Barry Eisler - The Detachment

No one responded right away, and in the silence, I realized the dog had finally stopped yapping. It was a relief.

“That’s a good point,” I said. “What I usually do in a situation like this is get an escort. They don’t care what you do or what you talk about as long as they’re being paid, and if they notice you watching your back or doing anything tactical, they usually attribute it to the fact that you’re married and afraid of being seen.”

“Works for me,” Treven said. “I’ve done it myself.”

Larison nodded. “It’s a good idea.”

There was the sound of a keycard sliding into the door lock, and a moment later Dox walked in. He was grinning.

“Well, the cyanide works,” he said, holding up the canister.

For an instant, I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Then it hit me. I said, “You didn’t.”

Dox nodded. “I did. If I had to listen to that thing for one more minute, I was going postal, I swear. This way, it was two birds with one stone. The cyanide works, and we get to enjoy the sounds of silence.”

I shook my head and sighed, thinking I should have seen it coming.

“Oh, come on,” Dox said. “Tell me you didn’t think of it yourself.”

Treven said, “I wish I had.”

We all laughed at that, and maybe the laughter was good. Nothing brought a team together better than shared laughter-well, shared fighting, maybe, but bar fights were a younger man’s game, and anyway we couldn’t afford the attention. But the momentary sense of camaraderie struck me as likely to be just that: momentary. Nothing more than a lull, a veneer temporarily obscuring differences that might soon impel each of us to very different sides of a board, the contours of which I sensed but couldn’t yet discern.

Treven benchpressed a hundred eighty pounds at a dead weight station in the spacious Wynn fitness center, taking his time, going easy. He could have put another hundred on the bar, but that kind of weight would have been conspicuous, and besides, he was only here in case Shorrock showed up, not for a real workout. Shorrock was scheduled to check in that day, with the keynote tomorrow, and though check-in was at three, it wasn’t inconceivable he’d arrive earlier. So Treven had started in at the gym at noon, doing nothing other than the length of his workout to distinguish himself from the other guests who’d been coming and going. It had been nearly two hours already, and no sign of Shorrock. It was about time for him to move on and let Dox, who was on deck, take over. It was silly, but he’d been hoping he’d be the one to make the initial contact. He wasn’t used to feeling like the junior member of a team, and although it embarrassed him to admit it, he wanted a chance to prove himself.

They’d been here for three days now, and knew the public layout of the hotel well enough to be employees. They’d been over every inch of the property-every bar, every restaurant, every club, every store, every men’s room. The parking garages, the pools, the perimeter. Everything. They were as ready as they could be on short notice and given the other constraints they were operating under. All they needed now was a little break, something they could leverage into something bigger.

He set the bar back on the rack and walked over to the mats to stretch. He hoped he was doing the right thing, taking out Shorrock. He’d always been fine knowing the military would disown him if he ever blew an op, but at least he’d always been able to comfortably assume his actions had been sanctioned by the proper chain of command. This one was different. The president had an assassination list, true-in fact, its existence had recently leaked, along with the fact that among its targets were American citizens. None of which was news to anyone in the ISA, but it wasn’t like the president had called him personally. Treven didn’t know where Hort’s orders had come from, or whether there had been orders at all. But what was he supposed to do? The kind of shit the military used him for was so deniable he hadn’t received written orders in longer than he could remember. If he’d asked Hort for something in writing now, Hort probably would have referred him for a psych evaluation.

He rotated his neck, cracking the joints, and started doing some yoga stretches. It was a tricky situation. On the one hand, Hort had repeatedly proven himself manipulative and worse. On the other hand, if what he claimed about Shorrock was true, that he was planning domestic mass casualty attacks, taking the man out could save thousands of American lives.

But was that really the reason he was here? He’d never been so confused about his own motivations…hell, he’d never been confused at all. The deal had always been simple: a photograph; a file; intelligence on who, what, and where. How was always up to him. Why was never even a consideration. Now, everything was different. Maybe it was all a natural transition. Maybe before he’d been nothing but a tool, albeit a sharp one, and now he was waking up to the way real hitters played the game. Yeah, maybe. That’s what Hort had told him, anyway-that he was beginning to understand the way the world really worked, that he was on his way to being a player in his own right.

He was afraid of those security tapes, he had to admit. The way Hort had presented it, it was the CIA that had the tapes-the deputy director, a guy named Stephen Clements, specifically-and Hort was leaning on Clements to keep the tapes under wraps. But Treven wondered. Isn’t that exactly how an operator like Hort would position this kind of leverage? Someone else is trying to extort you, and I’m your best friend who’s stopping him. How could he ever really know? If he stepped out of line, he could easily find himself arrested and charged with murder. Regardless of the truth of it all, Hort would just tell him he was sorry, he’d done all he could to prevent it from happening.

He knew he couldn’t live this way forever. At some point, he would have to go after Clements, and probably Hort, too. That, or just tell them all to fuck off and take his chances. He wondered if the real reason he’d accepted Hort’s orders this time was just to defer that day of reckoning.

Or was it something else? Having learned through multiple near-death experiences just how much of the noble-sounding king and country rhetoric was bullshit designed to fool the impressionable and empower the corrupt, was it possible he still craved being on the inside so much he was pretending not to know better? When he put it that way, it felt pathetic, but the notion of abandoning the military-abandoning the ISA-was horrible. Just imagining it made him feel anxious to the point of panic. What would he do? Who would he be?

He blew out a long breath and popped up on his palms in upward facing dog, his pelvis on the floor, his back arched. He liked the yoga. He found he didn’t bounce back quite as quickly as he had in his football and wrestling days, and that the esoteric stretches seemed to help.

One of the attendants walked over, an attractive brunette wearing a spa uniform with a nametag reading Alisa . Treven had noticed her watching him earlier and wondered if she was interested. Apparently that would be a yes.

“I didn’t figure you for a yoga aficionado,” she said.

“I don’t know about aficionado,” Treven said, coming to his feet. “But I like the stretches.”

“It’s smart. A lot of guys who are into weights don’t stretch enough.”

“Do you teach this stuff?”

“Personal trainer. I don’t think you need it, though. I was watching you, you know what you’re doing.”