by Barry Eisler
“Why’d you want me to call you?”
There was a pause. Hort said, “I was expecting to hear from the courier first.”
“The courier is fine. He’s good. I hope you’ll treat him better than you treated me.”
There was another pause. Hort said, “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you. But bear with me. It gets better as it goes along.”
Larison felt his scalp prickle. He said nothing.
“I figured your next stop would be a jewelry store somewhere. I wanted to let you know before you got there that the ‘diamonds’ you’re carrying are fake. They’re plastic. Hold a hot flame, like a butane torch, to any of them. Or hit one hard with a hammer. You’ll see.”
Larison felt an icy rage begin to spread out from his chest. It crept down his stomach and up his neck. A red haze misted his vision.
“You just made the biggest fucking mistake of your life,” he said, his voice near a whisper.
“Hear me out now. There’s good news, too.”
“Yeah, the good news is, I’m going to listen to you scream before I let you die.”
But he hadn’t hung up, and he knew how Hort would read that. Well, let him. It wouldn’t change the way this thing was going to end.
“Instead of the diamonds, I’m offering you a million dollars—diamonds, currency, gold, whatever you want.”
“Forget it.”
“On top of which, my protection and another million a year if you come back to work with me.”
A bus pulled up. Two people got off. The doors closed and it pulled away.
“What are you talking about?”
“Think about it. You could never have spent that money anyway. Most of what you were going to spend would have been for security. If you’re working with me, you won’t need that, you’ll already have it.”
“In exchange for what, exactly?”
“Peace of mind, ultimately.”
Larison laughed harshly. “You’re offering me peace of mind. That’s funny.”
“I know what you planned to do with those tapes after you got the diamonds. Well, you can’t now that Nico’s exposed. But it was the wrong way to go about it anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“You want people to pay for what happened to you? We’ll make them pay.”
“I want you to pay!”
“I already have, son. I have the same nightmares you do.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t do it. You don’t live with that fucking sound in your ears.”
“I live with all kinds of things. It’s the others that don’t. Well, I want them to pay, too. And there’s something more.”
“What?”
“You need to be on the inside, son. You can’t cut loose, not after the things you’ve done. You’ve tried nihilism. And it’s been caustic to your soul, I know.”
Larison squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like his head was being crushed in a vise. “I can’t. I can’t take this anymore.”
“We’ll get you help. The best help there is. Between the money and what’s on those tapes, we can change some things that should have been changed a long time ago.”
Larison opened his eyes and breathed through his mouth. He felt sick. He’d been such an idiot, thinking he could get free. An idiot.
“The million is yours no matter what. You earned it. You paid for it. Tell me how to get it to you and it’s done. If you want the rest—the million a year, the protection, the power to set some wrong things right—we need to talk more.”
Idiot. Fucking idiot. You could have killed him. You could have—
“Think it over. Take your time.”
—killed him, you—
His stomach clenched. He clicked off the phone, leaned over, and convulsively threw up onto the curb. He gasped, his back heaving, then gagged and threw up again.
You could have killed him.
He stood there for a moment sucking wind, his hands on his knees, his eyes and nose streaming.
And not just Hort. He could have killed Marcy, too. Why hadn’t he? What stupid, pathetic sentiment had permitted him to be so fatally, disgustingly stupid? He told himself he would never make a mistake like that again, and even as he thought it he knew how meaningless the vow was now, how hollow.
When he felt a little steadier, he looked around. There was a gas station across the street. He walked over and found a guy in blue coveralls in the garage.
“I need to borrow a hammer,” Larison said, his voice ragged.
He could tell the guy wanted to refuse, and was almost glad for it. He looked at the guy, struggling to control his rage, wanting someone to vent it on. The guy figured out refusing would be a bad idea. He leaned over and pulled a large orange dead blow hammer off the floor. He handed it to Larison. “This is all I’ve got,” he said.
Larison hefted it. It weighed about four pounds. He imagined the damage it would do to a man’s skull. He said, “I’ll be right back.”
He walked around to the side of the building, took a diamond out of the bag, and set it on the concrete sidewalk. He put the bag down, lowered his stance, and gripped the hammer. He looked at the diamond for a moment. It was meaningless, inert.
He raised the hammer over his head and smashed it down. The diamond—the plastic—exploded beneath it. Shards flew in a thousand different directions.
He pulled another from the pack and smashed it with the hammer. It exploded exactly like the first. He did it again. And again. He attacked the bag with the hammer, blasting it, savaging it, beating it the way he wanted to beat Hort’s brains.
He realized he was screaming. He stopped and looked up. The gas station guy was looking at him from around the corner, appalled and afraid and frozen to the spot.
Grimacing, his breath snorting through his nose, Larison stalked over to him, the hammer dangling from his hand like a war club. The guy’s eyes widened and his face went pale.
Larison stopped an arm’s length from the guy. He looked at him for a long moment, grinning with hate. He held out the hammer. “Thanks,” he said.
The guy took it without a word or even a nod. Larison went back to the bus stop. He left the bag where he’d dropped it.
Another bus pulled up. The doors opened with a pneumatic hiss. He got on. He didn’t even know where it was going.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that even through his rage and his nausea, his horror at how close he’d been and at how badly he’d blown it, he understood what he was going to do.
Accept Hort’s offer.
Take the money.
And when he was ready, when he had regrouped and resettled and refocused, get to Hort. He thought the courier, the blond guy from the unit, might be the right place to start. He was good, Larison could see that much. But he saw something else, too: The guy wasn’t happy. He knew he was being manipulated, and was looking for a way out. Maybe Larison could give him one.
He smiled grimly. Because when he found Hort, he would do things to him, do everything to him, until he made the sound Larison could never get out of his ears.
This time, it would be like music.
37
A Drink
Ulrich’s secure line buzzed. He looked at the phone, wondering if it would be better to just not answer. It was never good news. Never.
Still.
“Ulrich.”
“Clements. Okay to talk?”
“Why do you always ask me that? Yes, it’s okay. It’s always okay. This is a fucking secure line, do you not know that?”
There was a pause. “Are you watching CNN?”
“No.”
“There was a shooting in Arlington. Two dead.”
Ulrich clenched his jaw. “Theirs or ours?”
“Ours.”
Ulrich didn’t say anything. He felt numb. The numbness wasn’t unpleasant. At the moment, he much preferred it to whatever sensation it must have been blocking.
“We can still turn
this around,” Clements said.
Ulrich laughed. It started slowly and built to a cackle. He thought of these idiots, blundering about, thinking they had a clue, relentlessly ruining his life. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for now, he relished the humor element in the whole thing.
“You want to know how you can tell when a war is lost?” he said, wiping his eyes. “When people describe it as ‘still winnable.’ Well, that’s what I’ve been doing with myself all along on this. I keep telling myself it’s still winnable. But it’s not. It’s just not. There are too many idiots. I can’t keep fighting them. I can’t keep fighting you.”
He set the phone back in the cradle and put his face in his hands. He laughed again. And then he was crying.
People wouldn’t understand. He’d worked so hard to keep the country safe. Yes, he’d authorized some difficult things, some questionable things. But what looked questionable now didn’t look at all that way after 9/11. Back then, no one was questioning anything. They all just wanted to be safe, never mind how. So what, he was going to be hanged now for refusing to let a bunch of rules and procedures and bureaucracy prevent him from keeping people safe? What was the alternative? Dot his I’s and dash his T’s and just let the next attack happen? That would have been the real crime.
He blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter. He’d known the risks, hadn’t he? He’d never been in the military, but he’d performed his own kind of service. Soldiers risked life and limb defending America. He’d risked his job, his reputation, his own freedom in the same cause. How many people could make that claim? No matter what happened, he had every reason to be proud of what he’d done. And his family did, too. Even if no one else could understand, they would.
He thought about getting a drink. It was a simple thing, really, a man stopping by a bar on the way home from work. He wished he’d done it more often.
He really ought to do it now. It might be a nice memory later.
38
Property of the U.S. Government
On the platform at the West Falls Church Metro station, Ben used the iPhone to find Ulrich’s particulars. The former vice presidential chief of staff was now a “special policy adviser” for a lobbying outfit called Daschle, Davis, Baishun, one of the K Street giants, just as Larison had said. An Orange Line train would take him to Farragut West Station, a few blocks from Daschle, Davis’s headquarters.
On the ride in, Ben considered a number of stratagems for getting into Ulrich’s office. A back entrance, the roof, an elevator shaft, a maintenance stairwell. Or, having seen Ulrich’s picture on his firm’s website, just set up and wait for him in the parking garage under the building. Or outside the front door, if he used the Metro. But any of those would require reconnaissance, and reconnaissance required time. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted knowledge. And he wanted it tonight.
Besides, he thought he had a better way.
When he emerged aboveground from Farragut West Station, it was dark. Commuters flowed past him down the station escalators, car headlights illuminated the street. The air was warm and soggy and smelled like Washington, a city built on a swamp. He walked a block north to K Street and found the Daschle, Davis building, an expensive-looking glass-and-chrome square dominating the entire block.
He went through the revolving doors, and instantly the sounds of outside traffic were erased, replaced by a quiet hush and cool, dry air. The expansive lobby mirrored the exterior—glass, chrome, a polished granite floor. A rent-a-security-guard, a black guy in a blue uniform, sat behind a station in front of the elevators. Ben walked over, his footfalls echoing in the cavernous silence.
“I’m here to see David Ulrich.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t.”
“Who should I tell him is here?”
Ben could almost have smiled. He took out his credentials and set them in front of the guard. “Dan Froomkin. FBI.”
The guard picked up a phone. Explained who was here. Paused. Said, Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I have. Hung up the phone. Gestured to a sign-in sheet on the stand in front of him.
“Just need you to sign in, Mr. Froomkin.”
This time, Ben did smile. “Happy to,” he said.
He rode the elevator to the fourth floor and took the stairs from there. He didn’t consider Ulrich a threat, but using the unexpected route was a habit that had always served him well before. He mentally patted himself on the back for thinking to arrive as Froomkin. He might have dropped Hort’s name, or mentioned JSOC, but he expected that if Ulrich met him under a pretext like that, he would have come down to the lobby and kept Ben away from his inner sanctum. A possible interview by the FBI, though, was something you’d want conducted in private. And privacy was a funny thing. The same kind of space that could make a person feel confident could also make him feel exposed and vulnerable. Another kernel of wisdom from the Farm.
A smiling, pantsuited receptionist led him down a hushed, thickly carpeted hallway past a series of closed mahogany doors. Discretion, the place seemed to say. Quiet influence. Compartmentalization.
At the end of the hallway was a single open door. The receptionist gestured to it and went back the way they’d come. Ben went inside and closed the door behind him.
Ulrich was sitting behind a dark, massive desk. All these guys, compensating with their furniture. To the side was an ego wall covered by photos of Ulrich with the former vice president and various other political luminaries and insiders.
Ulrich set down a pen and stood, a big man, maybe a former linebacker now going to seed. “Agent Froomkin,” he said, looking up, “what can I—”
He saw Ben’s face and his mouth dropped open. Ben thought, You know me. Son of a bitch.
Ben understood Ulrich’s move an instant before Ulrich did, and shot forward just as Ulrich lunged for the phone. Ben leaped onto the massive desk and kicked him in the face. Ulrich went flying backward. The phone clattered to the desk. Ulrich bounced off the wall behind him, blood flowing from his nose, and somehow managed to snatch the handset off the desk. He raised it to his ear and Ben stomped the receiver. Shards of plastic exploded under his heel. Ulrich looked at the receiver as though in disbelief that it had just been rendered useless, then drew his arm back to throw it at Ben. Ben eliminated that possibility by jumping down from the desk directly in front of him. Ulrich dropped the receiver and turned to run the other way. Ben grabbed him by a wrist and the back of his neck and slammed his face into the desk. He twisted his arm up behind his back and Ulrich cried out.
“Go ahead and scream,” Ben said. “Get security up here. Get the cops. First thing I’ll tell them, the first thing my lawyer will talk about in the press conference he calls, is the Caspers. And Ecologia.”
He felt Ulrich freeze up at just the mention of the words. Whatever the Caspers and Ecologia were, Larison hadn’t been bullshitting him.
Ben pulled Ulrich from the desk and shoved him into his chair. Ulrich wiped blood from his face and stared at his hand as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What do you want?” he said.
“I want to know how you recognized me.”
“I mean, why are you here?”
Ben realized Ulrich was too smart, and too tough, to answer questions based on assumptions. He tried to imagine the situation from Ulrich’s perspective. Ulrich thinks the FBI is calling on him. Either he’s confused by that or, more likely, scared. Then a guy shows up who Ulrich recognizes is definitely not FBI because Ulrich already knows him as something else. Something else that freaks Ulrich out enough for him to try to call security without saying another word. He hadn’t gotten confused when he saw Ben. He’d gotten scared shitless. Why?
Because he recognized you as JSOC. Because he assumed you were here to kill him. And then he realized you weren’t—because he’s still alive, because someone who was here to kill him wouldn’t have announced himself to a guard and let himself be recorded by all the security cameras in the lobby an
d at the front desk. Now he doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s trying to find out.
“I’ve been tasked by the U.S. government with recovering some stolen property,” Ben said. “And I have.”
Ulrich’s eyes widened. “You recovered—”
He caught himself before he could say more. But he’d already said enough.
“Yes,” Ben said. “Larison’s dead. I recovered the tapes. Now I want to know who I return them to.”
Ulrich didn’t say anything, but Ben could see the eagerness, and the calculation, in his eyes.
“You want them?” Ben asked.
“Why would you think I do?”
Ben was impressed by the man’s discipline. But he’d already slipped, and Ben wasn’t going to allow him to recover.
“My mistake,” Ben said. He turned and started to walk to the door. “I’ll give them to the Justice Department.”
“Wait.”
Ben turned and looked at him.
“I’m not saying I’m interested. But … what are you asking for?”
Ben waited a moment to let him sweat. “You can start by telling me how you recognized me.”
Ulrich licked blood from his lips. “I’ve seen your picture.”
“How?”
“Your file.”
“Bullshit. There’s no photo associated with my file.”
Ulrich licked his lips again. “All right, look. I can see there was a mix-up here—”
“Just tell me the truth. Or I’ll know I can’t trust you with the tapes.”
“Okay, okay. The CIA’s been trying to get those tapes back. They—”
“The CIA might have a photo of me. Or maybe they could get one. But that doesn’t tell me what you matched it to.”
Ulrich didn’t answer. Ben didn’t give him time to think of another lie. He turned and walked toward the door.
“Lanier! Paula Lanier. She took the picture. While you were sleeping, on the way to Costa Rica.”
Ben stopped and turned. He tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t. “What?”
