pailin province. Our man included, in fact. Though he’d be harder to get to there because outsiders are more conspicuous than in the capital.”
“You’re looking to take him down for war crimes?”
“Nobody cares what atrocities he committed in his youthful exuberance, though I can tell you he committed plenty. No, this is about something more contemporary. You might know that Cambodia is one of the world’s major hubs for human trafficking. Labor and sex slaves; men, women, and children; to and from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Macao, and Taiwan… they all pass through Cambodia. Or come to rest here.”
Dox did know all that, and plenty more, but he’d gotten far in life having people think he was a hick. Partly it was the accent. Fooled ‘em every time. “Okay,” he said.
“Sorm is a key facilitator of the trade. He has a talent for connections. Gang bosses. Politicians. Cops. He knows every customs and border official along the length of the Mekong. He makes sure everyone gets a cut of whatever they have a taste for—cash for the greedy, opium for the dope fiends, children for the degenerates.”
Whatever reluctance Dox had been feeling a few moments earlier instantly evaporated. Bribery and dope-running put this Sorm character squarely in the game. And children? Sorm sounded like more than just a legitimate target. He sounded like someone who flat-out needed killing.
But still, there were aspects of Gant’s story that didn’t figure. “So your problem is that by ‘connections,’ you also mean ‘protection.’”
“That is exactly right. You know why Sorm will be in Phnom Penh this week?”
Of course he didn’t know, so he just waited for Gant to continue.
“There’s a meeting of a UN GIFT task force—that’s the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. Sorm always comes to town for these—they’re opportunities for him to fete existing customers and to meet potential new ones. Client relations and business development, all without even having to get on a plane. And you know what? I don’t even blame the people he corrupts. They know nothing ever changes, so why fight the system? Why not profit from it, while you can?”
“This is why you don’t just arrest him?”
Gant nodded. “The White House has been trying for years to get the Cambodian government to crack down on Sorm. It’s like running into a brick wall.”
“So you’ve decided to turn to alternative means of law enforcement.”
“That’s a nice way to put it, and it does seem to be the trend. I’m sure you’ve noticed the military is gradually being repurposed, right? Soldiers being deployed as cops, Military Commissions instead of civilian courts… And it’s no more than bipartisan consen
sus that the president has the inherent power to order the indefinite imprisonment, even the execution, of terrorist suspects, including American citizens. This isn’t so terribly different, if you think about it. The same principle, just a bit… broader.”
“A bit.”
Gant shrugged. “The public has proven itself comfortable with drone attacks on terrorists. We don’t think the market is quite ready for the acknowledged assassination of human traffickers, too. But Sorm is no less a problem because of that.”
“Pardon me for saying so, but I don’t think this all sounds like a long-term strategy for success.”
“I’m sure it’s not. But if I may utter the unutterable? Long-term success… that’s over. The empire is in its twilight. The goal here isn’t long-term health, it’s just to give the patient a few more comfortable years.” He smiled. “Of course, don’t quote me on that.”
Dox smiled back. “Hey, as far as I’m concerned? This meeting never happened.”
“Indeed. Anyway, this is just what happens toward the end. Things get… ad-hoc. Seat-of-the-pants. You use whatever viable tools you still have, and for purposes they weren’t designed or intended for. Basically, you do what you have to so your own country doesn’t wind up like this one.”
Dox didn’t much care for Gant’s pessimism, though he suspected that was because he couldn’t much refute it. But none of that mattered. What was important was that Gant’s briefing had told him what he needed to know. So he should have just let it go. But the act of asking some questions made it hard to refrain from asking others.
“All right,” he said. “But why me? When I arrived at the airport, a guy in a customs uniform told me he could move me to the head of the immigration line for a five-dollar gratuity. I figure hell, if a customs official can be bribed for five dollars, you could probably have a real problem solved for maybe fifty. Which is a little less than I charge.”
“Your calculations are good,” Gant said. “But Sorm isn’t the kind of target who can be gotten to by a fifty-dollar street hood. He travels with a retinue of bodyguards, for one thing.”
“Then why not send in one of those fancy drones, like you said? Reaching out and touching someone with match-grade ammo, I don’t know, it seems so old-fashioned. Not that I mind, because I come from a long line of proud knuckle-draggers. But still.”
Gant leaned forward. “You know, there are quite a few otherwise bright people who think what we do is stupid or counterproductive because of the criticism it engenders. But really, you can’t legitimately criticize someone’s tactics if you don’t understand his objectives, don’t you think? Sometimes, our objective is to send a message, and criticism of our actions simply serves to amplify the desired message. Torture Bradley Manning? Quite a message to other would-be whistleblowers, don’t you think? And swallowing up people in the black hole of Guantanamo? A loud and clear message to everyone else we might detain and interrogate. And what about a child trafficker, halfway around the world, with nothing but a fine pink mist where a human cranium used to be? Think there’s a message there?”
“I reckon there is. And one Western Union wouldn’t be adequate to deliver.”
A long moment went by. Dox had been casually and reflexively checking his surroundings for as long as they’d been talking, and he was struck again that Gant hadn’t once done so. There was something about the way the guy carried himself, as though he was above having to take such pedestrian precautions. Dox had been in LA once when a gang turf war erupted. Dox had seen the warning signs and had taken cover behind a truck just before it all went down. The civilians in the area, a beat behind him, had cleared out the moment they realized what was going on, too. But one guy, in a suit and carrying a damn briefcase, had just strolled through the whole thing like it had nothing to do with him. And the hell of it was, he made it all the way without a scratch. Barrio dudes laying into each other with pipes and chains, and Mr. Upright Citizen is just moseying along, checking his watch and messing with his cell phone. For whatever reason, some people just seemed untouchable, and maybe Gant was one of them.
“Okay,” Gant said. “Is there anything else you need to know?”
“Well, I’m still a little concerned that you want to be right there when it happens. I wouldn’t exactly call that SOP.”
“Probably it’s not. But am I correct in thinking that’s more my problem than yours?”
“You’re not worried about witnesses tying you to this in some way?”
“At the risk of sounding immodest, I think I can safely say I have a talent for not being noticed. Or, if I’m noticed, for not being remembered. Or, if I’m remembered, for not being found.”
Dox had no trouble believing any of that. He couldn’t figure out what was the basis for the man’s confidence. Dox knew veterans of the shit who wouldn’t flinch at being midconversation with a man the instant he shuffled off this mortal coil courtesy of a long-range rifle shot to the brain, but every one of them was a hardened operator, with all the signs and weight that kind of experience came with. Gant was so casual about things, he seemed like a posturing first-timer. And yet Dox’s buddy had assured him the man was anything but. He wondered what it would be like to be one of these people. Maybe there was just a kind of royalty in the world, people with a certain rank or privileges that made them carry themselves like they were above it all. He didn’t know.
“All right then, like you say, it’s your risk. But unless you’re planning on wearing a raincoat on the day in question, we might want to devise some special signal I can give you so you can lean away at the critical moment. It’d save you a story at the dry cleaner’s about how you cut yourself shaving.”
Gant chuckled. “That sounds sensible. Well, I suppose you could always just call me on my mobile. In fact, I think that would work well. I could confirm the target for you one last time on the phone, and it would give me an excuse to step out of the way at the ‘critical moment,’ as you say.”
“All right, if that’s how you want to do it.”
“Now, I imagine you weren’t able to travel here with your own equipment. What else do you need from me?”
“I wasn’t and it depends. What kind of distances are we talking about?”
Dox was expecting Gant to ask why, in which case Dox would have to explain that equipment error that would be meaningless at a quarter mile could mean a missed shot at farther out. And that therefore, if Dox was going to have to drop this Sorm character at extreme distance, it would help to have precision hardware, meaning probably not what was readily available in their current environs.
But instead, Gant just said, “I would say, no farther than five hundred yards. Probably less.”
Dox was dubious. “Five hundred yards? Shit, you could have just hired someone to throw a rock at him from that close. Why me?”
“You have a reputation for reliability and discretion. Forgive my candor, but should the worst happen, we can’t afford the kind of blowback we had in Pakistan with Ray Davis. We need someone maximally deniable.”
Davis was a CIA contractor who was imprisoned in Pakistan after shooting to death a couple of locals. It had turned into a major hairball and even the president wound up getting pulled into it. So it made sense they would want someone they could hang out to dry if things went sideways. Dox didn’t have a problem with that; in fact, he was used to assuming the risk of a shitstorm and had already factored it into his price for the job.
“Day or night?” he said.
“Night.”
“All right, a night shot at five hundred yards or closer, I can get by without anything too fancy. Still, I’m tempted to ask for an XM2010 ESR, but I reckon that would be a little too recognizably made-in-the-USA. Should the worst happen and all that.”
“Correct, the XM2010 is too new and too associated with the US military. What about its predecessor, the M24? Combat-proven and reassuringly widespread.”
Well, old Gant knew his hardware, it seemed. And the M24
was as comfortable to Dox as old pair of perfectly sprung boots. But as sensible as Gant’s reasoning might have been, he didn’t like that the man was proposing a bolt-action weapon. Other things being equal, if the shit hit the fan, Dox preferred a semi-automatic.
“If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’d prefer an M110.”
“Still a little too new and a little too associated with Uncle Sam. What about the SR-25? The Thai Army has it, and so do the militaries of quite a few other nations, so it’s conveniently deniable.”
Dox would have preferred to have the weapon he chose rather than the one Gant proposed, but in his experience, there was nothing to complain about with the SR-25. “All right. With the 20-round magazine, the Leupold Mark 4, an AN/PVS-14 night scope, and sound suppressor, naturally. Basically, the MK-11 configuration. Oh, and a hundred rounds of match-grade ammunition. I’ll want to play around with it beforehand.”
Gant nodded. “I’ll have the equipment by tomorrow morning. I’ll contact you on the secure site and let you know where you can pick it up. Tomorrow night is Sorm’s appointment in Samarra—will that give you time to zero the rifle and make any other preparations you need?”
Dox understood the allusion to John O’Hara’s novel. But he doubted Gant would have expected that, which meant the man intended the reference to be supercilious. Hell, he probably didn’t think Dox knew what supercilious meant, either.
He broke out in a good ol’ boy grin. “Tomorrow night ought to be fine.”
• • •
That night, lying in bed with Chantrea, clothed as usual, he was thinking of Sorm, and of how much he didn’t know about Cambodia. How much maybe he didn’t want to know.
“May I ask you something personal?” he said.
She looked at him, her expression half-veiled in shadow, and nodded.
“When you’re hanging around in a bar, like you were when we met. If you go home with someone… nobody’s… I mean, nobody’s coercing you to do that, are they? Forcing you, I mean. It’s your choice?”