Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

He nodded for a long moment, as though thinking. Then he said, “You know, maybe we’re being too limited with this either/or perspective we’ve adopted.”

I looked at him, intrigued.

“I mean, look at us,” he went on. “Are we CIA? No, not really, we’re contractors. But the CIA uses us from time to time. And it ain’t just us. Hell, these days you’ve got Halliburton and Blackwater and DynCorp and Vinnell and Kroll-Crucible… these outfits are springing up all over, and it can be hard to tell where the government ends and the private sector begins.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“Plus you’ve got the government turning everybody into a bounty hunter by offering twenty-five million for Osama’s scrawny ass.”

“Capitalism at work,” I said. “Supply and demand.”

“I know. Hell, when I was watching us shock and awe the Iraqis on CNN when we first went in, I kept expecting the announcer to say, ‘This sortie brought to you by Kellogg’s Rice Krispies,’ or something like that. It just ain’t as clear as it used to be.”

I nodded. “You know who is the third largest contributor of forces to the coalition there, after the U.S. and the Brits?”

“Private contractors, son, no doubt about it. We’re the wave of the future. Ought to form a union.”

I nodded. “The U.S. doesn’t go out of its way to advertise it, but yeah.”

“Well, that’s what I’m talking about.”

He rubbed his chin as though considering something.

“But on balance,” he went on, “I don’t think we’re dealing with Uncle Sam here. Not with the Thais, not with the Jew-boy thing. And like you said, Christians In Action has a fairly dismal record of being able to run really bad guys like Manny. Plus your Japanese contact, plus Kanezaki, both say those guys in Manila were ex-spooks, not current. That’s independent confirmation, far as we know.”

“What about that Washington Post report?”

He shrugged. “Some reporter, fishing. Making the same mistake the Israelites made.”

I nodded. “Can’t disagree with any of that.”

“Plus Hilger did abscond with that two million dollars from Kwai Chung.”

“I’m not sure which way that cuts. He could still be government, just dirty.”

“That’s kind of what I’m getting at. What I think is, Hilger is Agency, but he’s wandered a tad off the reservation.”

I considered. “That would be a very interesting possibility.”

“Damn straight it’s interesting. If I’m right, and the news gets out, the Agency would likely disown Hilger like the wayward child he is. I’ve seen it happen.”

“He would be vulnerable to that, it’s true.”

“So you agree with what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“Think we ought to go to Hong Kong?”

I looked at him. “I think we ought to leave in the morning. Bangkok’s feeling a little hot after Brown Sugar, anyway.”

I checked a few sites and found a Thai Air flight leaving at 8:00 that morning. I looked at my watch-less than seven hours away. Good. I wanted us out of the country before Hilger got news of what had happened to his man Winters, or at least before he had a chance to react to it. I reserved a seat for me, then one on an 8:25 Cathay Pacific flight for Dox. It would be more secure for us to travel separately. To be doubly sure, I used one of the backup false identities we were traveling under just in case Hilger had thought to put a customs hit on our names. I booked rooms for us in a couple of big, anonymous hotels-the InterContinental on Kowloon for Dox and the Shangri-La on Hong Kong Island for me.

“Glad to see we’re going deluxe,” Dox said, as I made the reservations.

“The China Club is members only,” I said. “We need hotels that can get their guests in.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.”

“We’re going to need some clothes, too,” I said. “The club is formal. There ought to be a tailor right in the InterContinental shopping arcade who can get a suit ready for you while you wait. If not, ask the concierge for a recommendation.”

He smiled. “I love Hong Kong. Fastest place on earth.”

“Just tell the tailor you want something dark and conservative, a suit,” I said. “Let him do the rest. He’ll pick a tie for you, too.”

“Hey, man, don’t you trust my sense of style?”

I thought it best not to answer. I finished up on the computer, then purged the browser again.

Dox said, “One thing occurs to me. If Winters is supposed to show up for dinner at the China Club and he doesn’t, Hilger’s going to be concerned. Or maybe Winters was supposed to check in beforehand, and when he doesn’t, Hilger might change his plans. Wasn’t that what you were worried about, why you tried to make it look like the man hadn’t died being interrogated?”

I nodded. “We’ll have to take that into account. But the fact that the meeting place was already decided is encouraging. It would have been more secure for Hilger to have just told people the general venue, and waited until the last moment to give the exact location. My guess is that VBM, whoever he is, isn’t all that reachable. Or there are some other limitations on their ability to communicate in real time. And you have to figure this meeting is related to what happened in Manila. They’ve already been disrupted there once. I doubt they’d want to cancel again just because someone didn’t show up or failed to check in. I may be wrong, and if I am we’re going to find out, but I have a feeling their dinner’s on.”

He leaned back in his chair. “I’ll buy that. What’s the general plan?”

I started envisioning things, figuring out what more we’d need and how we were going to get it.

“Manny and Hilger,” I said. “We take them both out. Manny satisfies the Israeli contract. We get paid. As for Hilger, either he’s not CIA at all, or he is and he’s off the reservation, but either way he gets disowned postmortem. At which point, the Israelis realize that they don’t have a problem with the Agency. It gets everyone off our backs.”

“You know, though, even if the government disowns Hilger, someone might be interested in avenging him. That kind of thing has been known to happen.”

I shrugged. “I’m willing to take that chance. No matter what, Hilger is where the direct pressure is coming from right now, even more than from the Israelis. I don’t see a better way of relieving that pressure than eliminating its source.”

“Seems reasonable to me.”

Part of me wondered how I had wandered along to a point where calmly proposing that we kill two men, one of whom might be CIA, would indeed seem reasonable. I would have to ponder that in my leisure time.

“And,” I said, “since, as far as I can tell, the reason they wanted relatively ‘natural’ causes for Manny in the first place was their mistaken assumption that he was a CIA asset, we no longer have to be overly constrained in our methods.”

Dox nodded. “That makes me feel better. Where I was brought up, gentlemen just shot each other. It’s more comfortable for me.”

I nodded, then for the second time in as many minutes realized that there were people in the world who might find this kind of conversation strange, who might even be put off by it. I wondered where the new perspective was coming from. I really would have to think about that later.

“The thing is,” I said, “I don’t think we’re going to have guns.”

His face fell a little. “No guns?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think even Kanezaki could get us what we’d need on this short notice. I’m not sure it would be wise to ask just now, regardless. And my Japanese contact could help us if we were in Tokyo. For Hong Kong… not with these time constraints.”