The Detachment - Barry Eisler [47]
“They don’t think the chances are good. They just think they’re better than the chances of the current course, which they judge to be nil. Like an emergency procedure for a patient who, if heroic measures aren’t undertaken, is going to die regardless.”
“Sounds pretty insane,” I said.
“It is insane. In no small part because they’re not factoring in the cost of the thousands of people who will have to be terrorized, burned, maimed, crippled, traumatized, and killed in order to create the groundwork for their plan. And this is why we need to stop it.”
I told myself I should just walk away. We’d done Shorrock. That was enough.
But then I thought of something. Something I should have spotted sooner.
“How do you know so much about this?” I said.
There was a pause, then he said, “Because I’m part of it.”
I glanced over at him, then back to the road. “Part of it how?”
“Never mind how. I was brought in, I played along, I want to stop it.”
“Without leaving a return address.”
“By the time the third and final critical player succumbs to ‘natural causes,’ they might catch on to me, in which case I’m prepared to face the music, which I expect will be a funeral dirge. But yes, in the meantime, I have a chance to destroy this thing root and branch. For that, I need an untraceable outside detachment, and speed, and no signs of foul play.”
We drove in silence for a few moments. Horton turned to Dox.
“Can you take that gun off my back long enough to tell me what you think about all this?”
I glanced in the rearview and saw Dox grin. He said, “I’ve just been waiting to hear about the per diem.”
Treven listened to Rain’s briefing over the sounds of the speeding L.A. Metro subway car, both impressed and concerned. Impressed that Rain had spotted a weakness in Shorrock’s defenses, had immediately improvised to exploit it, and had finished Shorrock with the cyanide as planned. Concerned that Rain and Dox had since met Hort and now seemed to be controlling the flow of information in both directions. He wasn’t used to having a buffer between himself and Hort, and even aside from what he recognized was an unworthy, petulant reaction to being placed on the periphery, he also understood that having to rely on Rain and Dox as intermediaries put him at an operational disadvantage.
The late morning train was mostly empty, a few bored-looking passengers dispersed among the seats. The four of them stood facing each other in the center of the car, swaying slightly as it hurtled along, Rain’s voice just audible although their faces were only inches apart. Rain had called them with instructions for the meeting, and Treven assumed he’d chosen the subway to frustrate any satellite surveillance Hort might be employing to track him. There were video cameras in the stations, of course, but even if Hort had access to a local feed, he’d have to know where to look and there would be layers of local bureaucracy to wade through. By the time anyone had a fix on their position, they’d all be long gone.
Larison said, “You think this Finch thing is for real?”
Rain took a moment before answering. “I didn’t know if Shorrock was for real, either. But the money’s been deposited.”
“He’s offering three hundred apiece for Finch,” Dox said. “And he says it’ll be five hundred apiece for the third one, whoever that turns out to be. That’s over a million for each of us when this is all done. I don’t know about you, but where I come from that’s a lot of green.”
“Where do you think Hort’s getting all this money to throw around?” Larison said, and Treven wondered where he was going with this, how much he was going to tell them.
“I don’t know,” Rain said. “Do you?”
Larison glanced casually around the swaying train car, then said, “What if I told you that instead of exposing ourselves for one million, we could protect ourselves, and walk away with twenty-five million?”
“Twenty-five million…dollars?” Dox said.
Larison nodded. “Apiece.”
Dox laughed. “You’re bullshitting us. Protect ourselves how, kill the president?”
Larison shook his head.