The Last Assassin (4 page)

“But just recently, right after the last time we talked, I got some…news.”

The pressure from her hand lessened. “Yes?”

“Remember when we were talking at the Peninsula in Hong Kong?” I asked. My words were coming out fast, but I couldn't slow them down. “The night you told me about Dov. I told you there was a woman, a civilian I'd screwed things up with.”

“I remember.”

“Well, it looks like, the last time I was with her, which was before I met you, we didn't…we weren't that careful. So it seems…”

“Oh,
merde…
”

“So it seems there's a child. A boy.”

There was a long pause. I sat there, my heart still kicking, wondering which way this was going to go.

Delilah said, “She contacted you?”

I shook my head. “I have a friend in Japanese intelligence. He got hold of some surveillance photos of the woman and the child, taken by my enemies. These people don't know how to find me, so they're hoping I'll reappear in the woman's life. They're watching her for that.”

“Is she in danger?”

“No. I don't think so.”

“What's her name?”

I paused, but I didn't want it to seem as if I was holding anything back. “Midori.”

“Pretty name.”

“Yeah.”

“These people…they're hoping you'll hear about the child? And that hearing will make you go to Midori?”

“It looks like that, yes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't have brought it up.”

I rubbed my temples and thought. “I'm not even sure the child is mine. But I have to know. You can understand that, can't you?”

There was another long pause. Her hand was still on my thigh, but it felt like an afterthought now.

After a moment, she said, “I can. But from what you've said, right now, Midori and the boy aren't in any danger. If you go to them, you might put them in danger, and yourself, too.” She paused, then added, “But you know that.”

“Yeah.”

She took her hand off my leg. “Well, it's not as though I was expecting us to figure out our crazy situation in just a few days together. It was going to take time no matter what. So you should do what you have to.”

I looked at her. “I'm sorry.”

She shook her head. “It's not your fault.” Then she laughed. “Things are never easy for us, are they?”

“Should I not have told you? We don't have much time together, and I didn't want to ruin it.”

“You didn't ruin anything. I'm glad you told me. It was respectful.”

“What do we do now?”

“We enjoy the time we have together. Like always.”

But I didn't want it to be like always. I wanted it to be more than that, and so, I was beginning to understand, did she.

I wanted to tell her all that. But I didn't. I just said, “Thank you.”

She shook her head and smiled. “I'm going to take a bath. You want to join me?”

I looked at her, still wanting to say more, still not knowing how.

“A bath would be good,” I said.

LATER
, Delilah lay next to Rain in the dark. Pale light from a half-moon shone through one of the windows, and she watched him sleep in that almost spookily silent way of his. Most people would be wired all night after a run-in like the one they'd had earlier—she was—but Rain had dropped off almost immediately after they got in bed.

He could be so gentle with her when it was just the two of them that it was hard to remember what he was capable of. But she'd seen his other side before, first on Macau, then in Hong Kong, and she'd felt it surface again tonight in the Barri Gòtic. She wouldn't have told him, but she'd interceded with those drunken Brits in part because she was afraid of what Rain might do if she didn't. She'd noticed him palm something from his front pocket during the confrontation, and assumed it was a knife. She'd hurt that guy badly tonight, it was true. But she was pretty sure Rain would have killed him.

Before going to bed, they'd made love again in the bath. She was glad of that, and took it as a good sign. They had a new situation to deal with, true, as it seemed they always did, but it didn't affect their fundamental chemistry. She hoped it wasn't the situations that were fueling the chemistry. She'd had affairs like that, where it was the illicitness, or the danger, or some similar thrill that kept the thing going. She didn't want that with Rain. She wanted something more stable. Something…

She smiled. The word that had come to her, and that she didn't want to say, was
lasting.

She'd been aware of these feelings before meeting him here, but she hadn't fully acknowledged them. She'd been afraid to. But now that she was faced with the prospect of losing him, of another woman who'd thrown a trump card down on the table, she couldn't hide from her hopes, either.

She realized she was thinking in Hebrew, and that was strange. French was her default setting for matters of the heart. The one exception was Dov, and she realized with a pang that somewhere along the line Rain must have come to occupy a similar place in her consciousness, the place where she kept her first language, her first love, perhaps her first self.

She watched him. It was good with this man lying next to her, it really was. It wasn't what she had with Dov, but how could it be? She had known Dov before she was formed, when she was guileless, even defenseless. When she was just a girl, in fact. That girl was long gone, so how could she expect a love like hers?

But there were elements of what she had with Rain that she hadn't had with Dov, or with anyone. She and Rain were of the same world. Each understood the other's habits and didn't judge the other's past. They recognized and accepted the weight they each carried from the things they'd done. Both knew that weight irrevocably separated them from civilian society, and at the same time brought them together like some secret sign.

On top of all of which, she couldn't deny, was some astonishing personal chemistry, and the sex that went along with it.

But she didn't think it was love, exactly. It was more like…the possibility of love. She wondered for a moment what the difference was, or whether she would ever even know the difference, but she didn't want to think about that now.

She doubted he was seeing things clearly, and that concerned her. His tradecraft was superb, but as far as she knew he'd never before had to use it when he was this emotionally involved. He could screw up. He could get killed. And for what?

He was taking a risk in going to see Midori and the child. He'd acknowledged as much. And a man like Rain would never take a risk like that unless there was something serious he was hoping to gain from it.

She considered for a moment. What do men do when they're facing a hard decision? They defer it by trying to collect more data. Maybe that's all he was up to. But it hurt to know there was even a decision to make.

She tried always to be realistic, to keep her hopes in check. She knew she had no future in her organization. They used her for the things she was good at, but would never trust her with real power. And she'd long ago accepted that, after the things she'd done, she could never have a normal life. She could never have a family. She could never let someone get that close.

Except…Rain had been getting that close. Which was why what he'd told her tonight hurt. Worse than hurt. It ached in a place she couldn't describe, a place she hadn't even known was part of her.

Their reservation was for a week, but she didn't know now how long he was going to stay. She realized this could be their last time together. Even their last night.

Maybe the child wasn't his. That was possible; he'd said so. Or the woman would otherwise reject him. Or something else would happen to make this turn out the way she wanted it to.

She watched him sleep, and was surprised at how possessive she suddenly felt. And threatened. And angry.

She wasn't helpless, of course. There were things she could do to create the right outcome.

She'd gotten a little more information from Rain in the bath. Not much—just that he was going to New York. But combined with the name he'd mentioned, and a few other details she remembered from Hong Kong, it ought to be enough. She'd be looking for a Japanese female, first name Midori, who emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in the last three years, was currently residing in New York, and who gave birth to a boy, probably in New York, in the last eighteen months. Her organization had found people before with a lot less to go on than that.

She lay there for a long time, struggling with warring impulses: hope and fear, sympathy and anger, temptation and guilt. Eventually, just before moonlight gave way to sun, she slept.

D
ELILAH AND I
spent the rest of the week in Barcelona. My “situation,” as I thought of it, wasn't on my mind as much as I would have expected, and its absence seemed linked to Delilah's presence, because I found myself thinking of it mostly when she was off doing something else and I was left alone. At those times I would be gripped by a vertiginous combination of excitement and dread, and I was always glad when we were together again.

Of course the news had been a surprise to her, but beyond that I couldn't tell. I didn't know what I was expecting, exactly—that she would be angry with me? Argumentative? Sullen? But she wasn't. We would get up early and stay out late and make love before napping every afternoon and we didn't discuss it again.

The only clue I had to how she might really be feeling was that she was less moody than she had been in Rio. Rio had been the first extended time we'd spent together, and it had taken me a while to get used to her periodic pouts and petulance there. But in the end I'd come to appreciate that side of her because it felt real. It told me she was comfortable with me, she wasn't acting. And now I wondered if the more consistent good cheer on display in Barcelona was deliberate, a form of overcompensation intended to obscure whatever was really going on inside her.

The morning I left, she came with me to the airport. I shouldered my bag outside security and tried to think of something to say. She looked at me, but I couldn't read her expression.

“I hope you're going to be careful,” she said, breaking the silence.

That wasn't really like her. I shrugged. “That's not a hard promise for me to make.”

“I'm more concerned with whether you'll be able to keep it.”

“I'll keep it.”

She nodded. “You going to call me?”

That was even less like her. “Of course,” I said, but the truth was, my mind was already half elsewhere.

I kissed her good-bye and got into the security line. When I turned back a minute later, she was gone.

Once I was past immigration, I used a prepaid card to call my partner, Dox, from a pay phone. The burly former Marine sniper had provided me with his new, sterile cell-phone number via our secure electronic bulletin board. He was stateside at the moment, visiting his parents, and to contact Midori securely I would need his help.

The call snaked its way under the Atlantic and rang on his mobile somewhere on the other side. Then the irrepressible baritone rang out: “Dox here.”

I couldn't help smiling. When he wasn't in stealth mode, Dox was the loudest sniper I'd ever known. One of the loudest people, even. But he'd also proven himself a trustworthy friend. And, apart from certain stylistic differences that sometimes drove me to distraction, a damn capable one.

“It's me,” I told him.

“Who's ‘me'? I swear, if this is another one of those ‘switch to our cellular service and we'll send you a free set of steak knives…'”

“Dox, keep it together. It's me, John.”

He laughed. “Don't worry, partner. No one else even knows this number, so I knew it was you. Just wanted to see if I could get you to talk a little on an open line. I see you're loosening up some, and that's all to the good.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I owe that to you.”

He laughed again. “You don't have to thank me, I know how you feel. What's on your mind? Didn't expect to hear from you so soon.”

“I've got a…situation I could use your help with. If you're interested.”

“This one business, or personal?”

“This one is personal. But it pays.”

“Son, if you have a personal situation you need help with, I'm not going to take your money for it. We're partners. I'll just help you, like I know you'd help me.”

I was so used to thinking in terms of me against the world that I was momentarily speechless at how much I could depend on this man.

“Thank you,” I managed to say.

“It's nothing, man. Tell me what you need.”

“How soon can you be in New York?”

“Shit, I can be there tomorrow if you need me.”

“No, take the weekend with your folks. I've got a few things to do first anyway. How about if we plan to meet on Monday?”

“Monday it is.”

“And maybe you won't take money for this, but I'm not letting you go out of pocket. You tell me what you spend on travel, okay?”

“Sure, I'll just take my customary suite at the Peninsula and you can settle it directly with them.”

“That's fine. Although somewhere downtown might be more convenient.”

“Shit, man, I'm joking. Not about the Peninsula—that's an outstanding institution. About letting you pay. You shipped me your share of the proceeds from the Hong Kong operation, remember? That ought to cover my current expenses, and then some.”

In Hong Kong, Dox had walked away from a five-million-dollar payday to save my life. Afterward I'd given him the fee I'd collected for the op as a small way of saying thank you. He hadn't wanted to take it, but had finally agreed.

“All right, I'm not going to argue with you,” I said.

“Good. You can buy the beer, though. Or that fancy whiskey you like.”

I smiled. “I'll call you Monday.”