Weaponized (14 page)

L
ara’s never been comfortable alone in a room. Being alone in
life,
that’s a different story, but being alone in a room horrifies her. She doesn’t want to remember how many men and women she’s spent a night with, weeks with, months with, just to avoid the terror of the empty room. She’s currently fighting the syndrome by watching television, listening to synth-pop through ear buds, chain-smoking, and painting her toenails.

She figures her phobia probably stems from her childhood growing up in Russia in that grim, functional brutalism called public housing. Several families crammed into two or three rooms at the State’s largesse. She never had a room of her own, was unprepared for the privacy and spaciousness of the West.

Robinson used to tell her that never having had her own room made her far more adapted to the world than someone who had grown up like he did. “Because this is a world both atomized and Balkanized,” he’d say. “This world…our world…is about feeling alone and isolated and primed to explode no matter how many different sets of eyes are watching you. The room is never empty. Only you.”

She takes an aggressive drag on her cigarette. The filter is stained red from her lipstick.

Kyle emerges from the bathroom, sits on a chair, and sinks into the cushions.

Lara turns down the TV. “So this is what you need to know. No one meets Robinson,” she says to him. “To the public, I am Robinson.”

“So you’re like his representative?”

“Not
like.
I
am.
I take meetings for him. I name a price. And if that price is right, Robinson decides whether he wants the job.” She takes a long drag off a cigarette. Kyle listens to the paper burn. “Six weeks ago, Robinson disappeared. I don’t know if he decided to go or if someone took him. But I haven’t seen him since. And since he’s been gone, he’s fucked four jobs for me I had him booked for. So I’ve got to come up with the fronted cash or produce Robinson…or I’m dead. I can’t come up with the fronted cash, because he’s got it. So I’ve got to come up with
him.
”

“Lara,” Kyle says, “what does Robinson do?”

“Whatever you want him to.”

“Such as?”

“When I met him, he had just been in the Balkans. That war was his first gig. He was working on shoring up the mines in Kosovo for the occupation forces. Coal mines. He was working with the Germans, the U.S., and the KLA. He never told me who ran him. But it didn’t really matter…no one actually runs Robinson. He was also operating an escape line for Bosnian Muslims and a ratline for Serbs wanted for war crimes, making some pocket money for himself.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction?”

“That’s what war is. Armed contradiction.”

Kyle rubs his eyes. There’s far too much moral ambiguity going on for him. “What types of jobs did you book him for?”

“Robinson studied to be a lawyer.” She laughs. “He’s capable of anything.”

“Who runs him now?”

“No one. No one runs him. He’s private.”

“Are the Chinese his clients?”

“Not through me. I’ve tried to steer him away from the Chinese. They’re
cheap.
Notoriously
cheap. They don’t want to pay for someone like Robinson. They’d rather blackmail or guilt-trip some first- or second-generation Chinese living in California or DC into spying for them. Chinese are the worst employers in the world.”

“Okay, but…”

“Mainly he works with multinationals or the governments that control multinationals. That way he can use business as his cover. He
was
a businessman, so it comes natural for him. Then when Robinson finishes his assignment, he resigns and moves onto the next industry.”

“He told me worked for a German telecom. VodaFone, I think.”

“Right. He did. That’s an old one. He used an old cover when he met you.” She furrows her forehead. “Those guys who took you were Chinese…just like our friends in the hotel room. What did they say to you?”

“They kept asking me why I was in Cambodia and who my target was.”

“The target…”

Kyle nods.

“It’s not a deal of mine,” Lara says. “I never made a deal for Robinson with the Chinese.”

“Well, someone did. And, more important, I think that CIA guy got a good look at me before I jumped.”

“Yeah. Your midnight dive. How good of a look do you think he got?”

“Good enough.”

F
owler sits behind his desk typing with two fingers aided by some occasional thumb music to the space bar. His inefficient typing method isn’t helped by his desperate need for a stronger prescription for his glasses. It’s gotten to the point where he sees better with them perched at the end of his nose, making him resemble some fin-de-siècle Austrian prince ruling his empire in a room of polished brass and painted ladies. He needs bifocals, but refuses. That’s Fowler’s hidden secret—even in his sixties, he’s hopelessly vain. Warriors don’t wear bifocals.

He reads over what he’s written thus far and shakes his head, still pissed.

Rebecca walks in without knocking—as is her wont—stands before Fowler’s desk, and says absolutely nothing, just fixes him with a subzero stare.

Fowler decides to break the ice. “Know what my least favorite sentence in the world is?”

Her gaze doesn’t relent.

He continues, “‘Suspect eluded capture because he dove from a balcony into a pool packed with German tourists, thus impairing my ability to fire a shot without risking significant collateral damage.’”

“Fuck you,” she says. “How do you like that for a sentence?”

“Outside of the fact it’s not a sentence”—he stretches his arms over his head—“it’s not thrilling. But it does benefit from the absence of German tourists.”

“You told me you
needed
me at the scene. You wanted me to babysit a comatose Frenchman while you and Grant did all the work.”

“Which we couldn’t have done if you hadn’t kept him occupied.”

“He slept the whole time.”

“He took things pretty hard, what do you want me to say?”

She doesn’t reply but obviously wants Fowler to say
something.

“Look,” he says, “Grant and I needed time. You’re the only one I could trust with Fresson. What I did wasn’t exactly following the rules the U.S. agreed on to get a station here. I needed Fresson occupied and not talking to the cops.” Fowler sees this line of reasoning is getting him nowhere. “No one said this job was sexy all the time.”

She gives up, sits down. “You are so not getting laid tonight.”

“Withholding sex. Seems extreme to me…”

“I am extreme.”

“I probably won’t be in the mood anyway. I have to go see someone both you and I consider distasteful. And you won’t be upset I’m going alone on this errand.”

Rebecca leans in, her curiosity piqued, forgetting how pissed she is. “Who?”

“Pang.”

“Passport Pang?”

Fowler nods.

“Sex-club, gambling-den, drug-running Pang…”

“His résumé is diverse,” Fowler says. “To paraphrase Whitman, Pang contains multitudes.”

“When did you start reading Whitman?”

“I was bored at your place one night. You were asleep. It was on your night table.”

“Did you like it?”

“No.”

She laughs a little. “How would Pang get himself wrapped up with Robinson?”

“Don’t know. But”—Fowler pulls the evidence bag with the casino chip out of his shirt pocket—“I found this in the back of Robinson’s closet. He must have left it behind when he bolted.” He tosses it to Rebecca, who studies it under the flickering office fluorescents. “It’s worth ten grand American,” Fowler says. “Pang’s got the only game in the town that lets people play for stakes that high and has the dollars to back it up. No one else wants that kind of risk.” He motions to another evidence bag on the side of the desk. “I found that too.”

“Hair?”

“A woman showered in that hotel room not long before everyone got dead.”

“One of Pang’s girls?”

“We’ll find out.” Fowler leans back in the chair, then starts typing. “Let me wrap this up. Sooner I shoot this off to Langley, sooner they can tell me what they’ve got about Robinson.”

“You want to release photos of Robinson to the media?”

“The airport photos?” Fowler says, then answers himself before Rebecca gets a chance, “No. I sent them around to the locals and CIA in the area. But I don’t want to get the media involved yet. Robinson is on a no-fly, so his travel options are extremely limited. If he wants to fly, he’s gonna have to come up with a new ID, and that’ll take time. Even here. As a client, he carries a lot of risk, so he can’t just go to some forger. He’s going to need good papers. That’s time he doesn’t have.” Fowler leans in over the desk. “We’ve got him somewhat boxed in due to circumstance, but if we get the media involved, he’s gonna panic, and we may lose him altogether. There must be something here he
wants.
I mean, he escaped from the airport and went back to his hotel. Regardless of whether those guys at the airport were friends or foes…he got away and still went back. That’s either dumb or desperate. And if he was smart enough to get himself out of the airport situation, he’s got a damn good reason to be here. I don’t want to give him any additional excuse to try and run. We hold off on the media.”

L
ara and Kyle located some glasses and are drinking vodka with ice. Kyle raises the glass to his lips, listens to the cubes crack, and then sips.

“I can’t believe Robinson got himself mixed up with the Chinese,” Lara says. “It’s not something he would do.”

“The Chinese certainly think he has.”

“The guys who took you…what did they seem like?”

“Like they wanted to kill me.”

“Right,” Lara says, rolling her eyes. “What else? What were they wearing? Did you get a good look at any of them?”

“Suits. They were in suits. That’s all I remember. They wanted to know who the target was. That’s all they kept asking. ‘Who is your target? And why are you in Cambodia?’”

“Target? What target?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well…sure sounds like part of Robinson’s skill set is murder.”

“Someone like you or me gets murdered. You
assassinate
the people who Robinson goes after.”

“So that
is
part of his skill set?”

“Part of it. His least favorite. He finds it anticlimactic. All that buildup for one good shot. He likes blackmail, interrogation…the things that last. The ones that make people remember him. If he’s going to assassinate someone either the Chinese gave him a sweet deal or they have something big hanging over him.”

“Christ,” Kyle says.

“He’s in a lot of danger either way,” Lara says. “The Chinese. Did they seem like government or hired thugs?”

Kyle takes another slug of vodka. It hits him hard. “There’s a difference?”

“Why can’t you remember more?” She rises from the bed.

“Hey. You met one of them in your hotel room. You didn’t question him either.”

“Don’t compare us.”

“It was dark.” Kyle runs through the litany: “I got Tasered, beaten. And then you killed everyone.”

“Fuck.”

“Sit down,” Kyle says. “You’re making me woozy.”

“You have to help me find him,” she says. “You’re the one who threw me off my path.”

“Threw you off your path? You found me, remember.”

“And lost valuable time doing it.”

“How am I supposed to help you find him?”

“I don’t know. Just do something. Make yourself useful, for fuck’s sake.”

“I thought I was supposed to
be Robinson.
That’s
my job
.”

“Yes. But first we have to find a reason for you to be him.”

“How am I supposed…”

“I don’t know.
Think
…” She can’t hold back her frustration. “We don’t have much time. This place will be blown soon too. The CIA saw you; the Chinese are onto both of us…”

“Just sit down, okay?” Kyle says. “The room’s spinning. I can’t think and watch you at the same time.”

She sits down but bounces her leg.

Kyle places the glass of vodka on the carpet, leans back in the chair, and closes his eyes.

“Are you fucking sleeping?”

Kyle keeps his eyes closed. “I’m trying to think.”

Lara lights a cigarette and says through the exhale, “It sure looks like sleeping.”

You used to be good at this,
Kyle thinks.
This used to be your job. You used to be able to find anything. No one wants to be found. No one. This is just one man. One man who has to be somewhere on the grid.

Kyle’s always been preternaturally gifted at seeing the world as a network, as a series of interconnected nodes able to function without a center. Those talents made him a hot commodity during the tech boom of the 1990s, but to achieve real fame and glory, he needed al-Qaeda to come along.

So how did bin Laden inadvertently turn Kyle into a celebrity in the—granted, extremely small—world of networking engineers?

After 9/11, Kyle, like everyone else, was moved, shocked, and furious. However, he channeled those feelings and did something constructive with his rage. He used the concepts and algorithms of game theory, applied them to the exploding field of social-network analysis, and created a graph that in six easy connections linked all nineteen hijackers together.

He posted his thought experiment on his website and allowed the world—well, other network engineers—to take in his handiwork, the product of nothing but open-source data available to everyone on the Internet.

DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research wing, had also been playing around with ways to link the nineteen hijackers. They had a twenty-foot-long chart and had been able to tie only twelve of the men together. The project had ballooned to such proportions that internal memoranda referred to it as the Big-Ass Graph, or BAG, program.

Kyle’s six steps versus DARPA’s ever-expanding org chart.

Harnessing someone like him could open up surveillance possibilities no one had ever considered. Actually, Christopher Chandler
had
considered them after checking out Kyle’s website.

A week after he uploaded his results, Kyle received a call from the director of National Intelligence asking him to fly out to DC and brief his staff and certain private contractors about his methods.

Kyle spoke to a packed room about
information,
about how he was able to connect the hijackers with such ease. The information was already out there in plain sight. The knowledge base already existed.

He was able to do it so fast because it was already too late.

He compared it to when average people on the street are able to spot a trend. They’re able to spot it because the moment has wound down, played itself out. The fad has reached maximum market saturation. Same thing with information. When you can make out the clear contours of a connection, you’ve already lost your chance.

He said the challenge facing national security was learning to think in nodes and networks. The agencies had to be hunters, not gatherers. They had to write algorithms that searched out valuable information from the outset, as opposed to the current institutional standard: suck up everything in sight and then write code to sift through it later. If you don’t have an underlying information base, you end up with everything and nothing.

After Kyle finished talking, everyone in the room offered him a job, but only one invitation intrigued him. Chandler’s. Of course, the man himself wasn’t present. He sent his emissary, his omnipresent lawyer Thomas Lozen, to deliver a meeting request.

You got to the power behind the throne in Washington because you tied nineteen hijackers together faster than DARPA,
Kyle thinks.
All you need to do now is turn that skill set to finding one man—admittedly, one who doesn’t want to be found.

What can he use? What was it Chandler always said when Kyle couldn’t crack a problem? What was Chandler’s mantra?

“Follow the money.”