“I’ve worked with him a few times, yes. Discreet and reliable. Why?”
The smile faded and she eyed him coolly—a duchess losing patience with a favored retainer.
“Is he effective?” she said.
“I thought that would go without saying.”
He didn’t know why he was sparring with her. The rope-a-dope would have been smarter. Maybe because he felt protective of Dox. Not that the big sniper needed anyone else to protect him.
“Can you contact him?”
“I can try,” he said, remembering his training: It’s not enough to know your way in. You have to know your way out. “He doesn’t always respond.”
“I thought you said he was reliable.”
“About carrying out a job. Not necessarily about accepting one.”
“Compunctions, then?”
“I don’t know him that well. Sometimes he says yes. Other times no. I don’t recall him ever offering reasons.”
There was a pause, and when Kanezaki didn’t respond to the silence, she said, “There’s a man who needs to cease and desist. A formidable man best persuaded permanently, and from a safe distance. I’d like you to engage your contact Dox to do the persuading.”
Kanezaki thought he had heard all the euphemisms in the world, but persuasion was a new one. “Who’s the man?”
“His name is Marvin Manus. He’s military-and Agency-trained, although you’ll find no records of any of it. You see, before his untimely death, NSA director Theodore Anders employed him as something of a Praetorian guard. Anders did an admirably thorough job of deleting Manus’s personal history from government files. But we can give your contractor Dox the necessary intel on where he can be found, and when.”
Kanezaki might have pointed out that knowing the exact where and when was an impressive feat with regard to a target who sounded like a well-practiced ghost. But there was no upside to revealing his thoughts, or to the plans that might flow from them.
“All right,” he said. “What does Manus need to be persuaded to cease and desist about?”
“The thinking is that Director Anders’s untimely death was at Manus’s hands.”
“The Praetorian guard turning on the emperor?”
“I suppose you could put it that way.”
“But that’s not a cease-and-desist. It already happened.”
Rispel offered a chilly smile—something that, like the warm one, Kanezaki sensed had some practice behind it. “What did you say about this Dox discussing his reasons?” she said.
“Just that I couldn’t recall him offering any.”
“Exactly. You see, Tom, sometimes it’s safer to have nothing even to recall.”
chapter
seven
KANEZAKI
Kanezaki glanced around and immediately saw Maya sitting in the right back corner of the theater. He walked up the aisle stairs past her, munching on the popcorn he had bought, and took a seat immediately behind her. The movie wouldn’t start for another fifteen minutes, but the place was already half-full. An installment in one of the superhero franchises that had opened just a few days before.
He leaned forward. “Anything?”
She turned her head toward the aisle, away from the people to her left and in front of her, and rested her left cheek against her folded hands. “Taped to the bottom of my seat. Lean forward whenever you like and it’s yours.”
“Summarize it for me.”