Elliot Goodkind knew it was a bad meet before he walked in, and he had a rule: never walk into a meet if there was even the slightest suspicion that it was bad. It was about ten thousand times easier to dodge the problem ahead of time than it was to get in the middle of it and then try to walk back out again.
And of course, in this case, he’d broken his own rule.
He’d ignored the twinge in his gut on the ride in, explained to himself how he’d triple-checked everything and why it was all going to be fine. The vibe in the restaurant had been off as soon as he opened the front door. But instead of turning around and walking away, he’d stepped inside.
Elliot had greeted his contact, Wilson, in his usual cautiously friendly manner, nodded politely and shaken the hand of the other man seated at the same table. Wilson had introduced that other man as Dillon, a business associate. And judging from the look that Dillon shot back at Wilson, it must have been his real name.
But Wilson had rubbed his hands on his pants before shaking Elliot’s hand, trying to hide sweaty palms, and he’d been a little too enthusiastic in his welcome. Tried a little too hard to make Elliot comfortable, which naturally had the opposite effect. Final confirmation had come when Elliot had excused himself to use the restroom before sitting down; the way Wilson watched him intently, eyes following him all the way to the bathroom door, but anxious to leap back to Dillon, his mouth practically ballooning with excuses and explanations ready to spill out.
Elliot was blown. And Wilson knew it. This meeting was for Wilson’s sake, then, his one attempt to prove that he wasn’t a snitch or a plant, that he had no idea who Elliot really was. Elliot’s fate had already been decided. A bad meet. And Elliot had walked right into it.
He turned on the water, splashed it cold over his hands and face, then left it running in the sink while he dried off. The bathroom was small, just a one-stall arrangement. The only window was a high slot. Maybe big enough to slide through, if he could get to it. He’d have to stand on the back of the toilet, and make an awkward stretch for that. That was assuming he could even get the window open, and judging from the grime built up around the frame, that wasn’t a sure bet.
But escape was admission of guilt. And while it might get him out of the restaurant alive, there was no telling what effect that might cascade across all his many other networks and plans. Elliot had been here a long time. He’d done well for himself. Wriggling his ungainly way through a slot window into some grungy side-alley seemed like the wrong way to let it all end. Besides, if they were any sort of professionals, they’d have placed some muscle around the outside. Elliot could just see himself, draped halfway out a window, shot to death, limp like a wet towel out to dry.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Looked himself in the eye.
“Elliot,” he said. He spoke aloud, but low enough for the running water to cover the words. “You’re being ridiculous.” He took a deep breath, stood straighter, pulled his shoulders back. Smiled. “Quit being ridiculous.”
What did they really know? He could guess. Wilson thought he was a smuggler; the other man at the table probably thought him an undercover agent, local cop or internal security services, maybe. They were both right, of course. To a point.
Elliot was, in fact, smuggling small batches of black market, military-grade hardware out of the Martian People’s Collective Republic for his employer. And Elliot was, in fact, an undercover agent. Though the proper term was undeclared field officer, and he didn’t work for local police or for the Collective’s feared Internal Security Services. He worked for the United States National Intelligence Directorate. He was a spy, in hostile territory, about two hundred and twenty-five million kilometers from home, give or take a few million depending on the orbital cycle. And being undeclared meant he only worked for the NID as long as he didn’t get caught. If he was exposed as a foreign intelligence agent, there were no protections for him. The Directorate would conveniently have no knowledge or record of him, and he’d face whatever consequences his host nation might have in store for, say, a treasonous citizen, or perhaps a domestic terrorist.
The only help he was going to get in this particular moment, then, was whatever help he could create himself. It wasn’t often he wished he carried a gun. In Elliot’s experience, people who carried guns typically saw violence or the threat thereof as the default solution to too many problems. They let the weapon blind them to the possibilities. They lacked creativity. And, of course, there had been the incident in his early days involving a riot shotgun and an office ceiling, but Elliot didn’t like to admit how much that had influenced his feelings on the matter.
The main trouble Elliot had with guns, though, was that usually when they were the solution to a problem, they were the only solution to the problem. And this particular problem sure looked an awful lot like one of those problems. He was just going to have to figure it out. He didn’t have a lot to work with.
But he knew Wilson. Knew him enough. Just a guy with a side hustle. Wilson didn’t care if he was selling milspec hardware or lollipops, he was just trying to make money where he saw opportunity. Well, no, that wasn’t totally true. Wilson liked to think of himself as different than everyone else. Better. Special. He made good money and lived well, and as far as he was concerned, he deserved it because he didn’t play by the same rules as all the other suckers out there. Living outside the norm, making his own rules, winning at his own game. That was important to Wilson. As long as he didn’t get busted. He was a coward, really. An insecure man, looking for significance. That was part of what had made him so easy for Elliot to develop as an asset.
Dillon, on the other hand… well, Elliot hadn’t seen him before, which meant Elliot had missed something along the way. Which was probably how Elliot had ended up in a one-stall bathroom, with the water running, trying to puzzle his way out. He glanced back up at that window again. Shook his head. Just too narrow.
So, best guess time. Dillon the Business Associate. Elliot let his mind draw up that brief flash of a first impression, let his instincts drive his assumptions. Dillon. Square jaw, square shoulders, everything squared away. Not overly friendly. Former military, turned businessman, then. He was probably Wilson’s supplier. His boss, maybe, but more likely someone adjacent, someone at a similar level in the hierarchy who just treated Wilson as inferior. Aggression was Dillon’s thing. His posture, his expression, his demeanor. Alpha.
Dillon had concealed his anger, mostly. There’d been an edge to it, though, something more. But not personal, he was too professional for that. He wasn’t hurt by the possibility of Wilson’s betrayal. It was a potential threat, and Dillon was the kind of guy who had to deal with all potential threats, immediately and with finality.
If Elliot had to guess, and he most certainly did have to guess, Wilson was out there, right now, doing everything he could to prove his loyalty to the relationship, to ingratiate himself to the strong man who could protect him. And meanwhile Dillon was evaluating the whole situation on a different plane; detached, impersonal, deciding whether or not continuing to do business with Wilson posed a threat to whatever operation it was he had going on. The more Wilson talked, the bigger the threat would seem.
Elliot shut the water off, took a deep breath. Smiled at himself in the mirror.
Show time. He stepped out.
“Sorry about that, gentlemen,” he said, patting his belly as he approached the table. “Three breakfast burritos seemed like a good idea at the time but uh… can’t say I recommend it.”
It was a round table, four chairs. Dillon and Wilson sitting across from one another. They’d pulled a chair out for Elliot, but he stopped next to Dillon, stood a little too close to the man’s shoulder than was socially appropriate.
“Hey buddy,” he said. Dillon looked up at him, icy. “You’re in my seat.”
The big, square man was sitting in the position that had the best view of both the front and rear entrances, and Elliot knew that was no accident. It was the best seat in the house for this kind of work, but that wasn’t the reason Elliot wanted it. At least, not the only reason.
“Just sit here, man,” Wilson said.
“Nah,” Elliot answered without looking at him. He held Dillon’s stare, kept his face as neutral, counted to twenty. Neither of them budged.
“Come on,” Elliot said. “You picked the place, I get to pick the chair.”
Dillon was not a small man; Elliot guessed he was 225, maybe 230 pounds at one-G. By contrast, Elliot was about 165 if his pockets were full. But Elliot had one advantage; he was standing while Dillon was sitting. Most alpha males had a natural aversion to having another man’s crotch in their face. Elliot casually grabbed his belt buckle and jiggled it around as if adjusting it, just to emphasize the point.
Dillon slid to the next chair over.
Elliot flashed a smile and plopped down casually, and just like that he’d changed the dynamic. Now it was a conversation between Wilson and him, with Dillon as observer. And Dillon was smoldering. Not just angry, but irritated. Hopefully enough to be distracted, and not enough to reach across the table and kill Elliot right there in the open.
Some attendant had come and gone while Elliot had been in the bathroom. A basket sat in the middle of the table filled with flatbread, herbed and glistening with rich oil, faintly steaming. Four glasses of water sweated almost as much as Wilson.
“All right,” Elliot said, “I know we need to get to business, but before we do, I gotta tell you this joke. So, there’s these three guys, right? These three guys walk into a restaurant… a businessman, a thief, and an undercover cop.”
He let the words hang there in the air for a moment.
“And the joke is,” he said, “I know who the businessman is.” He raised his hand, pointer finger extended up towards the ceiling at first for dramatic effect, and then pointed at himself.
“So what I have to do now, is figure out which one of you is the no-good, lying, conniving, dirty scumbag… and which one’s just the thief.”
The color leaked out of Wilson’s face so fast it was almost cartoonish, or as if someone had pulled a drain plug on him. Dillon, on the other hand, was unmoved. He returned Elliot’s gaze with steady intensity, a corner of his mouth pulled back with one part smirk and three parts malice. Elliot held still, tried his best to look right through the man’s eyes and straight out the back of his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wilson shifting his head back and forth between the two of them, no doubt wondering who would make the first move, and trying to decide whether he should make a run for it, or stick around to help.
After a long moment, Dillon leaned forward and drew a breath to speak. But before he could get a word out, Elliot slammed his palm down on the table, hard; it made the silverware jump and the other patrons quiet. Dillon sat momentarily stunned.
Elliot flicked his eyes left and right in a quick scan, soaking up the environment in a split-second glance. Several of the other customers were looking in his direction; a natural reaction to any sudden, loud noise. Two guys in the back corner were working a little too hard not to notice. Dillon’s guys, then.
“Now you,” Elliot continued, looking back at Dillon. “You’re a little too on-the-nose for a cop. You look like a cop. You smell like a cop. And you don’t seem bright enough to me to try the old reverse psychology trick. But you,” and here he kept staring at Dillon, while he pointed at Wilson. “You never check six. You talk too much.” Now he shifted his gaze over to Wilson. “And you walk right into what’s obviously a setup without asking yourself who actually did the setting.”
Wilson blinked a half dozen times, and then stammered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
“That doesn’t surprise anyone, Wilson,” Elliot answered. He turned his attention back to Dillon. “So, that leaves us with you, Dill. Which is so predictable, it’s boring.”
Dillon sat back again, his brow creased. He was an intelligent man; Elliot could see it in his eyes. Smart enough to know that even if he’d thought of everything, he probably hadn’t thought of everything. He was working through it now, trying to puzzle out whether he’d missed something or if Elliot was just bluffing. Elliot had to keep him in that space, slightly off-balance, couldn’t give him the time to work it out.
“Which means the only real question is, are you Central Martian Authority, or just a local guy?” Elliot said.
Dillon shook his head almost involuntarily.
“Or are you Internal Security?”
The suggestion was preposterous on its face; Elliot knew for a fact Dillon couldn’t be part of the Republic’s Internal Security Services. They were never so conspicuous, never confrontational, which made them exponentially more dangerous. ISS agents had a way of putting people at unusual ease, asking easy questions that somehow led to hard places. A good one could sell you a rope and keep you smiling while you tied your own noose. Even if Dillon had been law enforcement, which he clearly wasn’t, there was no way they’d ever let him be Internal Security. But just mentioning the agency planted the seed in Wilson’s head, and had an unsettling effect on Dillion.
“I’m not any of that,” Dillon confessed, now defensive. He tried to get back on top of the conversation. “You have no idea who I am.”
“Sure I do. You’re my supplier, and Wilson’s your cutout. Or, to be technical about it, your boss is my supplier. He just doesn’t know that, does he?” It was a shot in the dark, a hunch that Elliot hadn’t realized he’d had until he heard himself say it. But Dillon’s face shifted just enough to tell Elliot he was right.
So then, Elliot figured, Dillon had set up a little side business for himself, siphoning off hardware, selling it directly to buyers for three or four times the market rate, which was already substantial. And that was Elliot’s point of leverage.
“At least, he doesn’t know it yet,” he said. “You know, cutouts work better when you don’t meet face-to-face with your actual clients. That’s sort of the whole point of having a cutout, so you–”
“I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull off here, sport,” Dillon said, cutting him off, “but it’s not going to work.”
Elliot held up a placating hand. “All I’m trying to do is make sure I haven’t been wasting my time and money. I’m guessing you got spooked when I started asking questions about where else you’ve been distributing your gear. I can understand that. I can appreciate it.”
He reached over and made a point of picking up Wilson’s glass of water, took a very deliberate drink of it before continuing. “I’m a careful man, Dill. Guy with my unimpressive physique can’t afford to be anything but careful. I run a legitimate business, everything strictly legal, to the absolute letter of the law. To the tiniest dotted I and even the Ts they forgot to cross, you understand? A substantial portion of my resources goes to make sure I’m staying right in between the lines, and I assure you my resources are significant. So this is only going to play out one of two ways. One, you’re going to try to build some kind of case up against me, over the course of which you’ll get to learn a life lesson about how the legal system actually works–”
“I’m not a cop,” Dillon said, a little too loudly. Now he was getting angry. Elliot ignored him, which was sure to make him even angrier.
“Or two, you can keep your little charade intact and go snare some actual lawbreakers out there. Either way, you’re wasting your time with me. I’m giving you the choice, the opportunity, to keep everything you’ve built up to this point. I’m sure you’re making a nice little bonus on top of all your work for the greater good. And listen, I’ll even continue to do business with you, if you’re man enough to stomach it.” Elliot flashed a smile. “It’ll be good for your market legitimacy, I promise.”
Dillon shot Wilson a look, and then growled at Elliot, “You think you’re some bigtime player? Well you’re not. You’re not even half of my best client. Not even a tenth. I could crush you without even blinking. No one would ever find the body. No one would even come looking for it.”
“And my ex-wives would probably thank you for your service,” Elliot answered, reaching out and breaking the corner off one of the pieces of flatbread in the middle of the table. He popped it in his mouth, and spoke while he chewed. “But you gotta ask yourself, Dill, if you’re in control, why am I sitting here so casual?”
That was the part Dillon couldn’t work out. That was Elliot’s lifeline. He glanced down at his fingertips, saw that the oil from the bread had sheened them. He reached over and very deliberately dipped his fingers in Dillon’s glass of water, then wiped them off on the table cloth.
“What do you say, Dillon,” he said. “Do you and your two friends back there in the corner want to walk out of here still business partners? Or are you going to have to see for yourself why I’m so unconcerned?”
Dillon just stared at him, hard. Still a dangerous moment. There was silverware on the table. Elliot really did not want to get stabbed with a fork. Not again.
“That’s what I thought,” Elliot said. “Thanks for the time, gentlemen.” He stood up casually, careful not to make any moves that would suggest a threat, nothing that would set Dillon’s reflexes off. “Nice to meet you face-to-face finally, Dillon. And to get your name.” He smiled when he said it, then gave Wilson a little nod.
“Wilson, always a pleasure. I’m going to go ahead and take a twenty percent discount on that shipment this time. To cover this.” He waggled his hand vaguely over the table.
Wilson stared up at him, his mouth slightly open.
“I’ll be in touch,” Elliot said. “You two enjoy the rest of your day.”
Before Elliot turned his back, he looked over at Dillon’s two associates in the back corner, made eye contact with one of them. Gave him a little wink and nod. As he turned to leave, he heard Wilson whisper, “Hey, are you a cop, man?”
Poor Wilson. Elliot genuinely hoped that they’d be able to keep their arrangement, but he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see Wilson again.
He kept his pace steady and his ears attuned for any sudden movement. Twenty steps to the door. If he could make it that far, there was a better than coin-flip chance he was going to make it out. Fifteen steps. Ten.
And then he was there, opening the door, stepping out under the Martian sky. And it took every ounce of his remaining resolve to keep himself from sprinting to the vehicle that was waiting for him in the parking lot.