The Detachment

cities, and judo, and jazz, and coffee houses, and culture, all of which is part of your file, you don’t have a chance if someone like Hort is determined to find you. The only way is to make it so the people who are looking for you, stop looking for you.”
    “How do you do that?” I asked, my tone casual.
    He took another sip of coffee. “You wait for the right opportunity.”
    “Or you make one,” I suggested.
    He nodded. “Or you make one. And I’ll tell you one other thing. If you decide to accept Hort’s offer, whatever it is? Charge him for it. Charge him a lot. He can afford it.”
    He sounded unhappy as he said the words, even acrimonious, and if I hadn’t picked up earlier on some kind of rift, I couldn’t miss it now. Whatever Horton was up to, I decided it must be important to him, if it was generating animosity in someone as seemingly formidable as Larison.
    No one said anything after that. Larison obviously knew when it was time to shut up and let the prospect close the deal with himself, and Treven was smart enough to follow the older man’s lead.
    We sipped our coffee in silence. Either this was an impressive piece of theater that included two dead extras, or what they were telling me, and what they were hinting at, was largely true. Horton wanted to make Dox and me an offer, most likely one we couldn’t refuse. He’d made similar offers already to Treven and Larison, who were unhappy about it and looking for an alliance or some other way out, but were also smart enough to keep those particular cards concealed for now. As for copies of the evening’s home video, for now there was no way to know. And for the moment, it didn’t really matter.
    For the third time that night, I saw no advantage in waiting. I finished my coffee and took the video units from the table.
    “How do I contact Horton?” I said.

L ater that night, in the endless, twisting depths of the Shinjuku subway complex, where the multiple levels and concentrated crowds make tracking and locating someone from a signal nearly impossible, I checked the video on the cameras. The footage was grainy and helter-skelter, but properly enhanced it might provide damaging evidence for the prosecution, if it ever came to that. I destroyed the drives on all the units and disposed of them. The phones were useless—the only numbers dialed were to each other. I disposed of them, too. Then I found an Internet café and Googled Larison, Treven, and Horton. Larison and Treven drew precisely nothing. Horton was mentioned in passing in a few news articles, and had a Wikipedia entry consisting only of a brief outline of a distinguished military career and a note that he was divorced and had no children. Finally, I made three calls, all from separate pay-phones.
    First, the number Larison had given me. A deep, Mississippi Delta baritone I remembered from Afghanistan, but with more age behind it, more gravity, answered, “Is this who I hope it is?”
    I said, “I don’t know. Is there someone else you were hoping to hear from?”
    He laughed. “There are people I hope to hear from, and people I hope to never hear from again. Glad to say you’re in the first camp. How’ve you been?”
    “I’ve been fine. I heard you want to propose something.”
    “You heard right.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “With all the water under the bridge here, it’d be better if we did this face to face.”
    “All right, come out here. Your guys can tell you where to find me.”
    “They already did. Thing is, I’m too tied up right now for overseas travel. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll meet you halfway. How about Los Angeles? Anywhere in the city you’d like.”
    Los Angeles was easy enough to get to from Tokyo, and a destination with so many indirect routes I didn’t think I’d have trouble concealing my movements. Reflexively, I started considering how I would approach the situation if I were trying to get to me, and was surprised, and a little unsettled, at how familiar and natural it felt to slip back into the mindset. Almost as though I’d missed it.
    “If you want me to come to you,” I said, testing what Larison had told me, “you’ll need to cover my travel expenses. And I travel first class.”
    “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Tell you what. However our conversation turns out, you’ll get twenty-five thousand dollars just for showing up. That ought to cover your travel expenses, and then some.”
    “Fifty,” I said. “You’ve