Barry Eisler - The Detachment

There was no response.

“You know what we should do, Hort? We should put a bullet in her head so you can know what it’s going to be like for all the parents that you’ve done the same thing to. The same. Fucking. Thing.”

The interior of the car was silent. A lone cricket chirped outside.

“Please don’t do that,” Hort said quietly.

“The only reason I won’t is because I’m not like you.”

“I know that, and I’m grateful. But Larison is. Please, don’t let him.”

“Larison can do what he wants.” He wasn’t sure whether he meant it, or whether in his anger he was just trying to torment Hort.

“Listen to me. I have given you the diamonds. You can kill me now, if that’s what you want. Put me in the trunk and drive me to wherever Larison is so he can piss on my body, I believe he would enjoy that. But if you care about your country, let me live just a little while longer. There’s no one else who intends to put things right. And no else in a position to do so.”

Treven shook his head in disgust. “You are the most self-serving, lying hypocrite I’ve ever known.”

“I’m aware my request that you let me live long enough to set things right is self-serving. I can only say that if you prefer, you’re welcome to shoot me here instead. Either way, please, Ben. I’m asking you. Let my girl go. She didn’t do anything to you, or to anybody. You don’t even know her. Please. Just let her go.”

His voice broke and he stopped. He cleared his throat, blew out a long breath, and wiped the back of his hand savagely across his cheeks, one way, then the other.

For a while, they sat silently, Hort’s cigar slowly dying in the darkness.

“The others,” Treven said, aware he was conceding something and that Hort would recognize as much. “They don’t want just the diamonds. They want you to clear us. Get us off whatever hit lists you’ve put us on.”

“I’m a civilian now, Ben. I can’t do anything anymore. I could though, as the head of the commission I mentioned.”

Treven stared at him. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I thought you might find it to be another disgracefully self-serving statement,” Hort said. “But it is a fact.”

Treven didn’t respond. Once again, it was what he expected from Hort. But that didn’t necessarily make it a lie, either.

“Look at it this way,” Hort said. “You have the diamonds. And I’m a civilian now, you can get to me anytime. Let me finish what I have begun. Help me stop the school attack. And let Mimi go. What’s the downside to you? Just let her go.”

Treven watched him. He’d never seen Hort look so diminished. He wasn’t sure if it was some objective thing that had happened to the man, or if it was the new light in which he was seeing him.

“Why’d you try to take us out at the Capital Hilton?” he said, after a moment.

“I didn’t try to have you taken out. I told you, I was after the others.”

“I’m not buying it. You would have told me.”

“How? You had no cell phone, at least not one you were ever using. And you didn’t check in with me.”

It might have been true. Impossible to know for sure. But he hated that he wanted to believe it.

“Whatever. Why’d you try to have the others taken out, then?”

“You know why. They know too much. About my involvement. About everything.”

“So do I.”

“I told you, you’re the only one I trust.”

“Even if I believed you, and I don’t, the others? As far as they’re concerned, you’re as motivated to kill them now as you were before. Maybe more so.”

“It may be that I still have the motivation. But I no longer have the means. You have to get it through your head, I’m just a civilian now. You have the diamonds, you can go anywhere you want. And as I said, you can always come after me later. You could even come after my daughter if I do anything to cross you. I don’t see what I could reasonably do to stop you.”

Treven thought. They’d all agreed that if he had the opportunity as expected, he should kill Hort. Maybe they’d discover afterward that the “diamonds” he’d given them were fake, like the ones he’d given to Larison. Maybe they’d still be hunted by a national security state on steroids. But if having his own daughter in jeopardy wasn’t enough to get Hort to play ball this time, the working assumption was that nothing ever would. This way, they’d at least have the satisfaction of knowing he’d died before they did.

The problem was, a lot of what Hort had told him made sense, if sense was the right word for it. The situation wasn’t what they’d been assuming it to be. Hort alive might be more useful to them than he would be dead. He might be able to stop the coup and set things right, as he’d put it. Without him, this fucking thing he’d set in motion would probably take on an unstoppable life of its own, if it hadn’t already.

And there was that school to think about. How was he going to feel, if he knew about something like that and let it happen anyway? He’d done a lot of dark things in the course of his job, he knew, a lot of ambiguous things. Some of them kept him awake at night. Some made him wonder about punishment and reckonings and even hell. But he could honestly say everything he’d ever done was intended to keep Americans safe. Sometimes he felt like that knowledge was all that kept him sane in the face of what the task sometimes required. So what was he supposed to do now? How would he live with himself if some people blew up a school-a school, for Christ’s sake-and he could have stopped it, but didn’t? Compared to that, the possibility of someone blackmailing him with some bullshit video suddenly seemed unimportant.

He wasn’t sure. He didn’t trust his own motivations much more than he trusted Hort’s. And he didn’t know what the others were going to say. They’d made an agreement, and these weren’t the kind of people who took you to court for a breach of contract.

“Shall I finish this cigar?” Hort said. “Is it my last?”

Treven hoped he wasn’t being played. If he was, he supposed he was a three-time loser. He would deserve whatever he got.

“Just tell me about the goddamn school,” he said.

Waiting for Treven made for a stressful night. Dox brought in pizza; we ate; and then, to pass the time, we watched the news, which was nothing but breathless so-called “terrorism experts” fantasizing about the latest existential threat and how it could best be combated, along with blow-dried talking heads obsessing over the semiotics of Horton’s stunning departure from the Rose Garden earlier that day.

As the evening went on, Larison had gotten paranoid, becoming convinced that Hort had brought a team that had snatched Treven and tortured our location out of him. He’d pointed his Glock at Kei and had sworn if anyone breached the door, she was going to be the first to die. To which Dox had said, with uncharacteristic menace, “Put your gun away. You’re scaring her.”

“She should be scared,” Larison had answered.

“Well, congratulations then, because she is. Now, like I said, put your gun away and stop talking like that. There’s no need for it.”

Larison looked at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Dox pulled his Wilson Combat. “Son, this time I’m not doing Cleavon Little for you. You get in a mess with me, you’re going to have to find your own way out.”

“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” I said, deliberately playing the alpha. If it worked, and they accepted my dominant position, it would give them a reason to listen and a means of saving face. If they didn’t accept my position, things were about to get a whole lot worse.