Barry Eisler: The Detachment

But they did show up again, the following night. And this time, they stayed only briefly, probably just long enough to scan through the scores of judoka and confirm the presence of their target. If I hadn’t been doing my own frequent, unobtrusive scans of the spectator seats, I would have missed their appearance entirely.

I continued training until eight and then showered as usual, not wanting to do anything out of the ordinary, anything that might suggest I’d spotted something and was preparing for it. But I was preparing, and as a plan unspooled in my mind and adrenaline snaked out through my body, and as the presence of danger and the certainty of how I would deal with it settled into place with an awful, familiar clarity, I had to acknowledge to myself that I’d been preparing my whole life, and that whatever intervals of quiet I had ever briefly indulged were as meaningful and relevant as dreams. Only the preparation was real-the preparation, and the purpose it always enabled.

Ben Treven and Daniel Larison sat on stools at the window counter of a Douter Coffee shop fifty yards south of the Kodokan on Hakusan-dori, sipping black coffee and waiting for the two contractors to return. Treven had wanted to join them, to get a firsthand look at the man whom up until the week before he’d thought to be a myth, but Larison had insisted there was no upside to sending in more than two of them, and Treven knew he was right. It bothered him how easily and naturally Larison had established himself as the alpha of the team, but he also had to admit that Larison, in his mid-forties, ten years Treven’s senior, had seen more of the shit even than Treven had, and had survived heavier opposition. He told himself if he kept his mouth shut he might learn something, and he supposed it was true. But after ten years in the Intelligence Support Activity, the deliberately blandly named covert arm of the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, he wasn’t used to running into people who acted like his tactical superiors, and even fewer he thought might be right about it.

Treven was facing the window in the direction of the Kodokan, and saw the contractors, whom he knew only as Beckley and Krichman, approaching before Larison did. He nodded his head slightly. “Here they come.”

Larison had instructed all of them to use their mobile phones as little as possible and to keep them shut off, with the batteries removed, except at previously agreed-upon intervals. The units were all rented, of course, and all under false identities, but good security involved multiple layers. The CIA’s careless use of cell phones in the Abu Omar rendition from Milan had led to the issuance of arrest warrants from an Italian judge for a bunch of CIA officials, including the Milan station chief, and Treven figured Larison was applying the lessons of that op to this one. Still, the current precautions struck him as excessive-they weren’t here to kill or kidnap Rain, after all, only to contact him. On the other hand, just as with sending only the two contractors into the Kodokan for the initial recon, he supposed there was no real downside to the extra care.

The contractors came in and stood so they were facing Treven and Larison and had a view of the street. Treven had seen plenty of foreigners in this section of the city, but even so he knew they were all conspicuous. Treven’s blond hair and green eyes had always been somewhat of a surveillance liability, of course, but he figured that to the average Japanese, such features wouldn’t much distinguish him from Larison, with his dark hair and olive skin, or from any other Caucasian foreigner, for that matter. What the natives would notice, and remember, was the collective size of the four of them. Treven, a heavyweight wrestler in high school and linebacker for Stanford before dropping out, was actually the smallest of the group. Larison was obviously into weights, and, if Hort could be believed, maybe steroids, too. And the contractors could almost have been pro wrestlers. Treven wondered if Hort had selected them in the hope their size might intimidate Rain when they made contact. He doubted it would make a difference. Size only mattered in a fair fight, and from what he’d heard of Rain, the man was too smart to ever allow a fight to be fair.

“He’s there,” the man called Beckley said. “Training, just like last night.”

Larison nodded. “Maybe we should switch off now,” he said in his low, raspy voice. “Two nights in a row, he’s probably spotted you. Treven and I can take the point.”

“He didn’t spot us,” Krichman said. “We were in the stands, he barely even glanced our way.”

Beckley grunted in agreement. “Look, if the guy were that surveillance conscious, he wouldn’t be showing up at the same location at the same time every night in the first place. He didn’t see us.”

Larison took a sip of coffee. “He any good? The judo, I mean.”

Krichman shrugged. “I don’t know. Seemed like he had his hands full with the kid he was training with.”

Larison took another sip of coffee and paused as though thinking. “You know, it probably doesn’t really matter that much whether he saw you or not. We know he’s here, we can just brace him on his way out.”

“Yeah, we could,” Krichman said, his tone indicating the man found the idea hopelessly unambitious. “But what kind of leverage do we have then? We found him at the Kodokan. Tomorrow he could just go and train somewhere else. Or give up training, period. We want him to feel pressured, isn’t that what Hort said? So let’s show him we know where he lives. Brace him there, make him feel we’re into his life in a big way. That’s how you get people to play ball-by getting them by the balls.”

Treven couldn’t disagree with the man’s assessment overall. He was surprised Larison didn’t see it that way, too. But Larison must have realized his oversight, because he said, “That makes sense. But come on, he must have seen you. Treven and I should take the point.”

“Look,” Beckley said, his tone indicating the tail end of patience, “he didn’t see us. Krichman and I will take the point.” He gestured to one of the buttons on his damp navy shirt. “You’ll see everything we see, through this. If he spots us, and I doubt he will, we’ll switch off like we planned. Okay?”

The button was actually the lens of a high definition pocket video camera that shot color in daylight and infrared-enhanced black-and-white at night. Each of them was similarly outfitted, and each unit transmitted wirelessly to the others on the network. A separate unit, about the size of a pack of playing cards, could be held in the hand to display what the other units were transmitting. It was nothing fancy, just a stripped-down and slightly modified version of the Eagle Eyes monitoring system that was increasingly popular with various government agencies, but it enabled a small surveillance team to spread out beyond what traditional line-of-sight would allow, and also enabled each team member to know the position of all the others without excessive reliance on cell phones or other verbal communication.

Larison raised his hands in a you win gesture. “All right. You two cover the entrance of the Kodokan. Treven and I will wait here and fall in behind you when you start following him.”

Beckley smiled-a little snidely, Treven thought. And it did seem like Larison, maybe in a weak attempt to save face, was pretending to issue orders that had in fact just been issued to him.

Beckley and Krichman went out. Larison turned and watched through the window as they walked away.

Treven said, “You think he’s going to come out again at the same time? Hort said he was so surveillance conscious.”