“Manny and Hilger,” I said. “We take them both out. Manny satisfies the Israeli contract. We get paid. As for Hilger, either he’s not CIA at all, or he is and he’s off the reservation, but either way he gets disowned postmortem. At which point, the Israelis realize that they don’t have a problem with the Agency. It gets everyone off our backs.”
“You know, though, even if the government disowns Hilger, someone might be interested in avenging him. That kind of thing has been known to happen.”
I shrugged. “I’m willing to take that chance. No matter what, Hilger is where the direct pressure is coming from right now, even more than from the Israelis. I don’t see a better way of relieving that pressure than eliminating its source.”
“Seems reasonable to me.”
Part of me wondered how I had wandered along to a point where calmly proposing that we kill two men, one of whom might be CIA, would indeed seem reasonable. I would have to ponder that in my leisure time.
“And,” I said, “since, as far as I can tell, the reason they wanted relatively ‘natural’ causes for Manny in the first place was their mistaken assumption that he was a CIA asset, we no longer have to be overly constrained in our methods.”
Dox nodded. “That makes me feel better. Where I was brought up, gentlemen just shot each other. It’s more comfortable for me.”
I nodded, then for the second time in as many minutes realized that there were people in the world who might find this kind of conversation strange, who might even be put off by it. I wondered where the new perspective was coming from. I really would have to think about that later.
“The thing is,” I said, “I don’t think we’re going to have guns.”
His face fell a little. “No guns?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think even Kanezaki could get us what we’d need on this short notice. I’m not sure it would be wise to ask just now, regardless. And my Japanese contact could help us if we were in Tokyo. For Hong Kong… not with these time constraints.”
“Well, that sucks. I was kind of picturing myself up on a rooftop with the dreaded M-40A3 and matching AN/PVS-10 nightscope. It would have been so civilized.”
I nodded. “That, or I could have just burst into their private room with a forty-five while they were enjoying the Peking duck. But maybe…”
He looked at me. “You’re thinking something devious there, partner, I can tell.”
I smiled. “I’m thinking about Hilger. He was armed last year at Kwai Chung.”
“Armed and dangerous,” he said, nodding. “That boy was a one-man killing machine. Had his primary in a waist holster or belly band, if I’m remembering correctly, and a backup on his ankle.”
“Think that was a one-time thing?”
“Hell, no. A guy like that, carry for him is routine. He’d feel naked without it.”
“And even if it’s not routine, we know he carries when he’s operational.”
“Like tomorrow night, for example.”
“For example.”
He stroked his chin and grinned. “Old Manny might be carrying, too. I would be, after what almost happened to him in Manila.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
“Nice of them, to bring the guns for us.”
I nodded. “All I need to do is get to one of them alone, from behind. Say, in a restroom.”
Dox cleared his throat. “You’re not worried about, you know, that when you see Manny like you did the last time…”
I shook my head, and felt something shift inside me like a block of frozen granite. “No,” I said. “I’m not worried at all.”
PART THREE
SEVENTEEN
BECAUSE WINTERS AND COMPANY might have tracked Dox’s cell phone earlier in the day, the Grand Hyatt was no longer secure. We took extreme care in returning, and stayed just long enough to collect our gear. Then we went to Sukhumvit, using appropriate countersurveillance measures along the way, and took rooms at the Westin. Dox, chastened by the way Winters had almost gotten to us, didn’t argue with any of this.
I showered and shaved, then took an excruciatingly hot bath, which ordinarily helps me sleep. But I was still wired from that near miss in front of Brown Sugar. I had to leave for the airport at six o’clock, and if I didn’t get some rest soon, the next chance I’d get would be on the plane.
I pulled a chair over to the window and sat in the dark, looking down at Sukhumvit Road and the urban mass beyond it. There wasn’t much of a view-the Westin isn’t tall enough and the city itself is too congested. I wished for a moment, absurdly, that I was back in my apartment in Sengoku, the quiet part of Tokyo where I’d lived until the CIA and Yamaoto had managed to track me there. I’d never realized at the time how safe I felt there, how peaceful. It seemed a long time ago, and so much had happened in between. I realized I’d never even paused to mourn having been forced to leave. Until this moment, anyway. And now I couldn’t afford the distraction.
I thought about the plan Dox and I had come up with. It seemed sound, up to a point. But I wondered why the solutions I reached for always involved violence.
Violence, my ass. You’re talking about killing.
I smiled sardonically. When all you’ve got are hammers, everything starts to look like a nail.
Maybe my default settings were just horrifyingly stunted. Or warped. Maybe there were other, better ways, ways that long and unfortunate habit was preventing me from seeing.
Yeah, maybe. But the feeling of sitting there in the dark, running through the requirements of the next day’s operation, was momentarily so familiar to me that it carried with it the oppressive weight of fate.
I’ve been killing since that first Viet Cong, near the Xe Kong river, when I was seventeen. I’d kept count for a while, but long ago lost track entirely, something that horrified Midori, rightly, I supposed, when she had asked me about it. Could it really have just been circumstances that got me started so early and kept me going so long, or was there something about me, something intrinsic?
So many people seemed to recognize that I was a killer. Tatsu. Dox. The army shrinks. Carlos Hathcock, the legendary sniper I’d once met in Vietnam.
Why fight it? I thought. Just accept the evidence.
I remembered something from a childhood visit to church. Matthew, I think, where Jesus said:
Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
I chewed on that for a moment. Then:
Bullshit. God doesn’t care. Like Dox said, if he did care, he would have done something by now.
If he did do something, would you even know what it was? Would you be paying attention?
I would if he fucking smote me, or whatever. Which is what I would do.
Maybe that was the point, though. All this time, I’d been expecting-hell, demanding-that God smite me down for my transgressions. And prove himself to me thereby. But what if God weren’t really in the smiting business? What if smiting were all man-made, and God preferred to communicate in more subtle ways, ways that men like me chose to pretend weren’t even there?
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, and looked at my hands as though they might offer me some answer. I wished I could get tired. I wanted so much to just sleep.
I thought of Musashi’s Go Rin No Sho, the Book of Five Rings, which I’ve read many times. In his recounting of his over sixty sword duels, and of the half-dozen large-scale battles in which he participated, Musashi had never expressed doubt about the morality of his actions. He seemed to take it as a given that men fought, killed, and died, and I doubted he gave much more thought to any of this than he did to the fact that men breathed and ate and slept. The one was as natural, and immutable, as the other. What mattered was one’s proficiency.