The Detachment - Barry Eisler [62]
It was a little sad, actually. He respected Rain. Felt in some ways the man was even a kindred spirit—another self-contained, lethal loner, professionally paranoid, personally aloof.
But what difference did any of that make? In his position, sentiment was a weakness, and in his line of work, weaknesses got you killed.
Still, he was surprised to feel an uncharacteristic sense of regret at the thought of taking out Rain and the others. He wondered if it was a sign of aging, or whether it might be some last, twitching vestige of a conscience he’d long since left for dead. What if it was? He’d read his Thoreau in high school. How did it go again? Something like, What’s the point of having a conscience, if you don’t listen to it?
But Thoreau had never been a soldier. And if there was one thing he’d learned from Hort, it was that the mission came before the man. The mission. And the current mission couldn’t be more clear: eliminate Hort and recover the diamonds. Protect Nico. Protect himself.
As for the rest…well, it was a rare mission that didn’t involve collateral damage. You didn’t welcome it, but you couldn’t shrink from it, either. In the end, he supposed, all men do what they have to.
The trick was living with it afterward. But he’d had plenty of practice with that.
I arrived in D.C. on an Amtrak train from New York, having flown to JFK from Munich. I preferred not to use obvious routes to or from the places I might be expected. Dox, Larison, and Treven had traveled somewhat less circuitously, and had therefore arrived ahead of me, but that was their risk, not mine.
The meeting was at the downtown Capital Hilton, a large and appropriately anonymous conference hotel Dox had recommended and where he’d made a room reservation. I had the cab drop me off at the Hay Adams, across from the White House, instead, thinking I’d walk the few blocks to the Hilton rather than give the driver a chance to note my actual destination. But instead of heading straight to the meeting, I succumbed to a strange urge to join the throng of tourists milling along the tall iron security fence at the edge of the expansive front lawn.
I strolled over, my pores opening immediately in the afternoon humidity. It was a cloudy day, but somehow the absence of sun exacerbated the heat, which felt like it was radiating from everything rather than from some single, identifiable source. Even the squirrels in Lafayette Square seemed listless, lethargic, as motionless as the nearby humans slouching on park benches and sweating under the useless foliage in rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened ties.
As I exited the park, I was immediately struck by how fortified the area was. Pennsylvania Avenue had been shut down to automobile traffic, presumably out of fear of truck bombs. There were steel vehicle traps through which delivery trucks had to pass for inspection; multiple guard posts; swarms of uniformed cops and military personnel patrolling on foot, on bicycles, and in cars. The windows of the far-off building itself stared insensate through the thick iron bars separating the grounds from the citizenry, as blank and impenetrable as the tactical shades of the scores of men guarding them. What had once been a residence and office was now, in essence, a bunker.
I moved on, heading southwest in the beginning of a long loop that would give me ample opportunities to confirm I wasn’t being followed before arriving at the Hilton. Outside the garrisoned grounds of the White House, the city was unremarkable, even bland. The streets were wide