Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

SEVENTEEN

BECAUSE WINTERS AND COMPANY might have tracked Dox’s cell phone earlier in the day, the Grand Hyatt was no longer secure. We took extreme care in returning, and stayed just long enough to collect our gear. Then we went to Sukhumvit, using appropriate countersurveillance measures along the way, and took rooms at the Westin. Dox, chastened by the way Winters had almost gotten to us, didn’t argue with any of this.

I showered and shaved, then took an excruciatingly hot bath, which ordinarily helps me sleep. But I was still wired from that near miss in front of Brown Sugar. I had to leave for the airport at six o’clock, and if I didn’t get some rest soon, the next chance I’d get would be on the plane.

I pulled a chair over to the window and sat in the dark, looking down at Sukhumvit Road and the urban mass beyond it. There wasn’t much of a view-the Westin isn’t tall enough and the city itself is too congested. I wished for a moment, absurdly, that I was back in my apartment in Sengoku, the quiet part of Tokyo where I’d lived until the CIA and Yamaoto had managed to track me there. I’d never realized at the time how safe I felt there, how peaceful. It seemed a long time ago, and so much had happened in between. I realized I’d never even paused to mourn having been forced to leave. Until this moment, anyway. And now I couldn’t afford the distraction.

I thought about the plan Dox and I had come up with. It seemed sound, up to a point. But I wondered why the solutions I reached for always involved violence.

Violence, my ass. You’re talking about killing.

I smiled sardonically. When all you’ve got are hammers, everything starts to look like a nail.

Maybe my default settings were just horrifyingly stunted. Or warped. Maybe there were other, better ways, ways that long and unfortunate habit was preventing me from seeing.

Yeah, maybe. But the feeling of sitting there in the dark, running through the requirements of the next day’s operation, was momentarily so familiar to me that it carried with it the oppressive weight of fate.

I’ve been killing since that first Viet Cong, near the Xe Kong river, when I was seventeen. I’d kept count for a while, but long ago lost track entirely, something that horrified Midori, rightly, I supposed, when she had asked me about it. Could it really have just been circumstances that got me started so early and kept me going so long, or was there something about me, something intrinsic?

So many people seemed to recognize that I was a killer. Tatsu. Dox. The army shrinks. Carlos Hathcock, the legendary sniper I’d once met in Vietnam.

Why fight it? I thought. Just accept the evidence.

I remembered something from a childhood visit to church. Matthew, I think, where Jesus said:

Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

I chewed on that for a moment. Then:

Bullshit. God doesn’t care. Like Dox said, if he did care, he would have done something by now.

If he did do something, would you even know what it was? Would you be paying attention?

I would if he fucking smote me, or whatever. Which is what I would do.

Maybe that was the point, though. All this time, I’d been expecting-hell, demanding-that God smite me down for my transgressions. And prove himself to me thereby. But what if God weren’t really in the smiting business? What if smiting were all man-made, and God preferred to communicate in more subtle ways, ways that men like me chose to pretend weren’t even there?

I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, and looked at my hands as though they might offer me some answer. I wished I could get tired. I wanted so much to just sleep.

I thought of Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho, the Book of Five Rings, which I’ve read many times. In his recounting of his over sixty sword duels, and of the half-dozen large-scale battles in which he participated, Musashi had never expressed doubt about the morality of his actions. He seemed to take it as a given that men fought, killed, and died, and I doubted he gave much more thought to any of this than he did to the fact that men breathed and ate and slept. The one was as natural, and immutable, as the other. What mattered was one’s proficiency.

Somehow, Musashi had found a way to put down his sword as he got older. By the time he was in his late fifties, he spent most of his time teaching, painting, meditating, practicing tea, and writing poetry. And writing his profound book, of course. Eventually, he even managed to die in his bed. I didn’t find that notion at all unappealing. I just didn’t know how I was going to get there if I didn’t find a way to get out of this business.

When people take stock of their lives, I wondered, how do they go about it? From where do they derive their satisfaction, their sense of purpose? Sitting there, alone in that dark room, I tried to find some way to sum up my own existence, to justify who I am. And all I could come up with was:

You’re a killer.

I rested my head in my hands. I couldn’t think of anything else. Killing is all I’ve ever really been good at. Killing, and, I suppose, surviving.

But maybe… maybe I was missing the point. My nature might be immutable, but the causes to which I lent that nature, that was still for me to decide. And then it occurred to me: the dream I’d had, the one about the two katana. That’s what the dream had been about.

Regardless of the other services in which it might be employed, a sword is fundamentally a killing instrument. Yeah, you might use it as a doorjamb or as a letter opener, but that’s not what it’s designed for. It’s not what the sword, in its soul, longs to do. But its inherent nature isn’t what makes the sword good or bad; rather, the sword’s morality is determined by the use to which it is put. There is katsujinken, the sword that gives life, or weapon of justice; and setsuninto, the sword that takes life, or weapon of oppression. In the dream, some nameless thing had almost caught me because of my inability to decide. I couldn’t afford to keep making that mistake in my life.

Could I become katsujinken? Was that the answer? Killing Belghazi in Hong Kong a year earlier had prevented the transfer of radiologically tipped missiles to groups that wanted to detonate them in metropolitan areas. Didn’t my act there save countless lives? And couldn’t something like that… offset the other things I’ve done?

The notion was both appealing and frightening: appealing, because it hinted at the possibility of redemption; frightening, because it also acknowledged the certainty that, one way or the other, eventually I would be judged.

I chuckled ruefully. Katsujinken and redemption… I was going to continue trying to reconcile East and West until the attempt finally killed me.

I thought about Manny. He was like Belghazi, wasn’t he? A lot of good would come from his death.

And his little boy will be marooned in grief for years to follow.

I thought of the delicate way Dox had asked me if I was afraid I might freeze again, and of the simple confidence with which he took me at my word when I told him he needn’t worry.

And suddenly the feeling of being frozen, stuck in some nameless purgatory between competing worldviews, began to seem like the worst possibility of all. This was the wrong time to be a philosopher, to be afflicted with doubts. I didn’t care what the price was. I didn’t care whether it was right or wrong. I was going to finish what I started.

I felt the familiar mental bulkheads sliding shut, sealing off my emotions, focusing me only on the essentials of what needed to be done and how I would do it. Some bloodless, disconnected part of myself, turning the knobs and dials and making sure that things happened as they needed to. Whatever it was, this feeling, it has served me well countless times in my life. I don’t know if other people have it, but it’s part of my core, part of what makes me who and what I am. But this time, as those partitions moved into place, the part of me being closed off behind them wondered whether this wasn’t some further transgression, some further sin. To have been so close to what felt like a difficult epiphany, and to deliberately turn away from it…

I sat back in the chair and let my gaze unfocus. I started thinking about how we could do it the way it needed to be done.

I’d been to the China Club once, and knew the general layout. It was on the top three floors of the old Bank of China building in Central. The elevators stopped at thirteen; the next two floors were accessible only by internal staircases.

I’d need to arrive early, use a pretext for getting in. Maybe I’d be doing advance work for some Japanese corporate titan, checking the place out to see if the boss wanted to shell out all those yen for a membership. The ploy was good. I’d used it before, and it usually brought out the host’s deepest desires to show his place off and answer all my innocent questions.

The problem was that Manny knew my face now. I could ameliorate some of that with light disguise, which I assumed I’d have to use anyway because of the high likelihood of security cameras at the building’s perimeter and possibly inside. I’m also good at just fading into the background when I need to. But Hilger, who I sensed was a significantly harder target than Manny, would also know my face, as well as Dox’s. The CIA had photos of us both, as I’d learned during the Belghazi op a year earlier, and Hilger would have studied them closely, the same way I would have. Getting into the building wouldn’t be too difficult. But once we were inside, our ability to move might be curtailed.

I sat and thought more. I could get there early, and probably find a place to hide. A bathroom, a closet, whatever. Dox would arrive later. We might be able to use cameras, as we had at the Peninsula in Manila, and Dox could monitor them and signal me with the commo gear when it was time to move. But where could we position him so he wouldn’t be noticed? I pictured him, sitting alone at the China Club’s renowned Long March Bar. The Long March Bar was for entertaining and impressing clients. Anyone sitting by himself for more than a few minutes would stick out. It wasn’t going to work.

Of course, if he weren’t alone, it would be a little more doable. If he were with, say, an attractive European executive.

I pictured Dox in a Hong Kong-tailored, conservative suit, across from Delilah, probably in a chic but tasteful pantsuit. Dox could be a local corporate expat; Delilah would be the smart European advertising executive trying to land an account with him. That’s the kind of deal that got done at the China Club every night. They’d look completely at home.

What the hell, I couldn’t sleep anyway. I got up, turned on one of the reading lights, and picked up the cell phone. I slipped in a new SIM card and powered it up, then called Delilah. She answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” I said. “Hope I’m not waking you.”

“You’re not. I’m still jet-lagged.”

“Okay time to talk?”

“It’s fine. I’m just sitting in my room.”

I thought about asking her again if she wanted to meet. It seemed like such a waste, with both of us in the same city. Hell, for all I knew, she was in the same hotel, maybe in the room right next to me.

I supposed she was right, though. It would have been stupid to meet now, with Gil watching her. If she had to lose him, she might only get one chance, and I wanted that chance to be the China Club. Also, part of me, maybe not the most mature part, didn’t like the idea of being rejected a third time, even if the rejections were for sound reasons and not at all personal.

“I think I’ve got an opportunity to wrap this whole thing up tomorrow,” I said. “Finish what I started.”

There was a pause. She said, “Okay.”

“But I could use your help. If that’s a problem, I’ll understand. This isn’t your mess.”

She chuckled softly. “If only that were true.”

“All right. If you want to help clean things up, can you get to Hong Kong tomorrow?”

There was another pause. “I already told Gil that I would stick around Bangkok for a few days in case you contacted me. I don’t know how I could explain my sudden urge to travel.”

I thought for a moment. “Tell him I contacted you. That I apologized for bugging out on you and asked if you could join me in Hong Kong.”

“If I tell him that, he’s going to go out there, too, just like he came to Bangkok. To be closer to wherever you resurface so he can get to you right away. And he’s suspicious of me now. He’s going to want to stay close.”

“Can you manage all that?”

I could feel her weighing the pros and cons. She said, “Probably.”

“Can you get a flight out first thing in the morning?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Do it. Check the bulletin board when you get there. Or I’ll call you again.”

She was quiet for a moment, and I thought, Meet me tonight. Just ask me.

But she didn’t. She said, “Okay. I’ll be there.”

I thanked her and hung up.

I powered down the cell phone, turned off the light, and sat down in the chair again. I crossed my legs under me and watched the city lights through the window until one by one, almost imperceptibly, they started to go out.

I thought about Delilah, so near and yet so far.

I hoped I could trust her. I supposed I needed to. But none of that was what worried me.

What worried me was how much I wanted to.

EIGHTEEN

HILGER FINALLY FINISHED UP the day’s financial work-certain aspects of which constituted his cover in Hong Kong; others of which had more to do with his real business, his real mission. With everything that had been going on lately, it hadn’t been easy to stay on top of it all.

He stood up from his desk and stretched, then checked his watch. Shit, two in the morning. He had to get home and get some sleep. He had a big day tomorrow.

The phone rang. He sat back down. The caller ID readout indicated a blocked number, which, he hoped, meant it was Winters calling with good news. He’d been wondering what had been taking so long.

Instead, it was Demeere, another man from his network who had gone to Thailand to help Winters interrogate Rain. Before Hilger had a moment to consider why it was Demeere calling rather than Winters, the team leader, Demeere said, “Bad news.”

“All right,” Hilger said, his voice calm.

“Winters and the Thais tried to take Rain outside a club in Pathumwan. Rain got away. Winters is dead. So are two of the Thais.”

For once, Hilger’s calm came slightly unstuck. He said, “Shit.” He tried to think of something else to say, but there was nothing, so he said it again. “Shit.”

Winters was a pro, and Hilger had assumed the man would avoid any unnecessary risks. Worst case, he had expected they might not be able to find Rain, or that Rain might get away when they moved in on him. He hadn’t expected casualties. Certainly not Winters.

“What about Dox?” he asked, regaining his focus.

“He got away, too. Two of the Thais briefed me.”

“Do the Thais represent a liability at this point?”

“No. They don’t know enough to matter.”

Hilger thought for a moment, then said, “How did it go down?”

“Apparently Rain saw it coming. He reacted before they were properly in position.”

If Rain had seen Winters coming, he must be damn near psychic. That, or the Thais had slipped somehow. You couldn’t expect them to own up to something like that. They were just local muscle, after all. Contractors. With Calver and Gibbons dead from that goat-rope in Manila, Hilger hadn’t been able to field a full, professional team.

“How did Winters die?” Hilger asked.

“Rain had a knife.”

Hilger frowned. All that kali stuff… Winters was supposed to be an expert with blades. “He beat Winters, with a knife?” he asked, thinking that something was wrong with the story.

“Dox threw a chair at him, it seems. It knocked him down.”

Well, that would do it. “And then?”

“The Thais said Rain and Dox jumped on him and started stabbing him. There was nothing they could do and they ran away.”

Hilger believed they ran away, all right. He just wondered exactly when in the sequence it had actually happened.

“Were you able to confirm any of this?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got a contact in the embassy who was able to check with the Thai police. Winters had broken ribs and was killed by a knife wound in the chest. He had defensive wounds on his arms.”

Even in the midst of his anger and sorrow over Winters, Hilger felt a sense of relief that the man had died on his feet. Winters knew a lot, and it would have been a problem if Rain and Dox had managed to interrogate him. Not that Winters had been any sort of pushover-it would have taken a lot to separate him from any information he was intent on keeping-but this way, Hilger didn’t have to deal with any doubts at all.

“What do the police make of it?” he asked.

“They think it was a bad drug deal. Winters was traveling sterile. No problem there.”

Damn, Winters had been a good man. Thorough. Losing him was a blow.

Hilger realized he was going to have to call Winters’s sister, Elizabeth Shannon. Winters hadn’t been married; his sister was his next of kin. Hilger had dated her after the war. She was married now, with a family, but they had stayed friendly. Goddamnit, he was dreading that call. He hated Rain for forcing him to make it.

“What’s next?” Demeere asked.

Hilger thought for a moment about telling the man to come to Hong Kong for the meeting with VBM, but then decided not to. It would have been useful to have him there to take Winters’s place, but he judged it more important to keep someone on Rain and Dox. He wanted them dead.

“Try to reacquire Rain and Dox,” Hilger told him. “And use your discretion, but I would advise against trying to render them again. We’ve lost too many people already, and I don’t see how we could do it anyway without a full team in place. If you can find them and the opportunity is there, just take them the fuck out.”

“Roger that,” Demeere said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

Hilger hung up. Christ, the op was coming apart. But he had to find a way to fix it. It had taken him two years to set up this meeting with VBM. And it wasn’t just the time he’d invested. It was the things he’d been forced to do to make it possible. Those things were going to haunt him forever, and if there was a God out there, Hilger knew one day there was going to be some explaining to do.

He put his elbows on his desk, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against his fingertips. Yeah, he’d made some hard calls along the way, calls that no one should have to make. Having to take out that guy in Amman, an American, with a family, hadn’t been easy. And having to sit on information that he knew would have saved lives in Bali, in Jakarta, and elsewhere… well he was going to have to live with all of that, too.

But a lot of good was coming from it, and that was the thing to focus on. You had to look at the big picture. Were the Brits wrong not to evacuate Coventry when they discovered the Nazis were going to bomb it? If the city had been evacuated, the Nazis would have known their Enigma code had been compromised, and the whole Allied war effort would have been jeopardized. The people of Coventry had to be sacrificed so that others might live. It wasn’t pretty when you said it out loud, but that’s what had happened. The difference was, today the politicians didn’t have the balls to make those decisions. So the hard work had devolved to men like himself.

It was funny, he thought, that democracy couldn’t survive if it tried to adhere top to bottom to its own ideals. He knew that it was men like himself, working behind the scenes, on their own, doing what no one else could face, who made democracy function, who saved it from the knowledge of its own inherent hypocrisy, who kept it sleeping untroubled at night.

The irony was, Rain was a man who might understand all this. Didn’t the Japanese even have a name for it? Honne and tatemae-real truth, and societal façade? English could use a couple of words like that. Their absence from America’s lexicon was revealing: not only couldn’t we appreciate the necessity, we couldn’t even acknowledge the concept.

Rain. He imagined how good it was going to feel when he received confirmation that the man was dead. He was surprised at the intensity of the feeling. Ordinarily, these things weren’t personal for him. But three good men were down, and now he had to make that call to Elizabeth Shannon… not to mention the pressure all this was putting on his entire operation.

Yeah, he wanted him dead, all right. And Dox, too. He wondered if maybe he would have a chance to do it himself.

NINETEEN

THE FLIGHT TO HONG KONG the next morning was uneventful. After the restless night I’d just had, I was glad to sleep through most of it. I arrived at Hong Kong International feeling relaxed and refreshed and caught a cab to the Shangri-La.

I checked in, then called Dox on the prepaid unit he was carrying. He was in a cab, on his way to Kowloon.

“Stop at the bug-out point first, take care of that,” I said. “No sense in both of us being there at the same time. Then check in and get the clothes you need.”

“Will do.”

The bug-out point was a coffee shop near the Man Mo temple on Hollywood Road. When you go operational, or otherwise commit an act that the authorities are apt to frown upon if you’re caught, it’s wise to choose a backup meeting place to use if it becomes inconvenient to return to your hotel, and to preposition certain necessary items there: cash, for one thing; and a spare passport, for another, if you’re lucky or connected enough to know how to come by such things. You typically want a place that’s accessible at all hours and that offers many appropriate hiding spots: the underside of a counter or a bookshelf, the back of a bathroom cabinet, that sort of thing. Whether the op goes well or poorly, your things need to be in place for only a few hours. If the op goes really poorly, you’ve got bigger problems than someone stumbling across the stash you’ve taped to, say, the underside of a toilet in an all-night diner.

“When you’re done with that,” I said, “let’s meet on the mezzanine level of the Grand Hyatt at sixteen hundred. It’s away from the main lobby so it’s private, and you’ll look right at home there in your new threads.”

“Sounds good. You’ve got the gear?”

“And everything else.”

“All right, partner, see you soon.”

I turned off the phone and headed over to the hotel shopping arcade, where I got a haircut and a shave. I had them put a bunch of gel in my hair and slick it back-not my usual look, and not a dramatic alteration to my appearance, but lots of small changes would begin to add up. Next, a visit to an optometrist for a pair of rectangular wire-frame glasses that did a nice job of reworking the angles of my face. At the adjacent Pacific Place shopping mall, one stop at Dunhill got me the rest of what I needed: single-breasted, double-vented navy gabardine suit, fitted with inch-and-a-half cuffs in fifteen minutes flat; white Sea Island cotton shirt and flat gold cuff links; brown split-toe lace-ups and navy socks; brown alligator belt and British-tan attaché case. It wasn’t terribly cold in Hong Kong, but perhaps just chilly enough to justify the purchase of a pair of brown deerskin gloves, which went into the attaché. I checked myself in the mirror before heading out of the store and liked what I saw: a well-off Japanese businessman, with international experience and taste, in the discreet employ of powerful industrial interests seeking a foothold in Hong Kong through one of its famous business institutions, the China Club. Hopefully I’d even get to keep the clothes when this was done. Hopefully they wouldn’t have any bullet holes in them.

I headed back to the hotel and filled the attaché case with the commo gear and other equipment. From the hotel, I caught a cab to the bug-out point, where I taped an extra passport and some other necessaries to the back of a cabinet in the men’s room. Then I walked until I found an Internet café, where I checked the bulletin board. No word from Kanezaki. From Tatsu, there was some interesting news. His post said:

Jim Hilger: Works as a financial adviser in Hong Kong for high net worth clients. Cannot confirm his possible CIA affiliations, although sources believe there was a connection there at some point. More recently, considered dirty. Suspected to be involved in black market arms trading, including Israeli weapons to various separatist groups in the region. Suspected of operating “Murder, Inc.” type organization, trading on former military and possible intelligence skills and contacts.

Mitchell William Winters: Gulf War I veteran, Third Special Forces. No other information.

Looking forward to seeing you. Take care of yourself.

All right, the more I learned, the more it seemed that Dox and I were right. Either Hilger was running his own show, or he was so far off the government reservation that he might as well be.

I Googled “Two Slain Americans Reported to Be CIA Officers” to follow up on the story we’d seen the day before in the Washington Post. This time there were dozens of hits-the other services were starting to pick up the story. I went to the Post’s site because they seemed to be breaking the news. There was a new story, this one headlined, “Americans Killed in Manila Connected to Mysterious Company.”

The Post had picked up the Gird Enterprises information and was running with it. They’d done some digging, and apparently the address listed in the company’s articles of incorporation was an empty suite in a New Jersey office park. The Post had contacted the law firm that had drawn up the articles; when told who was calling and why, the lawyer they reached hung up. Interesting.

I caught a cab to the Grand Hyatt and called Delilah from the lobby.

“Hey,” she said. “I was wondering when you were going to call.”

“Sorry. I had a lot of things to do to get ready. How soon can you be in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Good. See you then.” I clicked off.

I walked up the black granite stairs that curved along the wall to the mezzanine level. The mezzanine was open to the opulent lobby below, and would provide a good vantage point for ensuring that Delilah came alone.

Dox wasn’t there yet. I stood looking down at the lobby, explaining to the woman who offered to seat me that I preferred to wait and watch for my acquaintances, who ought to be arriving soon.

Delilah got there in fifteen minutes as promised. She looked around the lobby, then up at the mezzanine. I nodded when she saw me, then watched her cross the lobby and start up the long, winding stairs. No one came in after her. If Gil was keeping tabs, it was at a distance. So far.

I offered her my hand as she approached, just a business acquaintance greeting her for a post-meeting drink. We shook, then stood looking down at the lobby. Harry’s bug detector lay in my pocket without stirring.

“Dox is on his way,” I said. “Let’s just keep an eye out for him.”

“All right.”

In fact, I wanted to watch the lobby for a little longer to make sure she had come alone. She knew what I was doing, of course, but under the circumstances couldn’t really object.

“Where’s Gil?” I asked.

“He’s here. I told him you contacted me and wanted to meet me in Hong Kong. Right now he’s probably just sitting in his hotel room, waiting for me to call.”

I would have liked to take the fight to him. I’ve never been inclined to simply run and hide. A tactical retreat, sure, but at a minimum you leave booby traps along the way. Or you circle behind the people who are hunting you until you’re hunting them. It’s just the way I work, the way I’ve always done things.

But all I said was, “We’ll try to get this over with before he gets too antsy.”

Dox showed ten minutes later. Damn, I’d never seen him like this-a perfectly tailored charcoal suit, white spread-collar shirt, and a monochrome blue tie. The only thing that was out of place was the goatee-I’d forgotten to mention that. It was too memorable and anyway we needed to alter his appearance as much as possible. I thought it ought to go.

Unlike Delilah, Dox looked up before he looked anywhere else. It was reflex for him to check for sniper hides, and he saw us immediately. He crossed the lobby and headed up the stairs.

He walked over to where we were standing and shook Delilah’s hand. “It’s nice to see you again,” he said.

I realized that the latent formality Delilah seemed to evoke in him would be perfect for the job at hand. Dox, whose acting skills, in my opinion, still needed polishing, would automatically comport himself like the perfect gentleman, businessman, and solicitous host, which was exactly who he was supposed to be today.

She gave him a warm smile and said, “Likewise.”

“Sorry I’m a little late. I had some trouble getting fitted in this suit. They’re not used to the big guys in these parts.”

“You look great,” she said, nodding her head appreciatively.

He actually blushed. One day I would have to ask Delilah what her secret was. “Thank you,” he said. “You do, too.”

She did look great. She was wearing a charcoal pantsuit with a fitted double-breasted jacket, short to the waist with the buttons set low across the chest. Underneath was a crisp white blouse open at the neck. The pants were also fitted, with a slight flare below the knee; farther down, a pair of deep purple flats, a little less dressy than pumps but better for maneuver. The whole thing was set off with a pair of diamond stud earrings and a simple platinum link necklace. She was carrying a leather attaché case and a small clutch. Her blond hair was down and blown out-the perfect attention-getter in Hong Kong, and something that could be expected to draw attention away from Dox, whom Hilger might recognize.

We sat down and ordered tea. I briefed them on what I had just learned from my “source in Japan,” and on the latest news from the Washington Post. We all agreed that, although Gil’s information was to the contrary, the jury was in on Jim Hilger. Now all that remained was to carry out his sentence. And Manny’s.

We spent some time mapping things out. Through the hotel, I had already arranged a visit to the China Club for later that afternoon, and Dox and Delilah needed to do the same. Reservations shouldn’t be a problem; all they had to do was get there early enough to ensure getting seats at one of the small tables in the bar. We’d communicate via the commo gear. We would use the wireless video transmitters that Dox and I had employed in Manila, but this time we would supplement them with audio, and the combination would let us know when tonight’s targets arrived, where they were positioned, and, most important, when one of them excused himself from dinner to attend a call of nature. I was confident I could find an appropriate place to hide on the premises; Dox and Delilah would monitor it all from the bar and keep me apprised of whatever I needed to know. As for Manny and Hilger, I would use my hands on the first one that presented a target of opportunity, then immediately proceed to the other. With any luck, at that point I would be armed. VBM, whoever he was, would go down, too, if he got in the way, but other than that he meant nothing to me.

If this had been a sniping operation, I would have been the sniper; Dox and Delilah, the spotters. The division of labor isn’t always necessary, but it’s almost always useful. Having a partner spot, assess, and monitor the target enables the sniper to focus on a single task: killing. In this case, it would have been distracting for me to have to try to gauge whether and when Hilger or Manny might be moving toward my position; to adjust, if they went elsewhere; to react, if they did something I hadn’t predicted. Dox and Delilah, angled with their backs to the wall and monitoring everything on the laptop like two businesspeople discussing a PowerPoint presentation, would provide some welcome cushioning from all those vagaries. And backup, if something went wrong.

I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. Time for me to go.

“You take the attaché,” I said, setting it on the table and discreetly removing the items I would need. “Everyone carries a bag in Hong Kong and you have to look the part. The commo gear, the laptop, everything is inside.”

“What about you?”

I eased my hips forward and started slipping the items I’d removed from the attaché into my front pockets. “I’ll find something on the way. Something the right size for adhesive-backed, wireless audio and video transmitters.”

He grinned. “What the well-dressed man is carrying these days, I understand.”

I looked at him, trying to decide, then said, “I think you’re going to have to lose the goatee. It’s too noticeable.”

He looked at me as though I’d suggested a vasectomy. “Son, I’ve been wearing this goatee for over twenty years.”

“That’s my point. If Hilger has file photos, and I’m sure he does, the trademark goatee will be front center. The suit and the beautiful lady by your side are helpful, but losing the facial hair would be better.”

“Well, the suit is a new look, it’s true, but I’ve been known to have a beautiful lady by my side from time to time,” he said. “So that part’s not exactly a disguise for me.” He rubbed the beard. “Damn, I feel like Samson here on the chopping block.” He turned to Delilah. “Well, your name is Delilah.”

She smiled. “I think you’ll look great without it.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “You’ve got good bones. Why hide them?”

Dox smiled and looked at me. “Someone get me a razor!” he said. Then he turned back to Delilah. “You know, I’ve never considered myself the marrying type. But if you ever get tired of my partner here, I believe I’d like to propose to you.”

She laughed.

“Did I say something funny?” Dox asked.

“All right, I’ve got to go,” I said, standing up. “You should get there in, say, forty-five minutes, before the bar fills up. And before Hilger and company arrive.”

They stood and we all shook hands again, staying in our roles. I went downstairs, took a cab to the Mandarin Oriental, then crossed the street and ducked into a luggage store. They were selling a number of high-quality, but essentially boring business bags… and one mahogany-colored, lid-over, Tanner Krolle attaché. Expensive, I thought, playing with the latches, which clicked open with the quiet assurance of a bank vault or the door on a Rolls-Royce, but life is short…

Five minutes later, I was circling the old Bank of China building, attaché in hand. At over half a century of age, the Art Deco-influenced building was, by Hong Kong standards, ancient. At fifteen stories, it was also a pygmy, and with the steel-masted HSBC headquarters looming to its right and the fountain-like, fiber optic-controlled light show of the Cheung Kong Center rising up behind it, it had the air of a structure that has been granted some miraculous reprieve from the engines of progress that must have demolished its contemporaries to make room for the behemoths that now surrounded it. A condemned man, still dignified, but now living on borrowed time.

I noted all points of ingress and egress, the direction of traffic, the presence of cameras. There was a single entrance in use, on the western side, along a short, single-lane street that was all that separated the building from its giant neighbors. On the other side of the street, directly across from the building’s entrance, was a large industrial dumpster that would make for good cover and concealment if for some reason I needed it. Four elevators, two security cameras, center. One bored-looking guard behind a desk, right. A stairwell and fire door, left. An office worker emerged from the stairwell as I approached, and as the door eased closed behind him, I noted he wasn’t holding a swipe card or other key. The stairwell doors were accessible from the interior, then, at least on the ground floor. To be expected, it’s true-you can’t very well lock people in if there’s a fire-but it’s good to have confirmation.

I stepped onto one of the elevators, running a hand along my slicked hair as I did so to obscure my face while I checked for more cameras. There it was, a ceiling-mounted dome model. I pressed the button with a knuckle and kept my head down on the trip up. I reminded myself of who I was and why I was here: Watanabe, an advance man examining the China Club on behalf of certain Japanese industrial interests.

I got off on thirteen and looked around. A winding wooden staircase curved upward to my left, its banister supported by some sort of Chinese-style metal latticework. The walls were white; the floors, dark wood, with that density and slight unevenness that’s only acquired with generations of use. A flat panel monitor by the staircase was running stock quotes from the Hang Seng index. There was a hush to the place, a feeling of money, old and new; status, acquired and sought; ambition, barely concealed behind pin-striped suits and cocktail party smiles. The Bank of China might have moved its headquarters to I. M. Pei’s triangular black glass tower a few blocks to the southwest, but the ghosts of the drive and wealth to which the new headquarters stood in monument were all still at home right here.

And yet there was an air of whimsy to the place, as well. There was a sitting area crowded with overstuffed chairs and couches covered in slipcovers of bubble-gum pink and lime green and baby blue. The lamp shades hovering above the end tables were of similar glowing hues. And those grave wooden floors gave way to brightly colored kilim rugs. It was as though the proprietor had designed the place both in homage to Hong Kong’s titanic ambitions, and also to gently mock them.

A pretty Chinese woman in black pants and a white Mao jacket emerged from a coatroom to my right. “May I help you?” she asked.

I nodded, and switched on a heavy Japanese accent. “I am Watanabe.” As though that explained everything.

She picked up a clipboard and glanced at whatever was written on it. “Ah yes, Mr. Watanabe, the Shangri-La called to tell us you’d be visiting. Would you like me to show you around?”

“Yes,” I said, with a half bow. “Very good.”

The woman, whose name was May, was an excellent guide, and helpfully answered all my questions. Such as: Where are the private dining rooms? Fifteenth floor. Do you have any that would be appropriate for a small party-say, four people? Yes, two such rooms. And how are the upper floors accessible? Only by the winding internal staircases.

May’s guided tour took about ten minutes. Given the earliness of the hour, there weren’t yet any other patrons on the premises, and the staff was busy laying out silver and crystal and adjusting tablecloths and otherwise preparing for what would no doubt be another capacity-crowd evening for the club.

When we were done, I asked May if it would be all right if I wandered around a bit by myself. She told me that would be fine, and that I if I had any additional questions I should simply ask.

Watanabe-san gave the place a thorough examination, starting with the main dining room on the fourteenth floor and the charming Long March Bar adjacent to it. He observed the positions of the restrooms on the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, and noted that there was no restroom on fifteen, meaning that diners enjoying the private banquet rooms there would have to descend a floor to use the facilities. He wandered around the splendid library, and briefly enjoyed the view of Central from the rooftop observation deck. And of course he made sure to take a peek in all the private dining rooms, paying particular attention to the two that had been set for parties of four. In these, Watanabe stepped inside and paused for an extra moment to admire the furnishings, even running the backs of his fingers along the astonishingly thick interior doorjambs, which in each room was of more than adequate stature for the placement of a miniature audio and video transmitter.

So that we could keep the signal weak and therefore less susceptible to bug detectors, I also placed repeaters in various places outside the private dining rooms and along the stairs down to the fourteenth floor. Before heading down to the elevators on thirteen, I ducked into the fourteenth-floor restroom. As restrooms go, this one was impressive. The floor was white marble, and I noted with satisfaction that my new Dunhill split-toes were utterly noiseless on its polished surface. To my right was a bank of sinks, all solid white ceramic. Folded terrycloth washcloths were laid out neatly on a shelf just above them in lieu of ordinary paper towels, along with an array of special soaps, lotions, and tonics. Straight ahead, a bank of urinals; like the sinks, all heavy white ceramic. To my left were stalls that could more properly be described as closets, separated as they were by marble walls and featuring floor-to-ceiling mahogany doors.

The stalls looked promising, although I was concerned that, after his recent experience in Manila, Manny might have some sort of phobic reaction if he entered a restroom and noticed that one of the stall doors was closed. But then I noticed something that might be even better.

Between the sinks and the urinals was a large mahogany door. On it hung a brass sign with black lettering:

BUILDING ORDINANCE

(CHAPTER 123)

NOTICE DANGER

LIFT MACHINERY

UNAUTHORIZED

ACCESS PROHIBITED

DOOR TO BE KEPT LOCKED

Interesting, I thought. If the passenger elevators went up only to thirteen, this access must be to a freight unit. The door opened out, and there were three sets of heavy brass hinges running up its left side. I tried it, and, per the ordinance, found it was indeed locked. The lock, though, was a cheap single wafer model, what you might find on an old desk or filing cabinet. It wasn’t there to protect valuables, just to comply with a local building ordinance. After all, who in his right mind other than a maintenance man would want to access the lift machinery?

I didn’t even need a lock pick-I simply forced the mechanism with a turn of the Benchmade folder. Then I slipped the knife into the crack between the door and the jamb and eased the door open. The hinges gave a long squeal and I thought, Shit, hadn’t thought of that. Should have brought some lubricant.

I glanced inside. There was a small corridor, providing, I supposed, maintenance access to the elevators. It looked good. There were variables-Manny might have a new bodyguard, or might otherwise not show up alone, or he might not come at all-but this could work.

But what about those hinges. I walked back to the sinks and picked up one of the bottles of lotion. Gardner’s Hand Lotion, the label advised, Replete with Lavender and Other Essential Oils. Well, it wasn’t WD-40, but let’s see. I emptied a healthy amount onto one of the wash towels, then wiped down the hinges. I swung the door open and closed a few times, and the essential oils worked their magic. The squealing stopped.

I wiped down the bottle, put it back on the shelf, and tossed the wash towel into a basket that the China Club had thoughtfully provided for this very purpose. I exited the restroom and began to descend the winding staircase. A waiter on his way up passed me but paid no attention.

Two-thirds of the way down, I had a clear view of the elevators and the coatroom from which May had emerged when I first arrived. The area was empty. May must have been elsewhere for the moment, attending some aspect of preparing the restaurant. She might wonder at not having seen me leave, but I felt I could count on her to assume she had simply failed to notice my departure. Hopefully she would forgive Mr. Watanabe his rudeness in not saying thank you and a proper good-bye.

I turned around and went back up the stairs. This time I really did use the bathroom-I didn’t know how long I’d be without access. Then I opened the closet door again and stepped inside. I pulled the door shut behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was just a little light coming from the elevator shaft behind me. The lack of illumination in here wasn’t the problem though-what I really needed to see was the bathroom, and, with the heavy mahogany door closed, that was impossible.

I set down the attaché and popped the hinges. The case opened with a muted double click. I pulled out the Surefire E1E mini-light I was carrying and twisted it on, then slipped into the deerskin gloves. I looked around to see what I might have to work with.

Propped against the wall to my right was a mop in a bucket. On the floor, a plunger and a few rudimentary tools, including a screwdriver. I opened the door, then slid the screwdriver between the door and the jamb on the hinged side at eye level. I pulled the door inward. The steel shaft of the screwdriver created tremendous pressure on the hinged surfaces around it, and something had to give. But it wouldn’t be those heavy brass hinges-instead, the wood itself provided the path of least resistance, and the edge of the door and jamb deformed around the screwdriver as I pulled relentlessly toward me. I went back and forth several times until I was easily able to almost close the door with the screwdriver still in the way.

I stepped outside. I closed the door, then opened it without a problem. Just wanted to make sure that nothing was going to stick as a result of my handiwork. It would have been embarrassing to have to call for Dox to come let me out. I looked at the dent I had made at the intersection of the door and jamb. It was virtually unnoticeable. Even if someone put his eye right up to it, all he would see inside was darkness.

I went back inside, closed the door, and put my eye up to the jamb.

Perfect. I had a clear view of the area to my right, which included the urinals and stalls. Every time I heard someone come in, it would be a simple matter to visually confirm who it was.

I repeated the operation on the knob side of the door. When I was done, I had a view of the entrance and sinks. I checked from the outside and confirmed again that the door opened and closed without a problem, and that the second hole, too, was unnoticeable.

I slipped an earpiece and lapel mike into place and checked the illuminated dial of my watch. Almost six o’clock. Dox and Delilah should be arriving anytime now. I wouldn’t be able to use the gear to communicate with them until they were in the building-fifteen floors of steel and concrete would block the signal for sure.

At just after six o’clock, I heard Dox’s soft twang. “Hey, partner, it’s me. Are you there?”

It felt good to hear him. “Yeah, I’m here. The men’s room on the fourteenth floor.”

“Well, that’s a nice coincidence. I was just going to use that very facility. Can you hear me? I’m on my way in.”

A moment later, I heard the restroom door open, then footsteps on the marble. Dox moved past my position. The goatee was gone, and I was pleased at the way its absence changed his appearance.

He stepped up to one of the urinals and started to use it. Looking over at the open stall doors, then to his right, he said, “Looks like you’ve got a good spot. Where are you?”

“The closet. To your right.”

“Ah-hah, I should have known. Hey, man, no peeking.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, surprising myself with a rare rejoinder, “from this far, I can only make out large objects.”

He chuckled. “That’s a good one. Say, you don’t hang around in men’s rooms habitually, do you? You seem awfully good at it.”

All right, I should have known better than to try to one-up him. “Where’s Delilah?” I asked.

“She grabbed us a table in the dreaded Long March Bar.”

“Crowded?”

“Not yet, but it’s filling up. No sign of our friends. I sure hope they show. If they don’t, I’ll start to worry something might have happened to them.”

“Yeah, that would be too bad.”

He zipped up and headed over to the sink, winking at my position en route. “Ooh, look at these fancy soaps. I like this place. Ordinarily I’m not terribly fastidious about washing my hands after urination, but tonight I believe I’ll make an exception.”

I checked through the other hole and watched Dox lathering his hands. “Damn,” he said, “I can’t get used to the way I look in these clothes and without my trusty goatee. You think Delilah meant it when she said I have good bones?”

“I’m sure she did,” I said, feeling a little impatient. “Look, you might want to hurry. If our friends show up, you don’t want to accidentally pass them in the hallway. Even without the goatee that was hiding your good bones.”

He dried his hands with a towel and tossed it in the basket. “Okay, partner, that’s a fair point. I’ll be in the bar, keeping your girlfriend company. Seriously, I’ll be right here, talking into your ear the whole time. If you need me, I’ll come running.”

Even in the midst of all the annoying palaver, it felt good to hear him say that. “Thanks,” I said. “I know you will.”

TWENTY

A FEW MINUTES LATER, I heard Delilah. “Hey, John. Just checking the gear.”

“I hear you.”

“Good. We’re in the bar. We’ve got a nice table in the far corner. You can talk to us anytime. We’ll monitor the transmitters and let you know what’s going on. Any problems, just let us know.”

“Okay,” I said.

Dox said, “We’ll switch off now so we don’t bore you with our pretend conversations about strategic partnership opportunities in Asia and how we’re getting traction with our paradigm shifts and inflection points. Unless you want to listen in, just to make sure I’m behaving myself with your girlfriend.”

“Please, shut it down,” I said.

He laughed. “Okay. Remember, we can still hear you, so if you need anything, just speak up.”

“Okay.”

He cut out.

I waited for nearly an hour in silence. Three times, someone came in to use the restroom. Each time, I checked to see if it was Manny or Hilger. It was possible that one or both of them might stop in on their way to the private dining room, in which case Delilah and Dox wouldn’t be able to warn me. But it was always someone else.

The closet was fairly roomy, and I was able to move around a bit, do a few squats and stretches. There was a time when I could go to top speed without a warm-up, but that sort of thing was getting harder lately, and I wanted to stay limber.

I was doing some isometric neck exercises when Dox came back on. “Okay, partner,” he said, “our guests have arrived. They’re being seated right now.”

“How many?”

“Two, it looks like. Hilger and Manny. Hang on, let me change frequencies and listen in for a minute.”

A moment later, he came back on. “Yeah, it’s just the two of them. Hilger asked the hostess to escort ‘Mr. Eljub’ when he arrives. So it looks like it’s going to be just the three of them. You were right, Hilger didn’t change the plans.”

“ ‘Eljub,’ ” Delilah said.

I asked, “What of it?”

“I’m… not sure. Just wondering who the mystery guest might be.”

“I’m more concerned about where he’s sitting. And about whether he gets up.”

“Of course.”

I said, “Dox, can you switch the audio so that I can listen in, too?”

“I can, but then you won’t be able to hear Delilah and me.”

“That’s okay. You can cut back in anytime you think you need to.”

“Gotcha. Okay, here you go.”

There was a hiss, and then I was listening to Manny and Hilger. Hilger’s voice I remembered from listening to him through a parabolic microphone in front of Kwai Chung. He had a memorably slow, confident, reassuring way of speaking. Manny’s voice was higher; his tone, higher-strung. It sounded as though he was complaining to Hilger about security, specifically about having to leave his bodyguard outside.

“He can do you more good monitoring the entrance than he could have in here,” Hilger told him.

I wondered if he believed that-there were pros and cons, as I saw it-or if he was just trying to placate Manny, who struck me as a bit of a whiner.

Manny said, “I don’t think so. Anyway, after what happened in Manila, I feel more comfortable with him close by.”

“I’ve told you, I’m known at this club and I don’t have a bodyguard. If we post a man outside the door, it’s only going to make the staff curious about who I’m entertaining. Curiosity is the last thing we need tonight.”

“He could have just eaten with us. The staff wouldn’t know his role.”

“That’s true, but then we wouldn’t be able to speak freely. Look, I told you, Rain is in Bangkok. We almost had him there yesterday. He’s on the run now, and my men are pursuing him. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

For a moment I wondered anew whether Hilger’s operation was in fact CIA. He certainly sounded like the government, describing an “almost had him” as a comforting sign of success. I sensed he would have been right at home spouting off about “catastrophic successes” and the other such doublespeak of the age.

Manny said, “I want to know when you get him.”

“Of course.”

Well, Hilger’s going to have a little explaining to do to Manny later tonight, I thought. On the other hand, if things went as planned, Hilger wouldn’t be any more able to explain than Manny would be to listen.

The audio cut out. There was a hiss, and Dox was back in my ear. “Saw Hilger pull some bug-detection gear from an attaché,” he said. “Glad we’re using video. I’m gonna go dark for ten minutes or they might pick up the signal.”

“Good,” I said. The transmitters broadcast on radio frequency, which is present in the background in any urban location, and we were using low signal strength, boosted outside the room by the repeaters I’d put in place. So the concern wasn’t the transmitters’ ambient presence, only their susceptibility to a deliberate sweep, which might follow the signal they emitted like a trail of electronic bread crumbs. Once the sweep was completed, we could safely come back online.

After ten minutes, I heard Dox again. “Okay, here we go. I’ll switch you over.”

Another hiss, and I was listening to Hilger and Manny again. Manny was saying, “He knows he’s important. It’s going to his head.”

Hilger chuckled.

“I mean it, that’s why he’s late. He’s just showing us that he can make us wait for him, and that he knows we’ll put up with it. Arabs. This is just like them.”

“Let’s remember that we’re all friends tonight, all right?” Hilger said. “No nationalities around this table. No stupid allegiances.”

I thought I heard the sound of glasses clinking.

They were quiet after that. Ten minutes passed, then I heard the sound of a knock on their door, of chairs being pushed back. Hilger said, “Hello, Mr. Eljub. Welcome.”

At last, I thought. Mr. VBM.

“Ali, hello,” Manny said. “Glad you could make it.”

“Please, call me Ali,” a new voice said, in accented English that I had trouble placing. Arab, maybe, with something European behind it. Whoever he was, he must have been talking to Hilger. Manny had already presumed. Or else they knew each other.

“Ali, welcome,” Hilger said again. “Please, have a seat.”

I heard chairs being moved around. Hilger said, “You had a good flight, I hope?”

“Uneventful. But slow. There’s so much airline security these days!”

This provoked a laugh. Hilger said, “And the hotel?”

“I don’t think I can complain about a suite at The Four Seasons. Thank you for taking care of it.”

“My pleasure.”

I heard another knock at their door. Hilger said, “Yes.”

There was a woman’s voice, asking them about drinks.

“Shall we order?” the man called Ali said. “I’m starving.”

“Yeah, it’s gotten pretty late for dinner,” Manny said, and I thought, Not just a whiner. Passive-aggressive, too. Not that my growing distaste for him would be a factor one way or the other. I wasn’t feeling anything right now other than the usual, slightly heightened focus of being in the middle of an op. And I was going to keep it that way until after it was too late to make a difference.

“All right, let’s,” Hilger said. “Ali, let me suggest the…”

There was a hiss. Dox cut in: “We’ve got something interesting here, partner. Listen to your lady.”

Delilah said, “It’s not Eljub. It’s Al-Jib. Ali Al-Jib.”

“I don’t know the name,” I said. “Should I?”

“What about A. Q. Khan?” she asked.

Khan again. “Yeah, I know of Khan,” I told her, thinking of my conversation with Boaz and Gil in Nagoya. “Pakistani scientist, nuclear starter kit, et cetera. It was in the news a little over a year ago, then it died down, right? The outgoing CIA director, George Tenet, was bragging about it.”

“Yeah, how Christians In Action was down Khan’s throat and up his ass and in some other hard-to-reach places, too,” Dox added.

“I think it was more like ‘inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms,’ ” Delilah said. “But yes, that was the propaganda the U.S. was putting out. They were hailing Khan’s arrest as a great victory. But then why is the U.S. still investigating his network? Why is the International Atomic Energy Agency doing the same?”

“Oh, you know,” Dox said. “In these matters, the government usually continues the investigation just to determine whether what they’ve achieved is merely a ‘great victory,’ or if it could in fact be more accurately described as a ‘historic triumph.’ I’m sure they don’t think the network’s still operational after all that clever spying they did to stop it.”

“It is operational,” Delilah said. “Despite the arrests. It’s like Al Qaeda-the leadership is damaged, but then new, less centralized actors begin to emerge in its place.”

“Al-Jib?” I asked.

“Exactly. Ali Al-Jib is part of this new generation. He was educated in East Germany, the Central Institute of Nuclear Research in Rossendorf. There are more like him, men who were trained behind the Iron Curtain and then lost to the world’s intelligence services in the turmoil following the end of the Cold War. A lucky find of some Soviet-era documents pointed us in the right direction.”

“Maybe we should switch the frequency back to Hilger and company,” I said. “Not that this isn’t interesting, but we don’t want to get distracted.”

“You don’t understand,” Delilah said. “Al-Jib is a dangerous man, very dangerous. What Lavi does with conventional explosives, Al-Jib is trying to do with nuclear weapons. We’ve been hunting him for a long time and he is exceedingly difficult to track. We can’t let him walk out of here tonight.”

“Look,” I said, “he sounds like he’s another problem child, it’s true. But we’ve got our hands full as it is. Hilger and Manny are the primaries. That’s going to be hard enough to do. Let’s not complicate it by rearranging our priorities in the middle of the proceedings.”

“You don’t understand,” she said again.

“I do understand. These aren’t my decisions to make. Your people hired me to do a job, I’m doing it. If they wanted to hire me to do Al-Jib, too, they should have brought it up sooner and I would have priced it in. And they damn well shouldn’t have turned on me after one little hitch in Manila.”

“Is that what this is about?” she said. “You won’t do this… out of spite?”

“I won’t do it because it’s not sensible to do it. We’ve got two targets already. If I put Al-Jib at the head of the line, it reduces the chances that I’ll be able to get to the other two. So let’s just stick to the plan.

“Jeez, partner,” Dox said. “I don’t know.”

“Goddamnit,” I said, “what happened to all that ‘The judge and the executioner, they’re different roles’ shit you were spouting at me the other day?”

“I think I meant that more as a guideline than a rule, man,” he said. “And this feels like, you know, an exigency.”

We were all quiet for a moment. I thought, This is exactly what I’m talking about, we’re arguing about this idiot Al-fucking-Jib instead of monitoring what’s going on in the room. Getting distracted, jeopardizing the whole operation.

“If the opening is there,” I said, “I’ll take him out. But Hilger and Manny are still the priority. Okay?”

There was a pause, then Delilah said, “Okay.”

“Good. Now switch the frequency back. Please.”

We went back to Hilger and company. It sounded like Hilger was making a sales pitch. Something about diversified investments, Asian emerging markets equities, average yields of over twenty-five percent.

“What about your commission?” Al-Jib asked.

“The twenty-five percent yields are after my commission, which is twenty percent.”

“Twenty percent. Is that in keeping with American SEC regulations?”

“Not at all. But then, not much of what I can do is likely to be approved by the SEC.”

Al-Jib laughed. “I have to tell you, your proposal is interesting and I think there is a lot you might be able to do for my people, but I would not have agreed to meet you. Not even with the people who vouched for you. Your former affiliations are too… suspect. There are people who believe you are still in the employ of the U.S. government.”

“That impression can be useful in my work. I don’t go out of my way to dispel it.”

“I understand. Still, it can be hard for men to trust each other even when they are from the same village. When they come from such different villages as ours, the suspicions linger, do they not?”

“They do. But I hope the test you devised was adequate to ease your doubts.”

“More than adequate. Killing a U.S. diplomat in Amman… there are some things that a U.S. government agent simply cannot do.”

Hilger laughed. “It was a creative solution. I’m glad it worked.”

“You never told me one thing, though. How did you manage to have the Jordanians blame Al Qaeda for the man’s death?”

“That was a case of someone rounding up the ‘usual suspects,’ ” Hilger replied. “When a senior member of USAID is assassinated, someone has to be blamed. Who better than AQ?”

“Yes,” Al-Jib said. “I suppose that’s true.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then Hilger said, “One thing that’s so useful about my ambiguous status with the United States government is that I’m in touch with many, many people who are in a position to do me favors. They’re receiving the same twenty-five percent you will be, and are always looking for an opportunity to invest something more. So tonight, in addition to the logistics of setting up your accounts and transferring funds, I would very much like to talk about what you need that the U.S. government might unwittingly provide. I’d like to help with all that, too.”

“For your usual twenty percent fee?”

“Of course. Everything I do involves personal risk.”

“I don’t begrudge you. I only wanted to confirm. If you can provide what I need, I think we’ll both be satisfied with the arrangement.”

“Tell me, then,” Hilger said. “I’m intrigued.”

There was a moment of quiet, then Al-Jib said, “As you know, Dr. Khan’s organization was chiefly able to provide know-how and machinery to its customers. The missing link in our product lineup was always material.”

“Uranium? Plutonium?”

“Either one is greatly desired.”

“If it’s uranium you need, highly enriched is your best bet. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration and the International Atomic Energy Administration are supervising the repatriation of HEU from all over the world right now, and I have extensive contacts in both organizations. You might have heard of the program-the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, a joint operation between the United States and Russia to secure Soviet-era nuclear fuel.”

“Yes, I know of it.”

“Then you probably know that six kilograms of highly enriched uranium was just repatriated from the Czech Republic to Russia. The transfer was secret until it was completed, but I knew about it beforehand. There are others that are being secretly planned even as we speak. HEU is being moved from Bulgaria, Libya, Romania, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. With your background, I don’t think I need to tell you how many opportunities there are en route for a diversion.”

“What will it cost?” Al-Jib asked, and I thought, Nice sales pitch. The guy’s ready to whip out his checkbook.

“A lot,” Hilger said, and they all laughed.

Manny said, “What did I tell you, Ali?”

Al-Jib said, “Yes, it seems we can do business together.”

Manny said, “I’ve been telling you that for what, three years? I’ve made a lot of money with this man and he’s done me a lot of favors.”

Hilger said, “Cheers,” and I heard glasses clinking.

Manny said, “Excuse me for a minute.” I heard a chair sliding back, then their door open and close.

My heart rate started to pick up speed. There was a hiss, then Dox cut in. “Manny’s on his way out,” he said. “Probably going to take a leak.”

“I heard him,” I said. “I’m ready.”

“Delilah and I will stay on this frequency so we can hear you if there’s a problem,” he said. “But I’m done talking unless you need me.”

“All right,” I said. I was a little surprised Delilah hadn’t mentioned the discussion we just overheard as a way of reintroducing the critical importance of killing Al-Jib. I knew she was stubborn and didn’t easily accept the word “no.” But I supposed the compromise I offered had persuaded her.

I rotated my head left, then right, cracking the joints. I squatted down to make sure that, if my knees needed to pop, they would do so now. I twisted my torso left, then right, swung my arms around, and took two short, sharp breaths. Okay.

I looked through the hole facing the bathroom door, thinking, Come on, Manny, come on.. .

But Manny didn’t show. A minute went by, then two. If he was just heading down here from the private dining room, he should have arrived by now. Maybe he didn’t need the bathroom after all. Or maybe he went down to the one on thirteen. I wouldn’t have expected him to bypass the closer facilities, but maybe he didn’t know there was one on this floor. Or maybe he stopped to make a phone call, or to try to chat up a waitress. Could be anything. The main thing was, he wasn’t coming.

I said into the lapel microphone, “Manny isn’t here yet. He must have gone somewhere else.”

Delilah said, “Shit.”

“Can you take a look?” I asked. “Dox should stay put. It’s not likely, but also not impossible that Manny would recognize him.”

“No problem,” she said.

I heard the door open. I looked through the hole. It wasn’t Manny. But it was still someone interesting. I leaned toward my lapel and whispered to Delilah, “Wait.”

She said, “Understood.”

My new visitor had the dark hair and skin of a Filipino. Inside his cheap suit was a body with the approximate dimensions of a refrigerator. From his size, the way he was dressed, and the way he was scoping the bathroom, I made him as a bodyguard. Manny’s bodyguard.

This was the guy Hilger had insisted wait outside. Manny must have used his cell phone to call him after stepping out of the private dining room. The call, and the elevator ride up, explained Manny’s delay in reaching my position. He really had turned paranoid about public restrooms.

Not without reason.

The bodyguard was heading right toward me, looking at the closet door. He was going to check it.

I put my left foot against the doorjamb, grasped the handle, and leaned back so that the door was supporting about a hundred and fifty pounds of pressure. A moment later, I felt a mild pull from the other side. If we’d been in a real tug-of-war, the guy might have been able to budge me, but he wasn’t trying to force the door, just to confirm that it was locked as the sign advertised. It didn’t move a millimeter. I felt him let go, heard him walking back to the entrance. I heard the bathroom door open, heard him say, “It’s clear.”

I kept my position. Manny might try the door, too.

I heard a new set of footsteps in the room. Manny’s voice: “Thank you. Just wait outside, if you don’t mind.”

The man said, “Of course.”

I heard the door close. Manny’s footsteps, drawing nearer. Then stopping.

He had seen the closet door. He was wondering whether the bodyguard had checked it. Of course he’s checked it, he’d be thinking. He’s a bodyguard. Still, no harm confirming.. .

Sure enough, his footsteps came closer, then stopped again, and I felt another mild tug on the door. Then the pressure eased, and I heard him walking off to my right.

I eased off the pressure I was keeping on the door and looked through the first hole I had made. Manny was using the urinal farthest from me. He was facing the wall, but his peripheral vision would detect motion when I opened the door. I would have to move fast.

I took one quick peek through the other hole to confirm that the bodyguard had indeed walked out. He had. It was just Manny and me, the way it was supposed to be.

It wasn’t like the last time. I thought of nothing that wasn’t operational. Nothing.

I gave him a little time to finish what he was doing. If I didn’t, he’d wind up pissing on the floor, and maybe on me.

He started shaking off. I took two quick, silent breaths. Go.

I swung the door open, took a long step past the door, pivoted, and strode directly toward him.

His head snapped in my direction and his mouth dropped open. His eyes popped wide and his arms started to come up.

Adrenaline constricts the throat. This is why a person, suddenly terrified, finds himself squeaking in a high-pitched voice, or whispering, or unable even to make a sound. Manny, his recent restroom anxieties suddenly realized, had just gotten a massive dose. So although his bodyguard was just outside the door, he remained silent.

He started to turn toward me, but it was already too late. I stepped behind him, jammed my left knee in his lower back, and jerked him toward me by the shoulders. His body folded backward around my knee. I put my foot back on the floor and swept my left arm counterclockwise around his neck so that his face was pressed against my lower rib cage and my forearm was braced against the back of his neck. I took my left wrist in my right hand, shoved his lower body forward against the urinal, and jerked up with my forearm. His spine arched to the limit of its natural give, and for a split second our forward momentum froze. Then his neck broke. The crack was loud, but not quite loud enough for the guard to have heard outside that solid mahogany entrance door. His body went rubbery and I slipped my arms under his to stop him from slumping to the floor.

I dragged him into the closet and closed the door behind us. I patted him down, but he wasn’t armed. Shit.

I thought for a moment. If the bodyguard were right outside the door, and I expected he was, I couldn’t just walk past him. He had checked the bathroom before Manny entered, and it had been empty at the time. Someone new walking out now wouldn’t figure. Anyway, the point wasn’t to get past him, it was to get his gun. If his back was to me, I might manage it despite his size. But if he saw me coming, things might get messy. If there was a commotion, even if I disarmed him and headed directly upstairs for Hilger and Al-Jib, I might already have lost the element of surprise.

I heard the bathroom door open. I checked through the peephole: a middle-aged Chinese man in a business suit. He looked harmless, and the bodyguard must have decided it was all right for him to pass. He went into one of the stalls and closed the door.

Another minute and the bodyguard was going to check up on Manny. I was running out of time.

I left the closet, strode noiselessly over to the second stall, eased its door closed, and got back in the closet. The floor-to-ceiling mahogany stall door would obscure the question of whether someone was actually in there, and, if the guard poked his head in, he would now likely assume Manny was using one of the stalls. I doubted he’d want to disturb his client at such a delicate moment by calling out, but his reticence would last only so long. I might have bought myself a minute or two, but the clock was still ticking.

And then I had an idea.

TWENTY-ONE

DELILAH, ” I whispered.

She answered instantly. “I’m here.”

“Manny’s done. But there’s a bodyguard standing outside the bathroom. I can’t get past him. In another couple of minutes, he’s going to come in and check on Manny. There’s also someone using one of the stalls and I need to buy another couple minutes so he can finish and get the hell out.”

“Tell me what to do,” she said.

“Dox, do you still have that syringe we took off Winters?”

“Got it right here, partner,” he said.

“Give it to Delilah. Delilah, you won’t have any trouble getting close to the guard. Make it look like you’re about to head into the wrong restroom. Then flirt with him, distract him until the guy in the stall leaves. When he does, you nail the guard with the syringe.”

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“Dox, give her the syringe. I’ll explain on the way.”

“Already did, partner. She’s getting up now.”

“It’s a knockout cocktail. All you have to do is palm it and slap him with it. It works like a snakebite.”

“That’s ‘all’ I have to do? Don’t I have to hit a vein or an artery?”

“If we want the drug to work fast, you do.”

“Veins and arteries tend to be pretty small moving targets.”

“Look, just flirt with the guy, okay? Get him so his back is facing the bathroom door. I’ll hit him in the head with whatever I can find in here. But he’s a gorilla, I don’t know if a shot to the head will be enough. Although it should stun him for long enough for you to slap the syringe down on his carotid. If you miss, I’ll figure something else out.”

“All right.”

“He’s probably armed, a shoulder or hip carry. Whatever else happens, we have to disarm him. That’s our best chance with the other two.”

“Okay.”

I clicked on the Surefire and looked around the closet. None of the tools I saw would be helpful. No hammer, no wrench. For a second, I thought of the knife, then rejected it because of the mess it would make. All right, I would have to use my hands. I started to put the Surefire back in my pocket, then looked at it. Shit, I had almost overlooked something so obvious. I had been thinking of it only as a flashlight, when in fact, gripped tightly in my fist with the hard edge slightly protruding, it would make a serviceable yarawa stick.

I heard the toilet flush, and a moment later the Chinese man emerged from the stall.

I heard Delilah say, “Here we go.” Then, in a tipsy, slightly flirtatious tone, “Excuse me, isn’t that the ladies’ room?”

Her lapel mike picked up the guard saying, “No, miss, this is the men’s room.” She must have been standing close.

“Oh my God, I would have felt so silly if I’d walked in there! You don’t know where the ladies’ room is, do you?”

“I think it’s just around the corner.”

The Chinese guy walked over to the sinks and started examining the various choices among the soaps and lotions.

Can you just wash your hands and get the fuck out? I thought. Better yet, don’t wash them at all. I promise not to tell anyone.

Delilah said, “Are you the doorman or something?”

The man chuckled. Good, she was reeling him in. “No, I’m just waiting for someone.”

The Chinese guy selected one of the soaps and began thoroughly washing his hands. He was taking so long that I was half-tempted to pop out of the closet, break his neck, and drag him inside.

He turned off the sink, picked up one of the towels, and began leisurely drying his hands.

“Oh, you’re here with someone, then,” Delilah said. “Too bad.”

The guard said, “Too bad?”

“Well,” she said, “my date is being a jerk, and…” She laughed. “I’m sorry, I think I’ve had too much to drink. I’m not usually like this.”

The guard said, “No, that’s all right. I don’t mind at all.”

The Chinese guy kept rubbing away with the towel.

Come on, buddy, there can’t be a single fucking water molecule left on you…

Finally he tossed the towel into the basket under the sink.

If you comb your hair now, I thought, or examine your teeth, or adjust your tie, I will kill you.

But the man decided not to engage in any of these fatal activities. He simply walked out the door.

Delilah said, “You’re so nice. I’m sorry I was so forward just now.”

The guard said, “I’m used to forward women. I like them.”

“Really?” she asked. “Where are you from?”

“I need his back to me,” I said, emerging from the closet and heading toward the door. “Now.”

The guard said, “I’m Filipino.”

“It is,” Delilah said, without changing her tone at all.

And while the bodyguard was busy trying to process that non sequitur, I stepped out of the bathroom behind him and nailed him in the base of the skull with a hammer-fist, one end of the Surefire leading the way. He grunted and his body shivered, but he didn’t go down. Damn, this guy had a hell of a thick skull. I went to hit him again, but Delilah had already moved in, slapping him with the syringe on the side of the neck, over the carotid. He grunted again and started groping for something under his jacket. I caught his arm to stop him. He tried to turn toward me. Delilah reached in and smoothly retrieved what he had been going for-a Kimber Pro CDP II in a hip holster carry.

The guy managed to turn all the way around and face me. He reached out as though to grapple with me, but then his feet went out from under him, from the blow or the injection I wasn’t sure. He crashed into me and I caught him under the arms and around the back. I stumbled backward through the bathroom door, grunting with the effort. The guy must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Delilah followed us through, closing the door behind us. I saw her eject the Kimber’s magazine, check its load, and pop it back in. She pulled back the slide a half inch, nodded as though she liked what she saw, and let the slide go.

“Brace the door,” I said, straining to support the dead weight in my arms. “Don’t want anyone coming in.”

She pressed her right toes against the door, her heel wedged to the floor, and took a long step back with her other leg. I dragged the guard into the closet and dumped him on top of his erstwhile client. I stepped over them both and closed the door behind me.

Someone tried the bathroom door. When it didn’t open, the person knocked. Delilah kept her foot in place and said, “We’re cleaning in here, sorry. Please use the restroom on thirteen.”

Cleaning, I thought. That’s one way to put it.

The knocking stopped.

I walked over and said, “Give me the gun.”

She shook her head. “Just go. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Come on, this isn’t what you do.”

“It’s what I have to do.”

“Let me finish what I started. With a gun, I can take care of them both.”

I thought that was what she would want to hear, but she shook her head again.

“Look,” I said, “where are you going to hide that cannon with what you’re wearing? It’s bigger than your purse.”

She took a deep breath and said, “You fulfilled your contract with Manny. You’ll be paid. Now just go.”

“Will you give me the fucking gun? I don’t know how much time we have.”

She looked at me, and for a second I thought I’d convinced her. But then she opened the door and walked out into the corridor to the stairway. I went out after her. She held the gun low along her right leg.

I heard Dox in my ear. “What’s the status there, ladies and gentlemen, your conversation is making me nervous.”

“I’ll handle the rest, Dox,” Delilah said, still heading for the stairs. “You should just go. Now would be a good opportunity.”

“Come on, Delilah,” he said, “we’re not just going to leave you. You can rely on my partner. I’ve seen his shooting, believe me, he hits things and they don’t get back up.”

We stopped on the landing between the stairs up to the fifteenth floor and down to the thirteenth. From here, we could only go up to fifteen, down to thirteen, or back along the corridor to the restrooms. For a moment, I thought of just grabbing her and trying to take the gun. But she was keeping her gun side away from me-keeping it away deliberately. I doubted I could disarm her without either harming her or getting shot myself. Neither was an attractive alternative.

I took her by the arm and started to say, “Damn it, Delilah…”

There was a sound at the top of the stairs above us. We both looked. It was Hilger and Al-Jib, descending toward us. Hilger was holding a gun in a two-handed grip, close to his body and pointing at the floor. He looked at me and I saw hard recognition in his eyes.

Shit. They must have gotten suspicious about Manny taking so long, and emerged to investigate.

“Step out of the way, John,” Hilger said. “We just want to leave. There’s no need for anyone to get killed here.”

Delilah was holding the Kimber, but it was clear to me that Hilger had the advantage. His weapon was more at the ready, for one thing. He had the high ground, for another. Also, presumably the gun he was holding was familiar to him, was presumably the very gun he trained with, whereas Delilah was relying on someone else’s weapon, a four-inch-barrel.45 that was probably too big for her. Delilah must have recognized all this, too, or she would already have tried for a shot.

But then why hadn’t Hilger already dropped us? I’d seen his combat shooting skills in front of Kwai Chung and knew he was formidable. And then I realized: He’s known here. This is part of his cover. He doesn’t want to shoot.

Al-Jib didn’t say anything. He looked scared. This was Hilger’s show.

“No problem,” I said, showing my hands. “Our business wasn’t with you. We’re finished.”

At a minimum, I had to get us onto level ground. Better yet, let them go down the stairs past us. Then the high ground would be ours. They’d be struggling to keep us covered and descend the stairs backward at the same time.

Hilger frowned. “Manny?”

“Manny’s done. You and I are quits.”

His eyes narrowed. “We’re not quits.”

Well, so much for lulling him.

Delilah said, “You can go. But not your friend.”

“Sorry, we’re both going to leave,” Hilger said. “Around you or through you, your choice.”

“I don’t have a problem with around,” I said, thinking, Goddamnit, Delilah, follow my lead.

I heard Dox in my ear. “I know what’s going on, folks, but I can’t help you while they’re above you on the stairs. You’ve got to let ’em down past fourteen.”

“Let’s just do as he says,” I said to Delilah, referring, of course, to Dox.

There was a long pause. I supposed she just instinctively didn’t want to take herself from between Al-Jib and an escape path.

But she was tactical, she must have understood the situation. Our position relative to Hilger and Al-Jib was untenable. It was as though she was just trying to delay things, slow Al-Jib down. But why would she…

A stair creaked on one of the risers below. I don’t know if it was intuition, or a sixth sense, or what, but I ducked. I heard the pfffft of a suppressed pistol and a round cracked into the wall behind me.

I sprang to my right, down the corridor toward the bathroom. As I did so I saw Gil, moving toward us from below, his gun out. I heard Delilah scream, “No!” A second later, gunfire erupted from the stairs above us.

I blasted open the bathroom door and stumbled inside. “Get out of the bar!” I said to Dox through the lapel mike. I ran for the closet, opened the door, and got inside. “Gil’s here. Delilah must have called him. They’re on the stairs. We’re blown. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Yeah, sounds like a shooting gallery out there,” he said. “The patrons here are all freaking out, can you hear them?”

I heard shouting and other sounds of panic in the background. Dox, characteristically, sounded almost soporifically calm. I pulled out the Surefire and twisted it on. The attaché was where I’d left it. I grabbed it and headed back to the freight elevator. I pressed the button on the wall and waited.

“If you can get to the closet where I was hiding,” I said, “there’s freight elevator access. Otherwise, your only way down is on thirteen.”

“Already thought of all that. But I can’t get to either with the OK Corral in between.”

Goddamn, he was cool under pressure. For a second I loved him for it.

“I know. But you can’t just stay in the bar, either. If Gil and Delilah drop Hilger and Al-Jib, they might come for you.”

“I don’t think Delilah…”

“Delilah called Gil, damn it. What do you think, she said, ‘Promise not to hurt them,’ and he said, ‘Sure, honey, whatever you say’?”

Come on, where the hell was the elevator. Delilah would know I would come this way. If Gil managed to drop Hilger and Al-Jib, this would be his next stop.

Dox said, “Okay, I hear what you’re saying. I’ll just find some more hospitable place to wait this out.”

“At some point, you’re going to get a crowd from the fifteenth-floor private dining rooms and the restaurant on fourteen stampeding for the exits,” I said. “Let them carry you with them.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I had in mind. What about you?”

“I’m waiting for the freight elevator right now. But once the doors close and it goes down, we’ll lose contact. The range of this gear is too short.”

“Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Go on, git. We’ll hook up at the bug-out point.”

The elevator arrived. I stepped inside and held the “door open” button. I glanced up-no dome camera. That was only for the passenger units.

“It’s here,” I said. “I can hold it for you.”

“Don’t be stupid, man. Just take it down, then send it back up when you get off. I don’t even know if I’m going out that way. I’ll probably just drift out with the crowd once Hilger and the rest have finished killing each other.”

I didn’t want to leave him, but what he said made sense. “Good luck,” I said, and pressed the button for the lobby. The doors closed and the elevator started down.

Damn it, I hated to let Hilger go. We’d been so close to having this whole thing wrapped up. I thought for a moment.

The dumpster opposite the entrance. If I hid behind it, and Hilger made it out, an opportunity might present itself. A long shot, true, but there wasn’t much downside.

Thirty seconds later, the doors opened on the lobby level. The security guard I had seen earlier was right in front of them. He had a gun drawn, a.38 Special, and was holding it too far in front of his body. He barely glanced at me as he charged inside.

He yelled something at me in Chinese-“Get out,” probably. Before he even had a chance to think about what was happening, I dropped the attaché, grabbed the outstretched gun in both hands, pivoted, and twisted it away from him. He cried out in shock and fear. Then he backed up against the elevator wall and started yelling in Chinese again. This time I assumed it was something like “Oh, shit!” or perhaps the time-honored “Don’t shoot!”

I picked up the attaché, stepped out of the elevator, and glanced around. All clear. I reached inside and pressed the button for thirteen. The doors closed, and the bug-eyed guard disappeared behind them, getting him out of my hair and preventing him from seeing what I was going to do next. Hopefully Dox already would be waiting for the guy when he arrived on thirteen. He could just haul him out and ride the elevator straight back down.

I walked across the street to the dumpster and examined my options. Good cover and concealment from both sides. But it was a little far from the elevator bank for my tastes. If Hilger hit the ground running and went immediately left or right from the elevators, I might lose him. If I could find the right spot, better to be waiting right there as he emerged.

I walked back over. The guard’s desk. That would do. I started to duck down behind it.

The stairwell door blew open to my left, ricocheting off the wall. Al-Jib dashed out. I brought the gun up and tried to track him, but he had already gone around the corner.

The door blew open again. I spun back toward it. This time it was Delilah. She stuck her head out and checked left and right, the Kimber in a two-handed grip just below her chin. She saw me and said, “Where did he go? Which way?”

“Where’s Hilger?” I said.

“Upstairs! Goddamn you, where is Al-Jib!”

I cocked my head to the left. She took off without another word.

I turned and took two steps toward the guard’s desk. I stopped. I took one more step. Then I said, “Fuck!” I turned and ran after Delilah, heaving the attaché in the direction of the dumpster en route.

I saw her head into Statue Square park and sprinted after her. She raced past one of the fountains inside, the couples sitting around it turning their heads to watch as she blew by them. I sprinted after her, dodging pedestrians. We crossed the square, then weaved through the thick traffic on Chater Road. I could see Al-Jib, about fifteen meters ahead of Delilah. He was running flat out but she was gaining. Damn, she was fast.

He bolted across Connaught without slowing at all. A taxi screeched to a halt in front of him, the driver laying on the horn. Al-Jib knocked down a pedestrian but kept going. Someone yelled something. The cab started to move forward again and then Delilah cut in front of it. The driver laid on the horn again. I flew past him a few paces behind Delilah.

Al-Jib raced up Edinburgh, toward the Star Ferry. If his timing was bad, he was about to meet a dead end, in the form of the southern end of Victoria Harbor. If his timing was good, though, he might just catch a departing ferry. The Star Ferry route between Central and Tsim Sha Tsui has been a major commuting line between Hong Kong and Kowloon for over a century, and the enormous, two-deck, open-air pedestrian ferries, some seemingly as old as the inception of the service, depart every seven minutes, each usually jammed with hundreds of passengers.

Al-Jib ran into the ferry terminal. Delilah followed him. I got inside a few seconds later and looked around. There were crowds of people and for a second I looked around wildly, not seeing her. Then I spotted a disturbance in the crowd on one of the stairwells-there she was, heading up the stairs. A woman was getting up from the floor and was yelling. Delilah must have lost Al-Jib for a moment, then figured out he had knocked over the woman tearing up the stairs. I followed, just a few lengths behind now. A crowd of passengers was heading down the stairs to our left. Shit, a ferry had come in a minute or two earlier-that meant it would already be leaving. We got to the concourse level and I saw Al-Jib, far ahead now. He seemed to recognize his desperate opportunity. He sprinted faster, vaulting over the turnstiles to the departure pier. He knocked a table over as he leaped and coins spilled to the concrete floor. The attendant bellowed something in Chinese.

We went over the turnstiles after him. The pier was empty-the passengers had already boarded the ferry. A worker stood along the gunwale on the lower deck, using a pole to push the lumbering craft from the pier. Al-Jib sprinted straight toward the boat, leaped, and fell across the guardrail, nearly knocking the worker over in the process. Delilah followed two meters behind him. I saw her leap onto the guardrail and pull herself over. The worker shouted something but didn’t try to stop the boat. It kept moving forward. Its stern was about to pull clear of the end of the pier.

I shoved the.38 into the back of my pants and kept running. Come on, come on.. .

Even as I launched myself through the air, I saw that I wasn’t going to make it. I slammed into one of the old tires strung up just below the deck to cushion the boat while it was docking. The tire might have been adequate for watercraft, but seemed to offer considerably less padding for a human torso, and I had the wind partially knocked out of me. But I was able to haul myself up to the guardrail. I scrambled over it onto the deck and rolled to my feet.

Delilah and Al-Jib had disappeared into the mass of passengers, but there was a path of sorts, slightly less packed with people than the areas around it, that told me where to look. I pulled the pistol and set off into the crowd. I was glad there were no security people on board to complicate things. The Star Ferry is about as secure as a sidewalk.

But after just a few meters, the path I’d been following closed up. There were scores of people down here, maybe hundreds, and I couldn’t pick up any vibe in the crowd that might have indicated where Delilah and Al-Jib had headed. In less than seven minutes, we’d be landing in Kowloon. It would be hard to stop him from leaping onto the pier there as we were docking and taking off into the crowd. We had to contain him here.

I moved toward the stern, beyond the rows of wooden seats, but couldn’t see through the mass of people who hadn’t gotten seats and were standing. “Delilah?” I called out. “Delilah!”

“Here,” I heard her say, from somewhere in front of me. “I…”

Something cut her off. I heard the report of a big gun. There were screams. Suddenly the crowd was shoving back toward me. The people ahead were trying to get away from the shooting.

I pushed forward. All at once, the crowd was behind me like a receding tide. And then I saw.

Somehow Al-Jib had gotten behind Delilah and managed to wrest the Kimber from her. He was standing behind her, one arm around her neck, the other holding the barrel of the gun to her temple.

I stopped, pulled the.38, and pointed it at him with a two-handed grip. They were eight meters away. I was still winded from the chase, and the deck of the ferry was rolling with the harbor’s currents. And Al-Jib was holding her like a shield, with only part of his head exposed. I was too far to risk the shot.

“Drop the gun!” he screamed. “Drop it or by Allah I will put her brains on the floor!”

“Don’t,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Because then I’ll have to put your brains on the floor, too.”

“Drop it! Drop it!” he screamed again.

“Listen,” I said over the wind that was blowing across the deck. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t care. My business was with Manny, and that business is done. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to leave. But not if you harm the lady. Then I have to kill you, understand?”

He looked at me, his eyes desperate, but I could tell he was thinking. He couldn’t shoot Delilah. If he did, in the time it took him to bring the gun around to me I would turn him into hamburger.

“Let’s think this through,” I said. “Let’s find a way to all walk away from here. Why don’t you lower your gun a little. And then I’ll lower mine a little. And then we’ll go from there.”

He started to relax, just slightly. I thought, Okay.

“No!” Delilah shouted. “Shoot him!”

Goddamnit, I would if you would just work with me…

Al-Jib’s grip around her neck tightened. “Drop the gun!” he screamed again.

Delilah was staring at me, her eyes full of rage. “Shoot him!” she rasped. “Goddamn you, shoot him!”

He was choking her, intentionally or unintentionally, I didn’t know. I realized I was losing control of the situation. He was so strung out he might pull the trigger without even meaning to. Or he might shoot just to shut her up. Or he might otherwise miscalculate.

“Drop the fucking gun!” he screamed again. “Or I swear…”

In one smooth motion, Delilah shrugged her head downward and slapped the gun up with her right hand. It discharged into the ceiling. I was so juiced with adrenaline it sounded like not more than a firecracker.

Al-Jib started to bring the gun back down. Delilah caught it in both hands. It discharged again.

I moved in. Delilah was between us, in front of his torso, and they were moving. I was still too far to risk the shot.

He let go of her neck and used both hands to try to wrestle the gun away from her. It didn’t work. He looked up, saw me heading toward him, and realized he had lost.

He let go of the gun and started to turn to run. But the muzzle velocity of a bullet from a.38 is eight hundred and fifty feet per second. Since I was now less than twenty feet from him, the round I fired reached him in about one-fortieth of a second, give or take. Which turned out to be slightly faster than he could move out of the way. The bullet caught him in the face. He spun around from the impact and stumbled back toward the railing. I followed him, focusing on his torso, ready to finish him off.

I heard two more shots from alongside me. They caught Al-Jib in the side. In my peripheral vision I saw Delilah walk past me, holding the Kimber in a two-handed grip, as implacable as the angel of death.

Al-Jib tried to straighten. Delilah kept moving in. She shot him twice in the head. His hands flew up and he went over the railing, into the dark water below.

For a long second, I looked at her. I was still holding the gun in a combat grip.

She stood panting for a moment, returning my look, but not in a focused way. She lowered the Kimber.

I hesitated for a moment, grappling with the knowledge that she had called Gil. Then something in her eyes, her posture, made the decision for me. I lowered the.38 and stuck it in my waistband.

I looked toward the bow. The lights of Tsim Sha Tsui were less than a minute away.

A few wordless seconds passed. Then Delilah handed me the Kimber. “Here,” she said. “I’ve got no place to conceal this, like you said. And we might need it.”

I stuck the second gun in my waistband and looked at her, trying to find words.

She said, “I had to. For you, too.”

“What do you mean, for me?”

“One day, Al-Jib and his type will detonate a nuclear weapon inside a city. A half-million people are going to die. Innocent people-families, children, babies. When that happens, it won’t be because I could have stopped it but didn’t. And you couldn’t bear that burden any more than I could. I won’t let you.”

I realized there was a lot of shouting and commotion around the side of the boat where the passengers would be exiting any minute. While we were engaging Al-Jib, I’d been too focused to notice.

Delilah and I walked forward, into the crowd. The people closest to us recognized that we had been involved in what just happened, and gave us wide berth. The farther forward we moved into the crowd, though, the less we encountered that kind of courtesy. The people closer to the front hadn’t seen what happened. They didn’t know who we were and they didn’t care. They had heard shooting and a commotion, and just wanted to get the hell off the ferry as soon as it docked. We reached a point where the crowd was so dense that we were lost in it, just two more scared passengers. We couldn’t move farther forward. We simply had to wait, along with everyone else.

A few seconds later, we were docking. The moment the boat was in position, people started surging off it. There was a lot of shouting in Chinese and I wasn’t sure what was being said. I did know that we wanted to get out of there before anyone started pointing at us.

We headed out of the pier building, past the clock tower and the crowds shopping in the area. We cut through the underpass below Salisbury Road, then headed east to the impossibly dense and crowded shopping districts around Nathan. An Asian man and a gorgeous blonde-we would be easy to pick up from a description of what had happened on the ferry, and at the China Club just before that. But I didn’t want us to split up yet. I wanted to finish this.

We reached the southeast corner of Kowloon Park and went inside. The park, set on a sprawling knoll above the streets below, was dark and, at this hour, reasonably deserted. We walked past the skeletal aviary and the silhouetted Chinese-style gardens to the Sculpture Walk, where we sat on the steps of a small amphitheater beside one of the Walk’s silent statues. I took out the prepaid cell phone, turned it on, and called Dox on the throwaway he was carrying.

He picked up immediately. “Hey, partner, I hope that’s you.”

I couldn’t help smiling at the sound of his voice. “It’s me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I’m here at the bug-out point. Where are you?”

“Kowloon.”

“Pardon me for asking, but isn’t that the wrong direction?”

“Unfortunately. Delilah and I chased Al-Jib onto the Star Ferry.”

“How’d that turn out?”

“With Al-Jib dead.”

“Well, that’s a happy outcome. Another victory for the good guys, and a blow to the forces of evil. What about Delilah?”

“She’s fine. She’s right here with me.”

“Ah-ha, so that’s why you hightailed it to Kowloon. You sure we have time for that sort of thing right now?”

“I’m sure we don’t. What happened with Hilger and Gil?”

“If you’re talking about the guy who was shooting at Hilger, he’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Hilger shot him, and when Delilah went to help, old Ali just about fucking flew over them and headed down the stairs. After that, Gil was doing a damn fine job of returning Hilger’s fire upside down and on his back from the stairs, but eventually Hilger put another round in him and then imitated Ali’s levitation trick. He paused just long enough to turn and shoot the sumbitch point-blank in the head.”

“Goddamn, I wish we’d managed to get you a gun.”

“Yeah, I would have liked to shoot him, and the opportunity was there. I did manage to sling a chair at him from the landing as he made his getaway, at least. It knocked him down, but he kept going after that.”

“You and the chairs,” I said. “You ought to market it. ‘ Chair-fung-do.’ ”

He laughed. “Yeah, the odd piece of furniture can come in handy from time to time, I’ve discovered. Anyway, I couldn’t get to Hilger in time after he was down, seeing as he was armed and dangerous and I was only dangerous. These jobs can be awkward without a proper rifle at hand. I don’t know how you do it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Hilger’s known in the club. Hell, he had reservations there tonight. The police are going to pick him up for sure. And then we’ll see if we were right about him running his own operation.”

“Think the powers that be will disown him?”

I paused and considered. “I’m getting the feeling he has… enemies. People who might like to see that happen, yeah.”

“What gives you that feeling?”

“I’m not sure. I want to check something out, and then I’ll let you know.”

“All right. Finish your quickie, and let’s meet at the airport. The old City of Life just doesn’t feel as welcoming now as it did this morning.”

“Give me an hour.”

“Sure, take as much time as you need. I don’t see any reason to hurry. It’s not like half the Hong Kong police force would be looking for someone of your description or anything like that.”

“All right,” I said, “I see your point.” I told him where he could retrieve the bug-out kit I’d put in place. He said he would grab it and be on the way.

I clicked off and looked at Delilah.

“Gil’s dead,” I said. “Dox saw Hilger shoot him in the head, point-blank.”

She nodded, her jaw set, then said, “What else?”

I briefed her on the rest of what Dox had told me.

“I’m going to meet him at the airport now,” I said. “You coming?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t have my passport.”

I didn’t say anything. I was still pissed that she had called Gil. I was trying to let it go.

“Anyway,” she said, “I need to brief my people on what just happened here. There are going to be a lot of questions.”

“You going to be able to weather it?”

“I’m not sure. Al-Jib dead will certainly help. That is a major victory, major. If he’d gotten away, I don’t know what would have happened.”

She was talking unusually fast. I noticed that her hands were trembling.

“You okay?” I asked, looking at her.

She nodded. I saw her eyes were filling up.

“You never…” I started to say. I paused, then went on. “That was your first time, wasn’t it.”

She nodded again and her tears spilled over. She started to shake.

My anger dissipated. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. “You did the right thing,” I said. “Just like they trained you. You’ll be okay.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should be happy, I should be exulting that he’s dead. I mean, I was exulting, right after. But now…”

I kissed the top of her head. “Your mind knows what’s what. It’ll just take a little while for your gut to catch up. You’ll see.”

She wiped her face and looked at me. “I was so afraid he was going to get away. I wanted you to shoot him. When he had that gun to my head, I thought I was going to die and all I cared about was that you shoot him first, so I would know.”

I nodded. “When you’re certain you’re going to die, and you don’t, it stays with you for a long time after. Sometime I’ll have to tell you about what happened to me outside of Kwai Chung last year.”

“You never did tell me that whole story.”

“Well, are you going to give me the chance?”

She laughed a little and touched my cheek. “Let’s meet somewhere. I don’t want it to end like this. I want… I want that to look forward to.”

I shrugged. “I’ve got your number. And we’ve got the bulletin board.”

She smiled. “We’ll always have the bulletin board.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s not Paris, but we’ll figure something out.”

Her hand slipped around to the back of my neck and caressed me there, absently, gently. It felt good.

“Thank you for trusting me,” she said. “I wanted to say that to you in Phuket, but I didn’t. I wanted to tell you… how much it means to me.”

How someone could smell so good after chasing a terrorist a quarter mile, almost dying in his grasp, and then killing him, was a mystery I knew I would always savor.

“Sounds like trusting you in Phuket wasn’t the brightest move I’ve ever made,” I said.

She looked at me, her eyes fierce. “Yes, it was. And as for calling Gil tonight…”

I shook my head. “I understand why you did it.”

“I had to. I told him it was Al-Jib, not you, that you were helping us. But he didn’t believe me about you. And when I saw him take a shot at you…”

I realized I was touching her leg. I started to say, “I know, I heard you,” but she pulled me in and kissed me.

I stopped talking. The kiss went from zero to sixty in about two nanoseconds. Where we were sitting, it was very dark.

What the hell, it wasn’t like Dox had never kept me waiting.

I TOOK THE Airport Express train from Kowloon station and called Dox when I arrived. He was already there. We met on the departures level, in front of United Airlines. He was still in his suit, an attaché in each hand.

He grinned as I walked up to him. “I think this one’s yours,” he said, handing it to me. “Saw it next to a dumpster in front of the Bank of China building as I exited the premises. Unless you meant to throw it away…”

“No, I was just blowing the ballast to chase after Al-Jib. I’m glad to have it back. Traveling without luggage can be conspicuous.”

“And we all know how much you hate to be conspicuous,” he said, staring at my neck.

I said, “What?”

His grin achieved galactic proportions. “Partner, I believe that’s lipstick on your collar. You’ve been a bad boy. And here we are, in the middle of an operation and everything. Next thing I know, you’ll be leaving your cell phone on and trying to hump a katoey into submission and committing similar such indiscretions. If you keep this up, people are going to start suspecting you’re human, and the unpleasant burden of explaining otherwise will fall entirely to me.”

My hand wandered up to my collar. “I… I just…”

“You don’t have to explain. Combat will do that to a man, I know. Bet you didn’t even need the Viagra this time, either.”

“No, I just thought of Tiara.”

He laughed. “That’s good, you got me there, man! Damn, you’re always going to have that over me. Hey, you think the Israelites will pay us, after all this?”

“I’d say they’d better. And then some.”

“I’m sure Delilah will strenuously advocate our cause. She’s a nice lady.”

“I don’t know what her position is going to be now. They’re going to ask her a lot of questions.”

“Well, if things don’t work out for her with her people, as far as I’m concerned she’s always welcome to join our happy band of freelancers. Like I said, we’re the wave of the future. The nation-states of the world are just going to outsource all their defense needs so they can watch more television, you’ll see.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Delilah would be comfortable as a freelancer. It’s not who she is.”

“Well, hopefully she won’t ever have to face that decision. It ain’t a happy moment in a soldier’s life, as you know.”

“No, it’s not,” I said.

“Well? Where to, from here?”

“I’ve got some business in Tokyo. On the way over here, I made a reservation on an Asiana flight that goes through Seoul. It leaves at…” I looked at my watch. “Oh-dark-thirty. Two hours.”

“What about Rio? You still hanging your hat there?”

“Mostly. I’ll probably head back after Tokyo.”

“Maybe I’ll come visit you there. Them Brazilian girls… man, don’t even get me started.”

“I try not to.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, come on down,” I said. “It would be good to see you. We can go to another adult bar.”

He laughed again. “I’d like that. I really would.”

We were quiet for a moment. I said, “What about you? Where are you heading?”

“Gonna go visit my folks in the States, I think. It’s been a while and I miss them.”

I nodded, trying to imagine it. I lost my parents so many years earlier that the simple concept of visiting the folks, of visiting anyone, is almost alien. But maybe I could find a way.

I said, “They’ve got a good son.”

He beamed. “They do. And I’m lucky to have them, too.” He glanced at his watch. “Got a Cathay Pacific flight that leaves for L.A. at twenty-three thirty-five. So I’d better beat feet.”

I held out my hand.

He looked at me and said, “Son, just because I was recently nearly inducted as a new member of the Accidental Katoey Love Association doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to show your feelings for me.”

Oh God, I thought. But then there I was, hugging the big bastard in the middle of the airport.

TWENTY-TWO

I SLEPT like a dead man on the trip to Seoul. There was a five-hour layover, then a short flight to Tokyo.

I wondered where I should stay. When I was living in the city, I maintained a relationship with several hotels that held a suitcase for me while I was “out of town,” just in case. But those arrangements were out of date now, and I couldn’t be sure the hotels in question would still have my gear. And even if they did, it was possible the relationship had been exposed in the interim. I decided it would be safer to do something new.

I arrived at Narita airport at a little after noon. I took the JR Express train to Tokyo station, then walked unburdened by anything other than my attaché to the Four Seasons in Marunouchi. I asked if they had any rooms available. Only a suite, they told me. I told them a suite would be fine.

For an excessive price in the lobby concession store, I bought a pair of khaki pants and a navy merino wool sweater. In the room, I showered and shaved with the razor and other amenities the hotel had thought to provide. I called housekeeping and told them I would like to avail myself of their one-hour pressing services. My suit looked like I’d been living in it.

I walked into Ginza to buy clean underwear, a fresh shirt, and a few other such necessities for the fugitive on the move. The weather was cold and crisp-my favorite in Tokyo-and the wind had a clean winter bite to it. Being back felt good. It even felt oddly right.

I looked around as I walked, more in appreciation of my surroundings than to check my back. The topography had changed a bit since my last visit. Some of the stores were different, and a number of new buildings had gone up, and Starbucks had continued its kudzu-like infiltration of lobbies and storefronts. But the feel of the city was all the same: the way you could transition from the Stygian gloom of a Hibiya train underpass to the glittering shops of Ginza in just a few dozen paces; the air of money to be made and spent, of dreams realized and broken; the beautiful people in the shops and the sharp-elbowed old women in the train stations; the sense that everyone you pass in the pricey restaurant windows and on the smart sidewalks and in the solemn silences of the city’s small shrines wants to be here, here in Tokyo, here and nowhere else.

I thought of Yamaoto, and wondered when, if ever, it might be safe for me to move back here. Fond as I was of Rio, it didn’t really feel like home, and as I walked through Tokyo I suspected it never would.

I bought what I needed and went back to the hotel. My suit, pressed to perfection, was already hanging in the suite’s ample closet. I changed, left the hotel, and made my way to a cell phone shop, where I bought a prepaid unit. I used it to call Kanezaki.

“Hai,” he answered.

I gave him my usual “hey” in response.

There was a pause. He said, “You’re in Tokyo.”

Ah, the relentless march of caller ID and other such complicating technologies. “Yes,” I told him. “I wanted to update you on what I’ve found out about Manila. And I think you owe me a bit of an update, too.”

“I haven’t been able to learn that much…”

“Don’t bullshit me. You know that makes me angry.”

There was another pause. “Where are you?”

“I’m watching you right now.”

“You’re watching… what do you mean?”

I smiled, imagining him looking suddenly over his shoulder or through his office window. “Just kidding. I’m at Tokyo station. Marunouchi South exit.”

“I’m near the embassy. I can meet you in ten minutes, how’s that?”

“That’s fine. Call me when you get here.”

I clicked off.

I didn’t think he’d have any inclination to bring company. And I certainly hadn’t given him time. Still, I crossed the street and watched the entrance from afar. Old habits die hard.

He showed up by taxi ten minutes later, alone. He got out and waited, knowing I would want to see him before I showed myself.

I circled around, using taxis and pedestrians for cover, then moved in from his blind spot. But he turned before I could get close enough to say ta-da. Good for him.

“Hey,” he said, and smiled. He held out his hand and we shook.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I doubt the Japanese government wastes a lot of time trying to shadow you CIA types, but just in case.”

We spent a half hour making sure we were alone, then ducked into Tsuta, a coffee shop I used to frequent in Minami Aoyama. I was glad to find Tsuta weathering the Starbucks storm. The last time I’d been here, I had been with Midori. That had been a good afternoon, strange under the circumstances but full of weird and foolish promise. And it was so long ago.

We sat down across from each other at one of the two tables and ordered espressos. I looked him over. It had been a year since I’d last seen him, and he seemed older now, more mature. There was a confidence that he’d lacked before, a new substance, a kind of weight. Kanezaki, I realized, wasn’t a kid anymore. He was managing some serious matters, and those matters were in turn molding him. As Dox’s favorite philosopher said, when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

We made small talk for a while. The table next to us was occupied by two elderly Japanese women. I doubted they could speak English, which Kanezaki and I were using-hell, I doubted they could hear much at all-but we kept our voices low all the same.

After the espressos arrived, I said, “I think it’s time for you to level with me.”

He took a sip from his demitasse, nodded appreciatively, and said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

I knew he would tell me eventually. I also knew he would make me struggle for it, so that I would feel I had won something, that the information I extracted had worth. I wished we could skip the intermediate dance steps, but this was the way Kanezaki always played it.

Well, maybe there was a way we could accelerate things. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” I said, “but every time we talked or otherwise corresponded over the last few days, things I told you wound up in the Washington Post right afterward.”

He didn’t say anything, but I detected the trace of a satisfied smile.

“So,” I said, “if you want me to tell you what happened in Manila, and what just happened in Hong Kong, you’re going to have to go first.”

I picked up my demitasse and leaned back in my chair. I let the aroma play around my face for a moment, then took a small sip. Ah, it was good. Strong but not overwhelming; bitter, but not over-extracted; light, but with density in the play of flavors. I’ve drunk coffee in Paris, Rome, and Rio. Hell, I’ve even drunk it in Seattle, where the bean is a local religion. But in my mind nothing beats Tsuta.

Kanezaki waited a long time, the better to convince me that he was talking only under duress. I was halfway through my espresso when he said, “How do you know about Hong Kong?”

I knew he would crack, and I couldn’t help smiling a little. I said, “Because I just came from there.”

He looked at me and said, “Holy shit.”

“So? This time you go first.”

He sighed. “All right. Hilger was running a private op.”

“What do you mean, ‘private’?”

“Let me amend that. I should have said ‘semiprivate.’ Like the post office: private, but government-subsidized.”

He took a sip from his demitasse. “What is intelligence, to the policymakers? It’s just a product. Hell, in the community we even call it a product. We call the policymakers ‘consumers.’ And what do all consumers want?”

“Low prices?” I offered.

He chuckled. “If the consumer is rich enough so that price doesn’t matter.”

“Then choice,” I said.

He nodded. “Exactly. And if you don’t like what one store is trying to sell you, you’ll spend your money somewhere else. Look at what the White House did in the run-up to Iraq. They didn’t like what the CIA was telling them, so they set up a Pentagon unit and did their shopping there, instead.”

“So Hilger…”

“Look, think of it this way: the basis exists for a competitive, free market for intelligence. Regardless of the structure that exists by law, policymakers will always look to different factions to satisfy policymaking requirements, and develop those factions if they don’t already exist.”

I took a sip of espresso. “Hilger’s one of the factions?”

He nodded. “For almost a decade, he’s been building his own network. In a sense, he’s created a privatized intelligence service, and his product is good. A lot of policymakers have come to rely on it.”

“What happened, did the CIA get jealous?”

“That’s not the point. Sure, he was able to do things that the Agency can’t-he’s got no oversight, for one thing. But that’s exactly the problem. He’s his own extra-governmental institution.”

“And what are you doing here with me?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Hilger was corrupt. And I’m not just talking about the two million dollars he made off with from Kwai Chung last year. I’m talking about much worse than that. Remember the U.S. diplomat who was assassinated in Amman a few years ago?”

I nodded.

“That was Hilger, making his bones.”

That tracked with the conversation I had overheard in the China Club. I nodded.

“Look,” he said, “why do you think it’s so hard for us to penetrate terrorist cells? Because there’s a simple admission test: kill a high-profile American, or carry out some other atrocity. If you can do that, you’re in. Well, the CIA can’t do that.”

“But apparently, Hilger can.”

“Can and did. Hilger created access to terrorists by being a terrorist. The thing in Jordan, deals with that guy Belghazi you took out last year, black market arms, money laundering… I’ve got evidence that he knew about the Bali bombing before the fact. Two hundred people died there. The two bombings in Jakarta, too. After all that, you think he even remembered who he was or what he was trying to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s like Nixon’s ‘madman’ theory. You want people to think you’re a madman, you have to start doing mad things. In which case, you might as well be mad. What’s the difference?”

“Tell me why you were leaking to the Post.”

He shrugged. “I had to put pressure on Hilger’s network. Publicity equals pressure.”

“The first story said the men in Manila were spooks, not ex-spooks.”

“They were ex-spooks, like I told you. But if the story was that they were current, Langley would face more questions, and Hilger would feel more heat.”

“So those ‘well-placed sources’ the stories mentioned…”

“Yeah, you’re talking to him.”

I nodded in appreciation. “What about ‘Gird Enterprises’?”

“One of Hilger’s front companies, I think. We’ll know soon enough. The media is all over it now.”

“Now that you leaked it.”

“Of course,” he said, sounding and for a moment even looking very much like Tatsu.

“Are you sure that taking down Hilger was the right thing to do?” I asked. “He’d gotten pretty close to this guy Al-Jib…”

“Ali Al-Jib?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“You know any others?”

“How do you know this?”

“Because they were meeting at the China Club in Hong Kong last night.”

“They were meeting… holy shit, where is Al-Jib now?”

“I expect he’s being fished out of Victoria Harbor. Unless he was able to swim for shore with five bullets in him.”

He shook his head as though incredulous. “That was you, at the China Club?”

I shrugged.

He shook his head again. “Someone ought to give you a medal.”

“I’d settle for just getting paid. Anyway, how do you know Hilger wasn’t trying to develop Al-Jib, run him somehow? Maybe Al-Jib would have led to other sources.”

He took a breath and let it out. “Who knows what Hilger was up to with Al-Jib? The man was dirty.”

I took a sip from the demitasse. “So what happens to him now?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think he has much of a chance, but I don’t have all the information yet. What happened at the China Club?”

I told him, leaving out Dox’s and Delilah’s involvement.

He sat silently while I briefed him, shaking his head as though incredulous. When I was done, he said, “You did Manny, too. Unbelievable. You really should get a medal.”

“I wish I’d thought to come to you a week ago and ask what it would be worth to you for me to take these guys out. I probably could have retired on it.”

“That would be a tragic loss. Guess I can’t ask you who you were working for this time?”

“Guess you’re right.”

“It’s okay. I can imagine.”

“You can imagine all you want.”

“Well, from what you’ve told me, I don’t think Hilger can survive this. His supporters are all going to be running for cover.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I get the feeling this guy is a survivor. Look at the way he turned things around at Kwai Chung last year, and made off with two million U.S. in the process. I wouldn’t underestimate him.”

“I’m not,” he said.

I finished my espresso and set down the demitasse. “Are you still in touch with Tatsu?” I asked.

“A bit,” he said, his tone guarded, and I knew they were in touch a lot.

I nodded. “Spend time with him. He’s walked the narrow path you seem to be on for a long time, and somehow he hasn’t managed to fall off. That’s rare. You should try to learn his secret.”

“What path are you talking about?”

“The one where the end justifies the means.”

He nodded.

“Well,” I said, getting up, “seeing as I’ve just eliminated two of the entries on Uncle Sam’s nonexistent terrorism hit list, I guess I can count on you to pay for the coffee?”

He stood and smiled. “My pleasure.”

I looked at him. “Is this on you, though? Or the government?”

“It’s on me.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

I held out my hand and we shook. “Ki o tsukero yo,” I said. Be careful.

“So shimasu,” he told me. I will.

TWENTY-THREE

HILGER SAT in the Dragonair departures area at Hong Kong International, waiting for his flight to Shanghai. The sun was up and he was exhausted.

It had been a long night. Deleting the files hadn’t required much time. They were all electronic, after all. And collecting his essential gear hadn’t been a problem, either, as much of it was kept in a bag that served as the civilian equivalent of the bug-out kits they had been taught to use in the military. It had been the phone calls that had taken a while. There were the people in his network, who needed to be warned. There were the family members, who needed to be prepared. And there were the politicians, who needed to be importuned. Each set of calls had been more difficult than the one that preceded it.

He wasn’t worried about himself. He’d been ready for a day like this, and his backup systems had worked well. Even if they hadn’t, and he’d been forced to take a fall or even worse, he could have handled it. What was hard to come to grips with was the total unraveling of his op. He’d been so close to achieving so much. America was in mortal danger, and wasn’t doing enough to safeguard against it. With his operation crippled, he thought the worst was now inevitable.

He’d read an article once, about the wildfires they have every few years in Southern California. Some expert was explaining that, because of the encroachment of suburban development on woodlands, the small fires nature employed to clear out the underbrush were no longer permissible. As a result, year after year, the underbrush got thicker and drier and more ready to combust. Sooner or later, the expert said, something will always set that underbrush off. It’s almost mathematically certain.

He looked at a WMD attack on America in much the same terms. There was so much post-Soviet matériel out there, and so many fanatics who wanted to use it, that it was just a matter of time. But no one wanted to accept this fact, any more than the Los Angeles suburban homeowners wanted to accept that a little annual soot on their wood siding might be a small price to pay to avoid a fucking holocaust. It was just how people’s minds worked. There wasn’t much you could do about it.

He shook his head, disgusted. It all made him think of the way municipalities install traffic lights. After a certain number of auto fatalities at a given intersection, the politicians say, “Hmm, we ought to put in a light there.” They were going to do the same thing when New York had disappeared under a mushroom cloud.

Or maybe he was giving the idiots too much credit. Hell, losing New York… maybe they would just pause for a minute, then go back to renaming French fries and prohibiting gay marriage and the other priorities of the day.

Yeah, the politicians were in thrall to Big Oil, or brain-dead, or both. If anyone was going to prevent a cataclysm, it would be Hilger, and the team he had built.

He sighed. Al-Jib was one of his linchpins. If Hilger just could have learned a little more about the man’s contacts, where his knowledge had been disseminated, they might actually have been able to stuff some of the fucking genie back in the bottle. But not now. Al-Jib probably wouldn’t touch Hilger after this. That is, assuming the man was still alive. The blonde in the China Club, whoever she was, had taken off after him like a hungry lioness hot on a gazelle.

Well, there were little silver linings in the cloud. When his pissant National Security Council contact had started back-pedaling about whether the White House could support Hilger in the face of another mess, Hilger had just told the man what a shame it would be when Hilger’s client list came to light, with the contact’s name and those of several other prominent political personages on it. The helpless silence that had followed that warning was one of the most satisfying sounds Hilger had ever heard. The contact’s plan of simply saying “I have no recollection of that event, Senator,” and “I don’t recall that meeting, Senator,” and “I can’t imagine I would have done that, Senator, because that would be wrong,” suddenly just wasn’t going to be adequate, and the piece of shit knew it.

Hilger had gone on to explain that he was no Edwin Wilson. If he went down, lots of people would be coming with him, first among them Mr. NSC contact. Do I need to explain further? Hilger had asked. No, the contact had told him in a tight, emasculated voice. He had made himself perfectly clear.

Wilson had been an operative the Agency allegedly fired back in 1971, but who had gone on acting like a spook afterward, carrying out assassinations, laundering money, and selling plastic explosives to countries like Libya, until he was jailed in 1983. Wilson claimed that he’d never left the Agency and that the whole thing had been a sanctioned op; the government, predictably, claimed he was fabricating. Hilger didn’t know the truth-that information would be very closely held, just as it was for him-but he suspected the whole thing had been an op. After all, how do you get close to a man like Kaddafi? By selling him what he wants. There were people who understood this principle then, just as there were people, like Hilger, who understood it today.

Wilson’s error, though, had been his failure to collect evidence implicating his paymasters. Hilger had been much better prepared. The people who had been greedy enough to invest their money with him had been stupid, too. NSC staffers just couldn’t explain being on the same client list as unsavorables like Manny. They would have to back Hilger, or go down with him.

As for the Agency, he knew the last thing they would want would be another Wilson scandal. Even if they denied Hilger, the press would go into a frenzy over a repeat. All those resultant congressional committees, and questions under oath, examination of finances, new layers of oversight… no one wanted any of that, there was so much more important work to be done. Plus, Hilger’s contacts were putting out the word that Hilger had been behind Manny’s death. And if Al-Jib turned up not breathing, that would be attributed to Hilger, too. All, of course, with the understanding that the new director could take whatever credit for the op he wanted. Politicians tended to be as resistant to that kind of opportunity as junkies were to a fix. The Hong Kong police and Hong Kong liaison could be bought off the same way. With the right mix of sense and incentives, the whole thing could be put to sleep pretty quietly.

Of course, the Jim Hilger cover was permanently blown, and at a minimum Hong Kong’s Chinese overlords would declare him persona non grata and boot him out. Hilger had decided to save them the trouble. He already had an established identity, and a presence he had been careful to cultivate, in Shanghai. When the authorities showed up at his Hong Kong apartment, or at his office, as perhaps they already had, he wasn’t going to be there to greet them.

He was going to miss that view from Two IFC, though. Well, it wasn’t like there were no skyscrapers in Shanghai. The city was growing so fast, and had so many foreigners, that he’d have no trouble fitting in there and gearing up again.

He thought of Rain for a moment, and could actually feel his face contorting with rage as he did so. He was surprised at his own reaction. After all, Rain hadn’t acted with knowledge. He’d been hired for a job and he’d done it. Hilger used people like him all the time; it wasn’t personal. So why was Hilger taking it so personally now? It was stupid. Yes, the man had screwed up everything. And in the process, cost Hilger years of effort and unknowingly endangered millions of innocents. But he hadn’t meant it, he hadn’t known. Hilger should just let it go.

Or he should just find the bastard and shoot him in the head. It wasn’t justified, it wasn’t even mature, but it would probably help him sleep better.

And that fucking Dox, too. Someone had nailed him with a chair as he’d hauled ass down the China Club stairs, and he had a pretty good idea of who it was. He had a welt on his back the size and color of an eggplant.

One thing at a time, though. First, Shanghai. Then, probably, more damage control. Then salvaging what he could of his operation.

Then it would be time for Rain and Dox. And God help them then.

TWENTY-FOUR

AFTER LEAVING KANEZAKI at Tsuta, I called Tatsu. I asked him if he felt like an early dinner. He told me that would be fine. I told him I would meet him at Tsukumo Ramen, one of the best noodle shops in the city. Rio’s cuisine is wonderful, but ramen is comfort food for me, and Tsukumo is one of the best. I’d missed it and was glad for the chance to return.

I stopped at an Internet café in Aoyama on the way. There was a message waiting from Delilah. It said:

Dox was right, Gil is dead. I never liked him, and yet I feel so sad. Without men like him, I don’t know what would happen to the world. My government won’t acknowledge his affiliations, of course. Only his citizenship. But at least his family will be able to bury him and properly mourn. One day, I hope to tell them what happened. They should know he was a hero.

My people have transferred your payment in accordance with the instructions you gave them. You’ve been paid in full for Lavi. You have also been paid the same amount for Al-Jib. And there is a bonus.

I don’t know what’s next. There are a lot of meetings going on right now, with me as the subject. For the most part, I don’t care.

I would like to see you again. I hope it will be soon.

– D

I checked the bulletin board I had established with Boaz and Gil. There was a message waiting. It read like an invoice, and matched what Delilah had told me. Next to the amount she had described as a “bonus,” it said:

No hard feelings. With a little smiley face.

I almost laughed. It had to be Boaz.

I checked the account I had given them. The money was all there. I transferred Dox half of everything, then went to meet Tatsu. I would respond to Delilah later.

I took a cab to Hiro and walked. Tatsu was already sitting at the counter when I came in. He got up, shuffled over, and shook my hand. He was wearing a broad smile and it felt good to be with someone who was so happy to see me. Then I realized he was getting the same smile from me.

It was early enough so that we were able to get a table. We ordered marukyu ramen, prepared with fresh noodles and homemade Hokkaido mozzarella over a miso base, and a couple of Yebisu beers. We made small talk throughout the meal, just as we had discussed, and I was almost alarmed at how much I enjoyed his conversation. Dining with company was becoming addictive.

When we were done with the ramen and lingering over a second beer, I asked, “Is everything all right?”

“ ‘All right’?”

“You said you wanted to talk about something personal. Which, as everyone knows, isn’t like you.”

He smiled. “Everything is fine, thank you.”

“Your family? Your daughters?”

“Everyone is fine, fine. I’m a grandfather now, you know. My eldest daughter.”

“Yes, you mentioned she was pregnant last time we talked. A boy, right?”

He nodded, and for a moment there was no trace of the sadness that I could usually see in his eyes. “A beautiful little boy,” he said, beaming.

I bowed my head. “Congratulations, my friend. I’m happy for you.”

He nodded again. “Anyway. The personal matter isn’t mine. It’s yours.”

I shook my head, not following him.

He reached into a battered briefcase, pulled out a manila envelope, and handed it to me. I reached inside and withdrew a short stack of black-and-white photos. Even before my mind grasped the content, I noted the circumstances: from the slightly blurred background, compressed perspective, and shallow depth of field, I knew the photos were taken from a distance through a telephoto lens.

In them, Midori sat at an outdoor restaurant table in what looked like America, maybe New York. A baby stroller was parked next to her. A Japanese child, not much more than an infant, sat on her lap, facing her. Midori was making a face-pursing her lips and puffing out her cheeks-and the child was reaching for her nose, laughing.

My heart started thudding. It always does, when I pause to really imagine her, to indulge the razor-clear memories of the time we spent together. But seeing a photograph, literally a snapshot of the life she was living a world away, heightened the reaction. I tried not to show it.

“She’s… married?” I asked, warring emotions roiling inside me.

“No. Not married.”

“Then…”

I looked at him. He nodded and smiled, a profound and strangely gentle sympathy in his eyes.

My instincts, so keenly honed for combat, can be almost laughably useless in matters of the heart. The pounding in my chest intensified, my body understanding fully even as my mind struggled to catch up. I looked away, not wanting him to see my face.

I remembered our last night together, in a room at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo nearly two years earlier. We had made love furiously, despite Midori’s new knowledge of who I was and what I had done to her father; despite our understanding that it would be the last time; despite knowing the cost.

I didn’t know what the hell to say. “Oh, my God,” I think is what came out.

I tried to pull myself together, but couldn’t really manage it. Eventually, though, I was able to revert to some sort of operational default. I found myself asking, “Who took the photo? You?”

There was a pause, then he said, “No. It was taken by Yamaoto’s people.”

I looked at him. My expression was neutral again. Thinking of Yamaoto helped me focus. It put me back on familiar ground.

“Why?”

“She is your only known civilian nexus. Yamaoto has people watch her from a distance, from time to time, in case you reappear in her life.”

“Bastard needs a course in anger management.”

“You defeated him twice. First, in intercepting the disk. Second, in dispatching his lieutenant, Murakami. He is a vain man with a long memory.”

“Is she… are they, in danger?”

“I don’t believe so. He is interested in her only as a means to get to you.”

“How did you acquire the photo?”

“A search of one of his affiliates’ belongings.”

“Sanctioned search?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“Then there’s a chance the affiliate doesn’t know the photos are missing.”

“I can assure you he doesn’t. My men downloaded the contents of his digital camera, but otherwise didn’t molest it. He has no way of knowing his belongings were examined. Yamaoto has no way of knowing you have discovered the existence of… your son.”

There was a strange corporeality to those last words. They seemed to linger in the air.

A son, I thought. It made no sense. My father had a son. But not I.

“It’s… he’s a boy?” I asked.

He nodded. “I made some discreet inquiries. She calls him Koichiro. Ko-chan.”

“How do you even know… how can you be sure he’s mine?”

He shrugged. “He looks like you, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t even go there. I felt confused, and realized I was in some kind of mild shock.

“Why did you show me this?” I asked, feeling like I was groping, flailing. I was thinking, Because I had made my adjustment. It was over, she might as well have been dead and gone, I was consoling myself with memories.

Tormenting yourself, you mean.

“Would you have preferred that I hadn’t?” he asked.

“What’s the difference? Even if I wanted to, even if she wanted me to, I couldn’t contact her while Yamaoto is watching.”

I paused and felt a flush of anger. I looked at him and said, “That’s why you told me.”

He shrugged. “Certainly some of my motives were selfish. Some weren’t. You know as well as I do that you need a connection, you need something to pull you off the nihilistic path you’ve been treading. It seems that fate has taken a hand.”

“Right. To get out of the killing business, all I need to do is kill a few more people.”

“It does seem paradoxical when you put it that way. But yes, I believe you have accurately described the heart of the matter.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “I can’t see them unless I take out Yamaoto first.”

“Yes.”

“And Yamaoto is smart. He understands this dynamic. Which means he’s probably tightened his security as a result.”

“He most certainly has.”

I looked at him. “For Christ’s sake, why don’t you just arrest this fucking guy? What do they pay you for?”

“Yamaoto is a prominent politician, with many protectors, as you know. If I tried to arrest him, I would simply lose my job. He is inaccessible by ordinary means.”

“I don’t even know if she would see me. Why hasn’t she contacted me?”

“Does she have your address?”

“No. But she could have contacted you.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps she is ambivalent. Who wouldn’t be? True, she didn’t contact you. On the other hand, she had your baby. She is the mother of your son.”

“Oh, my God,” I said again. I felt dizzy.

“It’s a strange thing, having a child,” he said. “It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized that I would do anything-anything-to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It’s quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of the worth of your own life is changed by it.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” I said. I felt like I was outside my body, that someone else was talking.

“Of course you’re not. No one ever is. Because there’s a responsibility that comes with the privilege.” He licked his lips. “When my little son died, there was nothing I could do to save him. All the things I would have done, would have been overjoyed to do, were meaningless. You can’t imagine the impact of knowing that the most precious thing over which you have full control-your own life-is useless as barter or bribe to save the life of your child.”

He took a swallow from his beer mug. “You see? For your whole life, you’ve believed the sun revolved around the earth. You are about to discover otherwise. With everything that implies.”

I didn’t know what to say. My head was spinning but I ordered us another round.

We drank in silence for a while after that. At one point Tatsu asked if I wanted to be alone. I told him no, I wanted him there, wanted his company. I just needed to think.

Three rounds later, I said to him, “I can’t figure this out. Not in one night. But there’s one thing I am going to do. And I need your help to do it.”

TWENTY-FIVE

IT TOOK TATSU a few days to manage it, but eventually he was able to discover where I could find Manny’s Filipina wife. I had a feeling that, after what had almost happened to him in Manila, Manny might have sent her to stay with her family outside the city, and it turned out I had been right.

While I waited for the information, I stayed at my suite at the Four Seasons. It was a beautiful hotel and a good base from which to revisit the many areas in the city I had missed during my recent exile. I avoided those areas I had once frequented often enough to be recognized if I were to return, not wanting to do anything that might put me on Yamaoto’s radar screen. But there were plenty of places I had patronized anonymously before, and which I could therefore safely visit again: bars like Teize and Bo Sono Ni in Nishi Azabu; shrines like Tomioka Hachimangu, where the wisteria would be blooming soon; bright boulevards like Chuo-dori in Ginza and dim alleyways and backstreets too obscure to name.

Tatsu had been right, I realized, about the earth and the sun. Everything I saw measured correctly against the template in my memory, and yet the contours were subtly and indescribably different. The thought that I had become a father was overwhelming. I’d never even seen my child outside of a few surveillance photos, never even suspected his existence until just a few days before, and yet suddenly I felt connected to a possible future in a way I had never imagined. And it wasn’t just that I had a son; my parents, a posthumous grandchild. It was the connection the child gave me with Midori, something I intuitively sensed could never be denied, not even after what I had done to her father. I didn’t know if a life to come could trump a death dealt previously, but I wondered at the possibility. It filled me with frightful hope.

I responded to Delilah’s post, telling her that I needed a vacation like I’ve never needed one before. I had some things to take care of over the next few days, but after that I could meet her anywhere. She asked me if I’d ever been to Barcelona. I told her I hadn’t, but that I’d always wanted to go. We agreed to be in touch over the next few days, while her situation sorted itself out and while I tied off a few loose ends of my own.

Every day I checked various news sites, chief among them the Washington Post. I was hoping to see Hilger’s name in the papers. Publicity, as Kanezaki knew, would put Hilger out of business, might even make his protectors turn on him. But so far there was nothing, and I had a feeling there never would be. Hilger was too smart.

The shooting at the China Club and on the Star Ferry got a lot of press in the South China Morning Post and other local English language papers. Witnesses had provided descriptions of various people involved, but so far the only “arrest” had been of a Caucasian man-Gil-who had died of gunshot wounds before he could be questioned. Manny’s body had been identified. His bodyguard had been revived with nothing worse than a horse tranquilizer hangover and a huge lump on the back of his head, and the man had identified his late client for the police. And a body had been fished out of the turbid waters of Victoria Harbor. Police were checking dental records and DNA, but weren’t yet able to say who the dead man was.

I was in an Internet café in Minami Azabu, one of my favorite parts of the city, early in the evening, when Tatsu’s message came. It was brief: an address in Batangas, about a two-hour drive south of Manila. Characteristically, he asked no questions about why I might want this information, but a brief note, at the bottom of his post, indicated that he might already know:

It was very good to see you the other night. I think we should try to meet more often. Neither of us is getting younger.

Let me know how you would like to proceed in the matter we discussed. Obviously you would have the benefit of all my resources to assist you.

Good luck with what you have to do first.

The benefit of all my resources. Well, that was saying a lot. It wasn’t just his position with the Keisatsucho, the Japanese FBI. That would be the least of it. Tatsu had his own loyal cadre of men, along with other assets that would make a grizzled spy-master sit up and beg. I’d have to think about it. But first things first.

I made the appropriate travel arrangements on the Internet, moved money from one offshore account into another, then stopped at a Citibank to make a large cash withdrawal-the full amount I had been paid for Manny. I took the entire amount in ten-thousand-yen notes, which amounted to four bricks, each five hundred notes high, and put it all in the attaché.

I walked out and did a bit of shopping in the area: traditional Japanese sweets like daifuku and sakura-mochi and kashiwa-mochi; a kimono and geta slippers; several packages of high-end calligraphy paper. Each store wrapped the items exquisitely-after all, they were obviously gifts-and placed them in a elegant bag.

My shopping completed, I stopped in a Kinko’s, where I cut down the contents of one of the calligraphy paper packages so it would accommodate the bricks of cash. I resealed the package and placed it back in the appropriate bag.

I checked out of the hotel early the next morning and caught a flight to Manila. I arrived at nine-thirty and had no trouble passing through customs along with the dozens of other visiting businessmen from Tokyo, all of us bearing traditional gifts from exotic Japan. I took a cab to the Mandarin Oriental in Makati. I explained to them that, although I wasn’t a guest, I had business in town and would like to rent a car and driver for half the day. I would of course pay cash. They told me that would be fine, and I was immediately provided with a Mercedes E230 and driver. I gave him the address and we set off.

The weather was hot and sticky, as it usually is in the region, and the sky was full of the kind of pollution that almost begs to be washed away in some violent thunderstorm to come. While we drove, I replaced the innocuous contents of the attaché with the four bricks of cash.

The urban knot of Metro Manila unraveled as we drove, and soon we were moving past rice paddies and coconut groves. I had seen the same countryside just a few days earlier, but today it felt different. Unwelcoming, maybe. Maybe unforgiving.

I looked out the window at the fields and farm animals and wondered whether the woman would have learned of Manny’s demise. It had been only a few days, and I supposed it wasn’t impossible that somehow the news wouldn’t yet have reached her.

The roads we drove on became narrower, with more frequent and deeper potholes. Twice the driver had to stop and ask for directions. But eventually we pulled up in front of a low-slung, ramshackle dwelling at the end of a dirt road with paddies all around. A few gaunt cows swished their tails near the house, and chickens and small dogs ran freely. There were a dozen people sitting out front in plastic chairs. An extended family, I sensed, but more than could be living in this small dwelling. Something had happened, some tragedy, you might have guessed, and the visitors were here to offer support, to help the survivors make it through.

I saw Manny’s wife, seated across from two other young women who might have been her sisters. The boy sat listlessly on the lap of an older woman, perhaps his grandmother. I knew the scene well, and for a moment my resolve faltered. And then, ironically, the same icy blinders that had moved in to allow me to finish Manny started to close again, and enabled me to move forward this time, as well.

I got out of the car. Conversation, I noticed, had come to a halt. The assembled people eyed me curiously. I took the attaché and walked confidently over to Manny’s wife. I bowed my head before speaking.

“I am an attorney, representing the estate of Manheim Lavi,” I said to her. In the suit, carrying the attaché, I felt I looked the part. And if the average lawyer carries himself stiffly at moments like this one, then that part of the act was spot-on, too, because I was having a hard time even looking at her.

She came to her feet. She was petite and very pretty, and, like many Filipinas, looked younger than she probably was.

“Yes?” she asked, in lightly accented English.

“Mr. Lavi left clear instructions with my firm, to be carried out in the event of his death. That certain funds were to be transferred to you, for the benefit of… your son.”

I knew Manny might already have provided for them. Although, with a primary family back in Johannesburg, he might not have. I didn’t care. That wasn’t the point.

The little boy ran over from his grandmother. He must have gotten spooked seeing his mother talking to a stranger. His arms were outstretched and he was saying, “Mama, Mama.”

The woman picked him up with some effort and he clutched her tightly. He had regressed, I noted, from the trauma of the news he must have just received. That’s normal, I told myself. That’s normal.

She shook her head. “Funds?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes. From Mr. Lavi’s estate. Here.”

I went to hand her the attaché, but she couldn’t take it with the boy in her arms.

I felt oddly light-headed. Maybe it was the heat, the humidity.

“This is yours,” I said, setting the case down in front of her. I cleared my throat again. “I hope… my firm hopes it will be helpful. And I am very sorry for your loss.”

The boy started to cry weakly. The woman stroked his back. I swallowed, bowed my head again, and turned to walk back to the car.

Christ, I almost felt sick. Yeah, it must have been the heat. I got in the car. As we drove away I looked back. They were all watching me.

We drove past the paddies, the indifferent farm animals. I sat slumped in the seat. In my head, the boy cried out, Mama, Mama, again and again, and I thought I might never stop hearing his voice.

We drove. The potholes in the road felt like craters.

“Stop,” I said to the driver. “Stop the car.”

He pulled over to the side of the dirt road. I opened the door and stumbled out, barely making it in time. I clutched the side of the door and leaned forward and everything inside me came up, everything. Tears were streaming down my face and snot was running out of my nose and I felt like my stomach itself might tear loose from its moorings and make its way onto the potholed road I stood on.

Finally it subsided. I stood for a moment, sucking air, then wiped my face, spat, and got back in the car. The driver asked me if I was all right. I nodded. It was the climate, I said. You’d think I’d be used to it, but I’m not.

I had him take me to the airport. I didn’t know where I would go from there. Wherever it was, I knew that everything I’ve done, it would all be coming with me.