Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

He nodded. “Well, I’ll buy that. They were cool and their tactics were good. And like you said, they wore their cover well. I didn’t make them until it was too late. That’s my fault, man, and I’m sorry. I told you, you saved my life there, you really did.”

I wanted to tell him the truth-that by bursting in as he had, Dox had saved my life, not the reverse.

Instead I said, “The thing is, we still don’t know for sure who they were. Who they were with. Why they were meeting Manny. If we knew those things, we might get a second chance.”

“You think we could still get that close?”

“Depends. I hate to leave things unfinished, though.”

He laughed. “You mean like an uncashed paycheck?”

I nodded. “That’s part of it. And letting Boaz and Gil know that I’m still after Manny gives me an excuse to be in touch with them, and an opportunity to continue to evaluate them.”

“To make sure they haven’t changed their minds about just letting the whole thing go.”

“Of course. And they’re also a potential channel of information.”

“About who those shooters were.”

“Etcetera.”

We ate quietly for a few minutes. Then Dox said, “There’s one thing I want to ask you.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked at him.

“When I got in there, I was surprised Manny was still vertical. I know what you can do up close with your hands. You were alone with him for long enough.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

I looked away. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“Are you leveling with me, partner?” I heard him say.

I paused, then said, “I don’t know. He came in, his back was to me, I moved out of the stall. Then you told me the boy was coming. I went to move back into the stall before the boy came in, but I must have made a sound, because Manny turned. I looked in his eyes…”

“Whoa, why’d you look in his eyes, man?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Shoot, man, when I look through the scope, I never look in the eyes. Or if I do, I just look at one of them, and then all I see is a bull’s-eye, you know what I mean? I never see a man. Only a target.” He looked at me, then added, “If you see a man, you might… hesitate.”

I thought of several things to say, but none of them came out.

He took a sip of iced coffee and looked upward as though contemplating something. Then he said, “Well, each of us has only so much courage in the well. You draw from it too many times, eventually you come up dry. I’ve seen it before. I guess one day it’ll happen to me, too.” He paused, then smiled and added, “Although probably not.”

“That’s not what happened,” I said.

“Then what?”

I looked at the wall, images flickering against it as though it were a screen. “It was something about the boy. Seeing him with his family… I don’t know.”

There was a pause. He said, “Sounds like you spent a little too much time watching them this week, man.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, that happens. It can make it hard, it’s true.”

I felt like an idiot. What was wrong with me? Why had I frozen? Why couldn’t I explain to a man I’d fought alongside, a man I trusted?

Trust, I thought. The word felt slippery in my mind, dangerous.

“That’s not it,” I said. “Or, it’s not the only thing.”

“What else?”

I shook my head and exhaled hard. “I haven’t had a partner in a long time.”

“Hang on now, this is my fault?”

I shook my head again. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just… I didn’t trust you before, when you first came for me in Rio.”

“Yeah, I got that feeling.”

“But then, after what you did at Kwai Chung… I saw that I’d been wrong. That’s hard for me.”

“Guess I should’ve just shot you and taken the money for myself. At least that way you’d have been right not to trust me.”

“Did you think about it?”

He laughed. “Jesus, man, you almost sound hopeful.”

“Did you?”

He shook his head. “Not even for a minute.”

“Goddamnit. I knew it.”

“You want an apology?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Like I said at the time, I know you’d have done the same for me. Wait, don’t respond to that, it’ll spoil my reverie.”

The waiter came by and cleared away our plates. We ordered mango and sticky rice for dessert. I watched the man leave.

There was something I wanted to ask Dox, something I’d been thinking about, on various levels, for a long time, and particularly after Manila. It wasn’t something I’d ever said out loud before, and I found myself reluctant to bring it up. Partly because doing so might make it feel more real; partly because it would probably all seem so silly to Dox. But I’d told him a lot already. I wanted to finish it.

“I’ve got a question for you, too,” I said, looking at him.

He pushed his chair away, leaned back, and laced his fingers together across his belly. “Sure.”

“You ever… you ever bothered by what we do?”

He smiled. “Only when I’m not paid promptly.”

“I’m serious.”

He shrugged. “Not usually, no.”

“You don’t ever feel like…” I chuckled. “You know, like God is watching?”

“Oh, sure he’s watching. He just doesn’t care.”

“You think?”

He shrugged again. “I figure he’s the one who made the rules. I’m just playing by ’em. If he doesn’t like the way things have turned out down here on planet Earth, he ought to speak his mind. I would if I were him.”

“Maybe he is speaking his mind, and no one’s listening.”

“He ought to speak a little more clearly, then.” He looked up and added, “If you don’t mind my saying so.”

I studied my hands for a moment. “It bothered me, thinking about that boy losing his father.”

“ ’Course it did. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be the good man you are. That’s why it’s best not to get too close to the target. ‘If it inhabits your mind, it can inhibit your trigger finger,’ as one of my instructors once told me.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth.”

“The thing is, you can’t make the decisions and also carry them out, you know what I mean? The judge and the executioner, they’re different roles. The judge does what he does, and then the executioner carries things out. That’s the way it is. We’re just doing what we’re supposed to.”

“That’s an interesting way to look at it,” I said, feeling uneasy.

“It’s the only way. I didn’t know you were such a philosopher, partner. In fact, I think this is the most I’ve ever heard you talk.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize. But I do think that pondering too deeply might not be highly recommended for men such as ourselves. We might start thinking we’re the judges or something, and where would we be then?”

The waiter brought the mango and sticky rice. It was good, but my mind was elsewhere.

Dox asked, “Well, what’s the next step? With Manny, I mean.”

I considered. “We can’t get close to him again the way we did. He got too good a look at me, for one thing, and I think we can expect him to be taking extra precautions, for another.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing.”

“We need a new variable, something to shake things up. And the only one I see coming our way is information from Boaz and Gil. If they can find out the affiliations of the two guys we took out in that restroom, we might have something to go on. Otherwise I think the op is dead.”

“So nothing to do but wait and see what the Israelites can offer.”