The Detachment - Barry Eisler [119]
“It’s all right. I’m feeling antsy myself.”
Treven looked at him. Propped serenely on the bed, he looked about as antsy as a statue.
“That’s how you act when you’re antsy?”
Dox grinned. “Oh, yeah. My blood pressure’s way up at the moment. When I’m feeling relaxed, I’m practically invisible.”
Treven couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. “Well, what’s bugging you?”
“Your friend, to be honest.”
“Larison?”
Dox nodded and turned to Kei, who, though she hadn’t said or done anything different since they started talking, somehow seemed to be following their conversation with interest.
“Darlin’,” he said, “would you mind wearing the headphones for a few minutes? Nothing special, just the dreaded OpSec, which is what we badasses call operational security.”
“I don’t mind listening,” Kei said.
Dox smiled a little sadly. “I know you don’t. Would you trust me, though?”
Amazingly, Kei nodded as though she indeed did trust him. Dox, Treven decided, just had a way with people. Those kids in the minivan at the Capital Hilton had practically fallen in love with him inside five minutes. And now, he’d somehow gotten a woman who he’d helped kidnap to apparently believe he had her best interests at heart. Treven wished he knew the trick. He would have liked to be able to do it himself.
Dox got up and put the headphones on Kei, then walked over to Treven. “Let me ask you something,” he said quietly. “How well do you know that hombre?”
Treven wondered where he was going with this. “Not that well. I tracked him down in Costa Rica for Hort, and then we wound up working together on this fucked-up op.”
“Then you don’t really know him.”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m just trying to get a handle on him. I’m usually good at reading people, but when I try to read Larison, it’s like the pages are blank. That, or it’s too dark to see them.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“What do you think he’s thinking right now?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, if you were him, and you just found out the diamonds are real, and Horton is now a civilian, and you don’t give a shit about schoolchildren being murdered, what do you do?”
Treven didn’t answer. He’d been half-consciously grappling with the same question.
Dox waited, then said, “Do you just take your cut of the diamonds and walk away?”
“I don’t know.”
“Cause that’s a lot of loose ends you’re leaving behind.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“And that’s just the cold-hearted calculus of the cold-hearted operator I’m trying to imagine. It could be even worse.”
“How?”
“You think Larison has any…secrets?”
Treven was suddenly and profoundly aware that, this whole time, he’d been wrongly assuming Dox was a little bit dull. And, equally suddenly and profoundly, that he’d been completely, dangerously wrong about that. He wondered how many people had come to the same realization in the moment before Dox put out their lights forever. He supposed he should count himself lucky, for having learned the lesson so cheaply.
“Secrets?” he said, hoping his expression hadn’t betrayed anything.
Dox looked at him, the hillbilly gone, the expression more akin to that of a human polygraph. “Secrets,” Dox said again. “Because, if he had any, and he had reason to believe that we might know or even suspect those secrets, I’m a little concerned about what conclusions he might draw.”
Treven didn’t answer. He thought Dox was right, but wasn’t sure about the implications of acknowledging it.
“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Dox said. “And that’s why you’re not answering. You think I’m wrong?”
Treven shook his head. “No.”
“Well, we can handle Larison. One way or the other. But one thing I cannot abide is what he might do to this girl here. If those diamonds are legit, we don’t need her anymore. And we’ve put her through enough. I say we let her go. What do you say to that?”
“Just let her go?”
Dox nodded. “Right now. Before the angel of death gets back here and starts trying to implement whatever conclusions he might have arrived at during this morning’s absence.”
Treven thought. He didn’t want to