by Barry Eisler
Sarah nodded and saw Alex do the same. That word he’d used so casually—”hunting”—had chilled her.
“Well, congratulations. I’d be all over that, too. You say you’re ready to disappear for a while, but you don’t know how to do it. It’s not supposed to be easy. You’re going to have to give up a few conveniences. Okay? Do you need any more explanation than that, or do you get it now?”
They were all quiet for a moment. Sarah realized what he was saying made sense, but still resented the way he said it.
“What do we do?” Alex asked.
Ben looked at Sarah. “Exactly what I tell you,” he said.
18 BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME
They went to the Four Seasons in Ben’s rented car, Alex driving, Sarah shotgun, Ben in back. Ben was pissed. He’d been back for, what, twelve hours? And he’d already lost control of the situation.
He didn’t trust the girl. She was obviously political, and it wasn’t inconceivable she had an uncle or a cousin in one of the security services. It would have been easy enough for her to make a call—hey, Uncle Ahmad, you should take a look at this technology I’m trying to patent. It’s the kind of thing you told me to keep an eye out for. Yeah, maybe it was unlikely, but he knew Iran’s cyberwarfare efforts were real.
And someone had taken those documents from Alex’s office. Someone who knew where to go, or who had been given some very precise information. There had to be someone on the inside. Who else had the connection? And who else would have the motivation? The fact that she claimed to be missing documents, too, only made him suspect her more.
It was a huge risk to bring her along now, but he didn’t really have a choice. He’d seen the way Alex was looking at her, and he could tell the idiot was half in love. Well, he couldn’t exactly blame him. He had to admit she was attractive. But Christ, she was a handful. He shouldn’t have said anything about Iran; it could only serve to tip her off. But sanctimonious and naïve was a combination guaranteed to piss him off.
And he didn’t like that comment about the Istanbul hit at all. Yeah, it had been all over the news. She was Iranian, she was political, she would have seen it. But still.
Anyway, he was going to get Alex out of his latest mess. Not that Alex deserved it, but Ben was going to do it anyway because that’s the kind of guy he was, even if Alex couldn’t recognize it. And now his little brother had made it clear that it was a package deal: he had to help the girl, too. Christ, he should have seen it coming. It was just like Alex: suck him in, get him committed, and then tell him, Oh, just one other little thing …
Overall, he gave the situation a suck factor of about 9.8, but there was a tiny silver lining. If the girl really was working for the other side, he could use her as a conduit for false information—essentially as an unwitting double agent. He’d have to take extreme care because she’d also have plenty of accurate information she could pass along—their current location, for example—but if he could control for that downside, he might be able to use her to draw her people into an ambush. He started thinking about how.
He had Alex take them to the Wal-Mart on Showers Drive in Mountain View. Ben picked out wool hats for them. Sarah wanted to know why.
“I want to make us a little harder to recognize, and a little harder to remember. Just in case. Is there a downside?”
“I’m just asking,” she said, “or do I have to obey without question?”
Ben tossed her a hat. “You just have to obey.”
He paid for the hats and a prepaid phone. On the way out, he entered the number in his speed dial. He handed the unit to Alex. “This is if you need to call me, and for me to call you. No other uses, no other calls. Understood?”
They understood.
As they pulled off 101 onto the University Avenue exit that would take them to the hotel, Ben said, “Don’t pull into the hotel parking lot. Take the next right, Manhattan Avenue, and park it there.”
“Why?” Alex asked.
“Your car and her car are compromised. I don’t want—”
“My name is Sarah,” Sarah said, turning to look at him. “Use it. Stop talking about me as though I’m not here. It’s rude.”
Christ. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be rude.”
“No, you obviously do want to be rude, otherwise you wouldn’t be. Which is why I’m telling you to cut it out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shook her head slightly as though in disgust, then turned away again. All right, maybe he’d been too hard on her. He wasn’t even sure why, exactly. It wasn’t going to help him use her to set up the opposition, assuming she really was playing for the other team. She just pushed his buttons. He was already carrying Alex, he didn’t need to shoulder her weight on top of it.
“Your car and Sarah’s car are compromised,” Ben said. “I want to make sure this one stays clean.”
Sarah looked back at him again. “You think someone’s at the hotel?”
“I doubt it. But like Alex said, I found him here. Someone else could have done the same. If there’s a problem, it’ll likely be waiting at Alex’s car. You can’t just sit around a hotel lobby forever without attracting suspicion. So for now, we’ll stay clear of Alex’s car and go in carefully, just in case. Got it?”
She nodded and turned away. Alex said, “What do you mean, ‘for now’?”
Ben opened the Wal-Mart bag. “One thing at a time. Put your hats on.”
They all pulled on the hats. Ben also slipped on his gloves. Dressing for an op was always easier in the cold.
They got out and walked, squinting against shards of morning sun slicing through the spaces between the buildings they passed. Manhattan Avenue was inaptly named: in fact, it was a quiet tree-lined street fronted by a few small lower-rent apartment complexes and a coin-operated laundry—artifacts of what the neighborhood had been before the sparkling hotel and office complex had been erected next door. Ben led the way back to the main entrance and into the hotel, scanning as they moved. He detected no problems.
A silver-haired guy in a charcoal suit by reception waved to Alex. “Hey, Alex. Nice to see you here. Breakfast today?”
“Hey, Tracy, no, I’m staying with you this time. Some work being done on my house.”
The guy smiled. “Nice to have you with us.”
They kept moving.
Ben was incredulous. “Who the hell was that?” he said.
“Tracy Mercer. The manager.”
“You know the manager?”
“I do a lot of business meals here.”
Ben wondered how someone so smart could at the same time be so galactically stupid. “Didn’t I tell you to stay someplace where no one would know you?”
“Well, yeah, but …”
Ben shook his head. “Forget it,” he said. Was Alex a moron? Did he have a death wish?
They went to Alex’s room, and while Alex collected his gear, Ben looked out the window at the highway below and the massive sprawl of an Ikea shopping complex on the other side of it. None of this had been here when Ben was a kid. East Palo Alto had been a no-go zone then, unless you wanted to buy pot, and even then you wouldn’t go at night. Times had changed. He was amazed that Alex could casually take advantage of something like this. This hotel had to be at least four hundred dollars a night, and Alex was using it as a safe house without giving a second thought to the bill. It was almost funny, the different economic strata they found themselves in. Of course, Ben’s half of their parents’ estate wasn’t insubstantial, but he never touched that money. In his mind, it didn’t even exist except as a last-ditch insurance policy should the shit he dealt with every day ever manage to squarely connect with the fan.
They headed back down to the lobby. Sarah said, “I need to use the bathroom.”
An alarm went off in Ben’s head. “No.”
She looked at him. “No?”
“Not now. We’re not secure here. We need to keep moving. You’ll have to hold it in.”
&nb
sp; She cocked her head and her eyes bored into him. “For how long?”
He wanted to say, Until I fucking tell you you can let it out. Instead, he said, “Ten minutes. Can you manage that?”
She didn’t answer, and he took that for a yes. Christ, he could almost see smoke coming out of her ears.
Well, tough shit. He was about to do another pass near Alex’s car, and the last thing he needed was for her to duck into the restroom, borrow a cell phone, and warn someone what was up.
Alex checked out—no sign of the manager this time—and they went back to Ben’s car, Ben scanning for danger along the way. “Drive again,” Ben told Alex. “There’s a Starbucks just on the other side of 101. Sarah can use the bathroom there. Then come back and swing around the hotel parking lot past your car. I want to have one more look at it.” By the time they got to the Starbucks, if the girl made a phone call it wouldn’t make a difference.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Alex asked.
“I doubt anyone’s there,” Ben said. But sooner or later, he knew, someone would be. Either at Alex’s car, or at the office, or back at his house. Or at the girl’s car. Or at her house. And every one of these ambush points was therefore also a place for a counterambush.
Alex and Sarah drove off. Ben pulled the hat low and walked back into the hotel parking lot. He walked past the hotel entrance, his head swiveling, checking all the places he would have used himself.
He cut through the parking garage so he could come out closer to Alex’s car. If anyone was there, the shortcut would give them less time to react. He turned the corner and bingo, there was a burly white guy with a shaved head leaning against the parking garage just ten feet past Alex’s car. The guy was wearing shades and smoking a cigarette, and wore a black, waist-length leather jacket.
Although his mind grasped it all in a kind of instant shorthand rather than in conscious thoughts, Ben understood all the things that were wrong with this picture. This was the western side of the garage, and this early in the morning it was all in shadow, so no need for the shades. It was too early for an office worker to be taking a nicotine break, too, and anyway why would the guy walk all the way down here for a smoke? And the waist-length jacket would be perfect to conceal a shoulder, waist, or hip carry.
Ben walked casually toward him, his heart rate beginning to accelerate. He glanced around and didn’t notice anyone else, but there were some cars parked in a row and he couldn’t see into all of them. He couldn’t be sure the guy was alone. He didn’t think about what he was about to do. He’d learned at the Farm that you can’t just play a role; you have to live it, you have to believe your cover. So in his mind, he was just another business traveler, heading out early to his car. Deep down, walled off in such a way that it wouldn’t surface and show itself in his expression or behavior, he was aware of the bald guy’s hands, and would have his own weapon out, the usual Glock 17 in a waistband holster, if the hands went anywhere Ben couldn’t see them.
“Excuse me,” Ben said as he approached. He pinched his thumb and forefinger together and cupped his hand as though he were holding a cigarette behind it. “Do you have a light?”
The bald guy looked at him but didn’t respond. Ben was glad he’d gone through the garage and come in from below where Alex had parked. The fact that the guy was still leaning against the wall indicated he’d been surprised. An operator would never keep a posture like that in the face of a possible threat. Now, if the guy tried to attack, he’d first have to kick off from the wall. It would take him a long time. The rest of his life, in fact.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” Ben said, stopping a couple of yards short of him. “And I know most of the smokers in the complex because in the People’s Republic of Palo Alto you can’t even smoke near a building entrance. Can you beat that?”
Still no answer. Maybe the guy didn’t speak English. Maybe he did, and didn’t want anyone to hear or remember an accent.
For a lot of reasons, noise and potential witnesses not the least of them, Ben didn’t want gunplay. But just a little closer and he could drop the guy quietly with his hands.
“Is there a problem?” Ben said. “Do you not speak English?”
There was a pause, and then the guy said in a deep, gravelly voice, “I speak English.”
The accent was heavy. The accent was Russian.
The submerged part of Ben’s mind that was in tactical mode served up a loud helping of Oh shit, not again.
They looked at each other for a long, suspended second. The world was suddenly silent, everything slipping away but the tension between them. Ben could feel himself decloaking, emerging from under the gauzy, innocent façade he had hidden inside to get this close. He knew the bald guy was seeing it happen. The guy remained perfectly still, but Ben recognized something coiling in his body now, a readiness to move, a hyperalertness that hadn’t been there a moment earlier.
Ben braced to rush in and at the same instant the guy kicked off from the wall, his right arm blurring toward the left side of his jacket. Ben leaped forward, simultaneously body-slamming the guy and jamming up his right arm. He groped for the guy’s wrist and whipped his left elbow around into the guy’s right temple. The shot connected with a satisfying thwack and the cigarette went tumbling through the air. Ben found the wrist and shot in another hard elbow and the guy staggered. The guy was trying to get his wrist free now, either because he’d accessed a weapon or just to protect his exposed right side, Ben didn’t know which and he wasn’t going to let go to find out. They twisted around and the guy was now between Ben and the wall. Ben took a half step back and head-butted the guy in the face, then braced and slammed his left shoulder into the guy’s sternum, getting his entire hundred and ninety behind it, hitting him the way he’d once hit blocking dummies and backpedaling quarterbacks, nailing him into the wall, driving the breath out of him. He hit him with another elbow, then another. Suddenly the guy was heavy, and Ben realized there was nothing holding him up but Ben and the wall behind. Blood was gushing out of the guy’s nose and his eyes were rolled up in his head.
Ben yanked the guy’s right arm away from his body just in case and took a cautious step back. The guy went straight down like one of those imploding Las Vegas hotels. Everything was still utterly quiet—an effect, Ben knew, called auditory exclusion, caused by adrenaline. Adrenaline caused another kind of exclusion, too, this one visual, brought on in part by a hyperfocus on the threat at hand. The trained reflex was to scan, and Ben did so now. Which is when he saw another guy in a dark jacket getting out of a brown sedan two up from Alex’s car. This guy was in sunglasses, too, and at least as big as the first. The guy’s arm was already inside his jacket, already coming out, and Ben thought, Shit, shit, shit …
The second guy’s gun came out. Ben lunged left and dropped to a crouch, accessing the Glock as he went down. The guy’s shot went high. Ben put three rounds into his chest before the guy could get off another shot. The guy went down. Ben detected movement to his right— the first guy. He spun and put two rounds into the guy’s head. He snapped left again and saw the second guy on his back, still moving, the gun on the ground inches from his hand. Ben put the Glock’s sights on him and walked over. So much for not making noise. He figured he had a half minute before he had to beat feet.
“Kto vy?” he asked, in Russian. Who are you?
The guy didn’t answer. His sunglasses had gotten knocked off and he was watching Ben with an expression of pained surprise, as though he couldn’t quite figure out how all this had happened.
Ben kicked the gun away. “Kto vy?” he said again.
Still no answer. Blood was spreading on the concrete sidewalk underneath the guy’s torso. Ben heard an odd slurping sound and realized the guy had a sucking chest wound.
“Tell me who you are and I’ll call you an ambulance,” Ben said.
The guy gave a weak chuckle that dissolved into a gurgling cough.
Yeah, well. He had never been a g
ood liar in these situations. He glanced around. No one was coming.
“Do svidaniya,” Ben whispered, and put a last round into the guy’s forehead. The guy’s body shuddered once as though he’d been shocked, and then the rigidity, the human cohesion and coherence, was just gone, leaving an inert mound where a moment ago had been a man.
Ben squatted and checked the guy’s pockets. Son of a bitch, a wallet. He grabbed it, thinking, Hallelujah. He checked the other guy and he had one, too. Come on, man, gotta boogie …
He stuck his head inside their car. No key in the ignition, and he saw why: the ignition lock was broken off. They’d stolen the car and hotwired it. Smart. A description of the car or a license plate would be useless.
Nothing else. No syringes, no restraints, nothing. They hadn’t been here to grab Alex, then. They were going to drill him and go. Anyone who saw it would have described two guys in shades, if that, and an irrelevant car. An unsolved murder, which police would probably figure had to do with drugs because look what had happened to the guy’s client just a couple of days earlier. Ben looked at the two corpses and thought, Better luck next time, assholes.
He holstered the Glock and walked toward the gated service entrance that accessed Manhattan Avenue. He climbed over the gate and pulled out his cell phone while he walked. Alex picked up immediately.
“It’s me. Don’t go back to the hotel. I’m walking north right now on West Bayshore, parallel to the freeway. You know where it is?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Take Woodland back to Euclid, Euclid to West Bayshore. Drive normally.”
“Why wouldn’t I drive normally? What’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine, just do what I told you.”
He clicked off. Two minutes later, he heard a car approaching from behind. He glanced back, ready to go for the Glock, but it was Alex. Alex pulled up alongside him and Ben got in, saying “Go” before he even had the door closed behind him.
