Free The God's Eye View by Barry Eisler Page B

his right hand feeling light, quick, the weight of the Berserker good in his left.
    The grin made the men flinch, an effect Manus was accustomed to. The tall man laughed. “No, of course not. I’m only joking. Don’t Americans like to joke? Aren’t you such a funny people?”
    Manus said nothing. He watched as they bundled Hamilton into the van, opening his door for cover and to regain access to the SIG as they drove off. The last thing he saw was Hamilton looking back at him, his eyes terrified, one of the men leering and holding him close with an arm around his neck.
    Manus got in his car and drove off, the SIG across his lap, watchful in case the Turks decided to try to ambush him on his way back to Istanbul. After an hour, the sun long since set, he started to relax.
    He hadn’t liked those men. He knew what they were going to do to Hamilton. He was concerned he’d been happy when it looked like they were going to give him a reason to kill them.
    He shook his head and reminded himself that whatever the director wanted, it was more important.
    The director had said he wanted him to watch that woman, too—the employee the director was worried about. It sounded like an easy enough job, and Manus would be glad to ease the director’s concerns. By watching, if no more than that was required. Or by more than watching. His job was to protect the director. That was all that mattered. It wasn’t his fault what happened to anyone who got in the way of it.

CHAPTER . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 7
    E vie left work at five and headed back to the apartment in Columbia. Digne was on the clock for another hour, but Evie always tried to relieve her early when possible. Her time with Dash was precious—it was hard to believe he was already in fourth grade, and she was acutely aware of how fast the time was passing. Soon it would be sports, and girls, and he’d be embarrassed by his mother, and she wouldn’t even see him anymore. Okay, well, not that she wouldn’t see him anymore, but it would be different. He wouldn’t need her the way he did now, he’d be independent, he’d have so many other interests and connections. And of course that was all wonderful, but the time they had together now, the bond they shared, was so special, and when he wasn’t her little boy anymore she didn’t want to ever feel that she’d wasted a minute.
    Dash had been her ex-husband’s idea—the name, not the child. The child had been unexpected, a word she preferred to accident , while she and Sean had been in their fourth year of the graduate computer science program at Cornell and their second year of dating. They’d talked casually about getting married after graduating, and when she told him she was pregnant, they just decided to speed things up a bit. Her mom moved to Ithaca to help with the baby, and they managed.
    For a while, being a father seemed good for Sean. He went out less with his buddies, and, when he did go out, he came home earlier and a little less wasted. She never begrudged him his boys’ nights. He was a gregarious guy with easy good looks and a ready laugh, and his high spirits made him popular with everyone in the program. In fact, she’d been surprised when he’d first asked her out. She’d never thought of herself as especially attractive, and she’d been flattered by his attention. She realized in retrospect that for a while she’d grown dependent on that flattery, on the boost the reflected glory of his looks and popularity provided to her own self-esteem, and that her dependency had come to occlude her own clear judgment.
    They’d both been recruited heavily by NSA—programs like Cornell’s were a magnet for the government—and they were excited about careers there. But less than six months before graduation, they got some bad news: Sean had failed the background test. No, no explanation was ever given, they were told. No, no second chances, either. Evie was still welcome, but Sean was out.
    To his