by Barry Eisler
There were things she couldn’t do—what the men had made her do on the deck of the boat from Bangkok to Portland, for one. And because, as she’d learned in college psych courses, negative reinforcement tends to generalize, there were other things she couldn’t do, as well. And still others she could do but that weren’t comfortable.
She could kiss, but didn’t really like to. Except for Sean, who had been her first, all the way back in high school, standing by the snowy swings in an empty playground on her last night in Llewellyn. She supposed she could have kissed Carl. He had obviously wanted to. But she hadn’t. What she wanted was exactly what they did.
She was glad he’d come. Sometimes it didn’t happen, because the guy didn’t like what she insisted on. That always made her feel crappy afterward, like there was something wrong with her. Or sometimes it was the opposite problem—the guy would come too fast, because he liked it too much. Which wasn’t exactly helpful, either.
She thought of Goldilocks and the three bears, and laughed a little. Yeah, Carl was just right. Freaked out, but still turned on.
She looked at the floor and let the hot water run down her neck and back. She could tell he would again if she wanted, and the way she liked, too. But it wouldn’t be the same. It would feel artificial. It would be artificial. She’d have to try to provoke him, make him angry, to make it real again, and the thought of that made her sad.
She’d said so little. And yet . . . he’d understood. Without knowing the details, he’d understood completely, in exactly the way she would have wanted him to understand, if she could have imagined what that might be like.
The hot water was good. She felt herself starting to relax.
She was glad for what happened. After the last few days, she’d needed it. But she didn’t want it to happen again. She just wanted . . . to try to trust him. She’d almost told him that, right before heading to the bathroom, but then couldn’t say it.
When she was done showering, she put on a robe and went back to the room. He was sitting on the couch, and though his head was up and his eyes open, she had the sense he’d been dozing.
“Better?” he said.
She nodded. “I needed that.”
He smiled. “I’m tempted to ask whether you’re referring to the shower or what came before it, but I believe a woman is entitled to her mysteries.”
She shook her head, liking how irrepressible he was but not wanting to admit it.
“You were right,” she said. “I’m not a professional. Not like you. Nobody’s paying me.”
She sat at the opposite end of the couch and looked away from him. “I was Thai, when I was a little girl. Well, Lahu, but from Thailand. And I was kidnapped, and taken to America. With my sister. Nason. She died.”
“I’m sorry, Labee.”
Even all these years later, it was hard to talk about Nason without tears, especially to someone who seemed to understand. And worse, in this case, who was calling her by a name she hadn’t heard since she and Nason had been little girls. So she just nodded and hurried on.
“And Sorm . . . I’m pretty sure he was behind it. Not the kidnapping itself—that was someone else, and I took care of him. And the people who helped him, or at least most of them. But the logistics. The network. That’s all Sorm. What happened to Nason and me wouldn’t have been possible without Sorm. And what’s happened to God knows how many other children would never have happened without him.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You know better than I do, but yeah. And my guy at CIA, whose intel has always been solid before, he told me Sorm’s not just a trafficker. In his Khmer Rouge salad days, his specialty was sexual humiliation and rape. Even children, in front of their parents. Like I said, some people just need killing.”
She knew nothing more true than that. “Yes.”
“But how’d you get so close? I mean, night vision and the Glock . . . how’d you get all that into the club?”
She told him about Little and the joint federal-local-law-enforcement task force, leaving out the specifics.
“My lord,” he said when she was done. “These state-of-the-art networked security systems are like a wet dream for nation-state actors. I hate to think of where things are going with electronic voting. But what about Sorm? I gather from my guy he’s a hard man to find. And apparently, my guy was more right than he knew. Where’d you get the intel?”
“I developed some leads.”
He laughed. “One of those leads lend you his Glock?”
She didn’t like the question. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong, you can ride a Z800 like a pro, so maybe you like big guns, too. But I had a feeling the Glock was something you borrowed from someone. And that you didn’t ask nicely.”
She realized that despite everything, she was still partly buying the hick routine, and underestimating him as a result. “And you say I’m a good interrogator.”
“You are. But I suppose I have my moments.”
“Anyway, yes. I got Sorm’s burner number from someone in his network and tracked it to the club. But you’re right, now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I realize he wasn’t even there. Why would he be? It was obviously a setup. I just couldn’t accept it right away. Because—”
“Because you wanted so much to kill him. I get it.”
She nodded. The feeling of being that close . . . She realized now she’d gotten carried away. If Carl hadn’t been there to talk sense to her, she might have gone tearing down the hotel stairs and straight into another ambush. She had to keep a tighter grip on herself.
“So a setup,” he said. “But for which of us?”
“It’s hard to say. I never told my contact where I’d be going in the club. But from what you’ve told me, your guy knew you were going to hit the VIP safe room.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I hate to think it, though. A lot of water under the bridge with my guy.”
“But there are other possibilities. Everyone has been tracking Sorm by what we believed was a burner he was using.”
“That’s right.”
“So whoever was behind the setup, if they knew about the burner, they also knew exactly where one of us was going to try to hit Sorm.”
“You’re right,” he said. “And there’s another possibility. I told you, these days, Sorm is a DIA asset. It was DIA who hired me to take out Sorm’s UN nemesis by getting me to believe the UN guy was Sorm himself. So if DIA . . .”
He got up, walked over to the French doors, and stood for a moment, looking out onto the dark beach. Then he turned to her. “If DIA knows about my CIA guy, they’d know I’d have called him after surviving their Phnom Penh double cross. They’d especially know because my guy made some inquiries throughout the intelligence ‘community’ once I’d contacted him. Shit, I bet you I know what happened.”
He walked back to the couch and started pacing in front of it.
“These ‘intel community’ types spend as much time spying on each other as they do on America’s ostensible adversaries. So shit, DIA probably knows about my CIA connection. My guy’s used me for enough work, after all. So when my guy starts asking questions, someone at DIA feeds him false intel. ‘Oh yeah, we know the mobile number of a known Sorm associate.’ My guy cross references, and creates a map of a telephone network that leads him to the burner Sorm is supposed to be using. Yeah, in fact, he even told me, ‘Sorm doesn’t know all our capabilities’ to explain why Sorm would have gotten sloppy with his communication security. Well, yeah, Sorm might not know, but DIA does. And then DIA makes sure ‘Sorm’s’ burner is located at Les Nuits, night after night, right in the club VIP safe room. My CIA guy laps it all up and thinks, ‘Bingo, we found Sorm.’ And I thought the same. But instead of Sorm, it was a damn ambush.”
“When you tossed in that flashbang, one of the men yelled, ‘Grenade.’ In English.”
“He did?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t narrow the list
of suspects that much, but it’s at least consistent with your theory.”
“Damn, I didn’t even hear. Too busy trying not to piss myself, I guess. I don’t think I’d have made it out of that club if you hadn’t been there.”
“I’m glad I was, then.”
“That’s pretty sentimental for you.”
She laughed. It was weird how comfortable he made her.
“Anyway,” she said, “I have another lead.”
“Yeah?”
“Udom Leekpai. Another Sorm associate. Who sells children out of a shipping container at the Srinakarin Rot Fai Night Market.”
“Well, it sounds like we ought to get back to Bangkok and pay old Udom a visit.”
A warm ripple of adrenaline spread through her gut. Leekpai was her best lead to that little girl. And to Sorm. She was glad to have someone with her to go after him, and a little bewildered by both the notion and the feeling.
“Say,” he said. “Can I ask you something off topic?”
She nodded.
“You have some kind of martial-arts background? Tai chi, or aikido, or something like that?”
The question made her tense, the way his comment about the Glock had. “Why?”
“The way you moved me on the couch. I don’t even know how you did it, exactly. It didn’t feel like you were pulling hard, but away I went. I have a friend who can do things like that, and he’s got a big-time judo background.”
That was way too close for comfort. “I’ve dabbled in this and that,” she said, remembering how Little had said something along those lines when she’d put a similar question to him.
He laughed. “Yeah, ‘dabbled.’ But okay. Like I said, I believe a woman is entitled to her mysteries. Can I ask you one other thing off topic?”
“I get the feeling nothing is really off topic with you.”
“Well, I guess it comes down to how you define ‘topic.’ But anyway, before, when I said I loved the smell of durian fruit. You looked at me strangely. I know most people dislike the smell, but that look seemed like something else.”
He really did notice a lot. He would have made a great cop.
“Durian was Nason’s favorite.”
There was a long pause. Then he said, “I’m glad you told me.”
She nodded. And, to keep herself from crying, said, “If you’re right. About DIA feeding false information to your CIA contact. It means—”
“Right, it means my contact ought to be able to tell us who at DIA is protecting Sorm. And if he won’t—”
“Then the one protecting Sorm is your contact.”
“That’s right, even though I hate to think it. But I can’t call him now. I don’t want to power up the phone until we’re ready to vamoose in the morning. But I’ll tell you what, one way or the other, he’s going to have himself some explaining to do.”
24
Dox slept fitfully. It wasn’t the couch—he’d meant it when he said he’d slept, and slept well, on plenty worse. It wasn’t even any kind of adrenaline aftermath from the whole crazy night. It was the worry that Kanezaki might have sold him out.
He didn’t want to think it could be. Which meant he had to make sure he wasn’t discounting the possibility just because it was uncomfortable.
If Kanezaki had turned on him, there would’ve had to be a hell of a good reason. Because the man would know that if anything went wrong, he’d be taking on not just Dox, but Rain, as well, and with all due immodesty, there weren’t many pairs on earth you’d less want looking to punch your ticket.
Still, Kanezaki himself would make for some formidable opposition. And while that was a sobering notion, it was also such a sad one.
Rain didn’t trust anyone. Well, maybe he trusted Dox. And his lady—or sometime lady, who knew what was up with them anyway, Rain didn’t like to talk about it—Delilah. Rain trusted her.
But Dox wasn’t built like that. He needed to have people he could believe in. Rain was one, of course. And Delilah, too—hell, she’d earned it after all they’d been through, though it was also true he could tell with her right away. And the Dalai Lama—well, Vannak Vann, the UN guy, but he just thought of him as the Dalai Lama. He was on the up-and-up, no doubt. And Labee, who, okay, he hadn’t known for very long, but with whom a hell of a lot had happened in the short time they’d been acquainted. He trusted her.
And Kanezaki. Kanezaki was another. He hadn’t even realized how much he’d come to trust the man over the years until just now, lying sleepless on a wee-hours couch at the Paradise Cottages and Spa in Rayong Province, Thailand, when he was forced by circumstance to ask himself whether his trust might have been misplaced.
At well past dawn, Labee stirred in the bed and sat up.
“Hey,” Dox said. “How’d you sleep?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Pretty well, actually. How about you?”
“Okay at first. But I’ve been awake for a spell, trying to decide whether my guy could have sold me out.”
There was a pause, then she said, “Even if Sorm wasn’t there last night, he was there recently. My lead was solid.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but that doesn’t exactly get my guy off the hook, either.”
“Well, we’ll know soon enough, right?”
“Yeah. Speaking of which, we should git. I don’t want to call him until we’re east of Bangkok and past the choke point of the coastal road. Just in case.”
There was a pause. She said, “You’ve been calling him your ‘guy.’ But it sounds like he’s more your friend.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. Known him a long time.”
“I don’t think it was him.”
“I don’t, either, but . . . it could have been. I can’t afford to be sentimental about it.”
“I get that. But I also think . . . you have good instincts.”
He looked at her. She was so pretty in the faint light from outside, and naked beneath the bedsheets. He wished he could have walked over and made love to her right then and there. But he could tell she didn’t want that. And it wasn’t just a question of it being her way, or more gentle, which he would have favored right that minute. He sensed the night before had been just a crazy one-off. But not a bad one. Not a bad one at all. With luck, what came after it might be even better.
He laughed. “I think that’s just self-flattery. You’re saying you think I have good instincts because I decided to trust you, is that it?”
“Just because it’s self-flattering doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“Well, let’s hope it is. Like you said, we’ll know soon enough.”
They took turns in the bathroom and headed out. Back at the bike, he didn’t argue, he just held out the key.
She almost took it, but then hesitated. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll ride in back.”
It was such a small thing, but at the same time he could tell what a concession it was for her. And that she was doing it for his sake, and maybe so she’d seem more normal to him, whatever the hell normal might mean.
He shook his head and pressed the key into her hand. “No, I know you like to be the one with your hand on the throttle. So to speak. Plus I like the way you ride. Damn, these double entendres are a big effort and you’re not even smiling. Anyway, no shit, you ride as well as I do, or actually better, if my honesty overcomes my pride. I really don’t mind. For today, anyway. Maybe I could just reserve the right for another occasion.”
She touched his cheek, like she had the night before. This time he didn’t make the mistake of trying to touch her back.
Along the way they stopped to buy new clothes—tee shirts and cargo shorts and hiking sandals—and at an incongruously American-diner-looking place, where they fueled up on eggs, toast, bacon, and coffee. Their conversation was comfortable, almost banal, considering the events of the night before and what they were facing now. Mostly they talked about motorcycles, and how stupid it was to ride without leathers, but when in Rome and trying to be
inconspicuous and all that. She had a passion for Ducatis, and a Streetfighter was her most cherished possession. He was a Harley man and planned one day to own a V-Rod Muscle, though where he lived, a little Honda Rebel was the more practical choice.
About a half hour east of Bangkok, they found an Internet café. Dox went in and paid cash for access, then came back out to the dusty parking area in front. The late-morning sun was high in the sky and Labee was standing next to the Kawasaki in the shade of a lonely palm tree, alongside a mongrel dog sheltering from the heat. Dox joined her. She already had his phone out of the case and handed it to him. Then she walked off, no doubt recognizing that he wouldn’t want her listening to his call. He almost told her to stay, but then thought of how Rain would castigate him for being too trusting and decided to just let her go.
He looked at the dog, which was watching him. “Hey, pooch,” he said absently. He was surprised at how nervous he was. He didn’t believe Kanezaki could have turned on him. But . . . what if he was wrong?
He fired up the unit and saw that the Wi-Fi connection was strong enough to reach the lot from inside. Good to go. He brought up Signal and made the call.
Kanezaki picked up instantly, even though it was the middle of the night over there. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure you understand that, first with Zatōichi and then after the Pattaya debacle, I needed to make sure I was secure.”
“I get that.”
“I hope you do. Now at the outset of this whole thing, you told me you had a hunch Sorm was DIA, a hunch you confirmed. I want to know how you confirmed it. Specifically, who confirmed it. And how you dialed into what you thought was that Sorm associate’s mobile phone, the one that was proof positive Sorm was sheltering in Les Nuits, right in the damn safe room that for me turned out to be anything but.”
“Damn it, Dox, you know I can’t—”
“Shut the fuck up, son, because you are not getting it. Last time you gave me this whole song and dance about how Sorm’s a DIA asset and you couldn’t have me kill a DIA asset, but this time you’re not going to be giving up a DIA asset, you’re going to be giving up a DIA officer, and if you won’t do that, then my problem isn’t with DIA, partner, my problem is with you.”
