Barry Eisler - Requiem for an Assassin

He started to say something back. I didn’t hear what. I stepped over him and sat down hard on his back. He grunted and collapsed to the ground. I planted my feet solidly along either side of his head, reached with both gloved hands under his chin, and arched savagely back. His neck snapped with the sound of a thick piece of dry firewood and his body spasmed under me.

I stood and immediately moved back to the bridge, where I had some concealment. I took out the binoculars again and scanned the area. No one. Then I examined the tableau before me. Jannick’s bike was on its side, the headlight shining uselessly upward into the falling rain, the front wheel slowly rotating. Jannick himself remained facedown, steam rising slowly off his body, the rain continuing its indifferent patter on and around him. It looked like a freak accident: a bicyclist, going a little too fast in the dark and the wet, loses control and falls the wrong way. There was no reason to think it was anything else, and no way to prove it, either.

I ZIPPED UP the binoculars and moved out to Page Mill. I waited a few minutes until there were no headlights coming from either direction, then jogged across the road and returned to the car.

I drove back to San Francisco, to the Tenderloin district, which I knew had a large homeless population. I left everything I’d worn that night next to garbage cans on a variety of street corners off Market, knowing the garments would be efficiently scavenged, distributed, and assimilated into the shifting ranks of the homeless within hours, perhaps minutes, of my passage. The binoculars and the SureFire went over the side of the San Mateo Bridge, into the dark, trackless waters of San Francisco Bay.

I found an Internet café called the NCK Cyber Lounge in San Mateo, where I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. It was empty. I posted him a message: Jan Jannick, Dutch national, CEO of Deus Ex Technologies in Palo Alto, California, In-Q-Tel backing.

I’d wait until tomorrow to contact Hilger. There were two commodities I needed if I was going to find Dox: information and time. Immediately apprising Hilger of Jannick’s demise would have cost me both. I couldn’t wait too long to contact him, though, because sooner or later he was going to learn when Jannick had died and I didn’t want it to look like I was playing for time. But I could slow things down. A message in the morning to set up a phone call for even later would buy me an additional twenty-four hours, maybe even more. Within which, with luck, Kanezaki might have some new information.

Kanezaki. He wasn’t going to be happy to learn of the identity of the first target after the fact. I’d just have to finesse his suspicions as best I could. I went out and called him from a pay phone.

“You got anything?” I asked, when he picked up.

“No. Didn’t you…”

“The phone number you’re tracking?”

“He’s keeping it turned off. Not a surprise. Look, didn’t you check the bulletin board?”

“Yeah, I just left you a message there. Name and particulars of the first person on the list.”

“Our friend gave you the list?”

“Just the first entry. And it’s already taken care of.”

“It’s already…you were just here forty-eight hours ago. How could you have…you must be bullshitting me, you must have known who it was when you were out here. Otherwise you couldn’t have done it so fast.”

“I’m not bullshitting you. All I knew was I was supposed to go to California. The information was waiting for me when I arrived yesterday. I caught a lucky break and an opportunity presented itself. I didn’t have a chance to tell you sooner and I’m telling you now.”

There was a long silence. He knew I’d known earlier. But what could he do?

“I’m waiting on the second name now,” I said. “As soon as I have it, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, take what’s on the bulletin board and see how it cross-references with what I’ve already given you. I’ll drag things out as long as I can on my end.”

“I hope you’re not going to fuck me on this.”

“Why would I? We both want the same thing. It’s just a question of timing. I’ll check in again tomorrow, okay?”

He waited a moment, then said, “Okay.”

Back at the hotel, I took a long, hot shower. Then I got a fire going and sat with a towel around my waist, watching the flames. I hadn’t eaten in more than eight hours, and I thought I should get something into my stomach. But I wasn’t hungry.

I wanted to feel something. Relief that I’d bought Dox time. Horror that I’d just killed a man, probably a husband and father, not a mile from his house, on the very road he was taking home to his family. Fear that I’d missed some variable, that even now the local police, or worse, Hilger and his men, were mapping my coordinates, triangulating on my position, moving in for the kill.

But there was nothing. It was as though some emotional spinal cord had been severed, leaving my mind useless and numb.

The numbness disturbed me. It was how I always used to feel, or rather, not feel, after taking a life. Clinical, analytical, detached. The trouble in Manila, when I’d frozen rather than traumatize a child by killing his father in front of him, had actually been a kind of breakthrough for me, although I’d only realized it in retrospect. It had been the first sign that the killer might be less than all of me, the first crack in the ice of what I was. But now, the iceman was back. And not just for the work, it seemed. For the aftermath. For everything.

All of which was bad enough. But what was worse was how…comfortable it felt. Like a favorite chair, or the food you grew up on, or an old, perfectly sprung pair of boots that felt just right when you slipped them on after a long absence.

I told myself there was no reason to be concerned. Being myself again felt natural enough, and it was certainly easy. I thought maybe I should just give in and go with it. What was the point of fighting, anyway? In the long run, you can’t win against yourself. I’d been up on points for a while, but the iceman was patient. He’d bided his time, and when he saw his moment, he’d found his way back.

No, not back. Maybe he’d just always been there. Like I supposed he always would be.

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?