The Killer Collective

by Barry Eisler

  Horton said, “Former SEAL, former CIA counterintel, now FBI, involved in some extremely shady goings-on, and aware of potentially formidable opposition. Does that sound soft to you?”

  Larison nodded. “Point taken. But absent the intel, we still don’t know.”

  There was a rap on one of the windows. Dox. Horton slid open the door. “All good?” he said.

  Livia nodded and got in. “All good.”

  Dox remained outside. “Hey, John, could you and I talk for a minute?”

  Larison gave him a suspicious look.

  Dox shook his head. “It’s nothing nefarious, amigo. If it were, why would I have asked for a private moment right in front of everyone else?”

  Larison didn’t respond. But he didn’t look happy, either. On the other hand, when did Larison look happy?

  I got out and followed Dox around the corner to the side of the store.

  “Everything okay with Livia?” I said.

  “She’s fine. She takes child abuse more personally than most.”

  I nodded, sensing that to ask more would be to intrude. And besides, his meaning was clear enough, and it tracked with what I’d already seen.

  “She’s impressive,” I said.

  “Partner, you’ve barely seen her in action. Did you know she’s a judo badass, too? Olympic alternate when she was in college. I bet she could give you a run for your money, and then some.”

  “I wouldn’t take that bet.”

  “Well, here’s the thing. Y’all have been talking about whether to go after Graham first or Arrington, is that right?”

  I wondered where he was going with this. I had some idea, and didn’t like it.

  “That’s what we’ve been talking about,” I said.

  “Well, obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages each way. For a variety of reasons, I favor what might best be described as the ‘kill Graham first’ approach. For one thing, Kanezaki is dialed all the way in to Mr. Graham’s Paris proclivities.”

  I realized I’d been right about where he was heading. I said nothing.

  “So you know where I’m going with this,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Look, man, it’s obvious. If all we want to do is kill Graham, the way Kanezaki described his hotel room, I can probably just turn his head into the proverbial fine pink mist. But if we want a chance to interrogate him—if we want intel, and I think we do—then we’re talking about Delilah.”

  I shook my head again. “No.”

  “She could really help us,” he said. “And you know it. And if you won’t take advantage of that, just out of some kind of misplaced wounded pride, you should at least admit that protecting your ego is more important to you than protecting the kind of children Livia showed us in that video. Not to mention protecting Livia herself. I can’t say I’d take kindly to that, in part because it’s not something I’d ever do to you if the shoe were on the other foot.”

  “Goddamn it, are you really going to play that card?” But I knew he was right.

  “Come on, man, it doesn’t get any better than this. A Mossad honeytrap specialist, and Graham has a thing for blondes on top of it. She could have him wrapped around her little finger after the first one of those clean dirty martinis he likes, and you know it.”

  “No,” I said again.

  “Why the hell not? She’s in Paris right now.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d been living in Paris the last time we’d been together. But for some reason, I thought she would have moved on.

  “You’ve been in touch with her?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Now and again.”

  Jesus. First Larison, now Delilah. “Why?” I said.

  “Because we’re friends, dumbass. Friends stay in touch. I won’t lie to you, you’re so good at reading people, but sometimes you assume everyone else is just like you, and that ain’t the way the world works. Most people don’t prefer to go months without talking to another human. That’s unusual. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it; in fact, there’s not. I’m just saying you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the people in your life who care about you also care about each other, and might like to reach out from time to time.”

  Sometimes I hated talking to him. Not because he was full of shit. That would have just been irritating. But because he was so fucking insightful. And that was intolerable.

  I looked away, not wanting to ask. But he just kept on waiting, silent and patient as the sniper he was.

  Finally, I sighed. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine. She misses you.”

  “She told you that?”

  “No, of course not. She’s too proud. Hmm, why does that sound familiar?”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “How do I know how much you miss her, even though you refuse to say so? Just by the way you’re talking right now. Well, it’s the same with her. Each of you is pining so hard for the other, and pretending so hard not to be, it would be comical if it weren’t so sad. Do you really not know this? My lord, do I have to run your entire personal life for you?”

  We were quiet for a moment. I knew he was trying to get the silence to work on me again, and I realized it probably would. I tried to squeeze out of it by saying, “What’s up between you and Livia?”

  “My feelings for her are pure, but our relationship is complicated. And you can make fun of me for that if you want, but you’ll have to do it later, because right now I’m not letting you change the subject.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to make fun of you. I’m sorry I did it earlier, when you called her ‘my gal.’ I didn’t realize it was serious.”

  “Yeah, it is. And it hurts at times. Just like you and Delilah.”

  We were quiet again. I said, “Okay. Call her.”

  “No, partner, you call her.”

  “You’re the one who’s been in touch with her.”

  “Yeah, but now you get to correct that.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know what to say to her.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, you’re smart. You’ll figure it out.”

  We went back to the van. As soon as we were inside, Dox said, “Okay, here’s the deal. We have an asset in Paris. A Mossad agent, name of Delilah, extremely experienced and capable, and gorgeous and blonde, just how Graham likes it. This could be a game-changing advantage for us. The only complication is, she and John here are erstwhile lovers and still carry a torch for each other. But I know we’re all professionals and will find a way to deal with that.”

  I looked at him, horrified and pissed. But all he did was shrug. “Hey, man, you’re the one who said the speakerphone was the way to go. Now everybody knows why I wanted to talk to you privately first, and they’ll understand why you’re going to be all twitchy about meeting with Delilah.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That was good of you.”

  He grinned. “What are friends for?”

  Horton said, “If your . . . lady friend is as good as all that, she could provide a way for us to interrogate Graham, not just kill him.”

  Dox nodded. “That’s what I told him.”

  “Look,” I said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves, all right? I told Dox I’d call her. But I don’t know how she’s going to react. She might just tell me to fuck off.”

  Dox shook his head. “She’s not going to tell you that. Not when you explain what this is all about. And even if she did, which she won’t, Paris still makes sense to me. Especially if someone can get me a rifle with a night scope, for just in case and when all else fails.”

  “I have contacts in Paris,” Horton said, looking at me. “Men I’ve worked with closely. DGSE, DGSI, GIGN . . . even a few former legionnaires. They should be able to get us anything we reasonably need, including commo. So in the hardware department, I’d say we’re good to go.”

  Larison said, “Kanezaki told us Graham bought his ticket a month
ago. Meaning if Paris is a setup, he only just came up with the plan. So if we’re going to do this, we should do it now. The longer we wait, the longer Graham will have to position his forces.”

  Dox looked at me expectantly. After a moment, I sighed and gave him a reluctant nod.

  “Oo-rah,” Dox said. “We’re going to Paris.”

  PART 3

  chapter

  thirty-five

  LIVIA

  Livia and Rain caught a cab from the airport, having arrived before the others. Too many last-minute tickets all on the same flight might have looked suspicious, and besides, they were all mindful that OGE had recently brought down a plane to silence two of its passengers. It seemed unwise to present anyone with a single target.

  The idea was that in Paris, where apparently the faces of Asian tourists would generally be lumped together as Chinois, Livia and Rain would look natural traveling and checking in to hotels together, and could act as needed as a front for the rest of the group. Carl, Horton, and Larison would present a somewhat more unusual grouping, so only one of them would reserve the second hotel room they needed, with the rest ghosting in later. Out of an abundance of caution, they’d change hotels every day, creating a rotating series of ad hoc safe houses.

  Carl had been right about the micromanaging—Rain had them all develop and practice an extensive cover story for how they knew each other and why they were in Paris, drilling them on the details repeatedly until he was satisfied. Strangely, she didn’t mind. She was a cop, so why would anyone expect her to be familiar with the concept of cover for action? Though in fact, she had been instructed on the topic by experts from both the CIA and the FBI when she was working with SPD’s anti-gang unit. And, of course, she had extensive practical experience as well from hunting rapists in a non-law-enforcement capacity.

  She liked Rain. Unlike Horton, who had an avuncular confidence, and Larison, who was overtly dangerous, and Carl, who liked to distract people with his banter, Rain had a stillness she sensed must be the perfect cover for the formidable qualities Carl had briefed her on. He didn’t have Carl’s patient empathy—though really, had she ever met anyone who did?—but he was a good listener, and the way he respectfully considered everyone else’s ideas took the sting out of his occasional pushbacks and critiques. She sensed from the way he sometimes looked at her that he was seeing more than she would have liked. But she also sensed that no judgment came with it—and, thank God, no pity. He had asked her little about herself beyond the obvious, but this struck her not as a lack of interest, but rather as deference to her privacy. It also spoke of his bond with Carl, because Rain didn’t come across as someone in the habit of trusting others based solely on third-party recommendations.

  They had both slept during the first half of the flight, and when she woke she saw him reading a book in Japanese. She had used the moment to try to draw him out, asking him a bit about his past. The matter-of-factness of his replies reminded her of how she fielded similar inquiries, and suggested similar childhood trauma, or at least a lot of buried pain. The book itself, he told her, was a collection of haiku by the seventeenth-century poet Bashō. He joked that he used the poems to help him sleep, but of course he had been reading the book after sleeping, not before, and the absorption she had witnessed in his posture and expression suggested that to Rain, poetry was anything but soporific.

  She asked about his judo background—Carl had told her about the Kodokan, which was mecca for all serious practitioners. Rain acknowledged training there for decades, but claimed to have nowhere near her competition experience. His approach to judo, he said, was more about combat, and the techniques that interested him most, including a variety of neck cranks mostly lost to the modern art, would have been horrific to Jigoro Kano, the founder of “the gentle way.” Livia told him that when this shit was over, she hoped they could roll together, and that he might show her some of how he used judo off the tatami. He looked at her for a long moment then, and she had that uncomfortable sense that he was seeing more than she had meant to show. But then the moment passed, and he told her he would enjoy the opportunity, graciously adding that he hoped she would offer any refinements she saw in the approaches he had developed.

  He was watchful at the airport, which made sense—if Treven’s information was part of a setup, CDG was a potential choke point. But their departure was uneventful, and after about twenty minutes of peering into the cab’s side-view mirrors and turning to look behind them, he seemed to relax. They had checked their bags, and so were armed at least with knives—a Somico Vaari fixed blade secured in a pocket of her cargo pants and a Bowie neck knife by a designer named Fred Perrin that Carl had turned her on to, and an Emerson folder for Rain. But she felt exposed without her duty weapon, which Larison had stored along with the other firearms in one of his stash sites before they flew out of Washington. Well, if Horton’s confidence was justified, she wouldn’t have to feel naked for long.

  She had checked in with Strangeland before boarding, and there was no word from Arrington. According to Chief Best, someone in the Criminal Investigative Division office had explained that Arrington was dealing with the loss of a senior agent and a valued contractor, both of whom had been on the doomed flight. And was therefore more backed up than usual. Strangeland agreed that the statement, while certainly not dispositive, was at least a little weird. Typically, when the Feds blew off local law enforcement, they didn’t bother to provide reasons. And Strangeland was pissed, and concerned, that Best still wouldn’t escalate—not even with the runaround they were getting about fingerprints from the IAFIS. The lieutenant sensed Best was irritated that Livia had used her administrative leave to get out of town and was therefore unavailable to the SWAT operators Best wanted watching her.

  “How’s the weather out there?” Livia had asked. She’d checked online, of course, but still wanted to hear it direct.

  “Clear skies,” Strangeland said. “Stop worrying about the park rapist, okay? For now, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. You need to focus.”

  Livia filled her in on what she had learned, and was relieved that the lieutenant didn’t ask how she had acquired her information. Livia didn’t want to lie to her.

  Livia had talked to Little, too. The phones and wallets Rain and Larison had taken confirmed the two men they killed were with OGE. No other useful information.

  It was a bright, crisp autumn morning, and she enjoyed the ride into the city. She had never been to Paris, and despite everything, she found herself excited to be there, smiling as they passed the Arc de Triomphe, and again at her first glimpse of the Seine. Rain had explained that while he had been living here with the woman they were now hoping would help them, Delilah, he had enjoyed exploring the city’s best bars, many of which were located in hotels. So as an artifact of the interest in bars, he had become something of a local hotel expert, as well. The place he had in mind was called L’Hôtel, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was only about a mile and a half from Delilah’s neighborhood, he said, but on the opposite bank. She wondered if he wanted to put the river between himself and Delilah out of respect or fear, or in some more symbolic way. But maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe he just liked the hotel, or its bar, or the neighborhood. Regardless, she couldn’t help but be curious about what this woman was like.

  Rain had the cab drop them off at a different hotel—a precaution she was familiar with—and they walked with their packs to their actual destination after the driver had pulled away. While Rain saw about a room, at the reception area in the tiny lobby, Livia went deeper into the hotel and immediately liked it. There was a central circular column rising five or six stories, surrounded by balconies on every level and with a glass dome at the top through which sunlight poured all the way to the ground floor. The space was compact without feeling cramped, and aged without feeling old. She saw the bar he liked so much, and was intrigued by what his attraction to it might reveal about him. It was snug, with room for not much more than a dozen
patrons. It had a low, softly lit ceiling, and though it felt private, even intimate, it was also quietly inviting. She wondered if it was one of the places he had enjoyed with Delilah, and thought it probably was.

  They were in luck, and Rain was able to book them something called a grand junior suite, which turned out to be quite small. Still, the room was bright and comfortable, with eclectic flowered wallpaper and a wonderful claw-foot tub, and though Livia had little basis for the impression, it all seemed somehow appropriately European. Of course, it would be way too tight for five, and they would have to get an additional room somewhere later. After what had happened in the Walmart parking lot, she felt nervous at the thought of another night with Carl. Not because of anything he might do. But because of her uncertainty about what she might do in response.

  When they were done examining the room, Rain said, “We’ve got some time before the others arrive. Would you like to see a little of the area?”

  “I’d love it,” she said.

  They headed out. It was interesting. Inside, when he’d been dealing with the hotel staff, his posture had changed, becoming stiffer, somehow more formal. She had even seen him bending slightly at the waist as he spoke, a mannerism that struck her as somewhere between a nod and a bow, and that she sensed was an element of his Japanese persona. But as soon as they were on the street again, it was gone.

  He took her on a brief walking tour, down narrow streets lined with art galleries and antique shops, and onto a bridge over the Seine called Pont des Arts, with the Louvre on the other side and spectacular views of all of Paris left and right. And then down a wonderful narrow street called Rue de Buci, bustling with pedestrians basking in the late-morning sun and lined with sidewalk tables filled with diners enjoying coffee and delicious-looking pastries. The air was perfumed with food smells—baking bread, brewing tea, savory aromas like roasted chicken with rosemary. Outside of television and movies, Livia had never seen anything like it, and for a moment, she just stared at it all, openmouthed. But then, as seemed always to be the case when she found herself hit by a wave of happiness, or joy, or delight, there was an immediate undertow of sadness. The first time she had tasted ice cream, the first time she had come, and now her first time in Paris . . . firsts always made her think of Nason, of everything that was done to her and taken from her and of all the things Livia’s little bird would never do or have or see.