Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“I need to go. I’ll call you.”

“Wait. Let me help you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you’re the only ones who can stop this thing now.”

“Bullshit. Spill it to the media. Don’t you have contacts at the New York Times?”

He laughed. “You think the Times would do anything with this, even if I had proof? They sat on Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program until after he was safely reelected. Their editor-in-chief asks the White House for permission to publish, for God’s sake, and is proud of it, too.”

“Then one of the networks. ABC, CNN, whatever.”

He laughed again. “Did you catch Jeremy Scahill’s report about the Agency’s secret prison in Somalia? The seventh floor had apoplexy, it was so dead-on accurate. They used Barbara Starr and Luis Martinez to discredit it. ABC and CNN, the watchdog media.”

“Then call Scahill.”

“The people we’re up against will just instruct the networks to ignore or discredit him. The networks work for us, John. Which I admit is mostly useful and I’ve taken advantage of it many times myself. But it’s working against us right now.”

“Wikileaks, then.”

“Now you’re making sense. But I don’t have any proof. Get me some.”

“No. I don’t want to get further into this. I want to get out.”

“You’re telling me you’re not going to make Horton pay for setting you up?”

I didn’t answer.

“You think he’s going to stop coming after you? You know as well as I do that he’ll be more motivated now than ever.”

Again I said nothing.

“Damn it, John, let me help you.”

I was in a box and I couldn’t see a way out of it. “Goddamn it. How?”

“I’ll come to you. Put you in the trunk of my car and drive you out of the city.”

“The trunk? There are four of us. What kind of car do you have?”

“Honda.”

“What model?”

There was a pause. “Civic.”

I looked over at the collective mass of Larison, Treven, and Dox. “No way,” I said.

“You’d be amazed what you can fit into a tight space with a little Crisco,” Dox offered, apparently having intuited what we were talking about.

“You have a better idea?” Kanezaki said.

“We’re talking about eight hundred, maybe nine hundred pounds. You couldn’t get us all in there with a chainsaw and a blender. And even if you could, the back of the car would be riding suspiciously low.”

“I’ll borrow my sister’s minivan. You can all hunker down. As long as no one stops me, no one will see you. It’s built to hold seven, the shocks won’t even be noticeably compressed.”

That sounded more promising. “When can you be here?”

“Where are you?”

If it had been anyone but Kanezaki, I would have been suspicious of a setup. But I trusted him as much as I did anyone other than Dox. Plus, I had no choice.

“Capital Hilton,” I said.

“She lives in Chevy Chase. It’s not that far, but we’re getting into rush hour now.”

“Can you have her meet you someplace in between and swap cars there?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll be there in an hour. Maybe less. If there’s a problem, I can’t reach her or she’s out with her kids somewhere, or whatever, I’ll call you.”

“Leave a message on the secure site. My phone will be out of commission.”

“Right, okay.”

“We’ll meet you in the lowest level of the parking garage. Away from the elevators.”

“Got it. See you soon.”

I clicked off and disabled and pocketed the phone. Larison, Treven, and Dox had moved out from between the beds and away from each other. Everyone’s arms were loose and their hands open. They looked liked gunslingers in a western a half-second away from drawing.

“What the fuck is going on?” Treven said.

I didn’t like the accusatory tone I heard in the question, and reminded myself to be extra calm in my response. Four armed, dangerous, and suddenly distrustful men in a small room…if things got out of hand, it was going to be very bad.

“You were right,” I said, looking at Larison. “Horton set us up. Shorrock has been replaced by one of Horton’s guys, and Finch is about to be replaced by Horton himself. The government just issued some kind of all-points terror alert saying the four of us killed both of them with cyanide. We were just put on the presidents’ kill list. And they know we’re in D.C.”

“Horton and that damn cyanide,” Dox said. “So that was just supposed to incriminate us and sound scary to the public, too?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And the hell of it is, I never even used it. And no one else…”

I stopped, realizing I’d missed something obvious. Dangerously obvious.

Treven’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

I didn’t answer. I realized there were three people who thought I’d used cyanide on Shorrock: not just Horton, but also Larison and Treven. Either one of them, or both, could have mistakenly told Horton that I’d used the cyanide. That would have given him additional confidence to order the faked toxicology reports. He would have believed there really would be evidence of cyanide if anyone examined the corpses more thoroughly.

“Then how did you do Shorrock?” Larison said. “The way you did Finch?”

I was struck that despite the tension in the room, he could remain so detached and professionally curious.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. But if Larison and Treven were working for Horton, they wouldn’t be on that terror alert, right? Unless the idea were to make it look like we were all in the same boat, when in fact…

Treven tensed. In my peripheral vision, I saw Dox spot it, too.

There was a blur of movement, and an instant later all four of us had our guns out. Treven and I were pointing at each other. Dox was aiming at Treven. Larison had the muzzle of his angled toward the floor, but his head and eyes tracked from Treven to Dox to me and back again.

“You think I had something to do with this?” Treven said. “I’m as fucked as you are.”

I saw his hands were as steady as mine. “Put your gun down if you want to get unfucked,” I said.

Treven said nothing.

Larison’s head kept tracking. He looked like a rattlesnake trying to make up his mind about in which direction to strike.

I thought we had maybe two more seconds before the tension boiled over. I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it.

Suddenly, Dox brought the muzzle of his Wilson Combat up to his own neck. “Hold it,” he said. “The next man makes a move, the nigger gets it.”

I blinked and thought, What the fuck?

“Drop it,” he said. “Or I swear, I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!”

He looked from one of us to the other, his eyes wide in faux lunacy.

Larison started to grin, then guffawed. “All right,” he said. “You win. You win.” He eased his pistol into the back of his waistband and held up his hands.

Treven glanced at Larison, then his eyes went back to Dox. His pistol stayed on me. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Good Lordy-Lord,” Dox said, his voice a falsetto now. “He’s desperate. Do what he say! Do what he say!”

“You’re crazy,” Treven said, but he lowered his gun a few inches. I did the same.

“What,” Dox said, “y’all never saw Blazing Saddles? Cleavon Little? I always wondered if it’d work for real.”

Treven’s gun dropped a little more. “You’re crazy,” he said again.

Dox kept his own gun in position at his neck. “Well, it’s a film, you see. A very fine film, in which-”

“I know the movie,” Treven said.

Dox took the gun from his neck and slid it into the back of his waistband. “Well, maybe the part you’re missing, and this could be due to the subtlety of my delivery, is that two seconds ago we were on the verge of committing a big old group suicide here. Besides hoping to get y’all to come to your senses, that’s what I was trying to demonstrate. You see, placing my weapon to my own neck was a metaphor-”