Killing Rain (13 page)

“Damn, this is good,” Dox said, after the waitress had opened and decanted the bottle and we had taken our first sips. “I don’t know who Emilio is, but I’d sure like to shake his hand. How do you know so much about wine, man?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know that much.”

“Cut the modesty routine. I can tell you do.”

I shrugged again. “For what I do, I need to be able to blend in a lot of different strata of society. To do that, you need to know the little things, the tells. Could be wine, could be the right fork to use. Could be the right clothes to wear. Or the right words. I don’t know. I just watch and try to learn. I’m a good imitator.” I took a sip of the Emilio’s Terrace. “But also, I just like wine.”

“So you can just . . . put these things on, then take them off, like they’re a disguise?”

“I guess so. You do it, too, although a little differently. You’ve got a way of disappearing when you want to, I’ve seen that.”

“Yeah, that’s from sniper school. You just . . . draw in all your energy, like. It’s a Zen thing. Kind of hard to explain. A buddy of mine once told me it’s like what that creature did in
Predator,
or a Klingon warship with a cloaking device. I think that’s about right. I wouldn’t mind being able to move comfortably in all those different societies like you do, though. Still, it must be
strange, to be able to move in them but not really belong in any of them, you know what I mean?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

The meal turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. The food and wine were first-rate, and the feeling of being in the heart of, and yet above and isolated from, the dense metropolis around us was invigorating, almost heady. The weather was Bangkok’s finest: cool and relatively dry, and a few stars were even visible through the polluted pall above. We talked a lot about Afghanistan, which was the conflict we had in common: the men we had known there; the crazy things we had done; the unintended consequences of an armed and well-trained cadre of Islamic fanatics that had followed in the wake of the departing Soviet army we had helped to drive out.

We talked, too, of Asia. I was surprised at his knowledge of and affection for the region, and his inquiries about Japanese culture, in particular, were intelligent and insightful. He told me about his love for Thailand, where he had been “sojourning,” as he liked to put it, for years, staying longer and longer with each visit, and how he hoped to retire here. How he no longer felt at ease in the States.

I understood his feelings. There’s something accepting about Thai culture, and there are species of
farang,
foreigners, who find themselves drawn to it. On the dark side of the phenomenon are pedophiles and other deviants who come to indulge their secret sicknesses. And there are the aging middle-management types, who anesthetize regrets about failed ambitions and the implacable, day-by-day approach of death by renting women with whom they are in any event too old and too far gone to function, and by reassuring themselves of their worth by living in a neocolonial style that the locals can’t afford. But there are many who stay for more benign reasons. Some, in a sense, are
Easterners trapped in Western bodies, who find their truer natures liberated in Thailand’s “foreign” climes. Some are simply adventurers, addicts to the exotic. Some are refugees from a misguided affair, or divorce, or bankruptcy, or other such personal trauma. And some, like Dox and me, are soldiers who found themselves too altered by the things they did in war to return to the lands of their youth. For some, the distance between who you were and who you have become is unbridgeable, and the dissonance attempted repatriation creates is a constant reminder of the very changes that you want so badly to forget.

When we were finished with the meal, and lingering over enormous mugs of cappuccino, I told him, “I need your help with something.”

He looked at me. “Sure, man, anything, you know that. Just name it.”

“My Israeli contact. The one who brokered the meeting with Boaz and Gil. She just contacted me. She wants a meeting.”

“Maybe this is the break we’ve been waiting for, then. Some new info on Manny.”

I shook my head. “She didn’t say anything about Manny. She says she just wants to see me.”

He cocked his head and looked at me. “I don’t get it. Why would she want to see you, if it’s not about Manny?”

“Before she set things up with Boaz and Gil, I spent some time with her.” I gave him the
Reader’s Digest
version of how Delilah and I had met in Macau, of what had happened between us there and then in Rio after.

He listened quietly, his expression uncharacteristically grave. When I was done, he said, “You’re thinking about seeing her.”

I nodded.

“Are you going to do this because you think she might have some operational intel, or because you just want to?”

For a guy who liked to play the hick, Dox had a way of going straight to the heart of the matter. I could have equivocated, but I decided to play it straight with him. He deserved that.

“I just want to see her.”

He nodded for a moment, then said, “I’m glad you said so. I could tell it was that from how you just talked about her, and I would have been awfully concerned if you’d tried to bullshit me. I would have wondered if you were bullshitting yourself, too.”

“I don’t know if I’m bullshitting myself or not.”

“Partner, that in itself is a profound species of honesty.”

I sipped my cappuccino. “She might still have something operational for us. I doubt that the timing of the meeting is just a coincidence.”

“If it’s not a coincidence, and she told you she was calling just because she missed your charming personality, she wasn’t playing straight with you. There might be something nefarious at work.”

“ ‘Nefarious’?”

“Yeah, you know, it means ‘immoral’ or ‘wicked.’ ”

I frowned. “I know what it means.”

He smiled. “Well, if you know what it means, what do you think?”

“You might be right.”

“But you want to meet her anyway.”

“Yeah.”

He pursed his lips and exhaled forcefully. “Sounds like unsafe sex to me, partner. And I’m not sure I want to be the condom.”

I nodded. “When you put it that way, I’m not so sure, either.”

He gave me a medium-wattage grin. “Well, tell me what you want, anyway.”

“She’s coming to Bangkok. I told her I would meet her outside of customs. If she puts people there to anticipate me, you can spot them.”

“Okay . . .”

“We’ll take a taxi from the international terminal to the domestic. You’ll be tailing us, so you should have some opportunities to tell if we’re followed. If I’m clean, we’ll go through security on the domestic side. I’ll have two tickets for Phuket, which is where Delilah and I are going, and you’ll have a ticket for somewhere else. That way you’ll be able to get through security, too, and you’ll have another chance in the boarding area to confirm that we’re alone.”

“Phuket, huh? Hope you talked to your travel agent. There are still a few places that aren’t back on line after the tsunami.”

“I know.”

“Or you could go to Ko Chang, it’s in the Gulf of Thailand and they didn’t get hit at all. Plus it’s less built up and only about a four-hour drive from Bangkok.”

“I know. I want to fly. We’ll be harder to follow that way.”

“Ah, that’s a good point. Well, Phuket sure is nice, anyway. Where are you planning on staying?”

I balked for a second out of habit, then said, “Amanpuri.”

“Hoo-ah! Paradise on earth! Stayed there once and saw Mick Jagger. My kind of place, although I believe I do slightly prefer the beach at the Chedi next door. I won’t need one of the villas or anything like that. Just a pavilion ought to be fine. With an ocean view, of course. No sense being in paradise if you can’t see the water.”

“No, I don’t think . . .”

“Hey, how am I going to watch your back if I’m not there? She could call her people once you arrive, and you’d be all on your own.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Then why are you asking me for my help?”

“Look, I don’t know if I can get another room there. I was lucky to get the one on such short notice.”

“Come on, man, you know their bookings are off because tourists think the tsunami damage is worse than it really is. All on account of them CNN camera crews going in and asking the locals, ‘Can you take us to a scene of appropriately picturesque destruction that’ll increase our ratings back home?’ And then their viewers think, ‘Shit, that’s the whole island, I better just go to Hawaii instead.’ But you and me, we know better, don’t we?”

I didn’t see any room for negotiation in his expression. I sighed. “All right. But this woman is sharp, understand? She notices what goes on around her and she remembers faces. If you stay in sniper mode, you’ll be fine. But if you slip, she’ll make you in a heartbeat. And that could multiply our problems.”

He grinned. “I promise to behave.”

I looked at him. A part of me was shaking its head, thinking,
Nothing good can come of this.

But I only said, “All right.”

“Well, I’m glad to be getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Amanpuri, but I still don’t like it, partner. Mixing business and pleasure like this ain’t smart. It’s apt to leave you confused. And you getting killed would be a piss-poor way to clarify the confusion.”

I took another sip of my cappuccino. “There’s some risk, but there’s a reward, too. If I don’t meet her, I’ll blow a chance to learn what the Israelis know, what they might be planning.”

“Yeah, son, but that ain’t the only reward that’s on your mind here.”

“No, it’s not.”

“All right, you’re a grownup, I’m not going to tell you what time to go to bed or who to take there. I hope she’s worth it, though.”

I nodded. A breeze picked up, and for a moment, the terrace was actually chilly. I wondered about the wisdom of what I was doing, and about the fairness of involving Dox.

The stars, which had been briefly visible, were gone now, reclaimed by the polluted sky. I looked out at the lights of the city. The meal over, I no longer had the pleasant sense of being above it all, removed from it. Rather, I felt that I was right in the middle of something, probably more than I knew.

H
ILGER SAT
at his desk in his eighty-eighth-floor office at the International Finance Center. Two IFC was one of the newest buildings on Hong Kong and, at 1,362 feet, the tallest. He had to admit, he really liked the place. It wasn’t just the views, the amenities, the feeling of being on top of the world, detached, all-powerful, untouchable. The building was also the perfect cover. The lease itself was so breathtakingly expensive that it was inconceivable that a government or any other nonprofit could be footing the bill for it. And, indeed, Uncle Sam wasn’t paying for Hilger’s lease, or for any other aspect of his operation. These days, Uncle Sam pretty much left Hilger alone, enjoying the quality of his intelligence but preferring not to know too much about how he came by it. All of which suited Hilger just fine.

The room was done in natural oak and off-white wool Berber carpet. The desktop supported only a few items: a brushed nickel Leonardo Marelli halogen reading light; a Bang & Olufsen Beocom 2500 telephone, with CIA-issue Secure Telephone Unit circuitry installed; and an anodized aluminum Macintosh thirty-inch flat panel display with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The overall look, which he had put to good effect with numerous clients, was solidity, focus, money, connections. The view, of the skyscrapers of Central and Victoria Harbor, was part of the impression, and Hilger liked it a lot. Tonight, to minimize reflection and reveal the glowing cityscape without, he had the room illuminated only by the desk light. Gazing out at the view soothed Hilger’s mind, helped him figure things out. Which was good, because at the moment there was a lot of figuring to be done.

The situation wasn’t entirely positive, certainly, but things were still fixable. Yes, he’d lost two men, but he’d lost men before and understood that losing men, perhaps losing his own life, was part of any mission. It was the mission that mattered, the operation. The operation had to succeed and he would ensure that it did.

He took things backward. The goal: protect the operation. Which meant: ending the threat to Manny, who was a critical part of the operation. How to do that? Easy enough. Find out who had been behind the hit and who had tried to carry it out, and then, insofar as possible, eliminate both.

The problem was doing it all under pressure. After meeting Manny in Kowloon that morning, he had returned to his office. There was a message waiting for him from someone in his network who was currently stationed at Langley. Hilger had called him. The man had offered a heads-up: the news that Calver and Gibbons had been gunned down in Manila had reached the top immediately. Manila Station had liaised with the Metro Manila
police, who had checked the dead bodyguard’s records and learned that his only client was one Manheim Lavi, Known Major Scumbag. Lavi was currently unreachable, but the inference was that the bodyguard had died protecting, and that the two dead ex-spooks had been mixed up with, said Known Major Scumbag. The burning question, his man had said, was: What were Calver and Gibbons doing with the Scumbag, and who else was involved? Hilger knew he had to tie up all the loose ends before someone grabbed hold of them and unraveled the whole fucking thing.