Requiem for an Assassin

17

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, I left the Stanford Park and headed south on 101. In an Internet café in San Jose, I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. It was empty. I found another café and checked on Hilger. Again, nothing. I left him a message that read, “Tell me when I can reach you by phone.” I didn’t say Jannick was done. I didn’t mention Dox. For the moment, I wanted to keep my options open.

It looked as though I had a little time on my hands. I decided to return to Los Angeles by the coastal route. Strange circumstances to fulfill my ambition to drive along the sea, but smoke ’em if you got ’em. And it would give me a chance to think.

The drive was beautiful. My appetite came back on the way, and I stopped in Carmel for lunch. I stumbled across an Italian place called Casanova in a cozy mission-style building, and ate on their patio, warmed by the radiant sun. The food was superb: bruschetta with local heirloom tomatoes; linguini with fresh mussels and shallots; chocolate nougatine pie. All accompanied by a ’96 Hudson Vineyard Marcassin Chardonnay that alone was worth the drive.

It was the kind of place Delilah liked, and the kind of place I liked to take her. I realized I should probably call her. But I didn’t know what I would say. The work she did, and the world she inhabited, necessitated compromises, of course, but in her way Delilah was as ethical a person as I’ve ever known. I didn’t want to have to tell her what I’d just done. And I didn’t want to hear the suspicion in her voice if I refused to answer her questions. I certainly didn’t want her judging me. I’d dealt with enough of that shit with Midori and wasn’t going to put up with it from Delilah, too. How could she understand, anyway? How could anyone, who hadn’t been there?

Yeah, but Delilah knows you, better than anyone. She would understand.

Bullshit. No one ever understands. They say they do, but they don’t.

I kept heading south, the windows down, the sunroof open, the wind in my hair. The road narrowed in Big Sur, the traffic thinning, the stores and houses and other signs of people slowly evaporating as I drove. Soon the land was mostly quiet meadows and conifered hills, scalloped cliffs that wended along the Pacific, in and out, back and forth, each curve in the road revealing some new, spectacular vista. I watched the ocean sparkling a thousand feet below and felt I was driving along the edge of the earth, through some intensely private and stoical place, beyond civilization’s purview, beyond any notion of redemption or regret, a place that existed only for itself, that neither welcomed nor opposed nor held in any regard at all the fragile creatures who intermittently passed through in awe of it.

San Simeon. Pismo Beach. Santa Barbara. The sun set over the water as I drove, yellow, then pink, then finally a long red band at the horizon, fading to indigo. I wondered if Delilah had ever driven this route, and imagined what it would be like to have her here with me, watching as daylight yielded to a giant vault of stars. I tried to push away the thought, but the feeling persisted.

I drove on in the dark. Absent the distraction of the sunlit scenery, my mind began to wander, not to good places. I thought of Jannick, and all I had taken from him. I reminded myself that I had no choice, that it was either him or Dox. I thought of Hilger, and regret and ambivalence were eclipsed by hatred and cold rage.

First Dox, I reminded myself. Then Hilger. Just be patient. That’s what’s going to make this work for you.

I stopped in Santa Monica and checked the bulletin boards. Nothing from Kanezaki. A short message from Hilger: Call me at 08:00 GMT.

Eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time…that would be midnight in California. Damn, it was almost eight out here already. A few more hours, and I would have missed the time for the call. I thought about skipping it entirely, telling him I hadn’t gotten the message until too late, giving Kanezaki more time to work the data. But I decided not to. If Kanezaki hadn’t found anything by now, he wasn’t going to, at least not without more information. A call to Hilger might shake something loose. And besides, I wanted to check in on Dox, to see if he was okay.

I thought for a moment. Hilger’s message was left at five o’clock that evening California time. I had posted at nine o’clock that morning, which would have been midnight or later throughout most of Asia. I imagined Hilger going to sleep sometime before I posted the message, receiving it and responding in the evening my time…morning his. A reasonably safe bet, then, that he was still in Asia somewhere, on a boat as Dox had said. It wasn’t much, but the more pieces I had, the better I’d be able to recognize and exploit each one of them, until hopefully, finally, they’d all add up to a breakthrough.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “Heads up,” I told him. “There’s going to be a call at oh-eight-hundred GMT. Less than four hours from now. If you have a way to track the signal, that’s your moment. I’ll keep him on for as long as I can.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “If our man is careful enough to keep the phone off the rest of the time, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to call from an insecure location.”

Kanezaki had grown a lot since I’d first met him, but he still had an annoying tendency to try to show his smarts by stating the obvious. “Of course he wouldn’t,” I told him. “But it’ll be one more piece of data to work with. I’d rather know where he places the call than not know, wouldn’t you?”

There was a slight pause while he absorbed the rebuke. Then he said, “You’re right.”

“What about the guy I posted about? Any leads on that?”

“No.”

“The government venture-capital backing? You don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I haven’t turned it into anything workable yet, either.”

“All right, then. Oh-eight-hundred GMT. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

I had a burrito and a fruit smoothie at a place on the pier, then killed time by strolling, loosening up after the long drive. I went to a pay phone at exactly midnight and made the call.

One ring, then Hilger’s voice: “Yeah.”

I noted that he picked up directly. Maybe he’d made his point about the strength of his numbers last time, and didn’t feel the need to repeat it.

“It’s done,” I said.

“I know. Nice work. You complained about five days, but in the end you only needed two.”

Maybe he already knew about Jannick. Maybe he was bluffing to impress me with his omniscience. It didn’t really matter.

“Let me talk to Dox,” I said.

There was a short pause, and then I heard the big sniper’s baritone, tinny through the speakerphone. “Dox here.”

“How are you doing?”

“Bored. This is one of the dullest groups of nitwits I’ve ever been forced to spend time with. It’s a dark day to be a Marine.”

He was telling me they weren’t leaving him alone, that there was someone with him at all times. With a little luck, they’d notice only the insult, and not the substance it concealed. But why the mention of the Marines?

I heard static, then Hilger’s voice again. “All right, you heard him, he’s fine.”

That was the second time he’d grabbed the phone in a hurry. The Marines…was that what Dox was going to say when Hilger had grabbed the phone from him last time? And what did he mean by it now? Hilger was former Army. But what about the people with him? Did Dox know one of them from his Marine days? Or did he have some other way of knowing one of them was a jarhead?

Why did Hilger keep cutting me off so fast? I had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. Far-fetched, maybe, but…

“Put him on again,” I said.

“No.”

“Put him on. You can listen, I just want to make sure it’s him and not one of your people imitating his voice.”

There was a pause, then I heard Dox’s voice. “Yeah.”

“What’s your favorite hotel in Bangkok?”

“What?”

“Your favorite hotel in Bangkok.”

“What is this? You don’t think it’s me?”

“They’re only letting me talk to you for a second at a time and your accent is too easy to imitate.”

“What accent?”

“Tell me.”

“If they hear my answer, I won’t be able to go there after this. And that would be a tragedy.”

It had to be Dox. No one else could be so obstreperous. But still.

“The name, goddamnit.”

“Look, I like the place because of the mirrors in the bathrooms. I tried to tell you about a threesome I had in one, all right? With two lovely Thai ladies. And you cut me off ’cause you didn’t want to hear.”

I let out a long breath. It was him all right. The hotel was the Sukothai, and yeah, I had cut him off the time he tried to tell me the story.

I heard the phone being moved, then Hilger’s voice. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“All right,” I said. “I’ve held up my end. Now let him go.”

“You’re not done. There are two more.”

Well, it was worth a try.

“Give me the particulars, then,” I said.

“Not yet. You’re a little ahead of schedule.”

“We’re doing this on a schedule?”

“The person’s not in position yet. As soon as he is, I’ll upload the information you need.”

On the one hand, I liked the extra time. On the other hand, once again, I hated the idea that Hilger would be able to follow me by my efforts to track his target. I hoped Kanezaki would find something to help me short-circuit the whole thing.

“How long are we talking about?” I asked.

“Forty-eight hours. Check the bulletin board then.”

He clicked off.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “You get it?” I asked.

“I got it. He’s in Jakarta. Or at least he was during the time you had him on the phone.”

I was gripping the phone hard. “Where in Jakarta?”

“Pluit, it looks like. The marina.”

“Can you be more precise than that?”

“What do you want, an address? All I know is he was near a cell tower in Pluit. Without a formal request to the NSA, which will create a lot of questions and take a month to process anyway, I can’t triangulate. I can only give you a radius around a single tower. From what I can see, either he was in Pluit, or he was a little way out in the Java Sea.”

I was quiet for a moment. He was right, I wasn’t being reasonable. But damn, to feel like I was that close to having him in my sights…

“He’s got our friend on a boat,” I said. “They probably docked in Jakarta to make the call, maybe use an Internet café, whatever. But with the boat, they could move anywhere, and keep moving. There are ten million people in Jakarta alone. Leave Jakarta, and you’ve got seventeen thousand islands, only six thousand of them inhabited, and probably twenty thousand miles of coast. And that’s all assuming he stays somewhere in Indonesia and doesn’t move on. Shit, this isn’t much better than knowing he’s in Asia.”

“It’s another piece,” Kanezaki said, after a moment. “Like you said.”

I sighed. He was right again. “Is this anything you can use with what you’ve already got?” I said. “The visas, the previous known location, the government backing?”

“I doubt it. I don’t have a way to search travel records by location, only by names. It doesn’t look like our friend was traveling as himself. So it’s slow going.”

“All right,” I said, trying not to be frustrated. We had so many pieces…but they still added up to nothing. I fought the urge to just go to Jakarta, see what I could find there. Without more information it would be useless.

“What about you?” he asked. “You learn anything on the call? Anything new we can work with?”

“No. Well…maybe one of the people who’s holding Dox is or was a Marine. I think Dox was trying to indicate that, but I’m not sure.”

“All right, I’ll see if that gets us anywhere.”

Even as he said it, I knew it was unlikely. It was almost nothing.

“Anyway, that’s all,” I said. “Hilger told me he’d upload details about the next assignment two days from now.”

“Two days from now? You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Giving yourself time to…”

“I’m not doing anything. He told me the person isn’t in position yet and wouldn’t be for forty-eight hours. I’ve got nothing to do but wait. If you could come up with something in that time, it sure would be handy.”

“Otherwise…”

“Yeah, that’s right. Otherwise we get to number two on the list.”

“Jesus,” I heard him breathe.

“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me,” I growled. “I’m not going to let something happen to my friend.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Bullshit. I don’t want to hear it. Not unless you’ve ever once gotten your own hands bloody. Have you? Ever? Or do you only send out other people for the nasty stuff so you can sleep like a fucking baby at night?”

A long moment went by. Then he said, “I wasn’t judging you. I was just…a little awed. That’s all. I’m trying to help, okay?”

I watched people strolling past me. A group of teenagers, laughing through orthodontic-perfect smiles, sauntering in distressed jeans that probably cost two hundred dollars a pair. Men whose faces bore the marks of nothing worse than overstretched mortgage worries beat back by too much Botox. Women with bare liposuctioned midriffs and Herculean plastic breasts. A river of well-fed selfishness, a contagion of insecure conceit. I hated them. I hated all of them.

“You there?” I heard Kanezaki ask.

“Yeah.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, and you probably will, you seem like you’re on a short fuse lately.”

“You’re right, I mind.”

“I’m only bringing it up because…”

“Because what?”

“Never mind.”

“What? Just say it.”

He sighed. “Don’t push away the people who are trying to help you. You can’t afford it. And neither can our friend who’s in trouble.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to help me. Not use me. Help me.”

“Look, there’s something I want out of this, yes. I’ve been upfront with you about it. But that doesn’t mean…”

“That’s exactly what it means,” I shouted. “Exactly. When are you going to grow up and realize you can’t fucking have it both ways?”

I slammed down the phone and clenched my hands into fists, fighting the urge to smash something. A sound rumbled up out of my throat. It might have been a snarl.

I looked up and saw three husky college kids watching from five yards away. White, dressed like gangsta wannabes. I realized they had stopped because of my outburst.

“Chill, dude,” one of them said.

I stood perfectly still. Inside, a war raged: the need to avoid trouble so I could focus on Dox; the overwhelming urge to slaughter the three creatures looking at me like I was an animal in the zoo. I imagined myself tearing into them like a lawn mower up on its back wheels, slashing, ripping, gutting. I could almost hear their high-pitched wails of terror and surprise, could practically smell the hot blood pouring out of them. I gritted my teeth into an insane smile and stood staring at them, panting with the effort of holding back, praying for one of them to say something, do something, to tip the balance and make me lose control.

One of them smacked Mr. Chill on the back of the head and gave him a shove. “Let’s go, man,” he said. And Mr. Chill, perhaps guided by some reptile-brain recognition of the image of a predator just before it pounces, nodded and silently complied. The three of them walked away, and somehow I managed to let them.

I glanced around. A few other people in the area were studiously looking elsewhere. Goddamnit, I’d drawn attention to myself. Stupid. I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped down the phone receiver, obscuring the act with my torso, then walked away, keeping my head down.

I found another pay phone and called the toll-free number for Hilton hotels. Their property in Beverly Hills had a room available tonight, did I want that? I told them I did, and would be there shortly. One night was fine. I was just passing through.

I had the car for a week anyway, so I decided to hold on to it. It beat figuring out the bus system, or trying to get around by cabs. I had nowhere to go for two days. I might as well stay here.

The nav system took me onto the Santa Monica Boulevard and east toward Beverly Hills. I drove through alternating patches of feeble yellow light and serene urban darkness, the interior of the Mercedes strobing weakly with each passing lamppost. Fragments without were illuminated, revealed, then gone again: a shuffling homeless man, glancing up at me as indifferently as a sea creature outside a passing bathysphere. Shuttered storefronts, graffitied walls, construction sites suffocating under profusions of slapped-on posters. A homeless woman, sunk to her side in the shadows, her head in her hands, another soul swallowed up by the city.

A few miles from the hotel, as concrete gave way to palm trees and graffiti to the shiny windows of boutiques, I turned on my old cell phone to check the voice-mail account. Part of me hoped for a message from Delilah. Part of me dreaded it.

What I got, though, wasn’t a message. Just a second after I fired up the phone, it buzzed. I checked the readout, surprised, and saw that Delilah was calling me right then.

I hesitated for two full rings. Then I picked up and said, “Hey.”

“You’re hard to reach,” she said. “And you don’t return calls.”

I thought of several things to say. What came out was just, “Sorry.”

“You know how many times I’ve called you, hoping I’d catch you with your phone on?”

“A lot, I’m getting the feeling.”

“Any news?”

“Some. He’s okay for now.”

“Did you meet with…”

“I met him.”

“And?”

“I learned a few things. But not enough.”

“Where are you now?”

“I…” I started to say. Then, “I don’t know where I am.”

“I want to see you. Just tell me where.”

“I’m in California. But…”

“I have some time off. Tell me where on the bulletin board. I’ll fly out.”

I wanted her, and yet I didn’t. “You shouldn’t come,” I said. “You don’t want to be mixed up in this.”

“You told me you feel tied to me. Did you mean it?”

I sighed. “Christ, you’re stubborn.”

“Did you mean it?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “You know I did.”

“Then I’m coming to see you. Just tell me where.”

“I’ve only got two days…”

“Post it now and I can be there tomorrow afternoon.”

A dozen more protestations came to mind. But I said only, “I need to get to a computer.”

“Okay. And give me the name you’re using. I’ll make a reservation somewhere and tell them to let you in. If you show them ID, you won’t have to wait for me.”

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

She gave me a small laugh. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

My gut roiled with conflicting emotions. I waited, wanting to say something more, for her to say something more, but she had already clicked off.

I found an Internet café in West Hollywood and told Delilah I was in L.A. Then I went to the hotel. I used their business center to check the Air France website-a safe bet Delilah would be flying the national carrier if she wanted her choice of nonstops. There were two flights she could use. One got in at 3:50 in the afternoon, the next, a few hours later at 6:55.

I lay in bed for a long time, thinking, trying to unwind. I wanted to see her, but at the same time I was afraid to. Afraid of what she’d make of me. Which was stupid, of course. Why should I even care what she thought, or anyone else? And if anyone could understand…

No one can understand. No one.

Lying in another anonymous bed in another random hotel room, back in the life as though I’d never left it, I thought I should just let Delilah go. Already my relationship with her felt improbable, inapplicable, absurd. What could I have with her, anyway? Separate apartments in a foreign city, thoughts and lives that we couldn’t discuss?

It didn’t matter. Whatever we had, it was gone, another moment alchemized to memory. I should just accept that. I should just move on, alone. It was all I was ever good for. It was all I could really trust.