Barry Eisler - Rain Storm aka Choke Point

I used the room’s speakerphone to call the prepaid cell phone I had just bought, picked up the call, and left, closing the door behind me. I plugged a wire-line earpiece into the cell phone and listened. The music was soft but audible. As long as I could hear it in the background, I would know the connection was good.

I took the stairs down to the fifth floor. Room 544 was at the end of a hallway, with the entrance to an internal staircase opposite and about three meters ahead of it. I waited inside the doors that led to the staircase, where I could see the room through a glass panel. If anyone had managed to listen in on my call to Delilah, which was unlikely, or if she had decided to inform her people of my whereabouts, which I deemed less unlikely, I would see them coming from here. If they tried to use the staircase, as I had, I would hear them. And, if for some reason that I had completely missed, someone tried to get into my room while I was out, I would know it through the cell phone. Layers. Always layers.

Delilah arrived fifteen minutes later. As she passed my position, I checked the direction she had come from to ensure that she was alone. When I saw that she was, I opened the door and said, “Delilah. Over here.”

She turned and looked at me. She didn’t seem particularly surprised, and I wasn’t surprised at that. She was familiar with my habits and wouldn’t have expected me to just be waiting at the appointed place at the appointed time.

I held the door open as she walked past me. Harry’s detector was in my pocket, sleeping peacefully, the batteries fully juiced from an earlier daily charging. She wasn’t wired.

I led her along various stairways and internal corridors back to the room, listening in on the earpiece while we moved. All I heard from my room were the quiet notes of Lynne Arriale. Neither of us spoke along the way. We encountered no surprises.

I unlocked the door to the room and we went inside. “Sorry about the procedures,” I said, removing the earpiece. I turned off the cell phone and left it by the door.

The apology was perfunctory. So was the shrug she offered in response. I bolted the door behind us.

Feeling secure for the moment, I took in a few more details. She was wearing a midnight blue dress, something with texture, maybe raw silk. It was cut just above the knee, with three-quarter-length sleeves, an off-the-shoulder neckline, and a deep V cut in the back and front. Her shoes were patent leather stilettos with sharp toes. There was a handbag to match the shoes, and a gold Cartier watch with a gold link band encircling her left wrist. It was a man’s watch, large and heavy on her wrist, and its incongruous heft served to accentuate her femininity. Her hair was swept back and away from her face in a way that accentuated her profile. Overall the look was controlled and sleek, sophisticated and sexy. None of it, especially the shoes, would be ideal for escape and evasion, if it came to that, so I realized she must have chosen it all for some other operational imperative. There are all sorts of weapons in the world, and I reminded myself that when this woman was dressed for work she was anything but unarmed.

She reached into her purse and took out her cell phone to show me that it was turned off and unconnected to anyone who might be listening in. Then she opened the purse so I could see there was nothing else inside that might have been problematic. I nodded to show that I was satisfied.

She raised her arms away from her sides and looked at me. She smiled in that sly, subversive way she had-teasing, but also amused, and inviting the recipient of the smile to join in the amusement. “You’re not going to search me?”

I didn’t think it would be necessary. And it certainly wouldn’t be wise. If I put my hands on her body, my previous reaction, when I had watched her leaning over the bedstand in my room at the hotel in Macau, would have seemed shy and retiring by comparison. She knew that, and she was showing me that she knew.

“Why would I want to do that?” I said, aware that my heart had started a little giddyup just at the prospect. “We trust each other, right?”

She lowered her arms, letting the smile linger for a moment, maybe acknowledging that I’d handled her suggestion about as well as anyone could under the circumstances.

“Shall I take off my shoes?”

“Why?” I asked, thinking of that idiot shoe bomber who had tried to bring down a flight from Paris.

She shrugged. “Isn’t that the custom in Japan?”

Cute. A way to confirm a biographical detail, to increase or decrease the probability that the guy her people had read about in Forbes had been me. She’d have to do better than that.

“I think they do it in houses, not so much in hotels,” I said. “Either way is fine.”

She bent forward, raised her right leg behind her, and reached around to a strap at the back of her ankle. She didn’t need to touch the wall or otherwise support herself to perform this maneuver. Her balance was good. But I had already seen that, in Belghazi’s suite when she had nearly put me down with that elbow shot.

She repeated the procedure for the other shoe. In the half-light where we stood by the door I caught a tantalizing glimpse of skin and curves as the front of her dress slipped momentarily away from her body. The view wasn’t accidental, I knew, but it was undeniably good.

I took off my shoes, as well, and followed her into the room. I’d left the lights on low so that their reflection against the floor-to-ceiling window glass wouldn’t obscure the view of the harbor and the lights of the Hong Kong skyline beyond it, but still I saw her logging the room details before appreciating the panorama outside. I couldn’t help smiling at that. A civilian would never have paused before taking in that spectacular scenery.

She glanced over at the coffee table. “Laphroaig?” she asked.

“The thirty-year-old,” I said, nodding. “You know it?”

She nodded back. “My favorite. I like it even better than the forty. That sherry finish-divine.”

Not bad , I thought. I wondered what else she would know. She was obviously adept when it came to languages, clothes, spycraft. And now whiskey. Food? Wine? Poetry? Tantric sexual techniques? I tried not to speculate too much on that last one.

“Can I get you a glass?”

“I’d love one. Just a drop of water.”

I poured us each a healthy measure in the crystal tumblers, adding a drop of water to hers as she had requested. I handed her her glass, raised mine, and said, “ L’Chaim ,” smiling into her eyes as I did so.

She paused, looking at me. “I’m sorry?”

I smiled innocently. “ ‘To life,’ right? Isn’t that the custom in Israel?”

For one second I thought she looked angry, and then she smiled. “ Kanpai ,” she said, and we both laughed.

It was a good recovery. But that pause, and the momentary reaction that had followed, seemed telling.

We sat by the coffee table. Delilah took the couch with her back to the wall, her right side to the window. I took the stuffed chair next to the couch. My back was to the wall next to the window, so I didn’t have the view. But I preferred to look at her, anyway.

We sipped for a moment in silence. She was right-the thirty-year-old, finished in sherry casks, mingles ocean tang and sherry sweetness like no other whiskey, offering a nose and taste unparalleled even among Laphroaig’s other outstanding bottlings.

After a minute or two she asked, “How much do you know about me?”

“Not a lot. Mostly speculation. Probably about what you know about me.”

“You think I’m Israeli?”

“Aren’t you?”

She smiled. The smile said: Come on, you can do better than that .