Barry Eisler - Fault line

What he was looking for was something that would be hard to articulate, but-what was it that Supreme Court Justice had said about obscenity?-he would know it when he saw it. The men would be alert and aware of their environment. Their expressions would be deliberately casual, but their postures would be possessed of purpose. Their clothes would be dark, bland, and without any identifying logos. There would be a look in their eyes he would recognize even from across the street. It was the same look in his.

He sipped his coffee, watching car traffic flowing up and down Columbus, noting pedestrians. The sky went from indigo to black; the street, from daylight to neon. Around seven-thirty, Pearl's started filling up, mostly with casually but well dressed couples who were of no interest to him. Eight o'clock came and went, but he didn't see what he was looking for. Well, he'd wait until the end of the show. If nothing happened, it wouldn't prove anything. The girl might still be involved; maybe her people just couldn't mobilize fast enough. After all, they'd lost two players that morning. It was possible they were having trouble putting together a full team now.

At a little before eight-thirty, he saw an attractive, dark-haired woman in a waist-length black leather jacket coming up Columbus. He looked closer. Son of a bitch, it was Sarah.

He watched her go into Pearl's, not knowing what to make of it. It didn't make sense. He could imagine her being an insider on whatever kind of operation Alex had gotten himself into trouble with, but not being an active part of it. He looked up and down the street, but saw nothing out of place.

There wasn't much time to think. He would just have to make it up as he went along.

He took out his cell phone and called Alex. “Just checking in,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Nothing new. No breakthroughs. We just called it a night. Sarah went out to buy a change of clothes.”

She hadn't told Alex she was going to Pearl's. He wasn't sure what that meant.

“I want you to do something,” Ben said, watching the double doors through the glass. “There's a room key under the bottom drawer in the bathroom. It's for an extra room I took-758, right across the hall. Use it. Don't stay where you are.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, everything's copacetic. I'm just being sensible, or you can call it paranoid if you want. I just don't want you to be where she knows you'll be until I'm back.”

“Ben, I work with her. I know her. She's not mixed up in this.”

“Yeah, everyone thinks they know everyone. But you know what, I flew halfway around the world to help you. Why don't you help me make it not a wasted trip, okay?”

There was a pause, and Ben could imagine Alex fuming. Yeah, well, tough shit if he didn't like hearing the truth.

“Yeah, okay,” Alex said.

“One more thing. Lock the connecting door and leave all the lights on. And leave the closet and bathroom doors open.”

“Anything else?” Alex said. Ben heard the sarcasm and tried not to let it irritate him. Was it really so hard to understand that Ben didn't want to come back to a room he couldn't easily clear?

“Why don't you just acknowledge that you'll do it,” he said.

“Yeah, I'll do it.”

“Good. I'll call when I'm back.” He clicked off and pocketed the phone.

A minute later, Sarah walked out of Pearl's and starting heading southeast on Columbus, back the way she had come.

Ben opened one of the casement windows. “Sarah,” he called.

She stopped and looked around. A bus went by and for a moment she was gone in a roar of diesel.

“Sarah,” he called again. “Across the street. In the window.”

She looked up and saw him. She gave a small wave of acknowledgment.

He looked around again and detected no problems. What she was up to? Keep him at Pearl's while someone else visited Alex? Could be that. Well, Alex was safe for the time being.

She couldn't be here to do him herself. No, it didn't figure. He could imagine her being an access agent, something like that, but not a trigger puller. He didn't read her that way.

Still, if he was wrong, the penalty for missing would be high.

“Come on over,” he said.

Alex had yawned three times in an hour, and the last two had been infectious. Sarah looked at him and said, “We ‘re going in circles. I say we call it a night.”

Alex fixed her with that unreadable gaze of his, then something in his face seemed to soften. “You're right,” he said. “We need to come at it from a different direction to see what we're missing, and that's not going to happen without a break. Are you hungry?”

She had thought he might ask, and was ready for the question. “No, I'm okay. I'm just going to go out and buy a change of clothes. I guess I'll see you in the morning?”

He nodded. “Seven o'clock too early?”

“No, it's good. I doubt I'm going to sleep well anyway. This is all too crazy.”

She went to her room through the common doorway, stripped off her clothes, and got in the shower. Something had been building up in her all day, and if she didn't deal with it, she thought she might explode.

The day had started out weird and then had become downright frightening. Her files missing. The strange call from Alex. Then this guy in his office who she could tell was dangerous in some way, who turned out to be Alex's brother. When they'd told her what had been happening, she was concerned, but not really frightened. Looking back, she realized her relative sangfroid was the result of a lack of understanding. She didn't really believe she was in danger. Yes, she understood the police probably couldn't help, but she had agreed to go with Alex and Ben and try to figure out what was so valuable or dangerous about Obsidian almost as a lark, a kind of adventure, a break in the routine. And then Ben had come back to the car outside the Four Seasons with blood on his face, and she'd seen the report on the news, and she realized that Alex's brother was someone who could kill two men-gangsters, it seemed-with about the same level of difficulty most people faced when pouring a cup of coffee. Could kill? He had killed them. There was no other explanation.

And what was she doing now? Had he made her, or had she made herself, in any way an accessory? She'd taken criminal law her second year of law school and had purged her mind of all of it about five minutes after graduating and taking the bar exam. She didn't know how bad this might be for her legally. And legally might be the least of it.

She knew he didn't trust her. And the way he looked at her, the way he'd casually walked over to see what was on her laptop screen… was he afraid she would freak out, go to the police? And what would he do if she did?

There were two ways she could deal with it. She could keep her mouth shut and hope it would somehow be all right. Or she could confront the problem directly.

She left the hotel and headed north on Stockton. The night was cold and clear and a crescent moon hung low in the sky. Chinatown was quiet, most of the stores closed now, hidden behind corrugated metal gates. Some of the gates had doorways, a few of which were open, and through them she caught glimpses of families eating dinner and friends playing cards, caught the smells of cooking rice and sweet pastries and the sound of laughter and conversations in a musical language she wished she could understand. Some of the doorways revealed steep, narrow staircases that ascended beyond the angle of her vision, and she wondered what rooms they led to, who traversed them every morning and night, what lives were lived in the secret spaces at their top.

She passed a street mural celebrating the Chinese railroad workers. Paper lanterns set at its base flickered, shivering in the breeze. She turned right on Pacific, looking up at the old wooden buildings, their balconies painted green and red, the eaves turned up in the Asian fashion. An old man was closing up his store at the front of one of them, an herb shop whose windows displayed glass jars filled with ghastly specimens that might have come from the earth or the sea or somewhere else entirely. He waved and smiled toothlessly at her as she passed, and she nodded and smiled in return.