Authors: Barry Eisler
The Last Assassin (2 page)
I
'
VE NEVER LIKED
doing a job in a new place. You don't know how to get in and out undetected, you don't know what tools you'll need to access the target, you don't know where you'll stick out and where you'll be able to fade into the background or disappear in a crowd.
To compensate, I start by studying the area from afar, move in only when I've learned as much as possible, and always arrive early enough to become familiar with the local terrain before it's time to act. Tactics like these have kept me alive, and even reasonably prosperous, during more than a quarter century of doing the thing I've always been best at.
But this time the preparation was reflex, not necessity. I wasn't on a job, for one thing; I was done with the life. Or almost done. There was one last thing, a big one, but I didn't want to face that just yet. Barcelona was supposed to be an interlude: pleasure, not business, and it was disturbing that some part of my mind seemed not to understand the difference.
Still, in alien circumstances, we tend to cling to habit, and so I found myself defaulting to my usual approach. I should have known better. Barcelona was unfamiliar, but the real territory I was trying to navigate isn't marked on any map.
I flew JAL from Tokyo via Amsterdam and arrived at Barcelona El Prat on a mild winter evening with nothing more than the plain carry-on bag in my hand and the cheap business suit on my back. On my feet were a pair of plain brown leather loafers, purchased in a mass market Aoyama men's store; on my nose, nonprescription steel-framed eyeglasses, calculated to obscure my features; in my pocket, a guidebook in Japanese. For my first days in the city, I would be an anonymous salaryman, recently divorced, his children grown and out of the house, seeking distraction through travel slightly more intrepid than last year's jaunt to Hawaii or Saipan. When Delilah arrived I would morph into something else.
The staff at Le Meridien hotel on Las Ramblas spoke their delightfully Catalan-accented English slowly, as my own halting, heavily Japanese-accented attempts indicated I would need. I certainly looked the part. My face is courtesy mostly of my Japanese father, and what vestiges my American mother contributed to the mix were diminished by surgery many years ago. The act came easily, too. I've had a lifetime to practice playing roles: no drama school training, true, but if you've lasted as long as I have in a business as literally cutthroat as mine, you learn a thing or two.
I was tired. Jet lag had been a nonissue in my thirties, a nuisance in my forties, and now it was more noticeable than ever. I went straight to my room, ate a room service meal, took a hot bath, and slept fitfully through the night.
I got up at dawn. I'd never been to Barcelona before, and wanted to see the city at first light, not yet on its feet, not yet wearing its makeup. I showered quickly and went out just as the sun was cresting the horizon. I scanned the street as I moved past the lobby window, then checked ambush positions from in front of the hotel. Everything looked fine.
I walked out to Las Ramblas, my breath fogging just slightly in the morning-chilled sea air, and paused. Ten meters down, three men in sanitation overalls and rubber boots were rolling up a dripping hose; the cobblestones were still slick from their work. I stood silently and didn't let them notice me. They finished with the hose, got in a truck, and drove off. When the sound of the engine had faded, it was followed only by silence, and I smiled, pleased to have the city to myself for a while.
I strolled east into the Barri Gòtic, the gothic quarter. I sensed I had arrived during a tenuous interlude between the departure of the night's last revelers and the morning's first arrivals, and I paused, enjoying the feeling that I was privy to some secret transition. I wandered for a long time, listening to my footfalls on the narrow stone streets, enjoying the aroma of fresh bread and ground coffee, watching as the area's residents gradually emerged from behind the centuries-old façades of scarred but stalwart dwellings to start another day.
After a breakfast of croissants and coffee
cortado,
I paid a visit to GaniveterÃa Roca, a famous cutlery store I'd read about while preparing for the trip. There, among the pewter razors and steel scissors and related items, I selected a Benchmade folder with a three-inch blade. I'd gotten used to carrying a knife in the last year or so, and no longer felt comfortable without something sharp close at hand.
Now properly outfitted, I started my customary systematic exploration of the city. I wouldn't feel at ease here until I had learned how best to blend, or how to escape, should my attempts at blending fail. So I went everywhere, that day and for the five days and nights after, at all times, by all means of transit. I absorbed the layout of the streets and alleys; the location of police stations and security cameras; the rhythms and rituals of pedestrians and tourists and shopkeepers.
But there were so many distractions: the mingled smell of tapas and shawarma among the winding alleyways of El Raval; the sounds of music and laughter echoing in the public squares of Grà cia; the feel of the sea breeze on my face and in my hair on the peaks of Montjuic and Tibidabo. I liked that the locals took for granted morning mass in six-hundred-year-old cathedrals. I liked the contrasts: gothic and
modernista;
mountains and sea; historical weight and exuberant esprit.
And the distractions weren't limited to the city itself. I was also suddenly aware of parents with infants. They were everywhere: walking their babies in strollers, holding them in their arms, gazing at their small faces with crippling devotion. Tatsu, my sometime nemesis and current friend in the Keisatsucho, the Japanese FBI, had warned me this would be the case, and, as in so many other matters, he had been right.
What Tatsu hadn't prepared me for, what he couldn't, were the thousand other ways his news about Midori had left me ambivalent, confused, almost in shock. I had nearly canceled with Delilah, but then decided not to. I owed her an explanation, for one thing. I still wanted to see her, wanted it a lot, for another.
I never could have predicted the affection I'd developed for Delilah, or that she seemed to have developed for me. Certainly our initial encounters were inauspicious. First there was Macau, where we learned we were working the same target. Then Bangkok and Hong Kong, where she was supposed to be working me. And yet the inherent mistrust born of working for competing intelligence organizationsâDelilah, for the Mossad, and I, freelance at the time for the CIAâhad paradoxically provided a stable foundation. Each of us recognized in the other a professional, an operator with an agenda, someone for whom business imperatives would always trump personal desire. All of that became the basis for respect, even mutual understanding, and ultimately provided the context for the indulgence of undeniable personal chemistry. The sex couldn't lead anywhere, we both knew it. So why not enjoy what we had, whatever it was, for as long as it lasted?
But it did last, and it deepened. We spent a month together in Rio, after which Delilah had defied her pay-masters when they ordered her to set me up. Defy, hell, she had very nearly betrayed them. She had warned me what was coming, and then worked with me to straighten things out. There must have been something between us, something worthwhile, if we had managed to avoid so many potentially lethal obstacles, and Barcelona was going to be the time and place to figure out what.
On the day Delilah was due to arrive, I checked out of Le Meridien and did some shopping in preparation for my transition from anonymous salaryman to the more cosmopolitan persona I think of as the real me. I bought pants, shirts, and a navy cashmere blazer at Aramis in Eixample; underwear, socks, and a few accessories at Furest on the Plaça de Catalunya; shoes at Casas in La Ribera; and a leather carrying bag to put it all in at Loewe, on the ground floor of the magnificent Casa Lleó Morera building on the Passeig de Grà cia. I paid cash for everything. When I was done, I found a restroom and changed into some of the new clothes, then caught a cab to the Hotel La Florida, where Delilah had made a reservation.
The ride from the city center took about twenty minutes, much of it up the winding road to the top of Mount Tibidabo. I had already reconnoitered the hotel and environs, of course, during my exploration of the city, but the approach was every bit as impressive the second time around. In the late afternoon sunlight, as the cab zigged and zagged its way up the steep mountain road, the city and all its possibilities appeared below me, then disappeared, then came tantalizingly back. And then vanished once again.
When the cab reached the entrance to the hotel, seven stories of taupe-painted plaster and balconied windows overlooking Barcelona and the Mediterranean beyond, a bellhop opened the door and welcomed me. I paid the driver, looked around, and got out. I had no particular reason to think Delilah or her people wanted me deadâif I had, I never would have agreed to meet her hereâbut still, I stood for a moment as the cab drove away, checking likely ambush positions. There weren't many. Exclusive properties like La Florida aren't welcoming to people who seem to be waiting around without a good reason. The hotels assume the lurker is a paparazzo waiting to shoot a celebrity with a camera, not a killer possessed of rather more lethal means and intent, but the result is the same: inhospitable terrain, which today would work in my favor.
The bellhop stood by, holding my bag with quiet professionalism. The grounds were impressive, and he must have been accustomed to guests pausing to enjoy the moment of their arrival. When I was satisfied, I nodded and followed him inside.
The lobby was bright yet intimate, all limestone and walnut and glass. There was only one small sitting area, currently unoccupied. It seemed I had no company. My alertness stayed high, but the tension I felt dropped a notch.
A pretty woman in a chic business suit came over with a glass of sparkling water and inquired after my journey. I told her it had been fine.
“And your name, sir?” she asked, in lightly Catalan-accented English.
“Ken,” I replied, giving her the name I had told Delilah I would be traveling under. “John Ken.”
“Of course, Mr. Ken, we've been expecting you. Your other party has already checked in.” She nodded to a young man behind the counter, who came around and handed her a key. “We have you in room three-oh-nineâmy favorite in the hotel, if I may say so, because of the views. I think you'll enjoy it.”
“I'm sure I will.”
“May I have someone assist with your bag?”
“That's all right. I'd like to wander around a little before going to the room. See a bit of the hotel. It's beautiful.”
“Thank you, sir. Please let us know if there's anything else you need.”
I nodded my thanks and moved off. For a little while, I “wandered” around the first floor, checking everythingâeclectic gift shop, low-key bar, comfortable lounge, spacious stairwells, abundant elevatorsâand found nothing out of place.
I took the stairs to the third floor, paused outside 309, and listened for a moment. The room within was quiet. I placed my bag and empty glass on the ground, took off my jacket, crouched, and loudly slipped the key into the lock. Nothing. I held the jacket in front of the door and opened it a crack. Still nothing. If there was a shooter in there, he was disciplined. I shot my head over and back. I saw only a short hallway and part of a room beyond. I detected no movement.
I stood up, eased the Benchmade from my front pocket, and silently thumbed it open. “Hello?” I called out, stepping inside.
No answer. No sound. I let the door close. It clicked audibly behind me.
“Hello?” I called out again.
Nothing.
“That's weirdâ¦must be the wrong room,” I muttered, loudly enough to be heard. I opened the door and let it close. To anyone hiding inside, it would sound as though I had left.
Still nothing.
I padded down the hallway, toe-heel, pausing after each step to listen. My newly purchased soft-soled Camper shoes were silent on the polished wood floor.
At the end of the hallway, I could see the entire room but for the bathroom. The closet door was open. Probably that was Delilah, knowing I would approach tactically and wanting to make it easier for me, but I wasn't sure yet.
There was a note on the bed, conspicuous in the middle of the flawless white quilt. I ignored it. If this had been my setup, I would have put the note on the bed and then nailed the target from the balcony or bathroom while he went to read it.
The glass doors to the balcony were closed, the curtains open, and I could see no one was out there. Probably Delilah again, lowering my blood pressure.
All that remained was the bathroom, and I started to relax a little. The worst part about clearing a room, especially if you have only a knife and the other guy might have a gun, is clearing the “fatal funnel,” where the enemy has the dominant position and a clear field of fire. In this case, narrowing down the ambush points to just the bathroom reduced my vulnerability considerably.
I walked to the side of the open bathroom door. I paused and listened. All quiet.
I rolled up the jacket, paused to take a deep breath, then hurled the jacket into the room. I followed an instant later, bellowing a war cry. No amount of training can eradicate the flinch response, and even the hardest-core professional will find it difficult not to momentarily track a sudden movement, especially when the movement is accompanied by a roar. The distraction might last for less than a second, but that second can make all the differenceâespecially if you've mistakenly brought a knife to a gunfight, as I might have.