The Detachment

you took them.”
    He nodded. “The diamonds were a ransom for the tapes’ return. But Hort stole them from me.”
    I almost asked why he hadn’t retaliated by releasing the tapes, but then realized: the hostage. Horton, it seemed, had collected the necessary cards, and then called Larison’s bluff.
    “When I checked up on you?” I said. “My source told me you were dead.”
    He smiled coldly. “Greatly exaggerated.”
    “You staged that?”
    A young couple was heading toward us, walking hand-in-hand, the hard consonants of their German echoing off the close-set buildings and the stone sidewalk. Larison paused. They might not have understood English, but at a minimum they would have recognized it, and why give them a recollection of having passed two American men near where a body would soon be found?
    When they were safely beyond us, Larison said, “As a way of throwing off the animosity I knew I was going to stir up. Hort saw through it.”
    “Still, that’s a hell of a feat that you managed to stay ahead of them at all. You must have had the whole U.S. government hunting for you.”
    “It was…interesting. I had to keep moving. A lot of buses, some hitchhiking. Rarely more than one night in the same town.”
    “Yeah, I’ve done some of that myself. You see any good parts of the country?”
    For a moment, he didn’t answer. His eyes drifted away, and his mouth loosened slightly as though in mild wonderment, or even reverence.
    “I liked The Lost Coast,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get back, someday.”
    Something had happened there, though I doubted he’d tell me what. Knowing Larison, it was probably something dark. I decided not to press.
    “The tapes,” I said. “Are you in them?”
    We started walking again, in silence. Finally he said, “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done. Are you?”
    I found myself considering the question. Considering it carefully.
    “There are…things,” I said. “Things that weigh on me. What a friend of mine calls ‘the cost of it.’ You know what I’m talking about?”
    He nodded. “Of course.”
    “I don’t know about you, but when I look back, and I’m being honest with myself, which mostly I try to do, it occurs to me that I’ve done more bad in the world than I’ve ever done good.”
    I wondered why I’d said that to him. I’d never thought it before. At least not in those words. Was it what Horton had said to me over breakfast that morning?
    I thought he was going to blow it off. Instead, he said, “I have…dreams. Really bad ones. Related to some of the shit I’ve done, the shit that’s on those tapes. I couldn’t tell you the last time I lay down at night without dreading what I would face in my sleep. Or the last time I slept through the night without waking up covered in sweat and going for the weapon on the bedstand next to me. The truth is…”
    In the dark, I saw his teeth gleam in a smile that faltered into a grimace.
    “The truth is,” he went on, “I’m pretty fucked up. But what can you do? A shark has to keep swimming, or it dies.”
    I thought of Midori, the mother of my son. “You know, I once said the same thing to a woman I was trying to explain myself to.”
    “Yeah? Did she understand?”
    I remembered the last time I’d seen her, in New York, and what she’d tried to do just beforehand.
    “That would be a no,” I said, and we both laughed.
    My phone buzzed. Dox. I picked up and said, “What’s the status?”
    “Our diners have just left the restaurant. A nice familial hug goodnight, and our guy is currently on his way to your position alone and on foot, ETA ten minutes. Guess you were right about the clubbing.”
    “Good. Have—”
    “Already done. Our friend on the scooter is zigzagging the street near you. He’ll see the diner when he’s one minute out. When you get a buzz from scooter man, it’s a one-minute ETA. And I’ll move in close but not too close in case you need me. Good luck.”
    “Okay, good.” I clicked off and said to Larison, “Less than ten minutes. Let’s get in position.”
    We headed toward the hotel. As we neared the end of Sonnenfels-gasse, just two blocks away, a uniformed cop turned the corner, heading toward us. I wasn’t unduly alarmed—there was no reason for him to pay any particular attention to us, and Larison and I had already established that “inebriated drinking companions” would be our cover for action in case we were stopped. I retracted into my