Rain Storm aka Choke Point

She gives when our attention is distracted

And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions

That the giving famishes the craving…

T. S. ELIOT, Gerontion

10

THE TICKET I had bought to get from Osaka to Washington was a round-trip. One-ways attract unnecessary attention, especially post-September 11. When I’d left I wasn’t sure that I’d be using the return, but I certainly had a reason now, and the morning after my chat with Crawley I caught a return flight from Dulles.

I slept well over the Pacific, all the way to the pre-landing announcements, the flight attendants having kindly respected my wish not to be wakened, even for champagne and caviar service. Ah, first class.

I took the rapito, the Rapid Transport train, from Kansai International Airport to Namba’s Nankai station in south Osaka. My ticket was for a window seat, and during the thirty-minute journey from airport to terminal station I sat and stared past my reflection in the glass. A sliver of sun had broken through the clouds at the edge of the horizon, shining like a sepia spotlight through an otherwise gray and undifferentiated firmament, and in the fading moments of the day I looked on at the scenes without, scenes that passed before me as disconnected and mute as images in a silent film. A rice paddy in the distance, tended by a lone woman who seemed lost in its sodden expanse. A man tiredly pedaling a bicycle, his dark suit seeming almost to sag from his frame as though wanting nothing more than to cease this purposeless forward momentum and succumb to gravity’s heavy embrace. A child with a yellow knapsack paused before the lowered gate of the rapito railroad crossing, perhaps on his way to a juku, or cram school, which would stuff his head with facts for the next dozen years until it was time for them to be disgorged for college entrance exams, watching the passing train with an odd stoicism, as though aware of what the future held for him and already resigned to its weight.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone in Namba. I told him to meet me that night, that he could find details on the bulletin board. I uploaded the necessary information from an Internet café. The Nozomi bullet train would take him about two and a half hours, and I expected he would leave quickly after getting my message.

I checked the bulletin board I had set up for Delilah, and was mildly surprised to find a message from her: Call me. There was a phone number.

I used it. The call might be traced back to Osaka, but I wasn’t going to be in town long enough for it to matter.

“Allo,” I heard her say.

“Hey,” I answered.

“Hey. Thanks for calling.”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to tell you that it’s almost done. To ask you to be patient for just a little while longer.”

That was smart. She must have been concerned that, if I didn’t hear from her, I might get frustrated. That I might decide she was playing me and go after Belghazi unilaterally again. And better to hear my voice, and let me hear hers, rather than a dry text message left floating in cyberspace.

“How much longer?”

“A day. Maybe two. It’ll be worth it, you’ll see.”

I wondered for a moment, again, about the elevator at the Macau Mandarin Oriental. After what had happened subsequently, and after what I’d learned, my gut said that she hadn’t been part of that attempt on me, that in fact she had tried to warn me, as she had claimed. What I couldn’t understand was why. From her perspective, operationally, a warning would have been counterproductive.

I hated a loose end like that. But I couldn’t make sense of it. I’d chew it over another time.

“Okay,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“Can I reach you at this number?”

“No. Not after this.”

I paused, then said, “All right, then. Good luck.”

“And you.” She clicked off.

A LITTLE UNDER four hours later Kanezaki and I were sitting in Ashoka, a chain Indian restaurant in the Umeda underground mall that I had come to like during my time in Osaka. I had employed the usual security procedures beforehand and there had been no problems.

“You were right,” I told him over Tandoor Murgh and Keema Naan and Panjabi Lassis. “There was a leak on your side. Crawley.”

“How do you know?”

The question was straightforward and I detected no sign of suspicion behind it. Apparently he hadn’t yet learned of Crawley’s recent demise. When he did, he would come to his own conclusions. I saw no advantage in having him hear it from me.

“Your NE Division has a relationship with Belghazi,” I said. “Belghazi gives them information about other people’s deals, particularly in the WMD trade, and in return they protect him in a variety of ways, including overseeing transshipments through Hong Kong.”

“Holy shit, how the hell did you learn this?”

I shrugged. “You’re telling me you didn’t know?”

“I’ve discovered a few things since we last spoke,” he said, looking at me. “But I’ve got insider access, and you don’t. Which is why I’m asking.”

I smiled. “Forget about how. Call it ‘sources and methods.’ What matters is what-and who.”

“Who-”

“There’s a CIA NOC, based in Hong Kong, attached to the CTC, formerly with NE Division. He’s the connection between Belghazi and Crawley.”

I watched him closely, looking for a reaction. I didn’t see anything.

“You know about the NOC?” I asked.

He nodded. “Of course.”

“All right. My guess is, he’s part of the reason that Belghazi seems to enjoy Macau so much. Belghazi likes to handle transfers in Hong Kong, where the CIA can help with the heavy lifting. Macau is right next door.”

“You’re saying it’s not the gambling?”

I shrugged. “I’m sure he loves gambling. But he also knows that analysts focus on things like gambling when they’re creating profiles. He knows that, if his movements are tracked to Macau, his profilers will just say, ‘Ah, it’s the gambling,’ without probing deeper. He’s using your expectations about his known habits to obscure whatever his real purpose is. Feeding you exactly what he wants you to eat, knowing you’ve already got a taste for it.”

We were silent for a long moment, during which Kanezaki drummed his fingers on the table and ignored his food. Then he said, “You’re right.”

“I know.”

He shook his head. “What I mean is, last time we met, when you suggested that Macau might not be a side trip for Belghazi, but maybe the main point, it got me thinking. I did some checking. Now, I told you that we’ve got a fix on Belghazi’s sat phone. The units he uses are part of a low-earth-orbit network. People like the LEO networks because reception is clear and because the satellites’ proximity to earth means reduced signal latency, but the networks are less secure.”

“Because multiple satellites are picking up the signal?”

“Exactly. So you can always triangulate. It’s not supposed to be possible because the signals are digitized and encrypted-it’s like, okay, you know there’s a needle in the haystack, but that’s a far cry from actually being able to find the needle. But, trust me, if you use one of those phones, we can find you.”

I thought for a moment. “You said ‘units.’ Has Belghazi switched phones recently?”

“Yeah, he has.”

“I thought he might. He must have decided that the satellite phone was how he got tracked to Macau. What would the NOC have told him?”

“Probably to get a new phone.”

“But you’re able to track him anyway?”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid that would come under the heading of ‘sources and methods.’ ”

“What, have you got the NSA listening in for a digital voice imprint?”

He shook his head again. All right, I wasn’t going to get the specifics. “Still think I’m paranoid for not using a cell phone?” I asked.

He smiled. “Maybe not. Anyway, I plotted out the coordinates of every Asian location to which we’ve tracked Belghazi’s phone calls during the last two years. What you get looks like a semirandom collection of dots. Except for one place.”

“Yes?”

“Three times in the last year, Belghazi has shown up at Kwai Chung in Hong Kong.”

“The container port?”

“Yeah. Always at Container Terminal Nine, the new one on Tsing Li island. He makes a call from inside. Always between two and four in the morning.”

“How’s he getting in there?” I asking, thinking out loud. “It’s got to be a secure facility.”

“I wondered the same thing. I thought, maybe he’s got an accomplice in there, a bribed Customs guy, night watchman, something like that. That’s why always the same terminal. I did a little research. And I found out something interesting.”

“Yes?”

“There’s an access agent. Hong Kong Chinese, lives in the New Territories, works at Kwai Chung. Transferred to Terminal Nine when it came online in July 2003. Belghazi’s first visit there was in August of the same year.”

“Who was the recruiting officer?”

He looked at me. “The NOC.”

I thought for a moment. I didn’t see Dox in that role. He was a shooter, not a recruiter. But I couldn’t be sure.

“So the NOC has the relationship with the port employee,” I said. “He tells Belghazi, ‘Hey, you can ship through Hong Kong, I’ve got the local connections to make sure it all goes smoothly.’ A little service from your friendly neighborhood CIA officer in exchange for information on WMD precursors or whatever.”

He nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“What does the port guy do, do you think?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been doing a ton of research on container shipping, though, and my guess is that this guy provides the physical access, shows Belghazi and the buyer or seller the merchandise in one of the containers, then takes care of the necessary EDI information to conceal the true origins and nature of the container cargo in question.”

“ ‘EDI?’ ”

“Electronic Data Interchange. Kwai Chung is the most heavily computerized container shipping terminal in the world. If the port guy has access to the EDI system and the physical containers, presumably he could change the necessary identification codes, country/size/ type codes, etcetera, and ensure that the cargo in the container gets sent to wherever Belghazi wants it to go.”

I thought for a moment. “Where is Belghazi now?”

“Still in Macau.” He looked at me. “You learn anything new about the woman? The blonde?”

Delilah. Well, there had been that message, advising me that the wait was almost over. But of course it wouldn’t do to mention any of that to Kanezaki.

“Nothing,” I said. “You?”

He shook his head.

“What about Belghazi?” I asked. “Any calls from Terminal Nine?”

“Not yet.”

“All right, then, we might still have a shot at him.” Without pausing, making the request sound as smooth and obvious as possible, I said, “I’ll need the names and particulars of the NOC and the access agent.”

He shook his head. “No. No way.”

Well, that didn’t work. I looked at him. “Are you having second thoughts about this op?”

He shook his head again.

“Because you know now that there are people in your organization who find Belghazi useful, who want him to stay healthy.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know what game they’re playing. I have my mandate, and my mandate is to have him removed. And knowing who he is, that mandate makes sense to me. If someone wants to disabuse me, they’ll damn well have to be explicit about it.”

“Good. I thought you were wavering there for a second.”

“It’s not wavering. It’s just-”

“Look, I can’t get to Belghazi directly anymore, okay? He’s seen my face, he knows he’s being hunted, he’ll be taking extra precautions. My only realistic hope of getting close is through a third party. Like one of the ones you just mentioned.”

“I understand what you’re saying. But I can’t give you the name of a CIA officer-especially a NOC-or the name of an asset. I’ve crossed a lot of lines with you, it’s true, but I’m not crossing that one.”

I could tell by his voice and his expression-and by recent experience with Crawley, who had refused to talk even in extremis-that he wasn’t going to tell me what I wanted to know. It would be useless to ask about Dox. Even if I asked, I wouldn’t be able to trust his answer.

I thought for a moment, and it occurred to me that there might still be a way to do Belghazi, even without the information Kanezaki was determined to hold back. It might involve calling off the wait that Delilah was counting on, but business is business.

“All right, let’s go back to the beginning,” I said. “What’s the purpose of the ‘natural causes’ requirement with regard to Belghazi, anyway?”

He shrugged. “Well, originally, I was told that it had to look natural because Belghazi has protectors in other intelligence services. But now-”

“Now it seems that the more important objective was to avoid offending protectors in your intelligence service.”

“Yeah, I know. Life at the CIA is funny that way.”

“I told you the right hand and the left aren’t exactly working in perfect harmony with you guys.”

“I didn’t disagree.”

“And now, it seems, the right hand has learned that the left has taken a contract out on Belghazi.”

He nodded. “So it seems.”

“But they haven’t complained to you. They haven’t gone through channels. You’ve suggested they’re afraid to do that.”

“What are you getting at?”

I shrugged. “Maybe you were being overly strict in your interpretation of just how ‘natural’ Belghazi’s demise needed to be. Because, if for whatever reason your people aren’t in a position to complain about the existence of a contract on Belghazi, maybe they’re not in a position to complain if the contract gets carried out.”

He looked away and nodded, rubbing his chin.

I said, “I mean, the point of the ‘natural’ requirement is to avoid blame, right? Plausible deniability, that kind of thing?”

“What you and I agreed on involved a bit more than just plausible deniability,” he said, shaking his head. “More like, Belghazi’s death would happen in such a way that uncomfortable questions would never even get asked. There would be nothing to have to deny.”

“Sure. But we’ve learned a few things since we had that conversation, haven’t we? For example, we’ve learned that Belghazi seems to be in Hong Kong to oversee one of his arms transfers. You’ve got multiple parties involved-buyer, seller, middleman, bought-off port official, CIA overseer-and a lot of money changing hands.”

He looked at me, and his mouth started to turn up into a smile. “Yes, that’s true. A lot of players, a lot of money.”

“Lots of potential for… complications.”

His smile broadened. “And people to get greedy.”

“Right,” I said. “What does a bodyguard make a year? Not much, I’ll tell you that. And he’s spending all that time with Belghazi, securing Belghazi’s hotel suites and then returning to his own tiny room, it’s like watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from the inside of a slum. He gets resentful, he gets jealous. He gets-”

“He gets greedy. And meanwhile he’s learning Belghazi’s plans-who he’s meeting with, where and when.”

“Maybe even… how much?” I said, raising my eyebrows slightly.

He nodded. “Yeah, he might learn that, too.”

“He’s the bodyguard, he accompanies Belghazi everywhere, including on those trips to Kwai Chung Container Terminal Nine. As the money is changing hands-”

“He shoots Belghazi, maybe a few other people, grabs the cash, hightails it.”

“See? You can’t trust anyone these days, not even your own bodyguards. And the way it goes down, both the bodyguard and the money are missing. It’s obvious what happened and who did it. No uncomfortable questions for anyone else.”

“What happens to the bodyguard?”

I shrugged. “I doubt he would be found afterward. I would expect him to just… disappear.”

“And the money?”

I smiled. “I doubt that would get found, either.”

He shook his head. “You’re a devious bastard.”

“Thank you.”

“I don’t think I meant it as a compliment.”

“So? It goes down the way I just described, that’s natural enough for our purposes?”

There was a pause, then he said, “It’s not what we agreed on.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, finding myself a little tired of his “this is a difficult concession” reflex.

“We didn’t agree on my getting ratted out by your own people, either,” I said, feeling like a rug merchant. “Under the circumstances, I ought to charge you double the original price. In fact, I think I will.”

“Okay, I see your point.”

“All right, then? What I’ve proposed, it’s natural enough?”

He paused for a moment, then nodded. “It’s natural enough.”

I STILL HAD my doubts about Dox, about his role in this. About who the NOC was. But I knew I couldn’t do Belghazi alone anymore. Delilah had been right about that. To make this work, I needed help, and I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. And I couldn’t just walk away, either. Belghazi had too much incentive to stay after me until he was sure I was gone for good.

And keeping Dox close would give me an opportunity to test him, maybe answer my questions indirectly. If I saw something I didn’t like, I could always abort, reevaluate, come up with a new plan.

I called him on his cell phone. “Hello,” he said, and it felt strangely good to hear his booming voice. He’s all right, I told myself, and maybe he was.

“Are you still around?” I asked.

There was a pause, during which I imagined him grinning. I heard him say, “Depends on what you mean by ‘around.’ I’m in the area again, if that’s what you mean.”

“How soon can you be back in the same place we met last time?”

Another pause. “I can be there tomorrow, if you need me.”

“I do. Same time as last time?”

“I’ll see you then.”

I hung up and, out of habit, wiped down the phone. Then I went to an Internet café for a bit of research on Hong Kong container shipping.

THE NEXT MORNING I caught a plane to Hong Kong. I sat in a coffee shop overlooking the restaurant where Dox and I had last eaten. He showed up an hour later, alone. I waited ten minutes, then went to join him.

“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he told me, as I sat down.

“I missed you,” I said.

He laughed. “You take care of our friend Mr. Crawley?”

I looked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He laughed again. “All right, all right, I was just asking. May he rest in peace.”

A waitress came over. “You know what you want?” I asked him.

“Can you get me some more of that caterpillar soup?”

“Glad you’ve developed a taste for it.”

“Well, the taste is all right, sure. But it’s the effects I really admire. Last time we ate here, that night, I showed two Thai ladies what love with Dox is all about. By the time the sun came up they were practically begging for mercy.”

“I’m sure they were.”

I ordered the food and looked at him. “How are your sniping skills?” I asked.

He scowled as though offended. “Shoot, partner, now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings, asking a question like that. You know marine snipers are the best in the world.”

“What I mean is, you’ve been staying in shape?”

He smiled. “Well, let’s just say that our friends at Christians In Action didn’t hire me exclusively for my charm, considerable though it is.”

“Do you have access to a rifle?”

“ ‘Access’? Last job I did, I wanted to try out the new M-40A3. I had one waiting for me the next day, with a matching ANPVS-10 night scope, no questions asked.”

“How’d you like it?”

“Liked it a lot. It’s a little heavier than the M-40A1, but I like the adjustable cheek piece and the recoil pad on the butt stock.”

“You used it in field conditions?”

He smiled. “With an M118LR round, chambered in 7.62mm. Drilled a certain malefactor through the eye in the middle of the night at four hundred yards. Nothing like seeing the pink mist to make a sniper feel alive, I’ll tell you. Although in the night scope, it was more green than pink.”

I nodded, satisfied. I’d seen some of Dox’s exploits in Afghanistan. I knew he might enjoy exaggerating his prowess with women, but when it came to sniping, he was as good as he said.

“I’ve been on a job that’s gotten more difficult as it’s progressed,” I said. “To finish it, I’m going to need help. If you’re interested, I’ll split the fee with you-two hundred thousand U.S., one hundred thousand each.”

“Two hundred thousand? They’re paying you that much? Shit, I’ve been getting shortchanged. I need to have a talk with that damn Kanezaki.”

“Plus there might be some additional cash involved, although I don’t think we’ll know how much until the time comes.”

“Well, I’m interested, all right. Tell me more.”

I told him what he needed to know about Belghazi, the NOC, and the Hong Kong container port connection. He didn’t react in any way that would have indicated prior knowledge or involvement, but you can’t prove a negative, as they say.

“Well, first thing is, I need to see the terrain,” he told me. “You say there’s only one entrance to the terminal, that’s where we’re going to hit them, that’s good. But can I get in and out of position without being seen? Will I have concealment? Can I shoot undetected? Will there be a clear line of sight to the target?”

I nodded and pulled out a sheaf of papers from inside my jacket. “These are printouts from the company that runs Container Terminal Nine,” I told him. “They ought to be a good start.”

I handed the papers to him and he started shuffling through them. “My gracious,” he said, pausing at one of the pages, “is this a map of the terminal?”

I smiled. “It’s amazing what you can get on the Web.”

He nodded. “Well this is a nice head start, that’s for sure. But I still need to do a walk-through.”

“I’ve already rented a van. We’ll drive over as soon as you’ve fortified yourself with the caterpillars.”

“It might be less conspicuous if I do the reconnoitering by myself.”

“Yeah, you’re right, they get a lot of enormous, goateed white guys sniffing around Kwai Chung. I’m sure you’ll blend right in.”

He grinned. “Well, that’s a persuasive point you make there, partner.”

KWAI CHUNG and its massive container port are located in the New Territories, a name conferred by the British when they “leased” the area in 1898 and unchanged even after the transfer back to China almost a century later. Although its rolling hills are now obscured by ferroconcrete forests of residential skyscrapers, there’s a timelessness about the place, a slower pace than is to be found on Hong Kong Island a few kilometers to the south, as though the area is gradually emerging from a long agrarian sleep and still suffused with the dreams of what it saw there.

We took Highway 3 north to the container port. Because we couldn’t afford multiple passes of the port facility lest someone notice and get suspicious, we stopped along the way and bought a video camera.

I drove; Dox videotaped. When I took us along Cheung Fi road, the thoroughfare that leads to the Terminal Nine gate, Dox looked to the area opposite and said, “Well, this does look like fine sniping terrain. Fine, fine, fine.”

I glanced over to see what had elicited his reaction, and saw a series of terraced hills, rising to what I estimated to be about one hundred and fifty meters above the road and overlooking the terminal entrance. Some of the hills were wooded, some were grass, some were cleared and home to what looked like partially constructed apartment buildings. Dox would have his pick of ingress and egress routes, cover, concealment, and an unobstructed field of fire. He was right. It was perfect.

We went to a tea shop in Tsim Sha Tsui to talk things over. Dox was pleased about the terrain, but I was uneasy.

“The problem is that our information is limited,” I said. “Kanezaki says he’ll know from Belghazi’s sat phone when Belghazi is on his way to Hong Kong, so we’ll have some warning about that. And the time window is manageable, too-apparently, Belghazi conducts his business at Kwai Chung between oh two hundred and oh four hundred. But we don’t know what he’ll be driving. We don’t know whether he’ll get out outside the gate, or stay in the car and drive in.”

“What do you think he’s been waiting for? He’s been in Macau for you said, what, a week now?”

I shrugged. “Part of it probably really is the gambling. Part of it is the appearance he wants to cultivate for anyone who’s trying to figure out what he’s up to in the region-‘Oh, he’s just there to gamble.’ And maybe part of it has to do with whatever shipment is being handled at Kwai Chung. There might have been some logistical problem along the way, the ship could have been delayed. A lot of things that could have kept him in place longer than he’d originally planned.”

He was quiet for a moment, then said, “There’s another thing. You said he’s a careful man, and that he knows you’re after him so he’s extra nervous. What if he rents an armored vehicle for his little trip to the dockyards? A place like Hong Kong, with all the property magnates and such, would have armored Mercedeses and Bimmers available, I’m sure.”

That was a good point. I thought for a moment. “What about armor piercing ammunition?”

“Well, I could use some, it’s true. A 7.62 AP round will penetrate fifteen millimeters of armor at three hundred meters and take out a hundred and twenty millimeters of Plexiglas, too. But if I start capping these guys with that kind of ordnance, it won’t exactly look like some bodyguard who decided to open up with a pistol from close range. And you said that if it didn’t look like an inside job we might not get paid.”

“We’ve got some flexibility on just how much of an inside job it needs to look like. The main thing is that it should look less like an assassination, and more like an arms deal gone to shit. We’re going to have to play some of the details by ear.”

“Okay, I’m just thinking out loud here.”

“No, that’s good, and you’re right about the armor.” I thought for a minute, then said, “What about two magazines, one with armor piercing, one with standard? You’d only need a few seconds’ warning to switch as circumstances required, right?”

“That’s right, yeah. We could do that.”

I nodded. “All right, let’s break it down. We know that, one morning soon, Belghazi is going to be visiting Container Terminal Nine. It’s not reachable by train or realistically by foot, and the harbor approach is patrolled, so a boat isn’t likely. Meaning we can assume he’ll be coming in a car. The only approach is south along Cheung Fi road. Using that information, what do we need to do to make sure this is Belghazi’s last road trip?”

“Well, the first thing is, we need to stop the car. Once it’s inside the terminal or off Cheung Fi, we lose access to it.”

“Right. Can we count on it stopping in front of the gate?”

He nodded for a moment as though considering. “I can’t imagine the gate would already be open, not in the middle of the night. The car would have to at least pause outside it.”

“Probably, but not definitely. Belghazi could call en route. His contact could be waiting for him with the gate open. In which case he drives right through. Plus, once the car turns in, you’re looking at the vehicle’s rear. If you start shooting but don’t hit the driver, he’ll floor it, blow through the gate, and we’ll lose them.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Well, there’s the approach along Cheung Fi. That’s a quarter mile, so I’d have, say, fifteen seconds to take out the driver there. The problem is-”

“How are you going to know you’ve got the right car.”

“Yeah, I’d hate to take out the pizza delivery man, I really would.”

“So what we need to do is, I’m the spotter, positioned on the slope above Cheung Fi, but close to the road. I’ve got binoculars, I see the car coming. There won’t be much traffic at that hour, and I guarantee you Belghazi will be arriving in something stylish, whether or not it’s armored. It shouldn’t be hard for me to confirm that it’s him.”

“What if the glass is smoked?”

“It might be, I know. But if I see a car like that heading toward Terminal Nine at oh two hundred on the same day Kanezaki tells us Belghazi is on his way, I’ll be confident enough to take out the tires, and maybe the windows, and see what happens next. Also, it’s possible they’ll stop outside the gate, maybe roll down a window. In which case, even if I can’t see what I need to, I might get to hear it. I’m going to ask Kanezaki to send a parabolic mike, compatible with the rest of the communications gear I want-earpieces and lapel mikes.”

“I never used one of those parabolics,” he said. “They really work?”

I nodded. “A good one will bring in conversation from three hundred yards out. The new ones fold up small, too. I’ll be able to talk to you on one channel, then switch over and listen in on whoever arrives, then switch back.”

“All right, so either visual or auditory or both, now you’ve got positive ID.”

“Now I let you know, from my lapel mike straight to your earpiece.”

“At which point-”

“At which point, you take your first clear shot. Any place between where I confirm that the target has arrived and the entry gate. In fact, earlier would be better. If this goes down right in front of the entry gate, we might have terminal security personnel to deal with, too. I don’t want to take out bystanders, and the fewer witnesses, the better, anyway.”

“Makes sense. I start with the driver, then just work my way through.”

“Right. Count on a total of at least three-Belghazi, one bodyguard driving, one bodyguard passenger-but maybe more. And while you’re shooting from up high, I’ll be assaulting on foot with a sidearm. Anyone you’ve missed, I take out at close range.”

He grinned. “Partner, marine snipers don’t miss. By the time you reach the vehicle, all that’ll be left is for you to reach through the shattered glass and retrieve a bag stuffed with cash, all right?”

And all that’ll be left for you to do is take one last shot, I thought. Then the cash will be all yours and you can walk away clean.

I needed to find that opportunity to test him before the main event. I hadn’t managed it yet.

I nodded and said, “Sounds like a plan.”

OUR GEAR ARRIVED the next day. We had contacted Kanezaki independently with our requests for matériel, some of which was for commo gear and all of which was bound for Hong Kong, and he must have suspected that we were working together. But if he had any questions, he didn’t ask. The Agency had moved it all through the diplomatic pouch and had left it in a golf bag at a prearranged dead drop. I had to admit, they could move fast when they wanted to.

Dox had asked for a Heckler & Koch PSG/1, semiautomatic, with a twenty-round magazine, tripod, 6x42mm illuminated mil-dot reticle scope, and integral suppressor. In the same package was a 7.62mm Tokarev for me. Unless Dox had to switch to armor-piercing ammunition, we would both be using frangible rounds, with relatively low penetration power but devastating results at the range from which we would be working.

Dox had been as excited as a kid with a new toy. He took the rifle over to the deserted south side of Hong Kong to take it through its paces. I joined him with the Tokarev and the commo gear. Everything was working fine. I was careful not to give him the opportunity to get downrange of me with the rifle. I still didn’t trust him.

I was checking the bulletin board every hour, but no word from Kanezaki. Not the first day. Not the second.

On the evening of the second day, there was a message waiting for me: “He’s on the way. Call me!”

I wondered if he’d thought to try Dox’s cell phone first. Maybe I’d been wrong, and he hadn’t figured out that this had become a joint operation.

I called him. He picked up immediately. “Moshi moshi,” he said,

“It’s me.”

“You got the message.”

“Of course.”

“ ‘Of course.’ How was I supposed to know, if you didn’t call to confirm? I wish you would just use a damn cell phone. I really do.”

“Do we have to have this conversation again?”

There was a pause, and I wondered whether he was smiling. “No, we don’t,” he said.

“I’ll call you when it’s done.”

There was another pause, then he said, “Ki o nuku na yo.” Be careful.

I smiled. “Arigatou.” I hung up.

I picked up Dox and we drove to Kwai Chung. We parked the van in the parking lot of a nearby residential high-rise, reachable on foot from the hills overlooking the terminal entry gate. Each of us had a key to the van. If something went awry and only one of us made it back to the van, he’d still be able to drive away. We reviewed our plans one last time and separated to take up our positions. Dox was about thirty meters south of the gate, about a hundred and fifty meters distant and at maybe seventy meters elevation. I was thirty meters north, and much closer to the road. Dox would be doing the distance work; I would do the spotting, then follow up at close range. I was lying in a concrete-lined drainage culvert, which would provide cover from Dox’s position in case I’d been wrong about him. But this was still dangerous. He was a sniper, more than capable of stealthily achieving a new position.

At a little after two o’clock, I saw a dark sedan coming down Cheung Fi road. I raised the binoculars-a gorgeous, mechanically stabilized Zeiss 20x60 unit with antireflective lenses-and looked through them. The approaching car was a Lexus LS 430. Two Caucasians in front. The back looked empty, but the car’s interior was too dark to be sure.

I had been half-expecting to see Delilah in the car, although I knew the possibility was remote. She might not even know this meeting was going down tonight. And her role, as I understood it, was such that Belghazi would want to keep her separate from his business transactions. Most of all, I knew she was too specialized and valuable an operator to risk in an operation like a straightforward terrorist takedown.

“That him?” I heard Dox’s voice clearly through the earpiece.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Too much glare on the windows from the streetlights, not enough light in the car. Hold on.”

The car continued past my position. The driver-side backseat was empty. I couldn’t be sure about the passenger side.

“Still no ID,” I said. “Hold on.”

The car pulled into the turnaround in front of the entrance, swung around so that it was facing the street, then backed up to within a couple of meters of the gate. The engine cut out. I watched through the binoculars, trying to imagine what this was, to understand why they weren’t going inside.

The front doors opened and two men got out. They looked Slavic to me: broad cheekbones, wheat-colored hair crew cut, white skin shining unhealthily in the light cast by the shipping facility behind them. They seemed uncomfortable in their dark suits, neither of which fit particularly well, and each was wearing a bright red tie. Ex-military, maybe, men unaccustomed to any uniform that wasn’t battle dress and choosing their ties in overreaction to a previous lifetime of nothing but olive drab. I decided to think of them as Russians. They looked around after exiting the car, and I thought their looks had the feel of an attempt at orientation. They certainly weren’t locals.

“Looks like a drug deal in the making,” I heard Dox say, and he was right, it did have that sort of illicit feel to it. I had expected them to drive into the container port, but it looked like the party was going to happen outside it. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“I think they’re going to do the exchange right here,” I said. “Let’s see if our friend shows, too. As long as the gate stays closed, I’m going to let him pass my position. If he gets out of the car like these guys have done, you’ll have a stationary target and a clearer shot. You’re loaded up with the frangible ammo?”

“Unless you tell me to switch to the AP.”

“Good. Hang tight.”

“Roger that.”

Five minutes later, two more vehicles pulled onto the access road: a white van, followed by a black Mercedes S-class. I glanced over at the previous arrival. The Russians, talking to each other, were smoking cigarettes. The gate was still closed.

“Two more vehicles approaching,” I said.

“Roger that.”

I saw two Arabs in the front seat of the van, neither of whom was the target.

Three men were in the Mercedes. The driver was Arab, and I recognized him as one of Belghazi’s bodyguards from Macau. It looked like there were two men in back, but I couldn’t see well enough to know. Given the circumstances, though, I was reasonably sure about who the passengers were. Adrenaline kicked into my bloodstream.

“I think this is him,” I said. “In the Mercedes. Let’s let him go to the gate, like we said.”

“Roger that.”

The Mercedes stopped in front of the gate and backed in parallel to the Lexus. The van performed the identical procedure, parking so that the Mercedes was in the middle.

“They sure have fine taste in their automobiles,” I heard Dox say.

The van doors opened and two Arabs got out. Three men exited from the Mercedes. One Arab. One white guy. And one half-French, half-Algerian. Belghazi. Bingo.

“He’s here,” I said. “The one who just got out from the passenger-side rear of the Mercedes.”

Belghazi was walking over to the Russians. I watched as they shook hands.

“The one who’s shaking hands now?”

“That one, yeah.”

“Say the word and I’ll drop him.”

“Let’s give them just a few more seconds. I don’t see any money, and I don’t want to have to dig it out of a locked trunk or something.”

“Roger that.”

“Hang on for a second, I’m going to see if I can listen in. Keep him in your sights now.”

“He’s not going anywhere.”

I changed channels so the earpiece would receive from the parabolic mike. The reception was good. The men were exchanging pleasantries, in English. Good to see you, thanks for coming all this way. The two I’d been thinking of as the Russians had heavy accents that might have been Russian. I wasn’t sure.

Belghazi shook the other Russian’s hand. He motioned for the white guy to come over. Even before Belghazi had introduced him, I was pretty sure I knew who he was.

The NOC. Belghazi’s protector. I let out a long breath as I eliminated this angle as a cause of potential untrustworthiness for Dox. This angle only, though. There was still the cash that we expected to be in play, the opportunity that, as he had put it in Rio, “only knocked once.”

“Let me introduce you to our American friend,” Belghazi told the men. “This is Mr. Hilger. He’s here to make sure that we don’t have to worry about problems with the authorities.”

Hilger shook the Russians’ hands. “And how do you do that, Mr. Hilger?” one of the Russians asked.

I looked around. The Russians were on their third or fourth cigarettes. Belghazi’s Arab driver had just lit up. So had the two Arabs from the van. Everyone was obviously a little on edge. Everyone except Belghazi and Hilger.

“I’m fortunate enough to have some useful connections in both the U.S. and Hong Kong SAR governments,” Hilger said, his voice low and reassuring. It didn’t sound like a boast, just a calm response to a reasonable question. “On occasion, I ask those connections if they would be good enough to look the other way while I conduct some business. Tonight is one of those occasions.”

The Russian might have pressed, but Hilger’s self-possession seemed to settle the matter. The Russian nodded. “Cigarette?” he offered, extending a pack.

Hilger shook his head and said, “No, thank you.”

I wanted to hear more. What was being exchanged tonight? Was this the moment Delilah had been waiting for, after which, she had assured me, she would give me the green light and help me get close?

And who were these “Russians”? Were any of these people connected to Nuchi, the Frenchman I had taken out in Macau, of whom Kanezaki claimed to have no knowledge?

Most of all, where was the money?

But at some point, the quest for perfect intelligence becomes an excuse for a failure to act. The situation seemed manageable for the moment, but it could easily change. I didn’t want to delay any longer.

I took two deep breaths and switched back to Dox’s channel.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Sure I am. Been waiting on you, that’s all.”

“Start with Belghazi. Then the white guy who came with him. Then the two white guys from the Lexus. I think they might be Russian. They look military to me, harder targets than Belghazi’s usual retinue.”

“Roger that.”

“Take out as many as you can. The ones you don’t drop are going to figure out the general direction the shots are coming from. Their only cover is the vehicles. When they move around the vehicles to get away from you, their backs will be to me. I’ll close the pincer.”

“Sounds like a plan, buddy. Here we go.”

At that moment, Belghazi, Hilger, and the Russians moved around to the back of the van. I heard Dox say, “Damn, lost my shot.”

“Hold on, I can still see him. They’re just talking. Belghazi is gesturing to the inside of the van. I think they’re talking about transport arrangements, something like that. Give me a second, I’m going to switch over again.”

“Roger that.”

The Russian was nodding his head as though satisfied with whatever Belghazi had explained to him. I watched Belghazi take out his satellite phone. I switched channels in time to hear him say, “We’re ready for the cargo, please. Thank you.”

He must have been talking to his contact inside. This wasn’t what I had been expecting. I had thought the meeting would be just to inspect whatever the cargo was, confirm its contents, and exchange money. The port guy would take care of bills of lading and country of origin certifications and the other minutiae of Kwai Chung’s EDI, then send the cargo off to its ultimate buyer. But it seemed that the goods were going to change hands right here.

And Belghazi had arrived with the van. I had assumed that he would be selling the cargo. Now I wondered if tonight he wasn’t the buyer. I was fine either way. But I did want to know where that damn money was.

The Russians, it seemed, shared my concern. “You have the cash?” one of them asked Belghazi.

Belghazi nodded. He said something in Arabic to his driver, who walked over to the back of the Mercedes, where he retrieved a large black duffel bag from the trunk. He carried it back behind the van, set it on the ground, and unzipped it. It was stuffed with greenbacks.

“Would you like to count it?” Belghazi asked.

The Russian smiled. “It would take a long time to count five million dollars.”

Holy shit, I thought, what are these guys selling?

“I doubt you would find it boring, though,” Belghazi said, and they all laughed.

Come on, fuckers, move out from behind that van, I thought. But they all stayed put.

Five minutes went by. They all watched the gate. No one spoke. I switched back to Dox.

“They’re still behind the van,” I said.

“I figured. I’d have seen them if they’d gone anywhere else.”

“Did you see that duffel bag?” I asked.

“Sure did. What’s in it?”

“I’m reluctant to tell you. It might affect your shooting.”

“Partner, nothing affects my shooting. When I’m looking through this scope, I could be getting a blow job and perineum massage from midget twins and I wouldn’t even know it.”

“Excuse me for a second. I need to drive a hot poker through my mind’s eye.”

He chuckled. “Well, what’s in the bag?”

“Five million U.S., it sounds like.”

“Well, that’s good,” he said. His tone was soft and even, and I realized he was telling the truth: when he was in sniping mode, he wasn’t going to be distracted by anything not directly related to the task at hand.

A Chinese man on a powered hand truck was pulling up to the gate. Four large metal crates were stacked across the vehicle’s tines.

“They’re going to open the gate,” I told Dox. “But I don’t think anyone is going inside. They’re going to load those crates into the van. Then the Russians are going to pick up the duffel bag and everyone will go back to his car. That’s our moment.”

“Roger that.”

The gate opened and the hand truck came through. The driver lowered the crates into the van, backed out, then stepped off the vehicle. Belghazi and one of the Russians climbed into the van.

“I think they’re inspecting whatever’s in the crates,” I said. “I can’t see inside the van. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Roger that.”

A minute later, Belghazi and the Russian came out of the van. They were smiling. Belghazi reached inside his jacket and handed a large envelope to the hand truck driver. The man nodded, got on the hand truck, and went back through the gate, which closed behind him.

One of the Russians picked up the duffel bag and zipped it shut. He shouldered it, then extended his hand to Belghazi. They smiled and shook. Everyone seemed to relax: the deal was done, money exchanged for merchandise, no unpleasant surprises.

Everyone, that is, but Belghazi’s driver, the bodyguard who had carried the duffel bag over from the Mercedes. He was fidgeting, looking from one face to the next. Despite the coolness of the night I could see beads of perspiration on his forehead through the Zeiss binoculars.

No one else seemed to notice. They’d all been worried about so many things-betrayal, the law, problems with the merchandise, problems with payment-none of which had happened. It was natural that their guards were down now, if only for a moment.

Belghazi noticed first. He glanced over at the bodyguard, and his brow furrowed. He said something. With the earpiece switched to Dox I couldn’t hear what. For a second, maybe less, an electric tension seemed to build.

I could see Belghazi getting ready to do something, his center of gravity dropping, his legs coiling beneath him. His instincts were excellent, perhaps dulled just slightly this one time because the source of the problem was a bodyguard, a direction from which he hadn’t expected trouble to come.

Hilger looked over at the bodyguard, too. And, possessing a set of sharp instincts of his own but without the personal relationship that had perhaps fractionally slowed Belghazi’s own reaction, he shot his hand toward the inside of his jacket.

But too late. The bodyguard had started his own move a second earlier. By the time Hilger’s hand had disappeared under his jacket, the bodyguard had reached into his rear waistband and withdrawn a pistol. He pointed it at Hilger and said something.

Everyone froze. Hilger slowly removed his hand from inside his jacket. It was empty.

Belghazi was looking at the bodyguard, his expression incredulous. He shouted something.

“Holy shit,” I said to Dox. “The bodyguard just pulled a gun on Belghazi.”

“Say what?”

“I think the inside job we were going to simulate is happening for real.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I want to hear what they’re saying. But if Belghazi shows his head, make sure you drop him. No more chances.”

“Roger that.”

I switched over. Belghazi was yelling at the bodyguard in Arabic, cursing him, from the tone. The bodyguard was yelling back, gesturing with the gun, pointing it from man to man. Everyone else seemed frozen.

“Achille, can you tell me what he’s saying, please,” Hilger said to Belghazi, the words slow and calm. “I don’t speak Arabic.”

“Yes, what in fuck is going on here!” one of the Russians added loudly.

“Take out your guns!” the bodyguard shouted. “Slowly! Put them on the ground! Slowly, slowly, or I will shoot you!”

Belghazi never took his eyes from his man. His lips had pulled back from his teeth, and his body was coiled like a panther about to pounce. It seemed that only the gun prevented him.

“He says that he is stealing the shipment,” he said. Then he let out another hot stream of Arabic.

“Guns on ground!” the bodyguard yelled. “This is the last time I ask!”

The men did as he said. Each of them removed a pistol from a waistband or shoulder holster and slowly placed it on the ground.

“Now hands in the air! Hands in the air!” the bodyguard yelled. Everyone complied.

“Now kick the guns forward. Kick them!” Again, everyone complied.

The bodyguard turned his head to the Russians, but didn’t take his eyes from Belghazi. “I am very sorry about this,” he said in heavily accented English. “Very sorry. We tried to buy the missiles from you. But you wouldn’t sell them.”

“Who in fuck is ‘we’?” the Russian spat.

“It doesn’t matter,” the bodyguard said. “What matters is, we offered you money, and you told us you already had a buyer-Belghazi. We offered to pay you more! But you wouldn’t listen.”

“Because we know this man, we have business with this man,” the Russian said. “With motherfucker we don’t know, bullshit like this! You see?”

Belghazi let out another stream of Arabic abuse. Hilger said, “Achille, please, I need to know what’s going on. Did he say ‘missiles’?”

Belghazi flexed his hands open and closed, as though trying to burn off some surfeit of energy that would otherwise consume him. “Did you send that French piece of shit to Macau?” he said to the bodyguard. “It was you, wasn’t it.”

The man nodded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Belghazi, very sorry. But you were the only reason these men wouldn’t sell us the Alazans.”

Alazans? I thought.

“ ‘Us.’ Who is us?”

The man shook his head.

Belghazi threw up his hands and laughed. The laugh sounded dangerous, almost mad. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter! Because I would have sold you the Alazans! All you had to do was ask!”

The man shook his head again. “These are special, you know that, you know you would have quadrupled the price. Also you would have sold them off in small numbers to many buyers. But we need them all. We had to buy direct, and you were in the way. I’m sorry.”

Belghazi said, “How are you going to move this merchandise off Hong Kong without my help, hmm?”

The bodyguard nodded almost sympathetically, as though he regretted putting his putative employer in such an embarrassing position. “We have made our own arrangements for the Alazans. Everything is taken care of.”

Hilger said, “Achille, what are ‘Alazans,’ please? Are there missiles in that crate?”

Belghazi shrugged. He said, “Jim, don’t ask me questions you don’t want answered, all right?”

“You told me this was another small arms shipment,” Hilger said, more to himself than to Belghazi. I could imagine the workings of his mind: Five million sounded like way too much. I should have known right there something was rotten in Denmark. Damn it, these guys are trying to move some very bad shit. I’ve been had.

The bodyguard turned his head to the Russians and, keeping his eyes on Belghazi, said, “We don’t want the money. You can keep it, it’s yours. It’s the same amount we would have paid you, if you had trusted us. Maybe you will be able to trust us next time, because now we have ‘done business,’ as you say.”

“We keep money?” one of the Russians said.

The man nodded. “All we want is the Alazans. And, for next time, your goodwill.”

I wondered if the man was telling the truth. He might have been bluffing, holding out hope for the Russians as a way of persuading them to acquiesce in what was happening. Even if he was sincere at the moment, though, the Russians would have been fools to trust him. The psychology of a criminal who suddenly realizes his total dominion over another human life is rarely stable. His ambitions grow, his original aims change. A nervous armed robber, seeing his victims cowering before him, realizes that not only can he rob these people, he can do anything to them, and what started as a simple armed robbery escalates to sadism, often to rape. So if this went on for another minute or so, I could imagine the bodyguard thinking, Why shouldn’t I take that five million? It’s for a worthy cause.. . at which point he might also decide that it would be best not to leave witnesses, or anyone who might bear a grudge.

Hilger was watching the bodyguard carefully, his expression somehow dubious, and I thought he might be as acquainted with these less savory aspects of human psychology as I. In which case, I doubted he would remain passive for too much longer.

Also, he had seemed distinctly unhappy to learn that this shipment contained something other than small arms. I wondered if he had decided to try to do something about that.

The Russians started talking to each other, and I realized I had been right: they were using Russian. But again I wasn’t sure of the accent. Were they Ukrainians? Belorussians? Or of some other group in the region?

I watched through the binoculars, amazed. With just a little luck, this really could go perfectly. The bodyguard executes the six men. Dox drops him as he goes to get in the van. Or they all start shooting at each other, and Dox and I take out the “survivors.” I grab the duffel bag and we drive off.

But even as I imagined it, I knew it was too good to be true. Because I saw a new complication: a silver Toyota Camry, approaching from the south end of the access road. Now what? I thought.

The bodyguard glanced over at the approaching car, then back to the men in front of him. He didn’t seem surprised; in fact, I thought I saw a little relief in his expression. I had a feeling the occupants of the car were his compatriots, perhaps having been signaled by the bodyguard through some electronic means that it was time for them to make their appearance.

Hilger was watching closely. I imagined him thinking: He can’t start shooting now because it’s six against one. He couldn’t drop us all before someone rushed him. But if the men in that car are with him, when they get here we’re all dead.

He was going to make his move before then. I could feel it.

“Well, gentlemen,” one of the Russians said, “we brought Alazans, no? They are yours now. So this… not our problem.”

Smart. He wasn’t going to wait for that car, either. He picked up the duffel bag and nodded to his companion. They started walking to their car.

The bodyguard stepped back a few paces to maintain his ability to watch all the players, but he made no move to interfere with the Russians’ departure. The one with the bag started to smile. Then his head exploded.

Maybe the bodyguard was willing to see that five million go. But Dox wasn’t.

The bodyguard’s mouth dropped open. And in that instant of his surprise and distraction, Hilger dropped down to one knee, drew a pistol free from an ankle holster, and shot him in the stomach. The man staggered backward and twisted around. Hilger shot again, and again. The bodyguard dove to the side of the car and I couldn’t tell if Hilger’s subsequent shots had hit home.

Apparently not. I saw muzzle fire come from under the car, from the bodyguard’s position.

The second Russian grabbed the bag and started to dash for the Lexus. He took exactly two steps before Dox quietly blew his head off.

Belghazi jumped into the back of the van. I heard the doors slam behind him.

Hilger moved to the front of the van and pointed his pistol at the driver-side window. I thought, Shit, he’s going to drop Belghazi, his own asset. Remind me not to cross this guy unless I really need to.

The Toyota screeched into the turnaround. I heard shots and saw muzzle flashes from the passenger-side window, explosions of dust in the dirt around Hilger and Belghazi’s other men. The two Arabs dove behind the van. Hilger, still on one knee, turned from the van, took his gun hand in his free hand and coolly fired a half dozen shots, all of which hit the car. Either he hit the driver or the man panicked under the hail of gunfire, because a second later the car swerved and smashed into the concrete abutment on its right. It spun a hundred and eighty degrees and screeched backward along the abutment, its side throwing sparks into the air. A second after it had come to a stop, the driver-side door opened and a man jumped out. Another Arab. He knelt behind the door and started firing a pistol in Hilger’s direction.

Hilger dove to the side of the van, seeking cover there. But there was none to be had. The van’s engine roared to life, and it lurched forward. Belghazi must have scuttled forward, into the driver’s seat. Hilger shot at its side, but apparently without effect.

I switched back to Dox’s channel. “Take the shot!” I hissed.

“He’s keeping down, I don’t have a shot,” I heard Dox say. Amid the gunfire and confusion, his voice was almost supernaturally calm. He was in his sniping zone.

“Then take out the tires!” I said.

A second passed. The van was pulling even with my position. I was going to have to try to take out the tires myself. From this distance and with only a pistol, I wasn’t optimistic about my chances. And my fire would alert everyone to my position.

But there was no need. The front passenger tire exploded and the van lurched to the left. The rear followed a second later, and the van swerved hard to the right. It crashed through the container port’s chain-link fence and slammed into a stack of containers about ten meters beyond. The containers, stacked five high, tumbled down on the roof, coming to rest behind the van and to the sides.

“Lost the shot,” I heard Dox say. “Can’t see past those containers.”

“Cover me,” I said. I doubted that anyone caught up in the firefight would notice me stealing across the road thirty meters north of their position, but I wanted backup just in case. I eased to my feet and scrambled down the embankment, my pistol out. I crossed the street in a crouch and ducked through the hole the van had punched in the fence.

Once inside, I slowed down and moved more cautiously. I held the gun in my right hand, the barrel angled down slightly, my wrist pressed tight against my solar plexus. My left hand was at chin level and further out from my body, where it could deflect an attack and keep Belghazi away from the gun if he sprang in suddenly.

The street was well lit, and the container area was dark by comparison. My eyes weren’t fully adjusted. The van was obscured by the containers that had fallen around it. I couldn’t see the driver-side door.

I moved up slowly, inching forward, my eyes scanning left and right, the gun tracking my searching vision. Scan and breathe. Front foot down. Slide forward. Pause. Check position. Again.

Belghazi’s eyes wouldn’t be any better adjusted than mine, but I knew the streetlights were backlighting me, exposing my position. I needed to move into the dark. I started to circle to my left.

Something hit me in the left ribs like a battering ram, finding its mark between my chin-level free hand and the stomach-level gun. There was an explosion of pain and I went flying backward. As I hit the ground I could hear Delilah’s voice: With his kicks he can break individual ribs.

Or maybe three or four at a time.

My body did a judo ukemi breakfall of its own accord, a quarter century of muscle memory taking over without any input from my conscious mind. The breakfall distributed the impact and saved me from further damage. Lying on my back now, I tried to bring the gun up to where I thought he would be, but he had already moved in. His foot blurred off his chambered hip in some sort of fouette or spiral kick and the gun blew out of my hand. I felt the shock up to my shoulder.

He reached inside his jacket. What he pulled out flashed in the lights reflected from the street and I realized razor, just as Delilah had warned me.

I brought my legs up to try to kick him away, and was surprised to see him take a step back. I thought, He knows your background, he’s being careful about closing, even with the razor, but then I saw him wiping blood from his eyes and realized the pause was driven more by necessity than by tactics. He must have gotten smacked around when the van hit the containers.

He swayed for a second, and in that second I rolled backward and sprang to my feet. I felt a hot stab in the ribs where he had nailed me and thought, If I get out of this, I will carry a blade, I don’t give a shit about all the good reasons not to.

I took two more steps back to buy a little distance, then glanced down at the ground. I didn’t see the gun. There were too many shadows, and too much junk lying around: cracked wooden pallets, container doors, sections of chain-link fence. To my right was a pile of what looked like oversized metal hubcaps. I swept one up, liking its heft. If there had been a handle on it, I might have used it as a shield. Instead, I slung it like a Frisbee. It hissed through the air straight for Belghazi’s midsection. He jumped left and it sailed past him. Damn, even with the head injury, he was light on his feet, more like a dancer than a typical kickboxer. He started to move toward me and I snatched up another of the metal disks, seeing as I did so that after two more I would be out of ammo. I sent it flying. He dodged again. I grabbed the third and fourth and flung them rapid-fire. The first went high and he managed to duck under it. But the duck cost him his mobility, and he couldn’t get out of the way of the next one, which was heading straight for his head. He raised his razor hand to protect himself and the disk slammed into it, knocking it back into his head. I saw the razor tumble out of his grip and felt a rush of satisfaction.

He stood up and glanced down, and I immediately took two long steps toward him. He looked up at me, knowing that he wasn’t going to have time to grope for and recover the weapon, and we stood facing each other for a moment, each of us breathing hard. He hitched his pants up slightly, creating a little more freedom of movement for his legs. That’s it, I thought. Give me one of those fucking legs. I promise to give it back when I’m done with it.

I had to be careful, though. His physical skills and toughness were obvious, but more than that I expected his tactics to be sound, too. Old-style savateurs practice what they call malice, or dirty fighting, using improvised weapons, deception, anything to get the job done. It becomes a mind-set, a mind-set with which I am firsthand familiar. I expected that Belghazi would be equally so.

I circled left, my hands up in a boxer’s stance. He did the same, his hands held lower, his posture looser, again moving fluidly, light on his feet. Of course I had no intention of boxing with him or otherwise trying to engage him at a distance. That was his game, not mine. But if I offered him a familiar appearance, say, the appearance of the kind of opponent he was accustomed to facing in the gym and in the ring, his body might automatically respond to the recognizable stimuli, much as mine had done a moment earlier when I had landed with a judo ukemi. In which case he would begin to approach me as though I was another savateur, thereby, I hoped, creating an opportunity for me to close with him. He wouldn’t be unacquainted with grappling-savateurs call their grappling style lutte, a derivative of Greco-Roman wrestling designed more to maim than to restrain-but I had little doubt that, if I could take him to the ground, the advantage would be mine.

He chambered his right leg, feinted, then returned the foot to the ground. He repeated the maneuver. And again. The upraised leg started to return to the ground and I saw my opening. I shot forward. But the third time had been no feint, or in fact it had been the real feint, and the leg reversed course and whipped in from my left. I covered up with my left elbow and the toe of his shoe caught me between the biceps and triceps. It felt like I’d been hit with a hammer. He retracted the kick, then shot it in again, this time toward my forward knee. I lifted the leg just as his heel landed, and, although it hurt, the impact was dissipated enough to prevent meaningful damage.

He replanted his right foot and I shot my own kick in, a basic front kick off the back leg aimed at his knee. He twisted clockwise off the line of attack and parried inward with his left hand. I reached out and managed to snag his left sleeve with my right hand. I rotated counterclockwise, dragging his sleeve down and around, ruining his balance and forcing his body to follow. As he spiraled in toward the ground, I changed direction and brought my left hand up under his hand. I swept my right leg around clockwise along the ground and levered his arm backward, trying to break it. Even with his balance destroyed, though, his reflexes were quick. Rather than resisting the wristlock, he launched his body into it, getting ahead of the lock’s momentum and saving his arm.

He landed on his back and I immediately dropped onto his solar plexus, my left knee leading the way. He grunted and I heard the wind being driven out of him. I kept his arm and dragged it upward, simultaneously sliding my left foot under his ribs, preparing to fall back in a jujigatame armlock and take out his elbow. But again he showed both quick reflexes and sound training: as I whipped my right leg across his face and dropped back into the lock, he spun his body in my direction and retracted his arm like a man trying to yank out of a straitjacket sleeve. His reaction cost me some of my leverage, but I still held enough arm to damage him. He reached around with his left hand and grabbed his right wrist to prevent me from straightening his arm. I brought my left leg up and hacked at his wrist with my heel. His grip broke. I popped backward and levered his arm against the natural movement of the elbow joint. I felt an instant of resistance from the surrounding ligaments, then felt the joint break with a resounding crack. He screamed and writhed under me.

And in that instant I realized I had lost track of his other arm. It had disappeared from my view. My stomach lurched with the knowledge. Then, as that lurch rolled sickeningly through me, his right arm flashed into view, light glinting off the surgical steel he was holding in it. A second razor, deployed after the attacker had been lulled by disarming him of the first. Malice.

I clamped his head tighter with my right leg and squeezed my knees together, increasing the pressure on his ruined elbow. He screamed again, but he was fighting for his life now and wasn’t going to be stopped by pain alone. He slashed at my thigh with the razor. I tried to grab his wrist but missed, and the blade cut deep into my quadriceps. He pulled back, then immediately cut me again. There was no pain, really, adrenaline taking care of that for the moment, but a gout of blood spouted out of the wounds. He slashed again. Again I missed the grab, and this time he cut my wrist. The next time I caught him. Immediately I shifted my leg off his head and blasted a hammer fist into his face, snapping my body forward to generate momentum and getting my weight into the blow. Once. Twice. Again.

I felt his body go limp and the razor dropped from his hand. I transferred his wrist to my left hand and groped for the razor with my right. There it was, on the ground, next to his thigh. I grabbed it carefully and slid off him. His face was a bloody mess and he was groaning, seemingly semiconscious.

I knelt beside him and hooked the fingers of my free hand under his jawline. I hauled his head back and raised the razor.

A voice cried out sharply in Japanese from behind me. “Yamero!” Stop!

I froze, thinking, What the fuck?

I looked back over my shoulder. Two serious-looking Japanese stared back at me, each with a pistol pointing at my face. “Yamero!” one of them said again. “Kamisori otose!” Drop the razor!

I did as he asked and started to stand. My right leg wobbled, then went out under me. I looked down and saw why. My thigh was gashed wide open and spurting blood. My wrist was doing the same.

I sank down to my knees and looked at them. “You must be Belghazi’s new yakuza friends, is that right?” I asked them in Japanese.

They ignored me. Beside me, Belghazi stirred.

He must have had them positioned up the road as backup, and they’d moved in when the shooting started. Maybe they’d been accompanying him since Macau. Sure, he knew I would be looking for Arabs again, and he’d even supplied a few-distractions at the periphery, diverting me from the real players. Tatsu had been right.

Belghazi groaned and sat up, then got unsteadily to his feet. I watched him, my face impassive. I was already kneeling, and now I placed my hands calmly across my bloody thighs, the fingers pressed lightly together and pointed in at forty-five degrees. I drew my head and shoulders up into seiza, or natural posture, the formal attitude of traditional Japanese culture, an integral element of martial arts, of the tea ceremony, and, perhaps most of all, of the dignified moments before seppuku, or ritual suicide.

Belghazi rocked on his feet, cradling his broken arm, blood running down his face from a gash in his forehead. It looked like one of the hammer fists had broken his nose. His body convulsed, then he leaned forward and vomited. His men watched and said nothing.

He spat a few times and wiped his face with his good hand. For a few moments he stood leaning that way, catching his breath. Finally he straightened and said to me in English, his voice ragged, “How have you been tracking me?”

I ignored him. It seemed that my luck had finally run out. I expected no help from Dox. There was a bag with five million dollars in it being contested in front of his position. I couldn’t reasonably expect him to abandon it. I was alone now, fittingly enough, and I had no good options.

“Tell me how you have been tracking me, and I promise to kill you quickly. If you don’t, I will make you suffer.”

My mind began to drift. I barely heard his questions. The urgency of his tone seemed strange to me, irrelevant. I wondered at some level whether I was suffering from the effects of blood loss.

“I will ask you a final time,” he was saying. I noticed that he had picked up the razor. “Then I will slice your face apart.”

I looked out at the harbor and had the oddest sense that I was connected with it somehow, that my spirit was leaving my body and expanding outward. I was vaguely surprised at how unafraid I was. Death catches everyone eventually, and I had never harbored any illusions about its ability to catch me. That it had hesitated so long to do so seemed born more of a desire to mock me than of any real inclination to wait. Death had tired of that game, and had finally moved in to collect what we all owe.

Well, come and get it, I thought. Go ahead, take what’s yours. Choke on it.

There was a strange sound, softer than the pop of a champagne cork, louder than the fizzing of a seltzer bottle. I looked over and was surprised to see a fine mist erupting out of one of the yakuza’s heads. Probably I should have done something about that. But the event seemed to have little to do with me.

The other yakuza had turned to look at his partner, whose body was sliding straight to the ground like a suddenly liquefying pole. The yakuza’s mouth was hanging open, as though in shock or incomprehension. But only for a second. Because then his head was erupting, too.

Even in his battered condition, Belghazi recognized what had happened. He was able to process it, and somehow to react. He turned and began to run. But something unseen knocked him down. He landed on his face, and immediately pulled himself to his feet. He staggered for a second, then got an unsteady foot in front of him. Something knocked him down again. This time he didn’t get up.

I looked out at the harbor again. Wherever I was going, I was already halfway there. All the commotion around me seemed trivial, even silly. I wished it would stop and leave me alone.

I heard soft footfalls to my right. I sighed and looked over. It was Dox. He had approached through the hole in the fence and was moving smoothly toward us, the rifle shouldered and pointed downrange.

Maybe he’d recovered the five million. If so, it would be time to tie up loose ends. Belghazi. Then, I supposed, me. Game over.

I looked out at the harbor again, feeling myself slipping toward it, into it. The water was warm. The feeling was not at all unpleasant.

“You all right?” I heard Dox ask. I looked over. I saw his eyes move to Belghazi’s prone form, then scan left and right, then back again.

I didn’t answer. The question might have been cruel, given what he was about to do to me, yet somehow it struck me as almost funny. I looked at him and smiled.

“That mean yes?” he asked, pulling abreast of me now. He raised the rifle to eye level. There was a soft crack and a flash from the end of the suppressor.

I looked over at Belghazi. He was totally still. Dox had put a last round into his head.

I felt tired, so tired. The ground underneath me was soaking wet and warm, and for a moment I thought I was back near the Xe Kong river, where I had killed that young Viet Cong. He, too, had been lying on earth saturated with his own blood, and in that instant it was as though I was seeing the world through his eyes. As though he was calling to me from across time, from across the grave.

Dox was looking at me now. I saw concern in his expression. He lowered the rifle.

Suddenly I was confused.

“I thought I was dead,” I said, trying to explain. My voice sounded odd to me, slow and unnaturally low.

“Well, you don’t look so hot, but I’m pretty sure you ain’t dead. I would say, though, that we ought to get out of here.”

“Mmmmmm,” I said, looking past him at a dark and suddenly retreating shape that flickered at the edge of my vision. Only teasing, Death seemed to be saying over his shoulder with a rictus smile, with good humor and an oddly paternal affection. Take care of yourself, okay? We’ll play again.

Dox stooped and got his head under my arm, then straightened. We started walking toward the fence.

“What about… what about the money?” I asked, not understanding what was happening.

“Well, it was a heartbreaker, I won’t deny it, but I had to abandon the big payday and come to your rescue. I meant to get here sooner, but there was a lot going on back at the ranch and I had a fair amount of ground to cover. Plus these PSG/1’s are heavy, even for musclemen like me.”

“You just… you just let it go?” I asked, trying to take it in.

I felt him shrug. “I don’t give a damn about money if my buddy’s in trouble, partner, and I know you feel the same.”

I didn’t respond. “What about… what happened in front of the gate? That other car?”

I lost my footing for a second, but Dox’s arm, tight around my waist, kept me going. “Now there’s one nobody would believe if I were to tell ’em,” he said. “I don’t know who Belghazi’s pal is, the white fella, I mean, but he’s quite a shooter. He dropped one of the men in that Toyota, and then, when the two Arabs who came in the van got up from humping the ground, he capped them both point-blank. They seemed a bit surprised at the time. He and the other fella from the Toyota had each other pinned down after that. They both had good cover, and I couldn’t wait for a shot ’cause I thought you might need my help. Too bad, too. If I’d been able to take them both down, that bag would be waiting for us right now. Well, it might be, still. We’ll see in a minute.”

“Hilger… he was shooting them all?”

“Hilger? Ah, the white one. Yeah, he sure was. I don’t think that boy wanted anyone around to contradict the story he was making up about how all this carnage occurred and his role in it. He’s a resourceful one, and cold-blooded, too. Hell, Kanezaki ought to hire him for the shit we do.”

We got to the street and paused. I heard gunshots from in front of the gate, then return fire from inside the Toyota.

“Damn, those boys haven’t killed each other yet,” Dox said. “Looks like we’re shit out of luck. Here we go.”

He pulled me across the street fast. If Hilger or the Arab noticed, they gave no sign of it. They had each other to worry about.

A few seconds later we were on the other side, heading upward, enveloped by darkness. I lost my footing again and this time couldn’t find it. For a moment I felt I was floating on water, that some sea creature had risen up beneath me and lifted me onto its snout. My head cleared, and I realized Dox had picked me up over an enormous shoulder and was carrying me.

“Wait,” I said. “Put me down. The money’s right there, if you can drop those two.”

“Partner, you are bleeding out,” I heard him say from under me. He didn’t even break stride. “Don’t worry about the money. We’ll get another chance.”

I drifted away again. When I came to, we were back at the van we had rented. Dox laid me out in the rear and slammed the door. The engine gunned and we drove off. A moment later, I heard him on the cell phone. His tone was urgent but I was fading in and out again and couldn’t make out what he was saying. Something about a doctor, maybe.

“Come on, man,” I heard him bellowing from somewhere in front of me. It seemed that his voice was coming from a great distance. “Stay with me now. Kanezaki’s scrambling a doctor and I need to know your blood type.”

“AB,” I said, my lips moving thickly. “AB negative.”

“Well, thank God for small miracles! A universal recipient! Come on down!”

I WAS GONE a long time after that. When I woke up, I was in a bed in a dingy room. I looked around. Taupe drapes from another millennium. An old television on a cheap dresser. A metal door with a peephole. It was a hotel room.

Dox was in a chair next to the bed, facing the door, his head slumped forward, the rifle set across his lap.

I pulled back the blanket and looked down at my thigh. It was heavily bandaged. Likewise for my wrist. The thigh and wrist hurt, and the ribs were worse, but none of it was terrible. My head felt fuzzy, though, and I realized someone had given me something for pain.

“Hey,” I said.

Dox’s eyes popped open and his head snapped up. “Well, all right,” he said, flashing me the grin. “It’s damn good to see you, man. You had me worried there for a while.”

“Where the fuck are we?”

“A little Motel 6 kind of place on Lantau Island. I didn’t want anyone bothering us while you were recuperating.”

“Who bandaged me?”

“Your uncle Kanezaki made a few phone calls and took care of everything. Got a local doctor out here pronto. He sewed you up, but you’d lost a lot of blood. Luckily I was on hand to lend you a quart or so. So don’t be surprised if your dick’s grown to about twice as big as you remember.”

I laughed weakly. “Am I going to start looking at sheep differently, too?”

He grinned again. “You should only be so lucky. But one way or the other, take comfort from the fact that you’ve got a quart of Dox sloshing around inside you. There’s people who’d pay good money for the privilege, and here it’s yours for free.”

I nodded, taking it all in. “Thank you,” I said, looking at him.

He shook his head. “Forget about it. Like I told you, you were good to me in ’Stan. I don’t forget.”

“Well, I reckon we’re even, then,” I said.

His eyebrows shot north. “Did he say ‘reckon’? My God, son, it’s working already!”

WE CALLED KANEZAKI the next day, after we had changed hotels. We put him on the speakerphone on Dox’s cell phone.

“I was always afraid the two of you were going to join forces,” he said.

Dox grinned. “Well, someone’s gotta save western civilization from the forces of darkness,” he said.

“You’re closer to the truth there than you know,” Kanezaki replied.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I can’t go into it now. But it’ll all be in the news tomorrow. We’ll talk after that.”

“The two hundred thousand?” I asked.

“The balance has already been transferred. Congratulations.”

That was good. In our haste to depart, Dox and I had left behind the binoculars and parabolic microphone, and I had been mildly concerned that Kanezaki might argue that this evidence made things look too well planned to be attributable to the kind of straightforward inside job we’d discussed. Apparently there wasn’t a problem. I was looking forward to finding out why.

“Speaking of the two hundred thousand,” Dox said, “you’ve been shortchanging me, son. My price just went up.”

“See, this is what I was afraid of,” Kanezaki said. “A damn union.”

We all laughed. Kanezaki asked, “How’d that doctor work out?” Reminding me of how he’d come through when I needed him.

“Well, he gave me a quart of Dox’s blood,” I said. “That ought to be grounds for malpractice.”

“Crimson Viagra!” Dox crowed, and we all laughed again.

“Check the papers,” Kanezaki said. “You’ll see what you’ve done. You should be damn proud, no shit.”

IT WAS ON CNN that night. A joint Hong Kong police/ CIA operation had stopped a transfer of radiologically tipped missiles at Kwai Chung port container facility. Several Arab terrorists involved had been killed in a shootout. A CIA officer, whose identity could not be revealed, was wounded in the operation. All missiles were recovered. No one mentioned anything about a duffel bag with five million U.S. in it.

So Hilger must have survived. Maybe he’d finally managed to put a round in the last Arab. No wonder Kanezaki hadn’t been uptight about the abandoned binoculars and parabolic microphone. Apparently their presence hadn’t been inconsistent with the new cover story.

The next morning I checked the appropriate offshore account. The two hundred thousand was in there, as Kanezaki had promised-fifty thousand that had been paid up front, one hundred fifty moved in the day before.

Dox had given me the number of his own account. I transferred him all two hundred. My way of saying thank you.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone.

“I saw the news,” I said. “Another heroic success for the defenders of the free world.”

He chuckled. “Be happy. The cleanup suits everyone-you, especially. No one here is disputing the official story. They’re all scrambling to try to make themselves part of it, in fact. So no one’s arguing about the definition of ‘natural.’ ”

“What are those missiles?” I asked.

“They’re called Alazans. They’re surface-to-surface rockets with a ten-mile range. They were originally designed by Soviet scientists for weather experiments, but seemed to work better as a terror weapon. Conventional versions were employed by Azerbaijan forces in the war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and by separatists in South Ossetia in clashes with Georgian troops.”

“The news said the ones recovered were radiologically tipped.”

“Yeah, two years ago, we uncovered documents showing that at one time one of the Alazan batteries had been fitted with radiological warheads-turning the rockets into ‘dirty bombs.’ The radiological battery was stored in Transdniester, a separatist enclave that broke away from Moldova twelve years ago. Transdniester is currently recognized by no government but its own, and, with its huge stockpiles of Soviet-era arms, it’s become a clearinghouse for black arms weapons.”

“Those two guys,” I said, thinking aloud. “The Russians. They were from Transdniester?”

“Yeah, the military junta that’s running Transdniester now is pro-Russian. The rest of the enclave speaks Moldovan, which is really just Romanian. It’s complicated.”

“Sounds it.”

“Anyway, what you’ve got now is a small clique that runs the ‘country’ of Transdniester by its own rules. Much of the enclave’s trade is controlled by a single company, Sheriff, which is owned by the son of Transdniester’s president. The son also heads the Transdniester Customs Service, which oversees all the goods flowing in and out of the country. The shipments move through the Tiraspol airport; overland by truck to Ukraine or Moldova; and on a rail-to-ship line that connects the capital to Odessa.”

“Or through Hong Kong.”

“Not a likely route, if you look at a map, but brilliant if you had the local connections that Belghazi was using. He was snowing his handlers in NE Division. They thought he was a ‘good’ arms dealer who was informing on the ‘bad’ arms dealers. In fact, he was informing on his competitors, and meanwhile dealing in whatever would make him the most money. The Alazans were probably just one example. Who knows what he was moving right under the Agency’s nose.”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s right. I meant it when I said you should be proud. The people who he would have sold those missiles to would have used them anywhere they could. If they had been smuggled into the U.S., it would have been catastrophic.”

“The two who died at Kwai Chung,” I said. “What was their connection to Transdniester’s president? And his son?”

“Why?”

“I just like to keep tabs on people who might want to take me off their Christmas card list.”

There was a pause. “Nephews of the president. Cousins of the son.”

I thought about that for a moment. “The family is probably unhappy about losing them,” I said. “Just guessing.”

“They have no way of connecting you with what happened at Kwai Chung.”

“What about Hilger?”

“Hilger?”

Kanezaki might have been playing dumb. Or the “Hilger” moniker might have been a pseudo, used operationally, that Kanezaki didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.

“The NOC,” I said.

There was a pause, during which he digested the fact that I had learned the NOC’s identity, or at least an operational pseudo. “Without confirming any names,” he said, “I can say that everyone involved has an incentive to stick to the official story. This was a joint CIA/Hong Kong law enforcement operation.”

“It sounds like Dox and I ought to get a bonus,” I said. “You got a lot more than you bargained for.”

“I can’t do that,” he said, “but you can charge me more for the next job. I don’t think anyone would argue.”

“Where’d the money go?”

“The money for the missiles?”

“Yeah.”

“It was recovered at the scene.”

“How much was recovered?”

“About three million.”

I laughed. “ ‘About three million’? Anyone wonder why such an odd amount?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your man Hilger scooped out about two million after executing the remaining people at the scene. It was dark and he was in a hurry, though, so he couldn’t very well count it all out bill by hundred-dollar bill.”

“No. Why wouldn’t he have taken all of it?”

“This was a sale. It would have looked suspicious if there had been no funds at the point of purchase. Hilger is smarter than he is greedy.”

There was a long pause. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you think he knew what was in those shipping crates?”

I considered for a moment. “I don’t think he knew beforehand, no. He seemed surprised when he heard the word ‘missiles,’ and Belghazi said something to him about not asking questions he didn’t want answered.”

“Yeah, but still, to just stand by for something like this…”

“For what it’s worth, I think he might have decided to try to prevent the deal from going down, once he figured out what it was all about. But should he have known beforehand? Could he have, if he’d cared? Hell, yes. Until circumstances made rationalization and denial impossible, he was probably happy to look the other way because he was getting such good ‘intel’ from Belghazi.”

There was another long pause while he took it in. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, there’s not much I can do about the money he took. Not this time.”

That’s all right, I thought. I know who he is now. I’ve seen his face, up close through those Zeiss binoculars. And I know he uses the name Hilger, at least operationally. Dox and I might want to have a chat with him, tell him it isn’t nice not to share.

“You ought to think about the arrangement NE had with Belghazi,” I said. “I doubt that it’s unique.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then you’re getting jerked around by other ‘good’ guys?”

“Look, the people who have the dirt are dirty. Belghazi was poor execution, but that doesn’t mean the concept itself is flawed.”

“You spend all this time with people who are dirty, what does that make you?”

“You don’t want to get dirty, better stay out of the sandbox.”

I laughed. “He was playing you.”

“Of course he was. Opposing sides always play each other. It doesn’t mean a deal doesn’t get done. As long as there’s something in it for everyone, it all gets worked out.”

“Incredible.”

“Not really. It’s just the way of the world. Look at America. All the interest groups donate to both political parties, knowing that, whoever wins, the winner will be in their debt.”

I paused, thinking, then said, “There’s something I want you to do.”

“Name it.”

“You’ve got a file about me. The file mentions Rio de Janeiro. It mentions Naomi Nascimento.”

“Yes.”

“I want those references deleted.”

“I can do that.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m going to tell you something now. And the information comes with responsibility. Heavy responsibility.”

There was a pause, then, “All right.”

“I care about that woman. It’s over between us, but I care about her. I owe her something. If someone from your organization, or through your organization, hurts her or even just tries to follow her to get to me, and I learn about it, I will make you pay.”

“I understand.”

“Good,” I said again.

There was another pause. “I hope you’ll let me know when you’re ready for the next job,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

“There always is,” I said, and hung up.

BEFORE I LEFT Hong Kong, Dox told me he couldn’t take the money I’d wired him. Told me a deal’s a deal, and we had said 50/50. I told him I couldn’t give him less than a hundred percent after what he’d done for me, after what he’d walked away from to do it. I couldn’t convince him.

“We’ll have another opportunity,” he told me, patting me on the shoulder, suddenly avuncular. “Just you wait and see.”

“I thought you said it only knocks once.”

“It does. This one wasn’t our time, that’s all.”

I nodded. “All right. You win. Send it back to me.”

“I will. Just give me the account number.”

I scratched my head. “Damn, I can’t remember it.”

“C’mon now, that’s not fair.”

“If it comes to me, I’ll write you.”

“Damn, you are a stubborn one, I’ll say that for you.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Dox. You’re a good man.”

He smiled back. “You’re just saying that ’cause it’s true.”

I held out my hand. He took it, then pulled me in for a hug.

Jesus Christ, I thought. But damn if I didn’t hug him back.

I WENT BACK to Rio.

The city was warm. It was summer there, south of the equator, and it felt good to be back, to walk the beaches and wade in the ocean and listen to choro and drink caipirinhas and live, for a while, as Yamada again.

I knew there were people now who might think to look for me in Rio. But I’m not that easy to get to, even if you know the right city. And, strangely enough, when I thought about the people who knew, I didn’t feel threatened.

Of course, a secret isn’t a secret once other people know about it. I thought I could trust Kanezaki to doctor the file as I had instructed, but you never really know. And, even if he did what I had asked, there might be other copies. I’d made a few new enemies with my latest escapades. If they looked hard enough, who knows what they might find.

But I felt all right for the moment. I’d just keep my nose to the wind, see what I could learn from Tatsu, from Kanezaki. Think about what I wanted to do next.

My wrist and leg took their time healing. My ribs took longer. The protein shakes and other supplements didn’t seem to be helping the way they should. I wanted to get back to my workouts, to jujitsu in Barra. But for a long time all I could reasonably manage was slow walks in the tropical evening air.

The long healing process was probably good for me, though. It reinforced something I needed to come to grips with: I was getting older. Time was, I would have ripped through a guy like Belghazi before he could have damaged me in return. But now, although my skills, my tactics, were better than those of my younger self, my quickness, and my resiliency, were declining. If I had been working alone that night at Kwai Chung, as I ordinarily do, I would have died there.

I tried to tell myself that it would have been all right, that it wouldn’t have been a bad death and you have to die of something. But that was bullshit. Almost dying had been a powerful reminder that I wanted to still be alive. I couldn’t articulate why, exactly. But it wasn’t just the sight of sunsets or sound of jazz or taste of whiskey.

What had Delilah said, both dismissively and sympathetically, when I had ticked off those items? All things.

And: If you live only for yourself, dying is an especially scary proposition.

The walks got longer. I began to supplement them with bike rides. My wounds lessened, but their presence continued to serve as a paradoxical reminder both of certain mortality and of continued life.

My city by the sea was still beautiful. But over time, I noticed that Rio no longer relaxed me the way it once had. In fact, in the oddest way, I found myself longing for Tokyo, for something I once had there, although at the time I hadn’t properly appreciated it for what it was.

Tokyo’s suddenly renewed presence in my thoughts was strange, because I had never thought of the city as home while I lived there. Strange, too, because, despite a childhood spent partly in the city and twenty-five subsequent years there as an adult, the associations that had welled up when I had returned were all about Midori.

Well, maybe that’s what home would always be to me-the place I’d miss when I had to move on. Love seemed like that, too. Because the woman I loved was the one I couldn’t have.

What had most defined Tokyo for me, I realized after Kwai Chung, was that it had always made me feel like there was something there, something I might find that would fulfill me, some answer to a question I couldn’t quite pose. Whatever that thing was, though, if it existed at all, it had always eluded me, frustrated me. It took without giving back.

But I realized now that the thing’s elusiveness didn’t mean I should stop seeking it. Life after Kwai Chung felt like a reprieve, a second chance. What a waste, not to make something of that.

I wasn’t sure how much longer I would stay in Rio. But I was equally unsure of where else I would go. I was like a kite suddenly cut loose from its line: for the moment exhilaratingly free, yet certain now to lose the wind that had borne it aloft and plummet back to earth.

I needed to find that line again. But I didn’t know where to reach for it.

There was Naomi, of course. Sometimes I thought about going to see her. But I never did. Maybe she was getting over the way things had ended between us. Maybe she was moving on. I didn’t want to interfere with any of that. Most of all, I didn’t want an association with me to be the thing that got her hurt, or worse than hurt.

Still, there were nights when I would lie in bed, listening to “De Mais Ninguém,” the song that had been playing in Scenarium the night I had gone to see her, or listening to some of the other music she had played in her apartment while we made love there, and the thought of how near she was would be almost unbearable.

I thought of Delilah, too. I wondered how things had turned out for her. I wondered how much of what she had told me had been true. I asked myself inane “what if” questions. I found myself wanting to believe her, wanting to believe that something was there, or could have been there, and I found this reaction weak and somewhat foolish.

Yeah. But look at Dox. He surprised you.

Yeah, he did. But not enough to reverse my whole view of human nature.

I’d been back for about two months when I found a message on one of my bulletin boards. The message said, “I’m vacationing in a wonderful city. Every morning I swim at the most famous beach there. The older beach, the one further north. I wish you could join me.”

It was the bulletin board I had been using with Delilah, password Peninsula. No one else knew of it.

I stared at that message for a long time. Then, without even being conscious of a decision having been made, I started packing a bag.

That night I checked into the Copacabana Palace Hotel, Rio’s grandest, positioned on its eponymous beach. I took an ocean-view room on the fifth floor. I had brought along a pair of binoculars-not quite the quality of the Zeiss model that I had employed at Kwai Chung, but good enough for gazing at the ocean. Or the beach.

I slept poorly. At sunup I started watching. At ten o’clock, she showed.

She was wearing a dark thong bikini, navy, almost midnight blue. I decided it would have been a crime for her to wear anything else.

She swam for twenty minutes, then lay down on a towel in the sun. She seemed to be alone, but the beach was filling up. I had no way of really knowing.

I told myself that she had no reason to try to set me up. And that was true. But the funny thing was, I just didn’t care. For the moment, I didn’t even care how she knew where, or almost where, to find me.

I pulled on a bathing suit and a hotel robe and walked out to the beach. The sun was beating down hot from overhead, and I squinted against the glare coming off the ocean and the sand. I put the robe down next to her and sat on it.

“Is this spot taken?” I asked.

She opened her eyes. They were bluer than I had ever seen them, taking on some of the hues of the sea and sky.

She smiled and sat up and looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, “You got my message.”

I nodded. “It was a surprise. Pleasant surprise.”

“You want to know how I found you.”

She was beautiful. She was just… beautiful. I said, “I want to know how you’ve been.”

She didn’t say a word. She just looked into my eyes, leaned in, and kissed me. The taste of her, the feel of her mouth, the fact of her presence, it was all like a waking dream.

I pulled back and looked around us.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I would, too, if our positions were reversed.”

I looked at her for a moment. It was good to be with someone who understood my habits. Who shared them.

She glanced at my arm and my thigh. The dressings were gone now, and the slowly healing results of Belghazi’s handiwork were clearly visible. Whoever had patched me up must have been more concerned about closing the wounds than with their subsequent cosmetic appearance. It looked as though I’d been attacked by a pissed-off lawn mower.

“I know what you did at Kwai Chung in Hong Kong,” she said.

I shrugged. “What, that thing? I read that was the CIA and Hong Kong police.”

She chuckled. “You know where those missiles were going?”

I shook my head.

“To Saudi-funded groups that would have used them against Jerusalem and Haifa and Tel Aviv. The missiles have a ten-mile range. Israel is nine miles across at her waist. They could have reached anywhere.”

“So it was the missiles you were after?”

She nodded. “We didn’t have a fix on the seller. But we were tracking Belghazi, tracking him closely, as you know. Once he took possession, the shipping information would have been in his computer. He kept everything in it. Encrypted, of course, but we have people who could have cracked it.”

“What then?”

“We would have tracked the ship that we learned was moving the missiles. Almost certainly it would have been destined for a Saudi port or to Dubai. So in the South China Sea, the ship would have been boarded by naval commandos, the cargo confirmed and appropriated.”

“Lots of pirates in that part of the world,” I noted.

“And not all ‘pirate’ activity is publicized, either. Some shipping companies would prefer to keep a theft quiet. Depending on the cargo involved, of course.”

“So it was the handoff, and the shipping information, you were waiting for.”

“Yes. If something happened to Belghazi before then, we would have lost track of the missiles. There would have been another buyer.”

I nodded, thinking. “I don’t think Belghazi was planning on moving those missiles through ordinary container port shipping. From what I understand, one of his last acts was to have them loaded into a van.”

“The information we’ve been able to piece together suggests as much. The Alazans were an unusual shipment for all parties concerned. They were using unusual means of movement.”

“I got that feeling.”

“What I mean is, if we had proceeded with our original plan, we might have lost track of the shipment. That would have been disastrous. You have a lot of admirers right now among the people I work with.”

I smiled, but the smile felt sad. “I have a feeling there’s a job offer in all of this.”

“There is.”

I laughed and looked away. I’d really been hoping there, for a minute. One glimpse of a thong bikini and my brain had gone to mush. It was ridiculous.

“At least you’re not pissed that I didn’t wait for your signal,” I said.

I heard her say, “I’m not. But none of that is why I’m here.”

I wasn’t going to buy it. “Yeah?” I said.

“I’m taking a long vacation, a long decompression, standard practice after living undercover and in danger of discovery for so long. My organization is generous this way, and sensible. They understand the stresses.”

It sounded depressingly like a sales pitch. “I’m sure they do.”

“Usually I go a little crazy for a while when an assignment is finished. I travel, hook up with some handsome young thing, try to blot out recent memories with a lot of wine, a lot of passion. No one knows where I go, and no one asks. I come back when I’m ready.”

“This time?”

“This time I thought I’d spend some time with a man I met. If he’s interested.”

I looked out at the water. A breeze was kicking up whitecaps. They flashed under the sun.

“Tell me how you found me,” I said, having waited long enough.

“After Kwai Chung, priority was given to tracking you. We put together a lot of information quickly. The more we learned about you, the more we were able to find out. And we were able to access Hong Kong Customs records, going back over a year. Smart people made assumptions, technicians fed data into supercomputers. They tracked you to South America. After that, you were gone.”

“Not gone enough, it seems.”

“You forget, I know you. We spent time together. At the Oparium Café, in Macau, you ordered caipirinhas.”

I shrugged. “They’re popular all over the world.”

“You said ‘por favor’ when you ordered.”

“No.”

She nodded. “The waitress was ethnic Portuguese, so at the time I thought you were just using some trivial knowledge of the language. But, when the technicians said they had tracked you to South America, I started thinking about what you had ordered, the way you had ordered it, your accent, the Japanese community in Brazil-”

“That’s the problem with being multilingual,” I said. “You forget what the hell language you’re speaking.”

She laughed. “Tell me about it. Can you imagine what Belghazi would have said if I had greeted him, ‘Shalom’?”

We both laughed. She said, “Anyway, Rio felt right to me. Partly because of what you said about retiring to a sunny place, a place with beaches. But partly because… it just felt right. I decided to give it a try. São Paulo would have been my second choice. But a caipirinha wouldn’t taste nearly as good there, would it?”

“You want to get one now?”

She smiled. “It’s ten in the morning.”

I shrugged. “I’ve got a room at the Copacabana Palace, right behind us. We could kill some time first.”

Her smile broadened. “That sounds nice,” she said.

Maybe it was all part of some larger plan, wheels within wheels. Maybe this was the job offer, and she was my signing bonus.

I supposed I would never know. Her motives, I understood, would remain a mystery, the time I might share with her a mirage, a kaleidoscope animated by the engine of my own foolish hopes, an attractive illusion, a projection.

On the other hand, she had warned me about that guy who’d been waiting for me in my room in Macau. That was the one thing that refused to fit, the one telling detail. Because, based on everything I’d learned since, I still couldn’t see any operational benefit that she would have derived from that warning. And if operational imperatives couldn’t explain it, it had to be something else.

Watching her there on the sand, I realized I’d been evaluating her too one-dimensionally, perhaps in unconscious and unflattering reflection of the way I view myself. She had refused to answer at the time when I’d asked her why she’d warned me. She might not even have known herself. But now I thought I might know. It was the desire, in the midst of a horrible business full of deceit and killing and regret, not to be responsible for an additional death. To expiate the sins of righteous butchery by saving a single life.

I could understand that. I could even hope for it. It was a pretty slim reed on which to try to build trust, but it was something.

It was a start.

I looked at her and asked, “How long are you going to be in town?”

She smiled. “A while, I hope.”

I held out my hand. She took it and we stood. Then we walked back to the hotel.