Read Online The Detachment by Barry Eisler - Free Book Online

phone,” I said. “And take out the battery.” He could have called someone before arriving, someone who could be recording our conversation now. Or he could have the phone itself set to a dictation function. And if it wasn’t a phone setting off the detector, it must have been a transmitter.
    “Of course,” he said. Because he didn’t ask me to do the same, and because my phone was turned off, I assumed the detector he must have been carrying, which would have been set to ignore his own phone, was quiet. He took out his phone, powered it down, removed the battery, and placed the empty unit on the table. The vibrating in my pocket stopped.
    He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, his fingers laced together. “Well, you’ll be unsurprised to learn it’s about a job. One requiring your unique set of skills.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “I think you do, but all right, I’ll spell it out. That’s why we’re here, after all.”
    He ordered a full breakfast—a Blvd Omelet, with mushrooms and black truffles; orange juice; a pot of coffee. I wondered how much of it had to do with appetite, and how much to demonstrate how relaxed he was.
    When the waiter had moved off, he said, “Does the name Tim Shorrock mean anything to you?”
    The name was familiar, but for the moment, I couldn’t place it. “Should it?”
    He shrugged. “It depends on how closely you follow these things. He’s not the most prominent player in the Beltway establishment, but he is the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.”
    The information clicked with the name’s familiarity, and I felt a small adrenaline surge as I realized what Horton wanted. Without even thinking, I shook my head and said, “No.”
    There was a pause. He said, “No, you don’t want the job?”
    “No one would want it. It’s too difficult and it’s too dangerous.”
    A detached part of my mind registered that I was objecting on practical grounds, not on principle. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought my response wasn’t so much a refusal as it was a negotiating gambit.
    “Look, we’ve both come all this way. If you’re not in too much of a hurry, why don’t you just hear me out?”
    His point was completely reasonable. And yet I sensed danger within it. Why?
    Because you’re interested. Admit it. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t even have come.
    No. I came to find out what this is about. Because forewarned is forearmed. Sound tactics, that’s all.
    The rejoinder felt weak. Kanezaki and Dox, always chuckling at me when I said I wanted out. Were they right? Did they know me better than I knew myself?
    The waiter brought over Horton’s beverages and departed. Horton stirred some cream into his coffee and said, “The National Counterterrorism Center focuses primarily on analysis and coordination, but Shorrock has been developing an ops capability. You see, prior to nine-eleven, al Qaeda wasn’t able to recruit Muslim Americans, but that’s changed.”
    “You’re talking about the Fort Hood shootings?”
    “And the attempted Northwest Air bombing, the attempted Times Square bombing, the planned D.C. Metro bombing, the planned Portland bombing…all the work of American Muslims.”
    I laughed. “You mean after a decade of two open wars, a dozen covert ones, predator strikes, torture, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, hysteria about mosques…American Muslims are getting susceptible to calls for revenge? It’s shocking.”
    He took a sip of coffee, then set the cup down. “I wish I could share your levity. But the problem is getting worse.”
    “What does this have to do with Shorrock?”
    “His men are involved with several domestic cells. Theoretically, Shorrock is supposed to penetrate a cell just deeply enough to gather evidence sufficient for criminal prosecution. In fact, he is now running these cells for real. You follow?”
    “Shorrock’s a secret radical?”
    “Shorrock is planning a series of false flag