Requiem for an Assassin (9 page)

“If he’s that easy, anyone could have done it the way you want.”

“He’s only one of three, remember. And you’re wrong about just anyone being able to do it. Making it look natural is harder than hell, except in the movies, and you know it. You’ve got a talent. It’s why we’re here.”

There was a lot he wasn’t telling me, of course. So all I could do was continue to engage him, continue to try to gather the information that would get Dox out of this. After all, I understood profoundly that Hilger would kill Dox the moment I was done with whatever he wanted doing. Even if I were inclined to give Hilger a pass for his transgression, he couldn’t count on one from Dox. And if Dox and I came after him together, his prospects would be bleak indeed.

Hilger, of course, could do this math as well as I could. And the ruthlessness I sensed in his poise would turn the situation into a simple equation for him, an equation for which the solution set would be obvious, and therefore imperative.

He knew I knew all this. Which meant the third target might be fictitious. I would kill the first two to buy time, thinking I had one more to go before Hilger killed Dox, but in fact I’d have unwittingly finished the whole job at the second target, at which point Dox would die. The third job, then, would be a setup. They’d feed me coordinates on some easy-to-track civilian on terrain they knew well, and when I showed up to take out the red herring, I’d walk into an ambush. Meaning, in effect, that the third target would be me.

Or maybe I’d be the second. Maybe Jannick was Hilger’s only objective, and when he was done, so was Dox. So was I. There were a lot of possibilities, none of them good.

“Are you satisfied?” Hilger asked, as though reading my thoughts.

“With what?”

“With having looked in my eyes. Trusting me to let Dox go when this is done.”

“No. I don’t trust you to do that. But I learned something else from your eyes.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

From his tone, I knew he was concerned that I might have picked up some piece of information he didn’t want me to have. Why else would I have insisted on a meeting? Trusting someone because of what you see in his eyes is a load of shit, although the latest bozo in the White House claimed to have managed a view of Vladimir Putin’s soul that way. And it was clear after what happened in Góc Saigon that I wasn’t going to kill him. What else could I have been after, if not information?

I thought of Mr. Blond. Maybe I’d lost him. Maybe not. Maybe there had been others I hadn’t spotted. I realized now that I’d been wrong in thinking Mr. Blond, and any others, were only backup for Hilger, or part of a setup. More likely, they were a plan B. If I refused to follow instructions, they would have tried to kill me here. Then they would do Dox immediately after.

I took a deep breath, then let it go. “I learned I don’t have a choice.”

He nodded. “You got that right.”

I stood up and took out his knives. I wiped them off with a napkin—I don’t like leaving my fingerprints on weapons—and placed them on the table. He made no immediate move for them, which was smart. I put Dox’s phone on the table, too. There was no way Hilger would have been stupid enough to have used it for any sensitive calls, so there was nothing to gain by taking it. And I wanted a way to reach him quickly if necessary.

“When will the information be on the bulletin board?” I asked.

“It’s there now.”

I looked at him. For the moment, the urge to kill him had faded into the background, like what happens when you get so hungry your appetite temporarily dissipates.

“I’ll be in touch when it’s done,” I said.

He nodded. “I know.”

I turned and walked away. He could damn well pay for the spring rolls himself.

D
OX SAT ON
the cot in the cramped, windowless boat cabin, the lights off, his eyes closed, a small smile on his face. He’d long since told himself every joke he’d ever known, three times over, four or five for his favorites. He’d recollected the layout of his childhood house, and imagined himself building it, starting with the foundation, then brick by brick, all the way to the roof and the detail work. Now he was trying to remember the name of every girl he’d ever slept with, but it just wasn’t possible because, well, there had been quite a few. The first ten were easy to come up with, even though it had been a long time ago, but once he got up into the double digits, things got tricky. He tried a different tack, focusing only on the ones who’d been lucky enough to surrender him their virginity, but the truth was, that was a reasonably lengthy list, too. He knew he’d never remember them all, and that was sad, but still it was fun to try, and it wasn’t like he had anything else to occupy his mind here.

He was shackled like a federal prisoner: leg irons, wrist manacles, and a chain connecting the two. They weren’t being overly generous about the length of chain involved, either. He couldn’t so much walk as shuffle along, bent over like an old man. If he got an itch on his nose, the only way to scratch it was to push his face against the wall and rub. The room had its own head, and he supposed he ought to be grateful for that, but wiping his ass chained as he was wasn’t exactly the high point of his day. He was half-tempted to beat the bishop, more than half-tempted, if the truth be told, especially with all these thoughts of girls he’d deflowered, and with his hands stuck right in front of his crotch, he could have, too. But the possibility of his captors sniggering at the sounds of his chains clanking in the dark would be an unbearable indignity. Besides, how the hell would he clean up the mess.

The one thing he wanted to do more than anything when he got out of this, well, besides standing up straight and stretching, that was the main thing, but besides that, the thing he wanted most was just to brush his teeth. The last time he’d had a chance had been the morning they’d grabbed him, and at this point it felt like he had a moss forest growing in his mouth.

He’d considered every variety of possible escape, but he couldn’t see a way out. The door was always locked. He’d tested it with his shoulder and knew it was heavy and solid. Unshackled, he might have been able to bust it open, although it opened inward so maybe not, but in these chains he could develop all the momentum of a pregnant penguin, and he certainly couldn’t kick. The door had a small window, too, and they were careful always to look in on him before entering. But hell, they could come in blindfolded and what could he do, shuffle over and head-butt them in the shoulders like the friggin’ Black Knight in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
? Call them dirty names?

He might have tried bellowing like a madman when he sensed they were in port, but he doubted anyone would hear. He didn’t know how big the boat was—they’d kept him blindfolded while they were moving him about—but they’d taken him down some steps and then across a short corridor to put him in this room, so he knew he was on a lower level and almost certainly in an interior room. No, the chances of any good coming from shouting were awfully remote, while the chances of someone coming in and smacking him in the guts with a truncheon and duct-taping his mouth shut and hooding him after for good measure were fairly high. It just wasn’t a percentage move.

He hadn’t been much mistreated, he had to admit, if he was willing to discount that initial waterboarding and some electric shock they’d applied to his feet after to get him to scream over the phone for Rain’s benefit. Jesus Christ almighty, the waterboarding was flat-out awful. The hell of it was how short-lived the effects were. One second you’re pissing-your-pants-panicked, and then a minute later you’re rational again, swearing you won’t break this time. Except you do. It was unnerving to be swept away by blind fear that way—it was like losing control of your bowels or something, but a hundred times worse. Hilger was right, going through it at SERE was one thing, having the bad guys do it to you with real intent was something else entirely. That vice president who’d called it “a dunking” ought to have his head pulled out of his ass.

They’d left him in his cold, wet, soiled clothes for about a day and hadn’t fed him at first, either. That meant they were still checking on the information he’d given them, wanting to keep him uncomfortable and mindful of his recent ordeal so they could break him again more easily if it turned out he’d been bullshitting them. When they hosed him off, changed him into a clean, dry track suit, and left him food and water, he knew something had been worked out. And whatever it was, his life was part of the bargain.

They’d pretty much left him alone after that, except when they’d put him on the phone with Rain. That conversation had been hard. Rain was his buddy, and he knew the man wouldn’t quit until he’d gotten him free or died himself in the process. He was ashamed his carelessness had put his partner in this position, and it was awful knowing Rain was out there doing God knows what, while he was here, chained up and helpless to change the odds even a little.

They were even feeding him well enough, he supposed, with two hot meals a day in styrofoam containers that he ate hunched over with a plastic spoon. Sometimes the food was Chinese, sometimes Malay, sometimes Indian. Which didn’t mean much, because you could get all three at pretty much any food stall in Southeast Asia, and it all froze and microwaved just fine. They could be anywhere. There was no porthole in his room, and his only sense of place was the rise and fall of the swells beneath them and the sound of the engine when they were moving. He didn’t even know what time of day it was, or night, for that matter.

His worst immediate problem, aside from shame, boredom, and the feeling that his tongue was cultivating lichens, was the Mexican, whom Dox thought of as Uncle Fester for both his bald head and his crazy eyes. The man had a touch of the sadist in him—more than a touch, in fact. Every now and then he liked to pop into the cabin and get in a cheap shot. The first time it had been in the gut, but Dox had seen it coming and even though the fuckwit knew how to punch, the damage hadn’t been too bad. But there were other places to hit. He’d kneed Dox in the coccyx once and the spot still hurt like hell and made sitting in his chains even less pleasant than it otherwise would have been. The man was picking his targets, Dox realized early on, so as not to leave marks. He figured Hilger, who while clearly being a four-alarm psycho in his own special way also seemed to be guided by some sort of professional ethos, would have taken a dim view of gratuitous treatment of a prisoner, and the bald guy was being careful because of it.

The last two days had been particularly bad. The only people he saw were the bald guy and the boyish-looking one, who Dox knew goddamn well at this point was anything but boyish, and he figured Hilger and the blond dude had gone somewhere. With fewer people around, Uncle Fester seemed to be emboldened.

The punishment hadn’t stopped him from provoking the dude with insults, though. On the contrary, more than ever his dignity required that he prove he was unbowed. There wasn’t much he could be proud of at the moment, but standing up to that piece of shit, insulting him grievously enough to make him an enemy, that was something. His body was paying for it, but it was helping keep his spirit alive.

He shifted on the cot and winced at the pain in his lower back. Yeah, he liked putting that fucker down, and he didn’t mind suffering for it, either. ’Cause when this was over, he was going to make Uncle Fester pay for all of it, and with more interest than the man could ever hope to come up with.

He just had to live through it first.

I
WENT OUT
the back of the hotel and made a variety of aggressive moves until satisfied I was clean. Then I found an Internet café where, after the usual examination for spyware, I checked the bulletin board I used with my contact in the CIA, a young Japanese-American in Tokyo Station named Tomohisa “Tom” Kanezaki. Kanezaki and I had first run into each other a few years earlier, when he’d been a green, idealistic Agency recruit newly posted to Tokyo. He’d quickly figured out the way his superiors were using him, though, and was a sufficiently quick study to turn the tables on them and survive. Since then, I’d helped him with a few off-the-books matters, and could typically count on him for information, and sometimes equipment, albeit always at a price. I wondered what the price would be this time. Whatever it was, I’d have to pay it. I knew I couldn’t get Dox out of the jam he was in without Kanezaki’s help.

The bulletin board was empty. I didn’t know when Kanezaki might check it, so I sent him a text message from an e-mail account he would recognize as mine:
You in Tokyo? Need to meet.
Although over the years Kanezaki had managed to achieve a relatively mild rating on my threat assessment matrix, I would have preferred not to warn him I was coming. But I also wanted to make sure he was in town when I arrived, not on temporary duty someplace else.

I thought. Hilger must have had family somewhere. Find them, take them…offer them up as a hostage exchange? Maybe. Kanezaki could probably point me in the right direction, assuming he didn’t balk at the nature of my interest. But if there were family, how close were they to Hilger? How much would he care? And even if he did care, how likely was it that I could kidnap someone, hold him, and negotiate Dox’s release, all on my own? While faced with a five-day deadline?

Maybe I could use family as a threat: Kill Dox, and I’ll slaughter your aging parents, or your adorable nieces, or whatever. Hilger might know about my rules regarding women and children, but what he saw in my eyes in the Góc Saigon would have shaken his confidence.

But no, that kind of threat could take things in unpredictable directions. I’d given Hilger a slim reed of hope with my talk about getting out of the life. Better to leave it at that, play along for time, and work my way back to him, and wherever he was holding Dox.

After five minutes, I checked the e-mail account again. Kanezaki’s reply was already waiting, a simple,
I’m here.

I purged the e-mail account and purged and shut down the browser, then left for another Internet café. My paranoia was running hot, and I didn’t want to do anything else on the same computer, with the same identifiable IP address, I had just used to contact Kanezaki. I doubted Hilger would be able to trace me through a Saigon Internet café IP address, and even if he could, at most he’d only be able to tell where I’d gone on the Net, not what I’d done or said there. But I’ve lived as long as I have by not taking risks without good reasons.

From the second café, I checked on flights out of Saigon. There was a 9:10
P.M
. ANA flight to Bangkok that night. Perfect. From Bangkok I would have my pick of flights to Tokyo. I booked the flight, purged again, and went to a third café.

This time, I Googled Jannick. The first hit identified him as the founder and CEO of a Silicon Valley startup called Deus Ex Technologies. “From God” Technologies…whatever they were selling, they weren’t modest about it.

I followed the link and perused the site. Once I finished sorting through the jargon about migration automation and cross-platform schema and backpropagation and Bayesian theory, I understood that DET’s focus was databases, specifically database search. They were trying to use neural networks—computers modeled on the cortex of the human brain—to spot previously hidden patterns in massive databases.

Jannick had earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford University in 1982. Since then he’d worked for Microsoft, Oracle, and several small companies I hadn’t heard of. DET was his first startup. I checked the funding page, and was surprised to see that Jannick was funded by In-Q-Tel—the CIA’s venture capital fund. I didn’t know what it meant, but it had to mean something.

I thought about what Kanezaki had once told me about Hilger’s privatized intelligence outfit. Unencumbered by congressional oversight, he could go places and do things the CIA couldn’t. It wasn’t clear how he had gotten started—on his own, or with his own version of governmental venture capital backing. Whatever the answer, the funds would be untraceable now, deniable. If Hilger’s activities got out, his customers, or his paymasters, would simply express shock and dismay at the uncovering of this “rogue” operation; reaffirm the importance of proper oversight; and, if necessary, convene a blue ribbon commission to whitewash the government’s complicity and decide on an appropriate fall guy. Thank you for playing, Mr. Hilger. Next contestant.

It was natural enough, I supposed. Democracy is about checks and balances. But if the policymakers find they’re being checked and balanced a little too much, they look for what the software types call work-arounds. Can you blame them? You might as well blame water for trying to go around a rock. It’s not a question of blame and fault; it’s a question of nature and proclivities. If there were no demand for Hilger’s services, or for mine, for that matter, there wouldn’t be a supply.

I wondered why Hilger would want to eliminate the CEO of a CIA-funded outfit offering neural net database technology. Was Jannick competition of some sort? Did his work interfere with something Hilger was trying to do, or threaten a market Hilger wanted to get into? No way to know, not yet.

I considered how Hilger might try to trace me, making sure I hadn’t missed anything. He would expect me to Google Jannick right away. If he had access to the data, he could start with searches for Jan Jannick that occurred, say, one hour after our meeting at the Park Hyatt. Cross-reference the hits with servers in Vietnam, and you’d have the IP address of the computer I used. A long shot, maybe, but not impossible. But now, even if he had the access, he could confirm no more than that I’d checked out Jannick, as he would have suspected. My other Internet activity would remain sterile.

I caught a cab back to my hotel, collected my gear, and headed directly to the airport. Hilger might have anticipated the move and put people at one of the choke points inside—check-in, maybe, or outside customs—but I doubted it. Too many cameras, too much security. Also, my gut told me he really wanted Jannick dead. If so, I’d be safe until it happened.

Afterward was a different story.