Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

The door chimed. I heard Dox walk over to open it.

“Thanks for coming up,” I heard him say. “I was just about to jump in the shower and uh, I wouldn’t have been able to relax in there worrying about forgetting the combination to the safe and all.”

I rolled my eyes. Dox was as deadly a sniper as I’ve ever known, but we’d have to work on smoothing out some of the rough edges.

I heard them move past my position. There was a bit of muffled conversation. Then they were on their way back to the door. Dox said, “Thank you again, thank you,” and I heard the door close.

A moment later he opened the bathroom door. “You can come out now,” he said.

“Any problems?”

“Nope. I think the robe helped, like you said. You know, you’re pretty good at this stuff, actually. Hey, maybe we should raid the minibar. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Was he able to give you the PIN Winters used?”

He nodded. “Eight-eight-seven-one.”

“Good. Nice work. What did you touch?”

“Just three things. The door handle, the bathroom door handle, and the safe.”

“Okay,” I said, handing him a fresh pair of gloves. “The alcohol and bleach are in the bathroom. Wash your hands with one, rinse, then use the other. You had Winters’s blood on you, too. Then put the gloves on. I’ll wipe down the places you touched.”

I grabbed a hand towel and took care of the surfaces he had mentioned, then joined him in the bathroom and did the sink when he was finished there. He pulled on the gloves again and I put the supplies, including the hand towel, into the bag in which we’d brought them. I set the bag down in front of the door so it would be impossible to forget.

We walked over to the safe, which was now open. There were three items inside. A wallet. A passport. And a Treo 650 smart-phone.

Dox pulled on his clothes while I checked the items. First, the passport. It was U.S.-issued, and indeed for Mitchell William Winters. Then the wallet, which contained credit cards and an Indonesian driver’s license with a Jakarta address, also for Mr. Winters. In the billfold, there were Indonesian rupiah, U.S. dollars, Thai baht, and Hong Kong dollars.

Back to the passport. Mr. Winters was quite the traveler. He had stamps from all over the world, most recently Thailand, of course.

The Treo was what I was most looking forward to. I picked it up and turned it on. The screen lit up, asking for a password.

Dox said, “Shit.”

I considered for a moment, then keyed in eight-eight-seven-one.

The screen changed to the home menu. We were in.

“Hot damn, nice going, man!” Dox said, clapping me on the back. “Shame on old Mr. Winters, using the same password in different places.”

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “Do you use different passwords for all your different devices?” I asked.

“Well, uh…”

“No one does. In the never-ending battle between security and convenience, convenience always wins.”

“I guess that’s true.”

I smiled. “Of course, now you know better. Remember: security is like a chain. It’s only as strong as its weakest link.”

We started going through the Treo-contacts, appointments, memos. There was a lot in the device.

“This is taking too long,” I said. “Let’s put the passport and wallet back in the safe. We’ll take the Treo with us. It’s possible someone will know it’s gone, but I think it’ll be worth that risk.”

“Works for me.”

“You leave ahead of me. Don’t go out the same way you came in-you don’t want that security guard to see you leaving shortly after he saw you come in. Meet me in twenty minutes on the Surawong side of Patpong Two.”

He grinned. “Sure, I know Patpong.”

“I know you do. But we’re just going there to find an Internet café. Don’t get distracted.”

“I was afraid you might say that. Why an Internet café?”

“Just a feeling. We might want to follow up on some of what we find in the Treo. We could do this from the laptop at the hotel, but I like to do my surfing anonymously.”

He grinned. “Me, too. You never know when the government is going to crack down on us pornography hounds.”

Dox went ahead. I put the passport and wallet back in the safe and relocked it. I gave the room a last once-over to make sure we hadn’t disturbed anything. It all looked good.

I checked through the peephole. All clear. I opened the door with my shirt and took the stairs down. I used a side exit, then walked down the sois paralleling Silom into Patpong.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we were sitting in an Internet bar off Surawang, going through the Treo. The date book was interesting. It had an entry for a meeting at 19:00 the following day. The entry read: TD, JB, VBM @ CC.

“Code,” I said, musing.

“Gee, you think?” Dox asked.

I ignored him. “Let’s see what else is in here,” I said.

There were a few dozen names in the contact list. I knew only one of them. Jim Hilger.

“Look at this,” I said, pointing to it.

“Hilger,” Dox said. “The guy from Hong Kong? The CIA NOC?”

“Yeah, Mr. Non-Official Cover. The one who skimmed two million dollars from what Belghazi was paying those Transdniester types who we thought were Russians.”

“That was supposed to be our money, partner. I’ve been hoping to run into this feller so we could have a good honest talk about it.”

I nodded and went to the memos section. There was only one entry: the confirmation number for an open-ended electronic ticket from Bangkok to Hong Kong.

“Looks like our friend Winters was planning on a visit to Hong Kong,” I said, indicating the entry. “There’s this ticket. And he had Hong Kong dollars in his wallet.”

“Hilger’s based in Hong Kong, ain’t he? Or he was when we took out Belghazi.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking the same thing.” I went back to the calendar entry, but still couldn’t make sense of Winters’s code. I looked at it for about a full minute, but nothing came.

“How does it work?” Dox asked. “If you stare at it long enough, does it suddenly reveal its secrets?”

I sighed. “No, probably not. But… ‘at CC’… and he’s going to be in Hong Kong…”

I spun around to the keyboard and brought up Google. I keyed in “Hong Kong CC.”

I got entries for Hong Kong Correspondence Chess. The Hong Kong Computer Center. The Hong Kong Cricket Club. The Hong Kong Cat Club.

“Ah-ha, the old rendezvous at the Hong Kong Cat Club,” Dox said. “Those devils, we should have known.”

I could tell that, if Dox and I were going to keep working together, ignoring him was a survival skill I would have to develop. “Hong Kong Cricket Club,” I said. “Hong Kong Cat Club. Hong Kong… China Club.”

“China Club?”

I nodded. “It’s a private club with a five-star restaurant at the top of the old Bank of China building in Central. They’ve got one in Beijing now, too, and in Singapore.”

“We didn’t get a hit for that, though.”

“Yeah.” I keyed in “China Club Hong Kong” and hit “enter.” I got about three million hits, none for what I was looking for.

“You sure about this place?” Dox asked.

“It’s exclusive. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t have a website and I doubt they advertise.” I keyed in a number of variations on what I was looking for until I came up with a phone number. I picked up my cell phone, turned it on, and input the number.

The phone on the other end rang once, then again. A woman’s voice answered: “Good evening, China Club. How may I assist you?”

“Restaurant reservations,” I said.