by Barry Eisler
“What do you mean, ‘what we say we really want’?”
“Look, if they really just wanted the tapes, I already told them their best course of action. The problem is, they don’t just want the tapes. They also want Larison. They’re scared and they’re angry, and even though they don’t know it and won’t admit it, part of what’s driving them is the urge to subdue the author of their pain and strap him to a table and exercise dominion over his body, mind, and soul. They need to feel like they’re in control again, and just having the tapes out there with the lowest probability of release isn’t going to help with that.”
“But torturing Larison will.”
Hort sighed. “I want you to remember something, son. Remember it and never forget.”
“Okay.”
“There are going to be times when you will be tempted to use what the New York Times in their chickenshit way calls ‘harsh interrogation techniques.’ You can call it whatever you want, you and I know what it means, and so does everybody else.”
“Okay.”
“A good ops man understands his real objectives, knows the right objectives, and chooses his means accordingly. So when you feel that temptation, you never forget that when you resort to those tactics, your motives are at least as much about the means as they are about the ends.”
“I don’t follow.”
“People always say they’re torturing to get the information. But there are a lot of ways better than torture to get information. So you don’t torture just because you want the information. You torture because you want to torture. I didn’t know this when I was your age. I know better now, and I don’t want you to make the mistakes I’ve made. Not just for tactical reasons, either. I don’t want your soul to have to bear it. I’ve seen what that does to a man. And I don’t want you to make the same mistakes these assholes keep making, again and again and again, and never learning from them. So promise me.”
Damn, he’d never heard Hort so agitated. He felt like he was starting to get a better sense of those unseen forces at work, that Hort was opening a window and letting him see inside. “I promise,” he said.
“Good. Now, Larison’s supposed to call in to the DCI thirty minutes from now. He’s expecting to get a status update about the diamonds. Instead, someone is going to tell him the diamonds aren’t coming and that if he doesn’t immediately hand over the tapes, Nico’s family is going to start getting smaller.”
“What good would it do if he turned something over anyway? He could have made a hundred copies.”
“That’s not the point. They’re just trying to bait him into going to San Jose.”
“You think it’ll work?”
There was a pause. “I think he’ll come. But if he does, he’ll be ready. And these Ground Branch guys, going up against a cornered, desperate man like Larison … they’re not going to get him. They’re going to get killed.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to observe. Whatever happens, it’s going to be hairy. Maybe you’ll be able to see something or learn something that’ll keep us in the game after this play is over. But you need to stay to the sidelines. These guys don’t know you, and they could be trigger-happy.”
“What about Lanier?”
“Your FBI friend?”
“I wouldn’t call her my friend.”
“Can you lose her?”
“I don’t know. She’s pretty tenacious.”
“Well, you’ll have to lose her or manage her, one or the other. You don’t want her in your way.”
Ben wasn’t sure which would be easier. “Okay,” he said.
“Larison should be calling in shortly. I’ll let you know how it goes. If this plan of theirs works out, I’d say you can expect him to arrive in Costa Rica in anywhere from the next six to twenty-four hours. It’s going to be an interesting day in San Jose.”
21
Caught in the Crossfire
Ulrich was just heading into Trinity Methodist with his wife when he saw Clements standing by the entrance. Christ, were they watching him now? And was this their way of letting him know they were watching?
No, he was probably just being paranoid. And even if they were watching, so what? Did they really think they could intimidate him? He had the recordings, and God help them if they pushed him.
“You go ahead,” he said to his wife. “I just need to make a quick call.”
She smiled understandingly and went inside. She knew he viewed church attendance mostly as a matter of keeping up appearances, both in the community and, just in case, with the Almighty. More often than not, the pre-church calls he made lasted longer than just a minute.
He raised his mobile to his ear and walked back out to the sidewalk, nodding at a few incoming parishioners along the way. By the time he reached the parking lot, he heard Clements just behind him. He dropped the mobile back into his pocket.
Clements fell in alongside him. “I tried you at the office, but—”
“What, are you watching me now?”
“Please. It’s pretty easy to know where someone goes to church.”
Clements’s denial did nothing to ease his suspicions. But it didn’t matter. The audiotapes were all the protection he needed. “What is it?”
Clements glanced down at Ulrich’s hands. “You taping this conversation?”
“I’ve got more than enough already. We’re already at mutual assured destruction, Clements. I don’t need more warheads.”
Ulrich waited, giving Clements time to absorb the truth of Ulrich’s words. After a moment, Clements said in a low voice, “The national security adviser just ordered JSOC to stand down. Larison called in this morning, we told him we know who he is, we know everything, that if he doesn’t cough up the tapes, his lover and his lover’s family are fucked, one at a time. We think he’s on his way to Costa Rica right now.”
Ulrich looked at him. “Your guys are there?”
“On their way. The national security adviser made clear this is CIA’s op. Horton didn’t like it, but he doesn’t have the resources right now anyway.”
“And you do? For a snatch?”
There was a pause. “Yes and no. No, Ground Branch doesn’t have a snatch team in theater. But we were able to scramble a private team. Blackwater.”
“Blackwater? We don’t want contractors getting hold of those tapes. Are you crazy?”
“What were our alternatives? You want JSOC running the op?”
Shit. Clements had a point. “You trust those guys?”
“More than I trust Horton.”
Another good point. “What about Horton’s guy? The one in the photo. Treven.”
“Like I said, he’s been ordered to stand down.”
“You really think Horton is just going to tell his man to walk away?”
Clements stroked his chin. “I see what you’re saying. Well, I have two Ground Branch guys there now per what we discussed previously. They’re not equipped for a snatch, and two is too few anyway, but you’re right, it wouldn’t hurt to have them keep looking for Treven.”
“Good. And even more important, make sure the contractors have the photo. If Treven shows up at the snatch point, they should assume he’s there to interfere. And you know, it’s not like they’d be expecting him, so it would be understandable if he accidentally got caught in the crossfire.”
“You’re right. I’ll make sure the Blackwater operators know who to look for.”
“And the Ground Branch guys. And what to do if they see him.”
Clements nodded and turned to walk away. “They’ll know.”
22
Big and Bad
Paula came out of the bathroom, obviously done with her call. Ben said, “How’s the Bureau today?”
She looked at him. “They say my role here is done.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m supposed to return to Washington.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“You know it’s a bad thing. It means that’s it for the law. The assassins are going to take over now.”
Ben sighed. She was so earnest with the law-and-order shit.
“Look,” he said, “for what it’s worth, I’ve been ordered to stand down, too.”
“You have not.”
“Yeah, I have.”
“What about Larison?”
“He’s someone else’s problem now.”
“You can just care, and then not care, like flipping a light switch?”
“You’re assuming I cared to begin with.”
“You know, I’ll bet a lot of people believe you when you tell them something like that. I’ll bet there are times when you even believe yourself.”
“Look, it’s too early in the morning for you to psychoanalyze me, okay? Why don’t you just fly back to Washington, and next time I’m in town, we can have a drink.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t drink?”
“I don’t think I’m just flying back to Washington with my wings clipped. And I don’t think you are, either.”
Ben didn’t answer. It felt like it was her move.
“You’re not, are you?”
He sighed. “I’m supposed to observe.”
“You’re not a very good liar.”
“Actually, I’m an accomplished liar. It just that this time, I’m not lying.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know, exactly. All I know is my team is out, and some other team has been brought in. My coach doesn’t think the new team understands the game and is going to lose. Badly. He wants me to be on hand.”
“In case they need a pinch hitter?”
“Just to observe.”
“Well, that sounds good to me.”
“Look—”
“Don’t even start. I’m not going to just walk away. So we can do this separately and trip each other up, or we can keep coordinating.”
“I don’t know that our coordination has been all that coordinated.”
“We’ve gotten this far.”
Ben knew he could lose her easily enough. But he didn’t know what her people knew. If they’d briefed her on Nico’s particulars, losing her wouldn’t help. She’d just be waiting wherever he arrived.
“Let’s get some breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know when we’ll get another chance. It feels like something big and bad is on the way, and I want to be in position when it arrives.”
23
One Way or the Other
Larison waited in front of the gate at JFK for his flight to San Salvador, his eyes moving from the announcements board to the faces of the people swirling through the area and then back again. He wanted desperately to fly directly to San Jose International, but if they had the resources to watch airports, that would be the one they’d key on. From San Salvador he could catch a nonstop to one of the smaller towns—Limón or Tamarindo or Quepos—and then finish the journey by train or bus. Or better yet, by motorcycle.
He was still shaky. He’d called from a Jersey City motel room, expecting the conversation to be brief and one-sided, expecting them to be meek, even if it was just playacting while they tried to buy themselves time. He was going to be in complete control. So he’d never really recovered from the first words they said to him:
Hello, Daniel Larison.
He’d made it through the call. He listened wordlessly as they explained how they would send contractors to rape Nico’s nieces and nephews and mutilate his parents and sisters and brothers-in-law; and then, when the happiness, the coherence, the sanity of Nico’s family had been torn and broken and shattered, they would explain to Nico why it had all happened. Because of the man Nico was seeing, who wasn’t who he said he was. Who did a stupid thing to antagonize powerful people, who kept on doing it even after he’d been warned of the consequences to Nico and his family.
When they stopped talking, Larison had paused for a moment to demonstrate his composure. When he spoke, his voice was calm, emotionless, the same voice he would have used had he not heard a single word they’d just uttered. He said, I’ll call again on Friday with instructions on how to deliver the diamonds. If you don’t deliver, I will release the tapes. And anything that happens to Nico or his family will seem mild after what I will do to you and yours.
Then he had hung up. For a long moment he stood still, his eyes unfocused, his heart hammering. Then his legs buckled and he collapsed and curled up on the floor on his side and sobbed uncontrollably for almost ten minutes. He knew he had to move—triangulating on a cloned satellite call was almost impossible, but it was almost impossible that they’d identified him so quickly, too. But he couldn’t move. Shame and horror and self-pity and fear and grief had simply overwhelmed him.
Finally, it subsided. He picked himself up, staggered to the sink, and splashed cold water on his face. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes red, his cheeks dripping and unshaven, his teeth bared, his nostrils flaring with his agitated breathing. He looked like a nightmare.
Then be a nightmare.
Yes, that was it. Make them pay. Make them pay for everything.
But first, he had to move. That lesson had been drilled into him from the start: No matter what you were hit with, no matter the pain or shock or confusion, never stop moving. Never give them a stationary target.
A corollary lesson was that when you’re ambushed, your best chance of prevailing almost always involved a simple strategy:
Attack back.
They’d be expecting that, of course. In fact, as the shock of the call wore off, to be replaced by a seething determination, he began to understand they were baiting him, hoping he would be provoked.
What he would do, therefore, wouldn’t be a surprise. How he would do it would be everything.
He checked his watch. He tried not to imagine what it would be like to be impossibly rich. He could have chartered a jet, he could have been on the ground in San Jose in three hours. Instead, he was glued to this seat in an airport, waiting for the interminable minutes to pass.
The worst part was that he couldn’t figure out what the vulnerability had been. It was distracting him, his mind wouldn’t let it go, he kept going over every aspect of his preparations and his movements and he couldn’t identify a single thing he’d done wrong. The only thing he could remotely come up with was those two brothers, the ones who’d been tailing him and who he’d assumed had just been petty criminals. Maybe they’d been more than that … but even if so, who were they, and how had they been tailing him in the first place? He’d been so careful not to create patterns, but somewhere, he must have done something, he just couldn’t understand what. Maybe the NSA had capabilities beyond even what he’d known of? Maybe he’d made some small mistake, and their supercomputers had unraveled everything from that?
He checked his watch again. He’d always prided himself on the supernatural calm he could summon before combat, but it wasn’t working for him now. He’d imagined a dozen ways this might have ended badly. All of them were unpleasant, but he’d been prepared, he could have faced it. What he’d never imagined was that they’d get to him through Nico.
He scrubbed a hand across his face. He was so exhausted. The announcements and the beeping from the goddamned golf carts … it was all so loud and cacophonous, his head was beginning to pound from it. The dreams were killing him, too; he’d had no idea how bad it was going to be without the pills. It wasn’t getting better, either—in fact, every night was worse than the one before. What had he been thinking, what monumental hubris had caused him to believe he could take on the entire fucking government and walk away from it clean? It was never going to work, he could see that now. Was it some kind of dramatic stand he was taking, Ahab slashing at the back of the whale even as it carried him down to drown in the dark and the deep? What the hell had he been trying to do?
If he was going to die anyway, he should release the tapes right now.
All he had to do was log on to one of the sites he’d created, enter a password and then a command, and it would be done. Or fail to log in for a preset interval, that would do it, too. Would they really hurt Nico after that?
He decided they might. He couldn’t take that chance. And besides, maybe, maybe, maybe he could turn this around. Regain the momentum. Show them who they were fucking with.
The main thing was that the tapes would be released, one way or the other. He focused on that, thinking, one way or the other, one way or the other, until he started to feel a little calmer. One way or the other. That was pretty much the only thing still keeping him going in the face of the suffocating knowledge that he’d screwed up and probably doomed Nico and rendered all his own most ardent hopes into pathetic, childish fantasies. Knowing that the tapes would get out, one way or the other.
That, and imagining what he was going to do to the people who would be waiting for him in San Jose.
24
He’ll Come from Here
Ben and Paula fueled up with an enormous buffet breakfast in the InterContinental’s restaurant—omelettes, exotic fruits, and several cups of Costa Rica’s justifiably famous coffee. Ben had a feeling the rest of the day would be nothing but granola bars, and wanted to make sure they had plenty to run on, through the night if necessary.
When they were done, they headed over to Nico’s residence. Ben had briefed Paula on their cover for action—the story they would tell if anyone questioned their presence. They were Americans thinking about becoming part of the large Costa Rican expat community and were examining possible neighborhoods. They’d only break out the FBI credentials if it became necessary. Better to try something less remarkable first.
Both the residence and office were in Los Yoses, about a kilometer from Spoon, each within walking distance of the other. It all fit: the regular appearances at Spoon, and Juan Cole’s “luck” in finding Larison there; Larison getting off the bus early in Barrio Dent to draw his pursuers away from the real locus of his interest in San Jose.