Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

For a guy who liked to play the hick, Dox had a way of going straight to the heart of the matter. I could have equivocated, but I decided to play it straight with him. He deserved that.

“I just want to see her.”

He nodded for a moment, then said, “I’m glad you said so. I could tell it was that from how you just talked about her, and I would have been awfully concerned if you’d tried to bullshit me. I would have wondered if you were bullshitting yourself, too.”

“I don’t know if I’m bullshitting myself or not.”

“Partner, that in itself is a profound species of honesty.”

I sipped my cappuccino. “She might still have something operational for us. I doubt that the timing of the meeting is just a coincidence.”

“If it’s not a coincidence, and she told you she was calling just because she missed your charming personality, she wasn’t playing straight with you. There might be something nefarious at work.”

“ ‘Nefarious’?”

“Yeah, you know, it means ‘immoral’ or ‘wicked.’ ”

I frowned. “I know what it means.”

He smiled. “Well, if you know what it means, what do you think?”

“You might be right.”

“But you want to meet her anyway.”

“Yeah.”

He pursed his lips and exhaled forcefully. “Sounds like unsafe sex to me, partner. And I’m not sure I want to be the condom.”

I nodded. “When you put it that way, I’m not so sure, either.”

He gave me a medium-wattage grin. “Well, tell me what you want, anyway.”

“She’s coming to Bangkok. I told her I would meet her outside of customs. If she puts people there to anticipate me, you can spot them.”

“Okay…”

“We’ll take a taxi from the international terminal to the domestic. You’ll be tailing us, so you should have some opportunities to tell if we’re followed. If I’m clean, we’ll go through security on the domestic side. I’ll have two tickets for Phuket, which is where Delilah and I are going, and you’ll have a ticket for somewhere else. That way you’ll be able to get through security, too, and you’ll have another chance in the boarding area to confirm that we’re alone.”

“Phuket, huh? Hope you talked to your travel agent. There are still a few places that aren’t back on line after the tsunami.”

“I know.”

“Or you could go to Ko Chang, it’s in the Gulf of Thailand and they didn’t get hit at all. Plus it’s less built up and only about a four-hour drive from Bangkok.”

“I know. I want to fly. We’ll be harder to follow that way.”

“Ah, that’s a good point. Well, Phuket sure is nice, anyway. Where are you planning on staying?”

I balked for a second out of habit, then said, “Amanpuri.”

“Hoo-ah! Paradise on earth! Stayed there once and saw Mick Jagger. My kind of place, although I believe I do slightly prefer the beach at the Chedi next door. I won’t need one of the villas or anything like that. Just a pavilion ought to be fine. With an ocean view, of course. No sense being in paradise if you can’t see the water.”

“No, I don’t think…”

“Hey, how am I going to watch your back if I’m not there? She could call her people once you arrive, and you’d be all on your own.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Then why are you asking me for my help?”

“Look, I don’t know if I can get another room there. I was lucky to get the one on such short notice.”

“Come on, man, you know their bookings are off because tourists think the tsunami damage is worse than it really is. All on account of them CNN camera crews going in and asking the locals, ‘Can you take us to a scene of appropriately picturesque destruction that’ll increase our ratings back home?’ And then their viewers think, ‘Shit, that’s the whole island, I better just go to Hawaii instead.’ But you and me, we know better, don’t we?”

I didn’t see any room for negotiation in his expression. I sighed. “All right. But this woman is sharp, understand? She notices what goes on around her and she remembers faces. If you stay in sniper mode, you’ll be fine. But if you slip, she’ll make you in a heartbeat. And that could multiply our problems.”

He grinned. “I promise to behave.”

I looked at him. A part of me was shaking its head, thinking, Nothing good can come of this .

But I only said, “All right.”

“Well, I’m glad to be getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Amanpuri, but I still don’t like it, partner. Mixing business and pleasure like this ain’t smart. It’s apt to leave you confused. And you getting killed would be a piss-poor way to clarify the confusion.”

I took another sip of my cappuccino. “There’s some risk, but there’s a reward, too. If I don’t meet her, I’ll blow a chance to learn what the Israelis know, what they might be planning.”

“Yeah, son, but that ain’t the only reward that’s on your mind here.”

“No, it’s not.”

“All right, you’re a grownup, I’m not going to tell you what time to go to bed or who to take there. I hope she’s worth it, though.”

I nodded. A breeze picked up, and for a moment, the terrace was actually chilly. I wondered about the wisdom of what I was doing, and about the fairness of involving Dox.

The stars, which had been briefly visible, were gone now, reclaimed by the polluted sky. I looked out at the lights of the city. The meal over, I no longer had the pleasant sense of being above it all, removed from it. Rather, I felt that I was right in the middle of something, probably more than I knew.

HILGER SAT at his desk in his eighty-eighth-floor office at the International Finance Center. Two IFC was one of the newest buildings on Hong Kong and, at 1,362 feet, the tallest. He had to admit, he really liked the place. It wasn’t just the views, the amenities, the feeling of being on top of the world, detached, all-powerful, untouchable. The building was also the perfect cover. The lease itself was so breathtakingly expensive that it was inconceivable that a government or any other nonprofit could be footing the bill for it. And, indeed, Uncle Sam wasn’t paying for Hilger’s lease, or for any other aspect of his operation. These days, Uncle Sam pretty much left Hilger alone, enjoying the quality of his intelligence but preferring not to know too much about how he came by it. All of which suited Hilger just fine.

The room was done in natural oak and off-white wool Berber carpet. The desktop supported only a few items: a brushed nickel Leonardo Marelli halogen reading light; a Bang & Olufsen Beocom 2500 telephone, with CIA-issue Secure Telephone Unit circuitry installed; and an anodized aluminum Macintosh thirty-inch flat panel display with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The overall look, which he had put to good effect with numerous clients, was solidity, focus, money, connections. The view, of the skyscrapers of Central and Victoria Harbor, was part of the impression, and Hilger liked it a lot. Tonight, to minimize reflection and reveal the glowing cityscape without, he had the room illuminated only by the desk light. Gazing out at the view soothed Hilger’s mind, helped him figure things out. Which was good, because at the moment there was a lot of figuring to be done.

The situation wasn’t entirely positive, certainly, but things were still fixable. Yes, he’d lost two men, but he’d lost men before and understood that losing men, perhaps losing his own life, was part of any mission. It was the mission that mattered, the operation. The operation had to succeed and he would ensure that it did.

He took things backward. The goal: protect the operation. Which meant: ending the threat to Manny, who was a critical part of the operation. How to do that? Easy enough. Find out who had been behind the hit and who had tried to carry it out, and then, insofar as possible, eliminate both.