Requiem for an Assassin (22 page)

“Sure, man,” he said, barely glancing away from the spectacle west on Prince. I thanked him and went to Accinelli’s car. I squatted down, quickly retrieved and pocketed the equipment, and slipped away without another word.

I drove back to Great Neck. Once I was out of the city and the immediate exigency had passed, I got the shakes—the usual aftereffect of an overdose of adrenaline, this time compounded by my awareness of how close I had just come to dying. I pulled over at a rest stop to wait for it to pass.

I sat in the car for almost an hour. When the shaking was no more than a slight vibration in my fingertips, I started thinking. I needed to consider three things: How Hilger had gotten to me. Why. And what it meant for Dox.

How was the easiest. He must have known about Accinelli’s mistress. If he knew about her, he would be aware of the unfavorable home and work terrain, as well. Not so difficult to anticipate that I’d learn of the mistress, too, and that I’d make my move at her apartment. Mr. Blond had probably been setting up there for days, maybe in a van a block or two north, watching the area in front of her apartment through binoculars. When he saw me go in after Accinelli, he knew what I was there for. At which point, he gets out of the van to intercept me and take me out. It was a good plan. If I hadn’t seen him in Saigon, and remembered that smooth gait, it might have been me right now, lying on the cold sidewalk in a pool of my own blood.

Why was harder. By killing me in the immediate vicinity of Accinelli’s cooling body, Hilger would have significantly reduced the chances that Accinelli’s death would be viewed as natural causes. Two deaths so close together is a hell of a coincidence. That meant that the naturalness of Accinelli’s demise wasn’t a priority for Hilger. Which raised the question of why he wanted me for the job in the first place.

There was another thing. The third job was bullshit. There was no third job: it was just an illusion, a way to get me to drop my guard.

Finally, Dox. I wanted to worry, knowing Hilger might already have killed him, but the iceman wouldn’t permit it.
Just work the problem,
a voice in my mind said.
Be cool. Be analytical. The rest won’t help you, or Dox, either
.

I put myself in Hilger’s shoes. He was smart. How would he plot this out?

There are only two targets. As soon as the second one is done, Mr. Blond takes out Rain. Kill Dox first? Risky. What if Rain demands to talk to him again before the Accinelli hit? And what if something goes wrong with the hit on Rain? Without Dox, I’ll have lost all my leverage. Better to wait. When Mr. Blond confirms Rain is done, I put Dox to sleep right after.

That felt right. It’s how I would have done it. Which meant Dox was still okay.

Probably.

I rubbed my eyes. Now that the adrenaline surge was depleted, the inevitable parasympathetic backlash was kicking in. My mind felt dull, and I badly wanted to sleep.

How to handle this. That was the only other thing I needed to figure out now. If I did things right, Dox still had a chance. If I fucked it up, he was done.

One way or the other, I needed to contact Hilger. I had to keep him moving, keep trying to generate new datapoints until there were enough for a breakthrough.

How. How.

I could pretend everything went fine. Accinelli is dead, apparently of an embolism. Let me talk to Dox. Give me the particulars on the third target.

But no, that would unsettle him. He’d learn soon enough about Mr. Blond. He might already suspect the worst, because his man sure as hell hadn’t reported in since I’d last seen him. He’d know I was gaming him somehow if I didn’t acknowledge what had happened.

Play it straight, then. Accuse him, threaten him, fly off the handle. That’s what he’d be expecting, what he’d be ready for. If I gave him the predictable stimulus, he’d give me the predictable response.

Which would be…what? I wasn’t sure. Some form of denying everything, stalling for time, finding a way to get at me again. He didn’t know I’d seen Mr. Blond in Saigon—if he did, he would have sent someone else to ambush me in New York—so he would probably believe he could bluff his way through.

I’d insist on talking to Dox again, of course. And if Hilger wouldn’t let me? Well, that would mean only one thing. And I would spend the rest of my life finding a way to make him pay for it.

I drove to the Great Neck Public Library and posted an update to Kanezaki. Then I called him from a pay phone. It wasn’t yet five in the morning there. Well, he was going to start his day early.

The phone rang only once, then I heard his voice: “Yeah.”

“What, do you sleep with that thing on your pillow?”

“Sometimes.”

“You need to check the bulletin board right away. All the particulars for the second person on the list are there now. But he’s already been taken care of. Things are moving fast.”

“Already been…you did it again. You waited to tell me.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you now. Remember the blond guy in the photos I sent you?”

“Of course. I haven’t been able to find out anything.”

“You’ll be able to now. He had a bad accident in New York City not two hours ago.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah, our friend sent him to anticipate me. I got lucky.”

“Our friend…that means…”

“Right. There’s no number three on the list. Or rather, I was number three.”

“What about…”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m hoping he’s still okay. He’s our friend’s leverage, remember? I’m going to set up another call to find out. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Are you up now? Are you listening?”

“Of course,” he said, sounding as though my question might have offended his dignity.

“Good. The blond guy was probably traveling sterile. But I have a strong feeling he was driving something, probably a van, that’s still parked on the street. If the cops were to find it, they might be able to associate it with a name. If we get a name, we can find out who applied for that visa to a certain Asian country recently. You following me?”

“Of course,” he said again.

I realized I was being too didactic. He wasn’t green anymore, and he’d never been stupid.

“You haven’t had time to think about this yet,” I said. “I have. That’s the only reason I’m asking.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and I imagined a reluctant smile on the other end of the phone.

“Anyway. If we have a name and visa application for Mr. Blond, we’ll be awfully close to our friend.”

“Understood.”

I paused, thinking there were other things. Christ, I needed to sleep.

“What about those secondary effects we talked about?” I asked. “You know, the family.”

“Almost done. I should have something later this morning.”

“All right, great. One other thing that occurs to me. I have a feeling our friend knew the second guy on the list. They served in the same theater of operations, you’ll see that. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but…my gut tells me it’s significant. Part of the nexus we’re trying to establish.”

“All right, good. I’ll follow up on that. What’s next?”

“I’m going to send a message to our friend to set up another call. I’ll slow things down as best as I can, but if I don’t push to do the call quickly, he’ll smell a setup. So my guess is, if you can come up with a breakthrough about his location, we need it within forty-eight hours. No, less than that. Because I’m going to have to travel to wherever he is.”

“Why don’t you leave now?”

“I don’t know where…”

“You don’t need to know, at least not exactly. We know he’s on a boat, still probably within reasonable proximity to the last place he called from. Get going now, you’ll be that much closer when we have his position. Wait in a hub city, a place nearby with a lot of flight connections. It’ll save time.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m tired, I should have seen that.”

“Yeah, well, apparently nobody’s perfect.”

I laughed, glad to see he was counterpunching. “All right, I’ll set up that call and then catch a plane. I’m going to need a few items from you, though.”

“Let me guess. Something from Santa.”

“Right. Same kind of toys he brought down the chimney last year, minus the tranq gun. You remember, or do you want me to post it?”

The “toys” I was talking about included a suppressed pistol with infrared laser and night sights, spare magazine, a hundred rounds of hollow point, a tactical thigh rig for carry, and night-vision goggles. I might have some refinements once I knew the terrain—assuming we learned the terrain in advance—but it paid to get him moving on the fundamentals now.

“I remember,” he said.

“Smaller this time, too, more concealable. I’m probably going to be operating in an urban environment. Body armor, too. And a medical kit. I don’t know what kind of shape my buddy’s going to be in.”

“Got it.”

I thought for another moment, feeling I was missing something. Then I realized.

“Papers,” I said. “I doubt my buddy’s been traveling with a passport, and wherever he is, most likely he’s going to have to clear customs in a country he hasn’t officially entered.”

“I can take care of that.”

“Good, good. All right, as soon as you have anything on those family members or anything else, post it. And I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear from our friend.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

I checked online. The only nonstop flight I could find from the East Coast to Southeast Asia was on Singapore Air, Newark to Singapore Changi, leaving at eleven o’clock that night, arriving in Singapore eighteen hours, forty minutes later, at 6:40
A.M
. local time. Long flight, but it would save time compared to changing planes on the West Coast or in Tokyo or Hong Kong. Besides, the way I felt just then, if I could snag a first-class seat, I could probably sleep the entire way. And Singapore would put me within an hour flight, two at most, of the likely radius of Hilger’s boat.

I called the airline on the way back to the hotel. I was in luck—first class was available that evening. At over twelve grand for a round-trip ticket, I was surprised they sold any at all. I didn’t know about their other customers, but for me the extra comfort would be worth the expense. In my line of work, the difference between arriving exhausted from a nineteen-hour flight and arriving well rested could easily turn out to be a life-or-death thing.

I checked out of the hotel and found another Internet café, where I left Hilger a message:

If you were hoping to hear from Mr. Blond, you might have to wait for a while. He wasn’t doing well last time I saw him.

You have one chance to live through this. Let Dox go. Now.

I hoped it was the right message. I thought it would engage him the way I wanted, but I couldn’t be sure. It was possible he’d double down: kill Dox, come at me with everything he had, try to finish the game that way.

But I didn’t worry about it. Not really. I was too tired, for one thing. For another, I wasn’t in charge. The iceman was running this show now, and the word worry had never been part of his lexicon. After all, to worry, at a minimum you have to care.

H
ILGER SAT ON THE FLYBRIDGE,
flanked by Pancho and Guthrie. They’d made port in Singapore the day before and were docked now in a berth at the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club. It was past one in the morning, though still hot and humid, and the other seventy boats berthed around them were all silent, rising and falling on the harbor swells as though breathing in their sleep.

Demeere had called fifteen minutes earlier, just before noon New York time. He’d spotted Rain at the Mott Street apartment. No surprise there; they’d known Rain was in New York from the bulletin board access, just as they’d known he was in California before that and Paris originally. So far, so good.

Accinelli had shown up five minutes later. Demeere told them Rain had followed Accinelli in, and they all knew that meant the man was as good as dead. Demeere was setting out to intercept Rain, and would take him when he left the apartment. He told them he would check in again right after, and then he clicked off.

That had been fifteen minutes ago, a very long fifteen minutes. Hilger imagined the sequence: Demeere had called just as Rain went in. Rain would be inside for, at most, five minutes. Demeere wouldn’t fuck around when he came out, he’d engage him immediately and be done with it. A one-minute walk back to the van, drive off, call from a few blocks away. It was hard to imagine a way for the whole thing to take more than ten minutes.

Another fifteen minutes went by. No one said a word. Hilger thought about calling Demeere, but didn’t want to risk it. Demeere would have purged his mobile phone before going out. If something had happened to him and Hilger called him now, the call would remain in the log. Not likely anyone could do anything with the number, but Hilger wasn’t going to take the risk. Besides, if Demeere were able to call, he would have already.

Hilger turned to Pancho. “Can you access New York City police band through the satellite?”

Pancho nodded. “It’ll take a little doing, but yeah.”

“All right. Let’s see if we can learn anything that way.”

Pancho disappeared. Guthrie and Hilger remained silent.

Ten minutes later, Pancho returned. From the set of his jaw, Hilger knew even before he spoke.

“They’ve got a killing on Mott Street,” Pancho said. “No ID on the body, they’re calling it a John Doe. But the victim is a Caucasian male. Blond Caucasian, about thirty-five.”

Hilger nodded, betraying no emotion. “How?” he asked, and that would be his only concession to a concern for something non-operational.

“Throat cut,” Pancho said.

Guthrie shook his head. “Goddamn,” he said. “Goddamn.”

Hilger sighed. He never got upset in these situations, never. He’d lost men before, and knew by instinct and training not to indulge his grief until later, when the immediate situation had been dealt with and new plans set in motion. His men had always looked to him for leadership, and leadership meant focusing on the problem, not on your own feelings.

“What do you think Rain’s going to do?” Pancho asked.

“Hard to say,” Hilger said. “But he’ll check in. We’ve still got his friend.”

“You think he did Accinelli before he got to Demeere?”

Hilger nodded. “I’d say so. Monitor the police band, and we’ll know soon enough.”

“What kind of vulnerabilities does this create?” Guthrie asked. “I mean, Demeere was operating sterile, right?”

“No doubt about that,” Hilger said. “And even if someone could attach a name to him, it wouldn’t be a real one. And even if the false name could lead to anything…Rain doesn’t have the kind of resources to do anything with it. And if even if he did, we’re moving around too much for him to pinpoint us. We’ll only be in Singapore for another day, and then we’ll move on. Operationally, we’re okay.”

“If Accinelli’s done,” Pancho said, “we don’t need Rain. If we don’t need Rain, we don’t need Dox. Say the word, and I’ll take us out toward the Riau Islands, weight him, and throw him over the side.”

Guthrie shot Pancho a look that Pancho ignored. Hilger had a reasonably good idea of what the exchange meant.

“No,” he said. “Not yet. I want to hear what Rain has to say first.”

“Are you…are you going to call Demeere’s wife?” Guthrie asked.

Among the four of them, Demeere had been the only one who was married. An American woman, JoAnne Kartchner, who lived with Demeere in Brussels. Hilger had met her once. She had lively eyes and he could see the attraction between her and her husband. Demeere’s work kept him away from home a lot, but Hilger had never known him to be unfaithful.

He wouldn’t say anything now, but before Demeere left for New York, he had given Hilger the number where he could reach JoAnne. “I’m not planning on going anywhere,” he had said, with a small smile. “This is just in case.” Now Hilger wondered whether the man had sensed something, some premonition.

He wondered for a moment whom he would want called on his own behalf, if the worst should happen. Or whom he would want to call himself, if he knew his own end was imminent. No doubt his sister, Susan. She was married and living in New York, a third kid on the way. He visited her and her family every time he was on the East Coast. After all, with their parents gone and no other siblings, there wans’t much other family to stay in touch with, and her two sons, Hilger’s wonderful nephews, were the whole future of the clan. Yeah. If he knew it was all over, if he had time, it would be a comfort if Susan’s was the last voice he heard.

He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll call his wife.”

Nobody moved. The night’s humidity had grown heavier, a pall of wet heat that pressed down on them from above and all sides.

“Demeere was a good man,” Hilger said. “As good and reliable as any I’ve had the privilege to work with. We’re going to miss him. And we’re going to honor his memory by finishing what we started, and what he cared about enough to be part of.”

Pancho and Guthrie nodded. Hilger looked at them, satisfied they were going to be all right.

My God, but Rain was going to pay. And that fucking Dox, too. Between the two of them, they’d cost Hilger dearly. He was so angry just now that he was tempted to let Pancho do as he’d asked, take the boat out to deeper water and dump Dox over to the sharks. He was angry enough to leave the two of them alone for a while first, knowing how Pancho was likely to use the time.

But the operation had to come first, as always. Demeere had been the point man in Amsterdam, and with him gone, someone else would have to go there for the final steps. He didn’t like the idea of sending Pancho; the man was capable, but his forte was muscle, and he lacked Demeere’s finesse. For one second, Hilger wished he had sent Pancho to New York instead of Demeere. It was Pancho’s aura of dangerousness that had persuaded him not to—Rain would have made him too easily. Demeere, he had thought, would have a better chance at surprise. Well, that hadn’t worked out, but there was nothing to be gained from agonizing over it now.

And Guthrie…he was definitely good, definitely reliable. But Hilger hadn’t known him as long as the others, and wasn’t sure he trusted him for something as critical as Amsterdam.

In the end, he might have to go himself. Yeah, that would probably be the best way. Despite everything, the operation was still on track. Best to see it through personally.

For the moment, that meant holding on to Dox for a little while longer.

But only a little.