The Chaos Kind (John Rain, #11, Livia Lone, #5)

by Barry Eisler

They looked over at Manus. The man was heading their way from fifty feet off, the dripping Espada still gripped in his right hand. It looked like someone had tossed an entire bucket of blood onto him. Which, as Dox considered, was more or less what had happened. Neither of them said anything as Manus approached. Dox, who had planned to holster the Wilson, found himself keeping it in a retracted low ready position. As it happened, Larison was doing the same. Manus reached their position. He glanced at their pistols. Then he closed the Espada, and for the first time, Dox saw him smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”

Rispel deliberately glanced around her office: one wall, a second, a third. It was a technique she used when she needed to slow things down. Absent that discipline, she might have felt too keenly her shock at the indignity of Devereaux addressing her as though she were some green recruit. She might have given in to the temptation to shout back. But if there was one thing she had learned in this man’s world, it was the danger of doing anything that could be disparaged as “emotional.” Men could shout, they could rant, they could even cry, and they were just being assertive, or passionate, or caring. But for women, the same behaviors were bitchy. Or unhinged. Or worst of all, weak.

She’d heard Devereaux talk this way to subordinates before. He was known, after all, for kissing up and kicking down. But during all the years he had mentored her, he’d always treated her like a favored child. And to have him turn on her like this . . . She was surprised at how much it hurt. Surprised, and angry. “I’m not offering excuses,” she said. “I’m trying to engage in a constructive conversation intended to redress the matter at hand. But if that’s less important to you than berating me, by all means, go right ahead.” That shut him the hell up. Which felt so good she realized it had been what she was after.

He looked at Manus and said, “We’re good? Not going to try to kill each other, at least for now?” It was a strange question. Why would the man trust any such assurance from Manus? Manus wouldn’t trust it from him. But the straightforwardness didn’t feel devious. It felt . . . straightforward. He couldn’t think of any other way to answer, so he simply said, “We’re good.” “Great. Then pardon me while I get the shakes. ’Cause that was a very near thing back there.” At which point, as promised, he started trembling. After a minute of breathing deeply in and out, he held up his hands. When he seemed satisfied they were steady enough, he said, “That doesn’t happen to you?” “It depends.” Dox smiled. “Okay, good. We’ve only just met, and I wouldn’t want you thinking less of me.” Manus couldn’t tell if he was joking. Why would Manus think less of him? The man was obviously competent. Shaking was just what your body did after you’d been scared. There had been times Manus was so scared he’d pissed himself. That was just something your body did, too.

Dox thought of the thin woman in the law firm website photo. He hustled over to the table and squatted next to it. There she was, shrunk back against the wall, looking at him fearfully. “Sharon Hamilton?” he said, extending his hand. “Come with me if you want to live. Hah, I always wanted to say that. I loved it in those Terminator movies.”

Frodo didn’t bark, or even make a sound. He just licked Maya’s face, trying with all his little might to make both of them feel better.

He glanced at Frodo. “What’s your dog’s name?” “Frodo.” “Like in The Lord of the Rings?” “Yes.” Frodo barked, and the boy must have realized it because he laughed. “I’m Dash.” “Maya.” “Can I hold him?” She nodded and handed him Frodo, who immediately began licking his face. He laughed again, obviously delighted.

About half the tables were filled, mostly by solitary people absorbed in their electronic devices, obviously business travelers. In a corner table, back to the wall, sat an Asian man, a coffee mug before him but no electronic device. Manus’s gaze almost skipped over the man because there was something so still about his presence. To someone else, the man might have seemed lost in thought. But Manus sensed something else: a person exceptionally attuned to his surroundings, his transmission dial set to bland, the reception dial wide open. A long-ago instructor had told Manus of a Zen concept called mushin—literally meaning “no-mind,” but in fact a description of a relaxed mind, a mind open to everything and therefore able to instantly react to anything. He hadn’t thought of the concept in years, but something about the man made him remember it now.

He could feel Dash shaking. He must have been crying. They’re fine, he told himself. They’re fine. But what had happened? After a few moments, they disengaged. Dash wiped his face and began signing. A man had come for them at the school. Evie had hit him with a cart of books. And Dash had hit him with a table leg. Dash held up his hand so Manus could see he’d torn up his fingers getting the bolts loose so he could detach the leg. And then Evie had taken the man’s gun and killed him. And Mr. Rain had killed another man. And then they came here. Manus looked from Dash’s signing to Evie’s face and back again, rocked by a storm of emotions. As Dash finished relaying the story, Evie signed, You should have seen him with that table leg. Our brave boy. This time, when Manus tried to suppress the tears, he couldn’t. Dash signed, Why are you crying, Marvin? Because I’m proud of you. You protected your mom. Dash smiled. You would have protected her, too. Probably better than I did.

I did kill people before. For the government. I don’t care about before. You should. Why? For a moment, Manus was stuck for an answer. I just . . . I thought you would. Not if you’re good now. You are, aren’t you? Manus didn’t want to lie to him. But he didn’t know what was true, either. I don’t know. But you won’t kill anyone anymore, will you? I will if they try to hurt you or your mom. That’s different. Anyway, don’t you want to be good?

Manus thought for a moment. And then remembered what he had been thinking about in the park, just yesterday morning but seeming much longer ago. I want to be . . . who you see when you look at me the way you are now. Dash gave him a beautiful, unself-conscious smile. That’s easy. You already are.

“Who’s guarding him?” “Three men. We don’t know their backgrounds, but we can assume they’re capable.” Larison didn’t respond to that. It was his habit to assume everyone was capable, until after he’d killed them. “Countermeasures?”

“All right,” Rain said. “So the plan is to release sanitized versions of the videos?” “Exactly.” “That’s going to have a lot of very powerful people feeling irked.” “Well, they’re already irked, and they have a logical motive to do us in on top of it. I’d like to remove the logical motive and just leave them feeling irked. Irked isn’t too bad. I’ve irked lots of people and none of them has killed me yet. Look at you and Larison. I irk you all the time and we’re all friends.”

“Is John Japanese?” “He was born there.” “Are you married?” “What? No.” “Oh. You look like you’re married.” Out of the mouths of babes, she thought.

It was interesting to see how relaxed Larison could be, even charming. He must never have had people he trusted. And now he did. Not so unlike John.

It wasn’t Henry V, Delilah thought, but she’d heard worse. And it was good to see how seasoned a player Kanezaki had become. It wasn’t so long ago that he would never have presumed to take charge of a team of such formidable operators—or that any of them would have taken him seriously if he had tried. And while on one level she was happy for him, somewhere deeper down she felt a tiny germ of concern. She considered Kanezaki one of the good guys, but of course in the intelligence business good was a relative term. Relative, and flexible. She’d never known Kanezaki to do anything that wasn’t calculated to increase his information portfolio, or that wasn’t a quid pro quo for something he himself wanted. It was possible his interest now was simply about obscuring the girls’ faces in those videos and then publicizing them, and thereby neutralizing the threat the videos had come to represent to everyone in the room. But it was also possible he was playing for something more. In her experience, people didn’t beat swords into plowshares, any more than governments did. No, when people came across a sword—especially one others were trying to acquire—they tended to conclude that the best possibility would be to find a way by which they themselves could wield it.

Rain had wanted to leave the dog at the office park, but Maya had persuaded him by asking, “What if we can’t make it back? He’s chipped, he can be traced to me.” Rain had nodded reluctantly at that. And Evie had suppressed a smile. Maya wasn’t just computer smart. She knew how to persuade, too, primarily by understanding what mattered to the person she was persuading. Evie recognized the skill because Dash wore her down with it all the time.

beyond that, an expansive garden with arrangements of granite boulders of various sizes, carefully raked sand, and moss-covered hillocks, all of it winding along the edge of an enormous pond crossed by several delicately arched bridges and buttressed at the far end by a waterfall. The only sounds were of the water and the birds in the surrounding trees. Given what had just happened, and what they were here for, the utter serenity of the place was suddenly surreal. “Did we take a wrong turn?” Carl whispered. “’Cause I think this must be the set of a damn samurai movie. Hey, the security people won’t be carrying swords, will they?” “If they are,” Rain said, “you can just shoot them. Like Indiana Jones, remember?” Carl smiled. “Hey, a movie reference! How’d you know?” Rain looked at him. “That one I saw.

She was wearing a vintage Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress: clingy fabric, open plunging neckline, and a skirt that would naturally fall open to expose a good amount of leg, especially while getting in and out of the car. High-heeled boots, gold hoop earrings, and most importantly a gold necklace to draw the eye to the décolletage. The whole thing was a throwback to the ’70s, but it was in again. And besides, Delilah always liked vintage, which was why she had packed the outfit in Paris.

She tried to insert Larry’s earpiece into her free ear. It was too big. She grimaced and pushed harder. No good. She pulled off the silicone tip and replaced it with a smaller one from her bag. Just right. She couldn’t help but smile. John had made them walk through everything, hitting every assumption with a barrage of What if possibilities. He did micromanage. But on the other hand, he was the one who had asked, What if the guard’s earpiece is too big?

Another thing she had learned at the black sites: you had to give the subject something to hope for. People who had nothing to hope for could be difficult to manage. Say what you will about the Nazis, but Arbeit Macht Frei demonstrated a sound grasp of human psychology.

She crouched behind the last tree thick enough to offer meaningful cover and concealment, and listened while Devereaux tried to assert authority over Rispel’s op. Rispel wasn’t having it, but the man Devereaux was with, Dutch, must have had his own authority, because he backed Devereaux’s play. Livia had just finished thinking, I don’t think you want to corner this woman when Rispel pulled a gun and shot Devereaux.

Larison lunged at the guy behind him, got his body to the outside of the guy’s machine pistol, and grabbed the barrel. The gun kicked and vibrated and the barrel was instantly hot as it spit out rounds. Larison twisted, but the guy adjusted and hung on. And then the guy twitched and blood spurted out of his neck and he screamed. Larison heard the suppressed shot and smiled grimly. Livia. He looked up and saw her moving in, firing calmly and implacably, her Glock close to her chin in a two-handed grip. A warm and improbable thought flashed through his mind—And they call me the angel of death—and he ripped the gun out of the guy’s dying grasp and spun.

Manus was holding the barrel of another guy’s gun with one hand and bear-swatted him so hard in the head with the other that Larison was surprised the guy wasn’t decapitated.

The good news was, people didn’t grab hostages unless they were desperate. And if Rispel was feeling desperate, on balance things must have gone poorly for her and her men. The bad news, though, was that desperate people did desperate things. And given that Dox was pretty sure Rispel had just shot the director of National Intelligence, he had to admit that she had done a fine job of establishing her desperation credentials.

Dox waved to get Dash’s attention. “How are you doing there, son?” Dash came out from behind Evie and Maya, and Manus adjusted his position so he could see Dox’s face, too. Dash said, “I’m good,” simultaneously signing so Manus could follow both sides of the conversation. “I could be wrong about this,” Dox said, “but did you say something to Rispel back there?” Dash nodded. “I said, ‘I told you I wasn’t scared of you.’” Dox laughed and ruffled Dash’s hair. “You’re going to be fine, son. You’re strong, and your folks are, too.” Dash put his arm around Manus’s waist and beamed. “They’re all right,” he said, and Dox laughed again.

Maya was holding Frodo again, and Rain had the sense that the girl was feeling the weight of everything she’d just been through. Larison must have noticed, too, because he went over. Larison held out his hand, and Frodo licked it. “Thinking about Ali?” Larison said. Maya looked down. “Can’t help it.” Larison nodded. “‘Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two.’” Rain assumed it was a line from The Lord of the Rings. A good line. When Maya looked up, her eyes were wet. “Tom told me you were scary,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t know you.”

Lori Kupfer, for always knowing how to dress Delilah to kill, and for so uncannily getting in her head, too.

I really enjoyed that the last 5% of the book was notes, thanks and references; really interesting!

“But only God can make a tree.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12744/trees

A bit more on the actual house that inspired the Constantine Grimble compound. https://www.airfloor.com/project/residential-larry-ellison-woodside-home/ https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/The-Villa-That-Oracle-Built-Ellison-proceeds-2938199.php#photo-2257649

A good surveillance/countersurveillance primer, particularly on the concepts of cover for action and cover for status. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/watching-watchers