The Chaos Kind (John Rain #11)
Barry Eisler
The object of power is power.
—George Orwell
prologue
MANUS
Marvin Manus walked up a steep flight of stairs in Seattle’s Freeway Park, his breath fogging in the damp morning air. He didn’t know why they called it a “park.” There were trees and grass, yes, and a series of artificial waterfalls, too, but the heart of it was sheer blocks of concrete, arranged like a scale model of windowless, doorless buildings, all of it as dull and gray as the autumn sky. It reminded him of the juvenile facility they’d put him in after what he did to his father. Like someone had taken the prison walls and tried to refashion them into art.
He’d read there had been problems with street crime here, and he could understand why. For one thing, he knew that places like this echoed. So you could hear a potential victim coming from a long way off. There were multiple vantage points from which to assess the victim’s suitability. And with all the mazelike concrete walls, the victim would have nowhere to go other than forward or back.
He paused and looked around. He could see a good deal of the labyrinth, but still there were numerous blind turns. It really was well designed for criminals, and he was surprised the woman would use it for her runs even in the morning. Maybe she liked all the stairs.
He pushed the thought away and started climbing again. Beyond what the woman looked like, he didn’t want to know anything about her.
In his previous life, details about an assignment hadn’t bothered him. He’d believed in Director Anders. He did what the director asked, to whomever the director needed it done. But then the director had wanted him to surveil an NSA specialist named Evelyn Gallagher. Evie. Who had a deaf son, Dash. Manus had met them, as he was supposed to. The director had then told him to do more. And Manus . . . couldn’t.
At the top of the stairs was a wall where the steps turned left. Amid the smell of damp concrete and mold and moss, Manus caught a whiff of body odor. By reflex, he dropped his hand to the Cold Steel Espada clipped to his front pocket, and moved to the right to create more space between himself and whatever might be beyond the ambit of his vision.
He reached the landing and glanced left. An old homeless man in a tattered down vest was sitting on a folded blanket, his back to the concrete wall. Had Manus not been at the far right of the stairs, he might have run into the man. It was a bad place to sit—too easy to startle someone coming up the stairs. And there were people in the world who, when startled, reacted badly.
As Manus moved past, the man said something, but he had a scraggly beard that covered too much of his mouth for Manus to see what he said. Probably asking for loose change. Manus would have given him some, but most people ignored such pleas, and Manus didn’t want to do anything that was likelier to be remembered than to be forgotten or overlooked.
He kept moving. The sky had gotten darker and he smelled a coming rain.
At the next landing was another homeless man, this one younger and standing with a shoulder to the wall. The bladed stance could have been tactical, and Manus gave the man more attention than he had the one who’d been sitting. He read the man’s lips—Spare a few bucks?—and shook his head once in response. The man frowned and spoke again: Fuck you anyway. Manus met his eyes. The man looked away and said nothing more.
Manus was used to the reaction. It wasn’t just his size. When he looked at someone who might be trouble, he didn’t feel anything. If the person didn’t want to be a problem, Manus would keep going. If the person wanted to be a problem, Manus would go to work. Most people, when he looked at them, understood. Usually they preferred the first option.
He hadn’t felt this way in a long time. Hadn’t looked at people this way in a long time. He didn’t like it. And he didn’t like how easily he had slipped back into it. But what choice did he have? They’d told him if he didn’t do what they wanted, they would tell Dash everything. About what Manus was. About the things he’d done. And even if all that had been before, how would a fourteen-year-old boy understand the difference?
Evie knew, of course. She’d known a lot even before he told her all of it, on that night he’d come undone by Dash’s trust and Evie’s gentleness. He’d signed good night to Dash, returning the boy’s hug, something that had become natural for Manus after months of it being more one-way, and waited while the boy climbed into the loft the two of them had built together. Evie watched, smiling, then walked to the loft, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed her son good night. She’d followed Manus out, turning off the light and closing the door behind them.
There was a chair in her small bedroom, and Manus sank into it, staring at the floor, gripped by a sadness he couldn’t name, as though he was grieving about something that hadn’t even happened.
Evie knelt in front of him and touched his knee. He looked up.
I love the way you are with him, she’d signed. And the way he is with you.
At those words, Manus began to cry. He tried to stop himself, but it only got worse. Evie, her expression alarmed, signed What is it?
You don’t know the things I’ve done.
Yes, I do.
No, you don’t.
And then he’d told her. Told her everything. As though some part of him was trying to warn her, save her, drive her away.
She’d listened. When he was done, when it had all come out of him, she said, You’re not that person anymore.