by Barry Eisler
A motorcycle buzzed by, a couple of kids riding tandem. Then it was gone, a long dust cloud in its wake, and everything was quiet again.
Kanezaki said, “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“Tom? I like you. You know I do. But right now? You should be afraid. Either you got played, or you’re playing me. There’s no other possibility here. I’ll tell you the truth, I am really hoping it’s door number one. But you need to prove that to me. If you won’t, it’s your choice. And your consequences.”
The dog that had been sheltering looked at him warily, then came to its feet and moved off.
“All right,” Kanezaki said. “My DIA contact is Frank Dillon. The deputy director.”
Dox felt a huge surge of relief. Yeah, he’d felt nervous, but he hadn’t realized just how afraid he’d really been that Kanezaki might stonewall. Still, the specific information made him wary.
“Franklin X. Dillon? The Delta sniper, from the Battle of Mogadishu?”
“Yes. That Dillon.”
“Well, he’s a genuine badass. And outspoken, too, especially for a Delta guy, who in my experience like to shoot more than talk. Isn’t he the one who did that New York Times interview after the battle, blaming the damn secretary of defense himself for the deaths of his comrades, for not having provided the requested tanks and armored personnel carriers?”
“Yes,” Kanezaki said, “he’s famous for that interview—or infamous, depending on who you talk to. It was one of the things that led to Aspin’s resignation.”
“If I’m remembering correctly, he’s also famous for inventing some kind of new approach to tank-and-APC downtime, some modular thing that doubled the ratio of deployment hours to maintenance hours.”
“Yes. So effectively doubling the number of deployed armored units. He said he’d never forgive himself for not having thought of it before Mogadishu. If he had, our guys might have had the armor they needed, and they wouldn’t have been at the mercy of ignorant DC brass. Do you know him? Or just by reputation?”
“Back in the day, I did some training with Delta. But our paths never crossed. What about you?”
“He’s been with DIA for a decade now, and I know him from various joint ops over the years. He’s a kind of frenemy. Very smart guy. Though I can’t say I find him as agreeable as you.”
“Well, who is?”
“Anyway. He’s the one who confirmed for me, off the record, obviously, that Gant was a DIA case officer and Dillon’s subordinate. And who gave me the initial intel I used to place Sorm at Les Nuits.”
All right. He wasn’t a hundred percent on Kanezaki, but they at least seemed to be heading in the right direction. “That’s a good start,” Dox said. “Now here’s something you can follow up on. There are three dead guys in that club. Well, six, actually, but three of them were locals—Sorm’s men, I’d guess, pawns someone set up outside the VIP room to be sacrificed. But the other three were different. When I tossed the flashbang into the room, one of them yelled ‘Grenade’ in English. Maybe you can find out who they were affiliated with.”
“Okay. But either way . . . you’re right. It was a setup. It had to be. I just . . . I’m sorry. I think I’ve been trying to convince myself it was something else.”
“Don’t you get it, though? It wasn’t just me Dillon was setting up. He had to know that if anything went wrong and I walked away, I’d suspect you. On which topic, pardon me, but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.”
“Yeah. I don’t know whether the next thing I tell you is going to get us out of the woods or deeper into them. But I wanted you to hear it from me regardless, not see it on the news.”
Shit. “Don’t think about it, then. Just tell me.”
“Vannak Vann. He was killed yesterday.
Dox felt sick. “Oh, no.”
“It was an IED. On the corner, not fifty meters from his office in Phnom Penh.”
“Who did it? You better tell me who did it. Was it Dillon?”
“Specifically? I don’t know. But a safe bet it was DIA. Their man Gant was the one who hired you to eliminate Vann in the first place. That didn’t work out. This feels like a Plan B.”
Dox realized he was clenching his teeth. And the phone, too. He blew out two long breaths and tried to calm himself so he could think clearly. He looked up and saw Labee watching him from the entrance of the café. She looked concerned. He was too far to be overheard, but his body language must have been clear enough.
“Maybe a Plan B,” Dox said. “Or maybe . . . something improvised. It took some doing to bring me in. Initial contact, meeting with Gant, acquisition of the equipment I requested . . . and they had to hire local muscle, the ones who were supposed to knife me in the dark after I’d shot Vann. It wasn’t exactly Operation Overlord, but there were a fair number of moving parts.”
“Yes. All designed to deploy you as a cutout.”
“And then to cut out the cutout as soon as the deed was done. It’s been only a few days. Either these guys build in safety redundancies better than NASA and had a meticulous Plan B already in place—”
“No. That wouldn’t make sense. Because every element of the plan is also a vulnerability—someone who knows too much, an element they might not be able to control.”
Dox could still feel the rage trying to push through. But focusing on the tactical aspects was helping. For the moment, anyway.
“All right,” he said. “What we’re saying is that they got to Vann by improvisation. No time for cutouts and all the rest. Direct action, because after things went sideways in Phnom Penh, they were desperate. Which brings us back to the question I asked a minute ago. Who. Fucking. Killed. Vann. That’s what you’re going to tell me. What you are not going to tell me is how I will or will not handle it.”
“I’ll try to find out. Just give me a little time.”
Now that the conversation was done, Dox could feel the rage building again. “I’m going to turn off this phone now. I’ll check in with you later.”
“Please. And don’t wait so long this time.”
“Tom? You’re in a difficult position and I appreciate that. But there comes a moment where a man has to choose sides. You can’t have it both ways here. You can be a loyal player in your ‘intelligence community,’ or you can give me what I need to kill Dillon dead. And Sorm with him.”
“Look—”
“Remember when I told you the only way to make sense of this crazy world is to know who your real friends are? Well, you need to make a decision about that, right now. The organization, or your friends. Them or me. That’s your choice now. With everything that flows from it.”
He clicked off, powered down the phone and put it back in the shielded case, and paced the parking lot, his sandals kicking up small clouds of dust into the still, hot air. He squeezed his eyes shut and balled his fists and clenched his arms and stomach. He wanted to hurt someone, kill someone.
You’re going to. You are going to kill some people who need killing.
He blew out a few more breaths. When he felt a little more in control, he walked over to Labee.
“What is it?” she said.
“They killed the Dalai Lama. Blew him up. Not the actual Dalai Lama. The UN guy I told you about who looked like him. A good man, a really good man.”
“I’m sorry, Carl.”
He realized he was close to tears. “I told him, ‘Vary your routes and times, get rid of your cell phone.’ I told him he was in danger. And he said, ‘In the scope of the universe, and the arc of justice, my life is of little consequence.’ Well, goddamnit, I hope he’s happy now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I should have known he wouldn’t listen. But I should have made him. I should have made him.”
“You tried. You did everything you could.”
He looked out at the narrow road running in front of the café, gray and rutted and baking under the sun. “You don’t know that. And neither do I.”
>
He started to move past her so he could get on the bike. But she held up a hand and pressed her palm to his cheek, stopping him. He stood there for a moment, looking at her, then put his hand over hers. This time she didn’t pull back.
“I am going to kill them,” he said. “Every last fucking one.”
She nodded, looking into his eyes. “We both are.”
25
Livia took them farther north, stopping at a gas stand in the middle of nowhere east of Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. They were less than an hour from the Central Business District, but it was quiet out here, the land flat and dotted with shacks and irrigation ditches and small plots of farmland. Livia gassed up the Kawasaki. When she was done, Carl walked over to an old woman perched on a sagging couch on the shady side of the small cinderblock building—the owner, it seemed. He pulled two bottled waters from an ice bucket and handed the woman some baht, holding up his hand and refusing when she tried to make change.
They took turns in the outhouse, then sat in a pair of plastic chairs under a faded red-and-white Coca-Cola umbrella set up in the dirt alongside the building. While they drank, Carl told her about the rest of his conversation with his guy. “He said he’s going to find out who killed Vann,” he told her. “Most likely, that means a former Delta guy named Franklin Dillon, the deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. That’s some heavy opposition and maybe heavy blowback. If you don’t want to be part of it, I’ll miss you, but I’ll understand.”
She looked at him. “You couldn’t stop me.”
He laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m getting that feeling. Not that I’d want to try.”
“I should check in myself. I would have earlier, but you made a good point about the coastal road being a choke point. I didn’t want to turn my phone on until we were close to Bangkok.”
She fired up the phone. The moment the call went through, Little picked up. “Livia,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Why didn’t you check in? I have to learn about what happened at the club on CNN, and hear nothing from you?”
“I’m sorry. I was all ready to go when I saw what looked like some kind of confrontation outside a room with three guards in front of it. That’s when I asked you to stand by. And then the guards started shooting, and I told you to kill the lights. It was pandemonium after that, and I got out. Do you know anything about what happened?”
“Not one damn thing,” he said. “In fact, I have the oddest feeling you know more than you’re telling me.”
“Really? I walked into what turned out to be a shooting gallery, and the only person who knew I was going to be there was you.”
“What? You think I had something to do with that?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Why in God’s name would I want to set you up?”
She didn’t have an answer to that, and in fact didn’t believe Little had anything to do with it. But that hadn’t been the point, either. The point was to change the trajectory of the conversation from his accusation to her counteraccusation.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But on the other hand, I know very little about you other than that you have resources to waste.”
“You know what I meant by that. Come on, this is insane.”
“What can you tell me about the people who died at the club?”
“You don’t think I’ve been trying to find out?”
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing. But I can give you the information I have. And you can follow up on it.”
“That would be great and I’d love to. I only wish you’d done it earlier.”
She smiled, glad to have him playing defense. “The guards were Thai. And then, after the shooting started, a door opened and three men in what looked like black combat or SWAT uniforms and body armor came swarming out. One of them yelled ‘Grenade’ in English, and then there was a series of explosions from a flashbang. Then more shooting. After that, I don’t know.”
“Yes, there were six bodies total. From what you’re saying, three Thai guards, and three foreign operators. It’s not much, but I’ll see what I can do with it.”
“Good.”
“Damn it, Livia, you need to stop looking at me as the enemy. We’re a team.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do. And don’t tell me we’re a team. Prove it.”
“You asked me to get you into the club, and I did. What the hell more do you want?”
“I want to know what happened there.”
“Well, so far I haven’t been able to find out. But maybe what you just belatedly told me will turn out to be useful.”
She didn’t mind the dig. In fact, if that was the best he could come up with, she knew she’d won. She hadn’t wanted to answer his questions, and by leveling accusations of her own, she’d gotten him to forget he even had any.
“I hope it will be,” she said. “I’m going to turn off my phone, but I’ll check in again later.”
“What, you think I’m tracking your phone?”
“What I think is that my phone is trackable. Are you telling me it isn’t?”
“Why does everything have to be an argument with you?”
“Why are you always arguing?”
“Look, I don’t have time for a Monty Python sketch. Turn off the phone if you want. If I have anything important to tell you, it’ll just wait until you get around to calling me.”
She smiled. “Like I said. I’ll check in later.”
She powered down the phone and put it back in the Faraday case. Carl said, “Why are handlers always such a pain in the ass?”
She shrugged. “Just comes with the territory, I guess.”
“You learn anything?”
“I think he’s up to something. My supervisor sure thinks so. But I don’t think he was behind what happened at the club. On that, I think he’s as mystified as we are.”
“What do you think he’s up to, then?”
She considered that. “He sent me over here to decide whether I wanted to be part of a task force. Something between Thai and local US law enforcement. But . . . since I got here, he hasn’t seemed very concerned about any of that. He seems glad I’m here, though. I’m just not sure why.”
They were both quiet for a moment. She said, “Anyway, the main thing is, what looks most likely right now is that your theory is correct. DIA was behind Pattaya. Your friend didn’t set you up. They did.”
“I hope you’re right. We’ll see what he has to say for himself when I call him later. But let’s get out of here now. Don’t want to linger anywhere we’ve been using the phones. For all I know, these guys will lock in on the signal and send in a damn drone. Those things are scary. I shot one out of the sky once, but it was a near thing and I was a lot better armed than I am at the moment.”
26
They kept heading north and northwest, sticking to back roads. Dox was surprised, though not unpleasantly, at how quickly he’d gotten used to riding in back. It was actually kind of relaxing. Of course, it would have been a different story if Labee hadn’t been such a competent rider. But she was. And he had to admit, insisting on being in front even in the face of her obvious skill would have been childish. If anyone ever gave him a hard time about it, he’d tell them to take it up with Labee, who, if she was in the wrong mood at the time, would probably kick their ass. He’d enjoy a backseat view of that, too.
They found a business hotel at the outskirts of the airport district. Dox got a room and they both napped on the king bed. Their clothes were on and there was no snuggling or anything like it, but still he felt glad that she was letting him into her space a little. The feeling was paradoxical, because hell, the night before, she’d let him into her body. But that was the point, she hadn’t so much let him in as taken him in. Now she was letting him. And it was different.
When they were awake, he checked in with Kanezaki again. “What have you got for me?” he said,
afraid again despite himself that the answer wouldn’t be satisfactory.
But maybe he was wrong, because Kanezaki said, “A lot.”
“Go.”
“Less than twelve hours after you shot Gant, Dillon was on a plane. Guess where he was going.”
“I don’t want to play guessing games. Just tell me.”
“Phnom Penh.”
“And you think he blew up Vann while he was there?”
“I can’t prove it. But it’s not hard to imagine the sequence. Sorm learns through various contacts, maybe through DIA, in fact, about Vann and the sealed indictment. He goes to his case officer, Gant, and says, ‘You better take care of this.’ Gant spends days, maybe weeks, putting everything together for you to hit Vann. But you hit Gant instead. Now Sorm is having a shit fit. SOP is to have a backup contact if for any reason you lose touch with your case officer. Figure the backup here is Dillon, Gant’s superior. Sorm calls Dillon and now he is really agitated, because the clock is ticking, they’ve lost time, they’ve lost Gant, Vann is still out there, and worst of all, so is a probably-pissed-off former marine sniper who might just know too much. Dillon says, ‘Relax, I’m coming to deal with it personally.’ Which he does.”
Dox considered. It fit with his general impression that blowing up Vann was less a Plan B than it was hasty improvisation. Which was his sense about Zatōichi, too.
Something else occurred to him. “Hey, you said it was an IED. You sure about that?”
“Yes. The blast site and surrounding damage is nothing like what you’d expect from any kind of missile. This was a bomb, already in place. Why, though?”
“Well, if it’s DIA, why not just make it a drone strike? Why send Dillon, and presumably a team, all the way to Phnom Penh?”
“I think you’re looking at it backward. Anybody with even rudimentary training can build and emplace an IED. You can even find recipes on the Internet, though the wrong ones will get you blown up. But if you wanted to send in a drone, the logistical tail would be formidable. That’s changing fast—the next generation of drones will be the size of dragonflies, with a practically microscopic camera called an optical phased-array receiver, and embedded microexplosives, and everything will be decentralized. But right now, if you wanted to deploy a Reaper or whatever to loiter over a target until you could ID him and launch a Hellfire to blow him up, the whole thing would have to be coordinated through Ramstein Air Base in Germany and other locations, too. You’d have a paper trail visible from outer space.”
