Barry Eisler - Inside out

Ben didn't know who they were. They felt like law enforcement. From the way they were armed and what the black guy had said, they could have been FBI. And Hort had said the Bureau was investigating.

But he'd be damned if anyone was going to take him into custody again. Not today. Not ever.

He eased the Glock into his waistband. "Yeah, I heard you the first time."

"Sir, I will shoot you."

He looked at her. "Then shoot me."

The black guy groaned and started to get up. Ben kicked him in the face and he went down again.

"Stop that!" the woman yelled.

"You want to ask me your questions, ask," Ben said. "Otherwise, I've got places to go."

There was a long pause. The woman continued to watch him through her gun sights and for a tense moment Ben wondered whether he'd miscalculated, whether she might actually shoot him.

She watched him for a moment longer, and he could see the tension in her face. Incongruously, he found himself noticing her skin. Smooth, light brown, with a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. There was a hint of Asian in the shape of her eyes.

She lowered the pistol and muttered, "Goddamn it."

She came out from behind the car and approached him, the gun in a two-handed grip but pointed at the ground. Ben noted that she was watching his torso, not his face. She was well-trained.

She walked over to the fallen white guy and knelt next to him. "Bob," she said, "are you okay? Bob."

Bob groaned. He got a hand on the street and started pushing himself up. The woman helped him. While she did, Ben reached inside the black guy's jacket.

"Hey!" the woman called.

Ben extracted a Glock from a shoulder holster. "Too late," he said. "Doesn't look like you're going to shoot me, but I don't know about this guy."

The woman walked over. "Drew," she said. "Goddamn it, Drew, talk to me." She looked at Ben. "If you killed him, I swear to God you're going down."

Drew wheezed, then broke into a coughing fit. He rolled to his side, his hands on his throat.

"Well, he's breathing," Ben said. "What were you saying there, chief? Something about, what, doing this the easy way? Well, you were right, it was easy."

"Shut up," the woman said. "Drew. Look at me. Can you drive?"

Drew sat up and massaged his throat. Ben didn't think the guy looked good to drive. He looked good to puke.

But Drew managed a nod.

"Then go."

Drew wheezed. "That's not-"

"Just go. I'll interview this guy and fill you in later."

She stood up and holstered her gun. "All right," she said. "Let's go."

"Go? Where are we going?"

"Wherever you like. A coffee shop. A park. Somewhere we can talk."

"I don't think-"

"Just shut up and drive your car, okay? Before I get sorry I didn't shoot you."

No One Ever Sees Me Coming They found a Starbucks in the direction of Orlando. At the counter, Ben told the girl at the register, "Just a black coffee. Tall." Then he walked off and found a table that put his back to the wall.

A minute later the black woman set a couple of coffees on the table and joined him. She looked miffed, whether at having to buy and bring him his coffee or being stuck with her back to the door or both, he didn't know. It was satisfying either way.

"Who are you?" the woman said.

He picked up the coffee and took a sip. "It's not going to work that way."

"What way is that?"

"The way where you ask the questions."

"Look, if I wanted to-"

"But you don't want to. Otherwise you would have already."

She drummed her fingers along the table. He couldn't help noticing how attractive she was. That great skin; close-cropped, natural black hair; full lips; perfect teeth. Maybe that's why he'd instantly written her off as a potential threat when he'd first spotted her. Stupid.

She opened her purse and took out an ID. The ID read, Special Agent Paula Lanier, Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with a photo.

Ben looked up from the ID. "Well, Paula, it's good to meet you."

"Sorry I can't say the same. And now it's your turn."

Ben didn't want to get into specifics. The Froomkin identity was backstopped, but someone within the FBI itself could debunk it easily enough.

"Why don't you just call me Ben," he said.

"All right, Ben, who are you with?"

"With?"

"Stop messing around with me, okay? I want to know who you are and what you were doing at Marcy Wheeler's house. And I want to know whatever she told you."

He took another sip of coffee. "That's a lot to ask, on short acquaintance."

"It's not, really. Not when you consider that you can tell me here, or I can arrest you right now and we can conduct the interview at the Orlando field office instead."

"Is this the hard way or the easy way again? It didn't work out well for Bob and Drew back there. You sure you want to go down that road, too?"

"I'm the one who had the drop on you, remember?"

"Then why haven't you just arrested me?"

"Because I'd rather do this off the record for now."

"Why?"

"Look, I know who you are. Or what, anyway. You've got spook written all over you."

Ben couldn't help smiling. "I could say the same about you, you know."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Funny. I know you're CIA. Could have been DIA, maybe, but I know they're not involved in this thing."

Interesting that she would assume that. Well, Hort told him the CIA would be conducting its own off-the-books investigation, trying to beat the FBI to the tapes. Looked like the Bureau was aware of the problem, too.

He felt a momentary unease. These missing tapes were big. Maybe the biggest thing he'd ever worked on. A lot of players were after them, maybe for a lot of different reasons. A part of him wondered why all these agencies were circling one another the way they were, and the thought was as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable. He was accustomed to thinking in terms of who. And when. And where. And how. But why? For the second time in as many days, he reminded himself that why was someone else's problem.

"What are you, Ground Branch?" she said. "You're former military. I can tell by the way you move."

"Yeah? Well, I took a look at you and couldn't tell anything. Until you were pointing a gun at me."

She smiled. "That's right. No one ever sees me coming."

An unprofessional double entendre popped into Ben's mind and some vestigial sense of judgment saved him from giving it voice.

"I'll bet they don't," he said, keeping it neutral.

"So don't blame yourself too much."

"I'll get over it."

They sat in silence for a moment, watching each other, and Ben knew she was evaluating him the way he was her.

"All right," he said, "so why off the record?"

She smiled just the tiniest bit, and he realized she'd been using the silence to draw him out. Damn, he had to stop underestimating women.

"Because I've never seen interagency cooperation worse than what we have on this case. Not even compared to what I've heard it was like before 9/11. And look what all that distrust and rivalry caused back then. When we don't work together, Americans die. It's that simple, but you people never seem to wake up to it."

"'You people'? What about your side?" Weird to suddenly find himself pretending to be an FBI guy pretending to be a CIA guy, but he went with it.

"Oh, there's plenty of blame to go around, I'm sure. But we're getting next to zero from the Agency on this one. We had to threaten a subpoena just to get a few records. And your presence at Wheeler's house confirms you've been holding back. If you know something about her, if she's relevant, why haven't you told us?"

"Well, it's not like you told us, either."

"The only reason my team was staking out Wheeler's house in the first place is because the Bureau thinks she's a dead end. If they thought she was important, someone else would have been assigned."