Barry Eisler - Requiem for an Assassin

I headed down an internal staircase, cut southwest on Le Loi, then crossed the street with fifty other pedestrians, motorcycles buzzing around us. On the other side of the street was a parking garage with its own entrance into Saigon Tax. I slipped inside, checking hot spots as I moved. Nothing rubbed me the wrong way. I turned a corner and waited. No one came in behind me. I waited for another minute, making sure Hilger had time to get to the restaurant ahead of me.

I entered Saigon Tax and used one of the internal staircases, pausing at the balcony of each successive floor to look above and below. Still nothing out of place. I continued to the fourth floor, where I cut across to the northeast side of the building, scanning as I moved. Still clear.

I came to the stairs that led to the Góc Saigon. I took one last look around. All clear. Okay.

I turned off my phone and turned on the other miniature bit of electronics I was carrying, a bug detector my martyred friend Harry, a hacker adept at kluging together all kinds of improvised devices, had made for me in Tokyo. If Hilger was wired, the detector would vibrate in my pocket and let me know. I headed up the steps to the restaurant.

The place sprawled out in an L shape, partly under a roof, mostly under the dark Saigon sky. Wood floors, slatted wooden tables and chairs, twinkling lights strung out across plantings like Christmas ornaments. Diners, but only a handful because it was still early, and none who appeared to have just arrived.

A hostess approached. I glanced at her, saw she wasn’t a threat, and went back to scanning the restaurant. The woman offered to seat me. I shook my head but otherwise ignored her and kept moving.

I hadn’t seen Hilger yet, so if he was here, he must be around the corner, in the short end of the L. I kept close to the inner wall, came to the edge, and snuck a quick peek around. There he was, sitting in the corner, his back to the concrete wall, his feet planted under him, ready to move, his head up and his eyes alive. The surrounding tables were all empty, this end of the L momentarily deserted.

He stood when he saw me coming and took a step back from the table, but slowly, showing me his hands. They were empty, the fingers splayed slightly. I approached him in the same nonthreatening way.

I moved toward him until I was in front of his table, then turned and faced him so my side was to the corner of the L. I wanted to be able to see anyone who came in after me and still have time to react.

He angled slightly away from me so that I was facing more of his left side than his front. He rubbed his chin with his left hand, the forearm vertical across his body, the other hand touching his elbow. I noted from the stance that he was right-handed, confirming my recollection of what I’d learned while witnessing his pistol craft at the China Club and at Kwai Chung the last two times we’d crossed paths. Although it was intended to look thoughtful and nonthreatening, the stance covered up most of his vital points. He was concerned I might attack. He was right to be.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that he must be highly motivated to incur the risks he was running. I wondered what he was after, and who he could be working for.

“Let’s go,” I said.

He looked doubtful. “Where?”

“Someplace else. You might have called someone and told him where we are.”

“I’m alone.”

I wasn’t going to tip my hand by asking about Mr. Blond. “That’s good to hear,” I said. “Indulge me anyway.”

I’m not getting any younger, but I have still two advantages. First, I’ve always been unusually quick-partly the result of genetics, partly of obsessive training. Second, I can go from stonelike stillness to explosive violence without any of the usual precursors. The signs people know to look for-obvious ones, like shouting, gesticulating, and other posturing, and less obvious ones, like the face going white and the pupils dilating-I don’t exhibit, or have learned to mask. I can hurt you, or worse, and the only sign you’ll have of what’s coming is that I was close enough to do it.

Hilger didn’t know that. I was close, sure, but the sum total of his experience would be telling him that there’d be some warning, some noticeable transition, and that therefore he would have the necessary moment to react. So it really wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t ready for what happened next.

“You need to…” he started to say.

I closed the distance with one long step, my lead hand feinting for his face. His eyes popped open in surprise and his arms flinched upward-away from my trailing knee, which arced up and slightly around on the way to its abrupt run-in with his balls. He made a sound you might describe as vomitus interruptus and doubled over into me. I shoved him into the wall and had the folder open against his neck in an instant. The edge might not have offered longevity, but it was plenty sharp at the moment, and I pressed it against his carotid, the pressure just short of breaking the skin, my fist in his Adam’s apple, my left hand securing his right wrist and keeping it away from anything he might have in his pocket.

“Hands up, shitbag,” I breathed. “Against the wall, alongside your head. Move for a weapon and I’ll open you down to your spine.”

Beyond my substantive need to check him for weapons, it was important that I give him an option other than resistance or death. If he were convinced I was going to kill him, I couldn’t expect cooperation. As it was, he decided to comply. He grimaced and slowly got his arms up against the wall. His head was pressed back, his chin tucked in against my fist, his nostrils flaring with his breathing. His eyes were narrowed to slits, coldly observing me.

I stared back at him, and realized with a start how close I was to doing it. Grab his hair, shove his head to the left, rip right, sidestep to avoid the spray. Walk outside, fillet Mr. Blond before he had a chance to react. Go Keyser Söze on them, let the remnants of Hilger’s team understand who they were fucking with and what was coming for them next.

“I don’t check in, my men do Dox,” he said, as though reading my thoughts. “It’s automatic.”

Maybe, I thought. Or maybe your men let Dox go at that point, to mollify me. What good is he to them, anyway, if you’re dead? Yeah, let him go. A quitclaim, a peace offering.

Jesus. I wanted to kill him so badly I was actually panting a little. And rationalizing everything else, even Dox’s life, to give myself permission.

Do it. Just fucking do it. End it now and you can walk away.

I imagined Dox, helpless somewhere, cut off, in pain, and somehow the thought stayed my hand. My whole body trembling with ambivalence, I turned Hilger around and patted him down. He was carrying two knives, a folder and a belt unit. I pocketed both. Next, Dox’s mobile phone. I turned it off and pocketed it, too. Other than a roll of dong and greenbacks, he was carrying nothing else, not even a wallet.

I backed away from him, closing the knife as I moved. I put it back in my pants, noting that Harry’s bug detector had stopped vibrating the moment I had turned off Dox’s phone. Hilger was clean.

I watched him, dumbfounded, on some level, that he was still alive, that I’d managed to hold back. He swallowed and his right hand drifted to his throat, rubbing it, caressing the undamaged skin. He was breathing hard.

The hostess turned the corner and pulled up short. She hadn’t seen what had happened a second earlier, but she could feel the aftermath. I glanced at her and said, “Give us a minute.” She nodded and backed away.

I looked at Hilger. “Let’s go.”

He shook his head. “Out of the question,” he rasped.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” I said, a part of me shouting It’s not too late-just step back in and fucking finish him! “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be bleeding out right now. You said it yourself: I can’t touch you while you’re holding Dox. I’m the one who has to worry about surprises, not you. There’s no reason we can’t walk out of here together. Unless you want to keep me here because you’ve got backup you told about this meeting place. In which case, I’m going to assume this was a setup.”