Requiem for an Assassin (13 page)

I set up next to the bridge by the construction site, keeping low and scanning the area through the binoculars. Everything was illuminated beautifully. The fanny pack was open, and the flashlight, like the binoculars, was getting wet, but the equipment was top quality and waterproof. I wasn’t concerned.

Five minutes of waiting and scanning. And then I saw him, coming toward me on the bike path along Page Mill. I could make out his face perfectly through the night-vision magnification, all the way down to the droplets of water on his glasses. A headlight on the front of the bike showed up in the viewfinder like a glowing yellow flare.

I felt a hot rush of adrenaline through my gut, and my heart started kicking harder. I breathed in and out deeply several times and did one last scan of the area. All clear.

I dropped the binoculars into the fanny pack, pulled out the SureFire, and walked into the middle of the road. Without the night vision, I couldn’t see Jannick himself, but his headlight shone like a beacon a hundred fifty yards out. One hundred. Fifty.

He slowed slightly as the bike path fed onto OPM, but he was still moving at what I guessed was close to fifteen miles an hour. More than fast enough.

Thirty yards now. I raised the SureFire to my shoulder. I closed one eye to protect it from the glare and preserve my night vision, and squinted with the other. Twenty. Ten.

Just before the forward edge of his headlight illumination reached my position, I pressed down on the flashlight’s tailcap switch. Five hundred lumens hit him in the face, as momentarily bright and white as a bolt of lightning. I heard a cry of pain and surprise.

He must have instinctively hit the brakes, as I had hoped. I heard the tires skidding on the wet leaves and leaped out of the way. The headlight weaved crazily as Jannick fought to control the bike. But he was too startled, and too blinded. And the road was too wet. For an instant, the headlight gyrations grew wilder. Then the bike went over and Jannick hit the pavement.

I dropped the SureFire into the fanny pack next to the binoculars and zipped the pouch shut. I looked around, confirming once more that we were alone.

“Are you all right?” I asked, walking over. He was on his hands and knees, spitting out blood, trying to get up.

He moaned, sounding as though the wind had been knocked out of him.

I walked closer, my heart hammering. “Don’t try to move,” I said. “You might be hurt.”

He started to say something back. I didn’t hear what. I stepped over him and sat down hard on his back. He grunted and collapsed to the ground. I planted my feet solidly along either side of his head, reached with both gloved hands under his chin, and arched savagely back. His neck snapped with the sound of a thick piece of dry firewood and his body spasmed under me.

I stood and immediately moved back to the bridge, where I had some concealment. I took out the binoculars again and scanned the area. No one. Then I examined the tableau before me. Jannick’s bike was on its side, the headlight shining uselessly upward into the falling rain, the front wheel slowly rotating. Jannick himself remained facedown, steam rising slowly off his body, the rain continuing its indifferent patter on and around him. It looked like a freak accident: a bicyclist, going a little too fast in the dark and the wet, loses control and falls the wrong way. There was no reason to think it was anything else, and no way to prove it, either.

I
ZIPPED UP
the binoculars and moved out to Page Mill. I waited a few minutes until there were no headlights coming from either direction, then jogged across the road and returned to the car.

I drove back to San Francisco, to the Tenderloin district, which I knew had a large homeless population. I left everything I’d worn that night next to garbage cans on a variety of street corners off Market, knowing the garments would be efficiently scavenged, distributed, and assimilated into the shifting ranks of the homeless within hours, perhaps minutes, of my passage. The binoculars and the SureFire went over the side of the San Mateo Bridge, into the dark, trackless waters of San Francisco Bay.

I found an Internet café called the NCK Cyber Lounge in San Mateo, where I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. It was empty. I posted him a message:
Jan Jannick, Dutch national, CEO of Deus Ex Technologies in Palo Alto, California, In-Q-Tel backing.

I’d wait until tomorrow to contact Hilger. There were two commodities I needed if I was going to find Dox: information and time. Immediately apprising Hilger of Jannick’s demise would have cost me both. I couldn’t wait too long to contact him, though, because sooner or later he was going to learn when Jannick had died and I didn’t want it to look like I was playing for time. But I could slow things down. A message in the morning to set up a phone call for even later would buy me an additional twenty-four hours, maybe even more. Within which, with luck, Kanezaki might have some new information.

Kanezaki. He wasn’t going to be happy to learn of the identity of the first target after the fact. I’d just have to finesse his suspicions as best I could. I went out and called him from a pay phone.

“You got anything?” I asked, when he picked up.

“No. Didn’t you…”

“The phone number you’re tracking?”

“He’s keeping it turned off. Not a surprise. Look, didn’t you check the bulletin board?”

“Yeah, I just left you a message there. Name and particulars of the first person on the list.”

“Our friend gave you the list?”

“Just the first entry. And it’s already taken care of.”

“It’s already…you were just here forty-eight hours ago. How could you have…you must be bullshitting me, you must have known who it was when you were out here. Otherwise you couldn’t have done it so fast.”

“I’m not bullshitting you. All I knew was I was supposed to go to California. The information was waiting for me when I arrived yesterday. I caught a lucky break and an opportunity presented itself. I didn’t have a chance to tell you sooner and I’m telling you now.”

There was a long silence. He knew I’d known earlier. But what could he do?

“I’m waiting on the second name now,” I said. “As soon as I have it, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, take what’s on the bulletin board and see how it cross-references with what I’ve already given you. I’ll drag things out as long as I can on my end.”

“I hope you’re not going to fuck me on this.”

“Why would I? We both want the same thing. It’s just a question of timing. I’ll check in again tomorrow, okay?”

He waited a moment, then said, “Okay.”

Back at the hotel, I took a long, hot shower. Then I got a fire going and sat with a towel around my waist, watching the flames. I hadn’t eaten in more than eight hours, and I thought I should get something into my stomach. But I wasn’t hungry.

I wanted to feel something. Relief that I’d bought Dox time. Horror that I’d just killed a man, probably a husband and father, not a mile from his house, on the very road he was taking home to his family. Fear that I’d missed some variable, that even now the local police, or worse, Hilger and his men, were mapping my coordinates, triangulating on my position, moving in for the kill.

But there was nothing. It was as though some emotional spinal cord had been severed, leaving my mind useless and numb.

The numbness disturbed me. It was how I always used to feel, or rather, not feel, after taking a life. Clinical, analytical, detached. The trouble in Manila, when I’d frozen rather than traumatize a child by killing his father in front of him, had actually been a kind of breakthrough for me, although I’d only realized it in retrospect. It had been the first sign that the killer might be less than all of me, the first crack in the ice of what I was. But now, the iceman was back. And not just for the work, it seemed. For the aftermath. For everything.

All of which was bad enough. But what was worse was how…comfortable it felt. Like a favorite chair, or the food you grew up on, or an old, perfectly sprung pair of boots that felt just right when you slipped them on after a long absence.

I told myself there was no reason to be concerned. Being myself again felt natural enough, and it was certainly easy. I thought maybe I should just give in and go with it. What was the point of fighting, anyway? In the long run, you can’t win against yourself. I’d been up on points for a while, but the iceman was patient. He’d bided his time, and when he saw his moment, he’d found his way back.

No, not back. Maybe he’d just always been there. Like I supposed he always would be.

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
I left the Stanford Park and headed south on 101. In an Internet café in San Jose, I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. It was empty. I found another café and checked on Hilger. Again, nothing. I left him a message that read, “Tell me when I can reach you by phone.” I didn’t say Jannick was done. I didn’t mention Dox. For the moment, I wanted to keep my options open.

It looked as though I had a little time on my hands. I decided to return to Los Angeles by the coastal route. Strange circumstances to fulfill my ambition to drive along the sea, but smoke ’em if you got ’em. And it would give me a chance to think.

The drive was beautiful. My appetite came back on the way, and I stopped in Carmel for lunch. I stumbled across an Italian place called Casanova in a cozy mission-style building, and ate on their patio, warmed by the radiant sun. The food was superb: bruschetta with local heirloom tomatoes; linguini with fresh mussels and shallots; chocolate nougatine pie. All accompanied by a ’96 Hudson Vineyard Marcassin Chardonnay that alone was worth the drive.

It was the kind of place Delilah liked, and the kind of place I liked to take her. I realized I should probably call her. But I didn’t know what I would say. The work she did, and the world she inhabited, necessitated compromises, of course, but in her way Delilah was as ethical a person as I’ve ever known. I didn’t want to have to tell her what I’d just done. And I didn’t want to hear the suspicion in her voice if I refused to answer her questions. I certainly didn’t want her judging me. I’d dealt with enough of that shit with Midori and wasn’t going to put up with it from Delilah, too. How could she understand, anyway? How could anyone, who hadn’t been there?

Yeah, but Delilah knows you, better than anyone. She would understand.

Bullshit. No one ever understands. They say they do, but they don’t.

I kept heading south, the windows down, the sunroof open, the wind in my hair. The road narrowed in Big Sur, the traffic thinning, the stores and houses and other signs of people slowly evaporating as I drove. Soon the land was mostly quiet meadows and conifered hills, scalloped cliffs that wended along the Pacific, in and out, back and forth, each curve in the road revealing some new, spectacular vista. I watched the ocean sparkling a thousand feet below and felt I was driving along the edge of the earth, through some intensely private and stoical place, beyond civilization’s purview, beyond any notion of redemption or regret, a place that existed only for itself, that neither welcomed nor opposed nor held in any regard at all the fragile creatures who intermittently passed through in awe of it.

San Simeon. Pismo Beach. Santa Barbara. The sun set over the water as I drove, yellow, then pink, then finally a long red band at the horizon, fading to indigo. I wondered if Delilah had ever driven this route, and imagined what it would be like to have her here with me, watching as daylight yielded to a giant vault of stars. I tried to push away the thought, but the feeling persisted.

I drove on in the dark. Absent the distraction of the sunlit scenery, my mind began to wander, not to good places. I thought of Jannick, and all I had taken from him. I reminded myself that I had no choice, that it was either him or Dox. I thought of Hilger, and regret and ambivalence were eclipsed by hatred and cold rage.

First Dox,
I reminded myself.
Then Hilger. Just be patient. That’s what’s going to make this work for you.

I stopped in Santa Monica and checked the bulletin boards. Nothing from Kanezaki. A short message from Hilger:
Call me at 08:00 GMT.

Eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time…that would be midnight in California. Damn, it was almost eight out here already. A few more hours, and I would have missed the time for the call. I thought about skipping it entirely, telling him I hadn’t gotten the message until too late, giving Kanezaki more time to work the data. But I decided not to. If Kanezaki hadn’t found anything by now, he wasn’t going to, at least not without more information. A call to Hilger might shake something loose. And besides, I wanted to check in on Dox, to see if he was okay.

I thought for a moment. Hilger’s message was left at five o’clock that evening California time. I had posted at nine o’clock that morning, which would have been midnight or later throughout most of Asia. I imagined Hilger going to sleep sometime before I posted the message, receiving it and responding in the evening my time…morning his. A reasonably safe bet, then, that he was still in Asia somewhere, on a boat as Dox had said. It wasn’t much, but the more pieces I had, the better I’d be able to recognize and exploit each one of them, until hopefully, finally, they’d all add up to a breakthrough.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “Heads up,” I told him. “There’s going to be a call at oh-eight-hundred GMT. Less than four hours from now. If you have a way to track the signal, that’s your moment. I’ll keep him on for as long as I can.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “If our man is careful enough to keep the phone off the rest of the time, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to call from an insecure location.”

Kanezaki had grown a lot since I’d first met him, but he still had an annoying tendency to try to show his smarts by stating the obvious. “Of course he wouldn’t,” I told him. “But it’ll be one more piece of data to work with. I’d rather know where he places the call than not know, wouldn’t you?”

There was a slight pause while he absorbed the rebuke. Then he said, “You’re right.”

“What about the guy I posted about? Any leads on that?”

“No.”

“The government venture-capital backing? You don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I haven’t turned it into anything workable yet, either.”

“All right, then. Oh-eight-hundred GMT. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

I had a burrito and a fruit smoothie at a place on the pier, then killed time by strolling, loosening up after the long drive. I went to a pay phone at exactly midnight and made the call.

One ring, then Hilger’s voice: “Yeah.”

I noted that he picked up directly. Maybe he’d made his point about the strength of his numbers last time, and didn’t feel the need to repeat it.

“It’s done,” I said.

“I know. Nice work. You complained about five days, but in the end you only needed two.”

Maybe he already knew about Jannick. Maybe he was bluffing to impress me with his omniscience. It didn’t really matter.

“Let me talk to Dox,” I said.

There was a short pause, and then I heard the big sniper’s baritone, tinny through the speakerphone. “Dox here.”

“How are you doing?”

“Bored. This is one of the dullest groups of nitwits I’ve ever been forced to spend time with. It’s a dark day to be a Marine.”

He was telling me they weren’t leaving him alone, that there was someone with him at all times. With a little luck, they’d notice only the insult, and not the substance it concealed. But why the mention of the Marines?

I heard static, then Hilger’s voice again. “All right, you heard him, he’s fine.”

That was the second time he’d grabbed the phone in a hurry. The Marines…was that what Dox was going to say when Hilger had grabbed the phone from him last time? And what did he mean by it now? Hilger was former Army. But what about the people with him? Did Dox know one of them from his Marine days? Or did he have some other way of knowing one of them was a jarhead?

Why did Hilger keep cutting me off so fast? I had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. Far-fetched, maybe, but…

“Put him on again,” I said.

“No.”

“Put him on. You can listen, I just want to make sure it’s him and not one of your people imitating his voice.”

There was a pause, then I heard Dox’s voice. “Yeah.”

“What’s your favorite hotel in Bangkok?”

“What?”

“Your favorite hotel in Bangkok.”

“What is this? You don’t think it’s me?”

“They’re only letting me talk to you for a second at a time and your accent is too easy to imitate.”

“What accent?”

“Tell me.”

“If they hear my answer, I won’t be able to go there after this. And that would be a tragedy.”

It had to be Dox. No one else could be so obstreperous. But still.

“The name, goddamnit.”

“Look, I like the place because of the mirrors in the bathrooms. I tried to tell you about a threesome I had in one, all right? With two lovely Thai ladies. And you cut me off ’cause you didn’t want to hear.”

I let out a long breath. It was him all right. The hotel was the Sukothai, and yeah, I had cut him off the time he tried to tell me the story.

I heard the phone being moved, then Hilger’s voice. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“All right,” I said. “I’ve held up my end. Now let him go.”

“You’re not done. There are two more.”

Well, it was worth a try.

“Give me the particulars, then,” I said.

“Not yet. You’re a little ahead of schedule.”

“We’re doing this on a schedule?”

“The person’s not in position yet. As soon as he is, I’ll upload the information you need.”

On the one hand, I liked the extra time. On the other hand, once again, I hated the idea that Hilger would be able to follow me by my efforts to track his target. I hoped Kanezaki would find something to help me short-circuit the whole thing.

“How long are we talking about?” I asked.

“Forty-eight hours. Check the bulletin board then.”

He clicked off.

I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “You get it?” I asked.

“I got it. He’s in Jakarta. Or at least he was during the time you had him on the phone.”

I was gripping the phone hard. “Where in Jakarta?”

“Pluit, it looks like. The marina.”

“Can you be more precise than that?”

“What do you want, an address? All I know is he was near a cell tower in Pluit. Without a formal request to the NSA, which will create a lot of questions and take a month to process anyway, I can’t triangulate. I can only give you a radius around a single tower. From what I can see, either he was in Pluit, or he was a little way out in the Java Sea.”

I was quiet for a moment. He was right, I wasn’t being reasonable. But damn, to feel like I was that close to having him in my sights…

“He’s got our friend on a boat,” I said. “They probably docked in Jakarta to make the call, maybe use an Internet café, whatever. But with the boat, they could move anywhere, and keep moving. There are ten million people in Jakarta alone. Leave Jakarta, and you’ve got seventeen thousand islands, only six thousand of them inhabited, and probably twenty thousand miles of coast. And that’s all assuming he stays somewhere in Indonesia and doesn’t move on. Shit, this isn’t much better than knowing he’s in Asia.”

“It’s another piece,” Kanezaki said, after a moment. “Like you said.”

I sighed. He was right again. “Is this anything you can use with what you’ve already got?” I said. “The visas, the previous known location, the government backing?”

“I doubt it. I don’t have a way to search travel records by location, only by names. It doesn’t look like our friend was traveling as himself. So it’s slow going.”

“All right,” I said, trying not to be frustrated. We had so many pieces…but they still added up to nothing. I fought the urge to just go to Jakarta, see what I could find there. Without more information it would be useless.

“What about you?” he asked. “You learn anything on the call? Anything new we can work with?”

“No. Well…maybe one of the people who’s holding Dox is or was a Marine. I think Dox was trying to indicate that, but I’m not sure.”

“All right, I’ll see if that gets us anywhere.”

Even as he said it, I knew it was unlikely. It was almost nothing.

“Anyway, that’s all,” I said. “Hilger told me he’d upload details about the next assignment two days from now.”

“Two days from now? You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Giving yourself time to…”

“I’m not doing anything. He told me the person isn’t in position yet and wouldn’t be for forty-eight hours. I’ve got nothing to do but wait. If you could come up with something in that time, it sure would be handy.”

“Otherwise…”

“Yeah, that’s right. Otherwise we get to number two on the list.”

“Jesus,” I heard him breathe.

“Don’t ‘Jesus’ me,” I growled. “I’m not going to let something happen to my friend.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Bullshit. I don’t want to hear it. Not unless you’ve ever once gotten your own hands bloody. Have you? Ever? Or do you only send out other people for the nasty stuff so you can sleep like a fucking baby at night?”

A long moment went by. Then he said, “I wasn’t judging you. I was just…a little awed. That’s all. I’m trying to help, okay?”

I watched people strolling past me. A group of teenagers, laughing through orthodontic-perfect smiles, sauntering in distressed jeans that probably cost two hundred dollars a pair. Men whose faces bore the marks of nothing worse than overstretched mortgage worries beat back by too much Botox. Women with bare liposuctioned midriffs and Herculean plastic breasts. A river of well-fed selfishness, a contagion of insecure conceit. I hated them. I hated all of them.

“You there?” I heard Kanezaki ask.

“Yeah.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, and you probably will, you seem like you’re on a short fuse lately.”

“You’re right, I mind.”

“I’m only bringing it up because…”

“Because what?”

“Never mind.”

“What? Just say it.”

He sighed. “Don’t push away the people who are trying to help you. You can’t afford it. And neither can our friend who’s in trouble.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to help me. Not use me. Help me.”

“Look, there’s something I want out of this, yes. I’ve been upfront with you about it. But that doesn’t mean…”

“That’s exactly what it means,” I shouted. “Exactly. When are you going to grow up and realize you can’t fucking have it both ways?”

I slammed down the phone and clenched my hands into fists, fighting the urge to smash something. A sound rumbled up out of my throat. It might have been a snarl.