by Barry Eisler
“Are you kidding? We give out bricks of hundred-dollar bills in Iraq and Afghanistan like we’re handing out lollipops and solicit work through no-bid contracts and there’s that three-trillion-dollar stimulus … at this point, a hundred million in the black ops budget is nothing but a damn rounding error. The only thing unusual is that we’re using diamonds instead of cash.”
A train pulled in with a hiss of pneumatic brakes and a recorded announcement of its arrival at the station. Ben watched commuters flowing on and off like zombies in a horror movie.
“The Fed had a hundred million worth of diamonds just lying around?”
“No, what you have in that bag is another triumph of government–private sector cooperation. Someone at the CIA had the admittedly excellent idea of engaging Ronald Winston.”
“Winston?”
“Son of the late Harry Winston. World’s premier diamond expert. We needed someone with deep contacts in the markets in Africa, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, New York, someone who could cajole a few Saudi princes. And also someone monumentally discreet. Apparently there’s only one man who fit the bill, and that’s Winston. He personally certified every stone in this bag and I took possession directly from him.”
“What was Winston’s cut?”
“I’m sure he was well compensated. Being indispensable, and discreet on top of it, puts a man in a position to charge a premium.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Now, listen. It’s just you on this. There’s no one else. So if anyone tries to interfere with you, you stop him. Any way you have to. Remember, you’re carrying a hundred million in there in untraceable, easily convertible stones. Plenty of people would like to get their hands on that, never mind the tapes.”
“Roger that.”
“You’re armed?”
Ben nodded. “Same Glock you set me up with when I was Dan Froomkin, FBI. It was on the jet where I left it.”
“Good. We can’t have Larison thinking we’re fucking with him again. The connection you uncovered in Costa Rica gives us a lot of leverage, and that’s important, that’s our insurance that if we let him walk away happy, he won’t release the tapes. But no sense antagonizing him, either. If another team from Blackwater shows up and tries to take him again, he might just decide the hell with it, we’re never going to give him what he wants, he might as well just release the tapes and the hell with the rest. We don’t want him in that frame of mind.”
His phone buzzed. He glanced down, saw the caller’s number was blocked. He looked at Hort.
Hort said, “Anyone else have this number?”
“No. Just you, as far as I know.”
“It’s him, then. Calling early again to keep us jumping. Go ahead.”
Ben accepted the call. “Hello.”
“Is this the courier?”
The same low, raspy voice Ben had heard on the conference call. The same confident tone. It was him. Larison.
Ben looked at Hort and nodded. “Yes.” After all the circling around, the listening in on other people’s calls, it was strangely satisfying to be engaging Larison directly.
“You’re going to start off by driving.”
“I thought I was flying somewhere.”
“Maybe you are. But first, you’re going to drive. Do you have a navigation system?”
“On my phone.”
“Good. Head west on Interstate 66. I’ll call you again in a little while and tell you what to do next. Now, listen. I’m going to be watching you. I might be tailing you, I might be having you drive past static checkpoints. I might have video installed on the route to monitor you that way. If you’re being followed, if you’re not alone, I’ll put a bullet in your brain and pick up the diamonds that way. Understood?”
The threat made Ben want to answer in kind, but he caught the reaction and suppressed it. “Understood.”
The line went dead. Ben repeated the conversation for Hort.
“Shit,” Hort said. “Should have seen that coming. We don’t have a car ready. All right, take mine. The driver’s outside.”
They left the station and walked over to a dark gray Crown Victoria parked at the curb. Hort told the driver, a crew-cut Asian too young to be part of the unit, that they’d be taking the Metro. The guy got out and Ben got in. He put the backpack on the floor of the passenger side and made sure the door was locked.
Hort held open the driver-side door and leaned in. “Remember,” he said. “It’s just you. And be damned careful with Larison. He killed twelve operators in Costa Rica. One more isn’t going to make a difference to him.”
35
Mirror
Ben slipped in the Bluetooth earpiece, opened the iPhone navigation function, and followed Route 1 north to I-66. He checked his mirrors, but in the late afternoon rush hour traffic, there was no way to spot surveillance. It was entirely possible Larison could have ghosted up behind or alongside him and snuck a peek in the car. But Ben had a feeling he hadn’t. No, if Ben had been Larison, he’d have planned a route involving increasingly quiet streets and residential neighborhoods with multiple points of ingress and egress—the kind of route that reveals a tail by winnowing him out of traffic and forcing him to stay close—and set up there. A standard surveillance detection route, in fact, the only difference being that this time, the person trying to spot the tail would be not the driver, but someone running countersurveillance from a static location.
On the other hand, he’d thought he knew what Larison would do in Los Yoses. And hadn’t even been close.
The iPhone buzzed. Ben accepted the call through the earpiece. “Yeah.”
“Go north on Glebe Road. Then west on Sixteenth Street North, past the hospital. Then right on George Mason.”
Ben input George Mason into the phone. A map came up. It was what he expected: the street cut through a residential area and offered multiple outlets leading to a half dozen major arteries. If someone were following him, they’d have to reveal themselves there. Probably Larison was set up nearby, watching.
“I’m turning onto Glebe now.”
“Just keep going.”
Several cars took the exit behind him. He marked the makes and colors as he drove past several blocks of brick and stone houses and well-kept lawns. The hospital came up on his right, multiple buildings along an entire block, surrounded by parking lots. He made a right on George Mason and continued past the west side of the hospital. Two of the cars that had followed him off the highway turned with him—a black Cadillac and a blue Toyota behind it. Nothing definitive—Glebe and George Mason were both busy streets, and it would have been surprising if no one else had turned off onto them from 66. As for Larison, he could have been watching from anywhere inside. Or from one of the cars parked along the street. Or from behind a tree. There was no way to know.
“Okay, I’m on George Mason now.”
“Make a left on Twentieth Street. Then zigzag over to Nineteenth. Left, right, left, right.”
“Doing it now.”
The Cadillac continued straight on George Mason. The Toyota made a left behind Ben. Still nothing definitive—the western sun was reflecting off the Toyota’s window and Ben couldn’t see inside, but someone who lived in this neighborhood might have followed the same route. Still, suspicious enough to warrant some simple countermeasures.
“Got a possible problem here,” Ben said. “I’m alone, per your instructions. But if that’s not you in the blue Toyota, I think someone’s following me.”
“It’s not me.”
“Okay, I’ll go around the block and see what he does.”
Ben made a right on Greenbrier, then a right on Patrick Henry. The Toyota stayed with him. He could make out a driver and a passenger, both in shades. He made a right again, back onto George Mason. The Toyota stayed with him.
“Okay, it’s official,” he said. “The blue Toyota is a tail. Looks like two men in the car. I’m telling you so you’ll know I didn’t put them there. Also, from the ro
ute I just drove, they know I’m aware of them now.”
“How did they follow you?”
Ben wished he knew. He thought of Hort again, but it just didn’t make sense. A tracking device in the car, then? Satellites? And who were the guys behind him, anyway? Blackwater? Ground Branch?
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m just the courier. I was told to follow your instructions and that’s what I’m doing.”
There was a pause. Larison said, “Is your navigation system up?”
“Yes.”
“Head west again. You see the high school at Washington Boulevard and McKinley?”
Ben dragged the phone’s touch screen to the right. “I see it.”
“The parking lot behind it?”
“Yes.”
“Turn into the parking lot from Madison and circle around it.”
“All right.”
Ben drove and the Toyota stayed with him. Even if he’d known who was behind him, and he didn’t, he wouldn’t have liked the idea of the parking lot. There was no way to know where Larison might be waiting inside or along the way, and the man seemed to have a penchant for high-caliber, armor-piercing ammunition. Overall, though, Ben judged it unlikely that Larison would try to greet him with a bullet. He’d want to first confirm that the courier actually had the diamonds. It was post-confirmation when things were maximally likely to become unpleasant.
As for the occupants of the Toyota, of course, that was a little harder to say. He patted the Glock in the shoulder holster and drove.
He headed south on Madison and turned into the parking lot per Larison’s instructions. The lot was a rectangle, bordered by a chain-link fence, with the entrance and exit on one of the short sides. It had four rows—two along each of the long sides and two up the middle—and might have held fifty cars full, though there were only a half dozen at the moment. Ben drove along, the Glock in his hand now, his head swiveling, scanning for Larison. The Toyota pulled in behind him.
He passed a white pickup parked to his right. No occupants. He checked left. Right. Forward. Nothing. He checked the rearview—
Larison, in jeans and a windbreaker and a baseball cap, popping up from the bed of the pickup like a deadly jack-in-the-box—
Shit, shit, shit—
Pointing a pistol at the Toyota, two-handed grip—
Ben’s head snapped left, snapped right, looking for a way to turn, trying to determine whether, how to engage—
Bam! Bam!
He checked the rearview. Damn it, whatever he was going to do, he was already too late. Larison had put two rounds through the windshield. The Toyota veered to the right and crashed through the chain-link fence into a tree. Larison dashed up behind it, the gun up at chin level. A shot came from inside the car, blowing out the driver-side window. But the guy must have been aiming over his shoulder and the shot went wild. Larison fired again, came closer, and fired twice more.
It was like Costa Rica again. Every reflex, every self-preservation instinct Ben had was screaming, Get out of the car, engage. But he couldn’t. Larison’s dead-man trigger was protecting him like a bulletproof vest.
Ben peeled around the far end of the lot, his tires screeching, and got the car pointed north, toward Larison, keeping one of the parked cars between them. He reached across and opened the passenger-side door. If Larison tried to circle behind him the way Ben had seen him do to so many deceased-immediately-thereafter people already, Ben would be out the passenger side and laying down fire in a heartbeat.
But Larison didn’t try to maneuver. Keeping his gun on Ben, he walked calmly over and went around the front of the car. Ben tracked him with the Glock, his finger firm against the trigger, but didn’t fire.
Larison leaned over and looked into the open passenger-side door. He was carrying an HK, Ben noted. The Mark 23. Forty-five caliber, maybe the same he’d used in Costa Rica. Up close, Ben could see dark circles under his eyes.
“Hand over the gun,” Larison said, pointing the HK at Ben.
Ben had known men in his professional life who naturally radiated quiet danger. It was nothing they said, and nothing they did, at least not overtly. You could just feel it about them, that they were capable, competent killers. It’s what Taibbi had been talking about, with those soldiers he’d mentioned. Ben had thought the guy was being melodramatic when he called Larison the angel of death. But he got it now. The man just exuded lethality, a kind of uncomplicated readiness to kill. Combined with everything Hort had told him and everything he’d seen, it was intimidating. So it took a certain level of discipline and determination for him to respond as he did.
“Sorry, that’s not going to happen.”
Larison didn’t respond. He just looked at Ben, his eyes as flat and emotionless as mirrored sunglasses. Ben had never been faced with this much immediate danger while simultaneously being prohibited from engaging it. All his instincts were screaming, Shoot! Shoot! He gritted his teeth and his hand shook.
Larison squinted slightly. “You were the one in Los Yoses, weren’t you?”
Ben nodded.
“Why didn’t you take the shot?”
“Same reason I’m not taking it now. The diamonds are in that backpack. Just take it and go.”
Larison looked down at the bag. Then he got in the car and pulled the door shut. “Drive.”
Ben thought, What the hell?
They sat there, mirror images, each pointing a pistol at the other.
Another few seconds, and Ben would either have to shoot the guy or leap out of the car and bolt for cover. What he couldn’t do was endure the tension of neither.
“You want me to drive?” he said. “Holster that fucking HK and wedge your hands palms down under your thighs. Deep under.”
“You’re not paying proper attention.”
“No, you’re not paying proper attention,” Ben said, struggling to ignore the Shoot! Shoot! alarms screaming in his mind. “You know I’m not going to kill you. If I’d wanted to, I could have in Los Yoses. Or again just now. But there’s nothing preventing you from trying to kill me. Except this gun. Which is why I’ll be holding on to it and you’ll be putting yours away. Otherwise, we can just sit here until the police show up to investigate reports of gunshots. Or you can take the diamonds and go. It’s your call.”
There was a long, tense pause. Larison swiveled and looked through the rear window. He did the same to his right. Then he slid the HK inside his windbreaker. He looked at Ben, and Ben could swear the man was suppressing a smile.
“Drive,” he said.
Larison hadn’t sat on his hands, but Ben hadn’t really been expecting that much and decided he could live without it. The truth was, he wasn’t much more eager to be sitting there when the police showed up than he imagined Larison would be. He switched the Glock to his left hand and hit the gas. If Larison lunged at him, he could grapple with his right and shoot with his left.
“Where are we going?” Ben said.
“Get on Lee Highway. Head west.”
That made sense. Not a neighborhood street where they would stand out; not an Interstate where suspects in a shooting might expect to be fleeing. Just enough traffic for them to blend while they drifted in the direction of the Beltway, and from there, to anywhere.
“You can have the car if you want,” Ben said, checking the rearview, making sure no one was behind them. “You really need me driving you?”
“I need you to confirm you have what you’re supposed to have.”
“The diamonds are in that backpack, right at your feet. You can see for yourself.”
“I’ll let you take care of that.”
Ben got it. Larison was afraid of a nerve spray or a dye pack. He didn’t want to open the backpack himself. Smart. He looked at his phone and saw it had no signal. Larison must have been carrying a jammer, something that would take out the phone, GPS, and anything else anyone might have used to track the car. Again, smart.
They got on Lee Highway and he
aded west. Ben was paying the bare minimum of attention to driving. Most of his concentration was on Larison, whose hands had been resting on his knees since Ben had driven off. He knew what Ben would make of it if his hands went anywhere else, or if Larison made any sudden movement at all, for that matter. The good news was, that meant if he did move, Ben wouldn’t have to waste any time trying to interpret his intentions. The bad news was, Ben had seen how fast the man was. And if he made a move, Ben would have the action/reaction disadvantage. And Ben would be shooting left-handed.
One piece of good news, three bad. It would have been a lot easier to just shoot the guy and be done with it. Orders were a bitch.
Larison said, “How long have you been in?”
Ben glanced at him, trying to judge whether it was just a distraction. He decided the hell with it. If he didn’t talk to the guy, he was going to shoot him. He had to do something, or the tension was going to make him explode.
“The unit?”
“Yeah.”
“Six years.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“Why?”
Ben shrugged. “I’m good at it.”
“I can see that. You think that’s enough?”
“It has been so far.”
“Yeah, it was good enough so far for me, too.”
“What happened, then? Hort said you were the best.”
Larison smiled slightly. “Did he?”
It was amazing. Even over Larison, even after everything that had happened, Hort just had that power. “Yeah. It’s part of what made him suspect you. He said no one else could have pulled this off—taking the tapes, faking your death, all of it.”
Larison’s smile faded. For a moment, he looked almost wistful.
“I don’t know about the best. But I was up there.”
“Still are, from what I can see.”
“Thanks.”
“Not sure it’s a compliment, given what I’ve seen you do with it.”
“You talking about Los Yoses?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they were going to do to me?”
“Well, it’s not like you’ve given people a lot of choices.”