The Detachment - Barry Eisler [63]
I had called Horton from the airport and briefed him on what happened in Vienna. As with Shorrock, he’d already heard. He told me the money had been deposited and proposed that we meet to discuss the next assignment. But I saw no upside to a face-to-face. We still had the communications gear he’d given me in L.A. I’d ditched the cyanide, and didn’t think I’d need a replacement. So I declined, telling him to use a secure site I’d set up, instead.
I paused in another park, fished the iPad out of my shoulder bag, and found a public Wi-Fi network. I checked the bank account and confirmed deposit of the three hundred thousand. Then I checked the secure site to see if Horton had uploaded the target file.
He had. I opened it and saw the name. I would have recognized it even if it hadn’t been immediately followed by her title:
Diane Schmalz. U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
No, I thought, shaking my head at the screen. Not a chance.
He was ignoring my rules about women and children. Maybe he thought I wasn’t serious, that the money would matter more. If so, he was wrong. I’d lived by my rules for a long time, and even the one deviation hadn’t really been an exception, because I did it for personal reasons, not as part of a job. I wasn’t going to change now.
But what if killing her saves thousands?
No. I didn’t care. If there’s one thing I know as well as I know killing, it’s how subornment works. One baby step at a time. The art of getting someone to cross a line he doesn’t even see until he looks back and realizes it’s already impossibly far behind him.
I glanced through the file. Photographs. Home addresses, both in D.C. and a weekend place in western Maryland. Schedule. No observed security consciousness and no protection, because no Supreme Court Justice had ever been assassinated.
But it didn’t make sense. I’d never had much interest in what passes for justice in America, but I knew Schmalz’s name, and I knew she had a reputation as one of the court’s last guardians of civil liberties. It was hard to imagine her being part of a plot to end those liberties. If anything, I would have expected her to be on the other side.
I scanned down and saw that Horton must have anticipated my concern. He had written:
When the president declares his assumption of emergency powers, he’ll be sued. There are four authoritarian Justices who will back him. The other four might or might not. Schmalz would absolutely oppose him, leading to a possible five-four defeat. Not necessarily fatal to their plans, but certainly it would be a major public relations setback not to secure the Supreme Court’s blessing along with that of Congress.
Schmalz’s son is a lawyer, married with three small children. He is a closeted homosexual and the plotters have graphic photographic and video evidence of his infidelities. He has also twice threatened suicide, and received therapy and other treatment afterward. Schmalz understands that were her son’s homosexuality revealed, it would destroy his family and career, devastate her grandchildren, and likely cause this unstable man to take his own life. She will do what’s she’s told to prevent all this.
But not if she passes away beforehand.
I reread the relevant paragraphs and felt an uncharacteristic anger taking hold of me. One of my rules has always been no acts against non-principals. Meaning no deaths of non-principals primarily, but still, I’ve never liked the idea of solving a problem with Person