Barry Eisler: Rain Storm aka Choke Point

I stayed on the narrow streets, the dark alleys. My pulse slowed more. My hands settled. The buildings to either side seemed to grow taller, and the weak light dimmer, until I felt as though I was zigzagging along the channel of a steep ravine, a dark urban gorge cut through the faded concrete façades by a long-vanished river. The rusted fire escapes were escarpments of rock, the hanging laundry tangled vines, a lone sodium-arc roof light a yellowed, gibbous moon.

I made my way back to the hotel. By the time I reached the rear entrance, my heart rate was normal again. I started thinking ahead, thinking about Belghazi.

Right, Belghazi. The main event. No more sideshows. I’d get close, do it right, and get out. After that, a big payday. Big enough so that afterward I would get clear of this shit forever.

Or at least for a reasonably long while.

THE NEXT MORNING, Keiko and I enjoyed another leisurely breakfast in the hotel’s Café Girassol, then whiled away an hour browsing the hotel shops, all of which offered splendid views of the lobby. But Belghazi never showed.

Around noon, I went to an Internet café to check the electronic bulletin board that I was using to communicate with Tomohisa Kanezaki, my contact inside the CIA. Before going further, I downloaded a copy of security software and installed it, as I always do, to confirm that the terminal I was using was free of “snoopware”-software, some commercial, some hacker-devised, that monitors keystrokes, transmits screen images, and that can otherwise compromise a computer’s security. Hackers love to remotely place the software on public terminals, like the ones you see in airports, libraries, copy shops, and, of course, Internet cafés, from which they then harvest passwords, credit card numbers, bank accounts, hell, entire online identities.

This one was clean. I checked the bulletin board. There was a message waiting: “Call me.”

That was all. I logged out and left.

Outside, I turned on the encrypted cell phone the Agency had provided me, punched in the number I had memorized, and started walking to make it harder for anyone to triangulate.

I heard a single ring on the other end, then Kanezaki’s voice. “ Moshi moshi ,” he said.

Kanezaki is an American sansei , or third-generation Japanese, and he likes to show off his language skills. I rarely indulge him. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, conceding. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

I smiled. Kanezaki was part of the CIA, which in my book rendered him automatically untrustworthy. Of course, he probably had the same misgivings about me. But in Tokyo I had declined a contract that his boss wanted to take out on him, and in fact had warned him about it. You’d have to be a world-class ingrate not to appreciate a favor like that, and I knew Kanezaki felt he owed me. He’d feel that way not just because of what I had done, but also because he was much more American than Japanese, and Americans, whose self-image is so tied up with “fairness,” wind up making themselves suckers for the concept. His sentiment would take us only so far, of course-in my experience, one of the guiding principles of human relations seems to be “what have you done for me lately”-but it was something, a small antidote against the potential poison of his professional affiliations.

“Unless I’m talking on it,” I said, “I leave this thing turned off.”

“Saving the battery?”

“Guarding my privacy.”

“You’re the poster boy for paranoia,” he said, and I could see him shaking his head on the other end. I smiled again. In some ways I liked the kid in spite of his choice of employer. I’d been impressed by the countermeasures he’d taken against his boss after my warning, and some part of me enjoyed being able to watch his development from naïve idealist to increasingly seasoned player.

“Our friend just got in,” he said.

“I know. I saw him last night.”

“Good. You know, we’re tracking him. If you’d leave the cell phone on, we might be able to contact you with some timely information.”

Although I didn’t know for sure, I suspected the Agency had been keeping tabs on Belghazi through a compromised cell or satellite phone. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake.

“Sure,” I said, my tone neutral to the point of sarcasm.

There was a pause. “You’re not going to leave it on,” he said, his tone half-resigned, half-bemused.

I laughed.

“We’d have a better chance of success if we could work together,” he said, earnest as ever.

I laughed again.

“All right, do it your way,” he said. “I know you will anyway.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. It would really be nice if you could account for some of those disbursements.”

“C’mon, we’ve been over this. I need the cash to get into the high rollers’ rooms. I saw a guy from China drop a million U.S. at one of the baccarat tables the other night. That’s where our friend plays. I need to get near him, and they don’t allow spectators. Or low rollers.”

He was probably just giving me a hard time to try to make me feel like I’d won something. I knew this whole program was as off the books as anything the Agency had ever run. The last thing Kanezaki or his superiors would want would be a paper trail for the General Accounting Office to follow.

“What if you actually win something?” he said.

“I’ll be sure to report it as taxable income.”

He laughed at that, and I said, “We’re done?”

“Sure. Oh, just one more thing. A little something. Last night someone got killed in your neighborhood.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Broken neck.”

“Ouch.”

“You would know.”

I knew what he was thinking. Kanezaki had once watched me take someone out with a neck crank.

“Actually, I wouldn’t know,” I said. “But I can imagine.”

I heard a snort. “Just remember,” he said, “even if we’re not there in the room with you, we’re still watching.”

“I’ve always suspected that you guys self-select for voyeurs.”

“Very funny.”

“Who’s being funny?”

There was a pause. “Look, it might be that I owe you. But not everyone here feels that way. And you’re not just dealing with me. Okay? You need to watch yourself.”

I smiled. “It’s always good to have a friend.”

“Shit,” I heard him mutter.

“If I need anything, I’ll contact you,” I told him.

“Okay.” A pause, then, “Good luck.”

I pressed the “end” key, purged the call log, and turned the unit off.

He hadn’t seemed particularly perturbed about the late Karate. Possibly indicating that the CIA wasn’t affiliated with him. Or maybe there was an affiliation, and Kanezaki-san was simply out of the loop.

I kept walking. Macau breathed around me, deeply, in and out, like a winded animal.

IN THE EVENING, Keiko and I decided to enjoy a little gambling at the Lisboa. I couldn’t continually set up for Belghazi in the hotel lobby without drawing attention to myself. And trying to wire his room the way I had Karate’s would have been too risky-if his bodyguards swept for bugs and found something, they might harden their defenses. So I decided my best shot at intercepting him would be not to follow, but to anticipate him.

This can be easier than it might sound. All you have to do is put yourself in the other party’s shoes: if I were him, what would I do? How would I look at the world, how would I feel, how would I behave? Just good, sound, Dale Carnegie stuff. Appreciating the other guy’s viewpoint, that kind of thing. I’m-okay-you’re-okay. I’m-okay-you’re-going-to-die.

Performing this exercise with someone as security-conscious as Belghazi, though, is tough, because the security-conscious tend to eschew patterns in favor of randomness. Random times; random routes; when possible, random destinations. They deliberately avoid getting hooked on anything-lunch at a certain restaurant, haircuts at a certain barber, bets on the horses at a certain track-that the opposition can dial into.