Read an Excerpt
Straight Flush
By Ben Mezrich HarperCollins Publishers
Copyright © 2013 Ben Mezrich
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-224009-5
CHAPTER 1
DECEMBER 19, 201 1
JUAN SANTAMARÃ? A INT ERNAT IONAL A IRPORT, SAN JOSÃe , COSTA R ICA
Ten minutes before 5 a.m., a gray- on- gray sky was pregnant
with the remnants of a passing storm, a thick canopy of clouds
marred by occasional daggers of tropical blue and orange— and
suddenly seven years disintegrated in a flash of reflected sunlight
across the spinning glass of a revolving door.
Brent Beckley stepped through the threshold of the Cen-
tral American country's main airport and into the poorly air-
conditioned terminal. A little over six feet tall, with boyish
features, a square jaw, and blondish- brown hair cut short over a
wide, boxy forehead, Brent was moving fast, his five- hundred-
dollar Italian- leather shoes clicking against the shiny linoleum
floor. He was wearing a conservative dark blue suit with match-
ing tie; there was a briefcase in his right hand and a heavy winter
coat thrown over his left shoulder. Anyone looking his way might
have assumed he was just another young, eager expat business-
man on his way to an important meeting up north; business- clad
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Americans strolling through SantamarÃ-a International were a
common sight, symbolic of the expat community that had grown
exponentially in the near decade since Brent had first arrived in
the tropical country.
But the truth was, Brent Beckley was not on his way to a
business meeting. In fact, he was quite possibly on his way to
a jail cell. And the journey from where he'd started to where
he was going was anything but common. He looked calm, cool,
collected— shoulders back, head up— but on the inside he was
terrified. He could feel the sweat running down the skin above
his spine, and it required all his willpower to keep his knees from
buckling, his body moving forward.
Ten feet from the blue- rope labyrinth that led through to
Immigration and Security, Brent spotted a man strolling deter-
minedly toward him and slowed his gait. At first glance, the man
didn't look like a spy: thin, angular, with narrow cheeks, a sharp
triangular nose, long legs lost in the folds of khaki pants, spindly
arms jutting out past the cuffs of a white button- down shirt. The
man was smiling, having recognized Brent immediately, though
the two had never met. Brent tried to smile back, but the fear
was playing havoc with the neurons that controlled the muscles
of his face.
Brent was barely thirty years old, a small- town kid from
backwoods Montana, a former frat boy who'd spent most of his
adult life working for what he considered to be an Internet com-
pany; he'd certainly never expected to find himself rendezvous-
ing in a tropical airport with a smiling spy.
Then again, the man wasn't necessarily a spy. From what Brent
remembered from the letter he'd received the week before, detail-
STRAIGHT FLUSH / 3
ing how the meeting would go down, the man's official title was
some sort of “liaison” with the U.S. State Department, based out
of the embassy in San JosÃ?. And up close, even despite the sharp
contours of his face, he looked much more like a kindly accoun-
tant than a menacing secret operative.
But if Brent had learned anything over the past seven years, it
was that there were very few things in life that were actually black
or white; most things tended to be a mix of both.
“Good morning, Mr. Beckley,” the man said as he intercepted
Brent a few feet from the entrance to the maze of blue rope. “My
name is David Foster. It's nice to meet you.”
Brent shook the man's hand, trying to think of a response.
When none was forthcoming, Foster extended his other hand,
offering two documents. The first was instantly familiar: Brent's
U.S. passport— the same passport he had turned over to the State
Department three days earlier. Glancing at the document, Brent
felt his mouth go dry. He could see, even without looking closely,
that someone had punched three holes through the center of the
cover. Each dark circle tore at the pit of Brent's stomach. There
was something so permanent and real about the sight of that
passport; its mutilation seemed like such a malevolent and un-
necessary act.
A week earlier, when Brent had first made the decision to
turn himself in, the U.S. Embassy had requested a copy of his
passport. Brent had been happy to accommodate, offering them
the original document so they could copy it themselves; they had
promptly confiscated it. Now he could see the result.
It seemed to be just another step in a deceptive game. Brent
had already agreed to surrender, and he was in the process of
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BEN MEZRICH
moving his family to the United States— yet even that wasn't
good enough.
Foster appeared to read Brent's thoughts and quickly shifted
the invalidated passport to the side, revealing the second docu-
ment in his hand: a thin, similar- looking passport, this one with
its cover still intact. Brent took both documents from the man,
inspecting the second, smaller booklet— and saw that it was
dated for a single day's use. Brent was still free to travel like any
other American citizen— for the next twenty- four hours.
There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Brent fi-
nally shrugged, shoving the two passports into his suit pocket.
“What now?” he asked.
Foster's expression turned soft, and he jerked his head toward
the blue ropes behind him.
“We've got an hour to kill before your flight. You want to get
a cup of coffee?”
It wasn't quite what Brent had expected— but again, none of
this could have been anticipated. He nodded and followed the
thin
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Straight Flush by Ben Mezrich. Copyright © 2013 Ben Mezrich. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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