Barry Eisler - Killing Rain aka One Last Kill

I went back inside, closed the door, and put my eye up to the jamb.

Perfect. I had a clear view of the area to my right, which included the urinals and stalls. Every time I heard someone come in, it would be a simple matter to visually confirm who it was.

I repeated the operation on the knob side of the door. When I was done, I had a view of the entrance and sinks. I checked from the outside and confirmed again that the door opened and closed without a problem, and that the second hole, too, was unnoticeable.

I slipped an earpiece and lapel mike into place and checked the illuminated dial of my watch. Almost six o’clock. Dox and Delilah should be arriving anytime now. I wouldn’t be able to use the gear to communicate with them until they were in the building-fifteen floors of steel and concrete would block the signal for sure.

At just after six o’clock, I heard Dox’s soft twang. “Hey, partner, it’s me. Are you there?”

It felt good to hear him. “Yeah, I’m here. The men’s room on the fourteenth floor.”

“Well, that’s a nice coincidence. I was just going to use that very facility. Can you hear me? I’m on my way in.”

A moment later, I heard the restroom door open, then footsteps on the marble. Dox moved past my position. The goatee was gone, and I was pleased at the way its absence changed his appearance.

He stepped up to one of the urinals and started to use it. Looking over at the open stall doors, then to his right, he said, “Looks like you’ve got a good spot. Where are you?”

“The closet. To your right.”

“Ah-hah, I should have known. Hey, man, no peeking.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, surprising myself with a rare rejoinder, “from this far, I can only make out large objects.”

He chuckled. “That’s a good one. Say, you don’t hang around in men’s rooms habitually, do you? You seem awfully good at it.”

All right, I should have known better than to try to one-up him. “Where’s Delilah?” I asked.

“She grabbed us a table in the dreaded Long March Bar.”

“Crowded?”

“Not yet, but it’s filling up. No sign of our friends. I sure hope they show. If they don’t, I’ll start to worry something might have happened to them.”

“Yeah, that would be too bad.”

He zipped up and headed over to the sink, winking at my position en route. “Ooh, look at these fancy soaps. I like this place. Ordinarily I’m not terribly fastidious about washing my hands after urination, but tonight I believe I’ll make an exception.”

I checked through the other hole and watched Dox lathering his hands. “Damn,” he said, “I can’t get used to the way I look in these clothes and without my trusty goatee. You think Delilah meant it when she said I have good bones?”

“I’m sure she did,” I said, feeling a little impatient. “Look, you might want to hurry. If our friends show up, you don’t want to accidentally pass them in the hallway. Even without the goatee that was hiding your good bones.”

He dried his hands with a towel and tossed it in the basket. “Okay, partner, that’s a fair point. I’ll be in the bar, keeping your girlfriend company. Seriously, I’ll be right here, talking into your ear the whole time. If you need me, I’ll come running.”

Even in the midst of all the annoying palaver, it felt good to hear him say that. “Thanks,” I said. “I know you will.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER, I heard Delilah. “Hey, John. Just checking the gear.”

“I hear you.”

“Good. We’re in the bar. We’ve got a nice table in the far corner. You can talk to us anytime. We’ll monitor the transmitters and let you know what’s going on. Any problems, just let us know.”

“Okay,” I said.

Dox said, “We’ll switch off now so we don’t bore you with our pretend conversations about strategic partnership opportunities in Asia and how we’re getting traction with our paradigm shifts and inflection points. Unless you want to listen in, just to make sure I’m behaving myself with your girlfriend.”

“Please, shut it down,” I said.

He laughed. “Okay. Remember, we can still hear you, so if you need anything, just speak up.”

“Okay.”

He cut out.

I waited for nearly an hour in silence. Three times, someone came in to use the restroom. Each time, I checked to see if it was Manny or Hilger. It was possible that one or both of them might stop in on their way to the private dining room, in which case Delilah and Dox wouldn’t be able to warn me. But it was always someone else.

The closet was fairly roomy, and I was able to move around a bit, do a few squats and stretches. There was a time when I could go to top speed without a warm-up, but that sort of thing was getting harder lately, and I wanted to stay limber.

I was doing some isometric neck exercises when Dox came back on. “Okay, partner,” he said, “our guests have arrived. They’re being seated right now.”

“How many?”

“Two, it looks like. Hilger and Manny. Hang on, let me change frequencies and listen in for a minute.”

A moment later, he came back on. “Yeah, it’s just the two of them. Hilger asked the hostess to escort ‘Mr. Eljub’ when he arrives. So it looks like it’s going to be just the three of them. You were right, Hilger didn’t change the plans.”

“ ‘Eljub,’ ” Delilah said.

I asked, “What of it?”

“I’m… not sure. Just wondering who the mystery guest might be.”

“I’m more concerned about where he’s sitting. And about whether he gets up.”

“Of course.”

I said, “Dox, can you switch the audio so that I can listen in, too?”

“I can, but then you won’t be able to hear Delilah and me.”

“That’s okay. You can cut back in anytime you think you need to.”

“Gotcha. Okay, here you go.”

There was a hiss, and then I was listening to Manny and Hilger. Hilger’s voice I remembered from listening to him through a parabolic microphone in front of Kwai Chung. He had a memorably slow, confident, reassuring way of speaking. Manny’s voice was higher; his tone, higher-strung. It sounded as though he was complaining to Hilger about security, specifically about having to leave his bodyguard outside.

“He can do you more good monitoring the entrance than he could have in here,” Hilger told him.

I wondered if he believed that-there were pros and cons, as I saw it-or if he was just trying to placate Manny, who struck me as a bit of a whiner.

Manny said, “I don’t think so. Anyway, after what happened in Manila, I feel more comfortable with him close by.”

“I’ve told you, I’m known at this club and I don’t have a bodyguard. If we post a man outside the door, it’s only going to make the staff curious about who I’m entertaining. Curiosity is the last thing we need tonight.”

“He could have just eaten with us. The staff wouldn’t know his role.”

“That’s true, but then we wouldn’t be able to speak freely. Look, I told you, Rain is in Bangkok. We almost had him there yesterday. He’s on the run now, and my men are pursuing him. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

For a moment I wondered anew whether Hilger’s operation was in fact CIA. He certainly sounded like the government, describing an “almost had him” as a comforting sign of success. I sensed he would have been right at home spouting off about “catastrophic successes” and the other such doublespeak of the age.

Manny said, “I want to know when you get him.”

“Of course.”

Well, Hilger’s going to have a little explaining to do to Manny later tonight, I thought. On the other hand, if things went as planned, Hilger wouldn’t be any more able to explain than Manny would be to listen.