Killing Rain Part 7

As Manny had hyperventilated the news to him, Hilger automatically shifted into problem-solving mode.

"Where is VBM?" he asked, using the cryptonym they had established for the new a.s.set.

"I don't know," Manny told him. "I don't have an immediate way of contacting him. He probably went to the meeting site, and when we didn't show up, he left."

s.h.i.t. Not quite the first impression Hilger had been hoping for.

"Can you reestablish contact?" he asked. "Set up another meeting?"

That produced a minor explosion. "Another meeting? Someone just tried to kill me! In front of my family!"

Hilger realized he wasn't demonstrating the proper priorities. All right, one thing at a time.

"Look, there's not much we can do over the phone," he told Manny. "We need to meet. You'll give me every detail. And then we'll figure out what to do."

"But how do I know I can trust you," Manny had whined. "How do I know you weren't behind this?"

"Those were my people who were killed," Hilger told him. "I can't give you better proof than that."

Manny wasn't being rational. He said, "Maybe it was a trick, maybe it was a trick."

Hilger sighed. He said,"Let's work together and we can solve this problem the way it needs to be solved."

There was a long pause. Hilger's heart rate was slow and steady.

Manny said, "All right, all right."

"Good. Where do you want to meet?" Giving Manny the choice would help ease his ridiculous suspicions.

"Not in Manila. I can come to . . ." He paused, and Hilger knew he had been about to say Hong Kong and then had thought better of it. Hong Kong was Hilger's home base, where he lived his financial-adviser cover. Manny didn't want to offer him any advantages just now, and, probably because he felt spiteful, was glad to deny him any convenience, as well.

"Jakarta," Manny said. "I can come to Jakarta."

Hilger didn't want to fly to Jakarta. Manny was being a pain in the a.s.s.

"Sure. But I've got a few things here I need to wrap up first-it'll probably take a few days. Are you sure you can't make it to Hong Kong?"

There was a long silence. Hilger said, "Look, we can meet anywhere you want, but Hong Kong will be faster, and I'd like to get started on this right away. Anywhere in Hong Kong, fair enough?"

That closed it. The next day, they were sitting in a coffee shop off Nathan Road in Kowloon, just a fifteen-minute cab ride from Hilger's office through the Cross-Harbor Tunnel. There weren't quite as many white faces in Kowloon as there were in Central, where Hilger worked, but there were enough so that neither of them would stick out, and there was a lower chance that Hilger might run into someone he knew. Not that anyone would recognize Manny-it wasn't as though the man's face appeared on post office walls, although probably it should-but it was better to be safe. Hilger had taken the usual precautions to ensure that he hadn't been followed, and hoped that Manny had been equally thorough. He had indulged Manny his mandatory hysteria. When he felt he had been nodding sympathetically for long enough, he began his debriefing.

"Tell me exactly what happened," Hilger commanded, and he knew that his calm would now be rea.s.suring. "Not just that day, but every day, from the moment you arrived in Manila."

Manny complied. When he was finished, Hilger began to drill into the details.

"You say there were two of them."

"I think so, yes. Someone came in after the bodyguard."

"But you didn't see his face."

"Not well. He was big. I think Caucasian. I'm not sure."

Hilger considered. "It doesn't matter. Even if you hadn't seen him, I could have told you he was there. The first guy, the Asian, you say he was already in the bathroom, is that right?"

"Yes."

"He'd been following you for a while before he decided to antic.i.p.ate you in the bathroom. But he wouldn't have done that if he didn't have backup continuing to watch you. Otherwise, if he'd been wrong about you coming to the bathroom, he would have lost you."

Manny nodded and said, "Yes, that makes sense."

"You think you could recognize the Asian?"

Manny nodded. "If I saw him again, yes. I got a good look at his face. Can you find him? And the other one?"

Hilger thought for a moment. He said, "I have some photos I'll show you before you leave. We'll see if the men I have in mind are the ones you saw."

"Then you can find them."

Hilger knew that if he was right about the men in question, identifying them would be a trivial exercise compared with actually finding them. Still, he said, "I think so."

Manny leaned forward. "You better. And when you find them, you make them suffer first. They were following me with my family, they might have harmed my son!"

Hilger nodded to show that Manny could count on him. He said, "And VBM? You can contact him, set up another meeting?" Letting Manny know that there was something of a quid pro quo here.

Manny shrugged. "I've already left him a message. But he's not an easy man to reach. And he might be spooked when he hears about what happened in Manila."

Hilger doubted VBM would spook that easily. Men like him tended to be tougher than that. But no sense contradicting Manny's a.s.sessment.

"If he's spooked, he's spooked," he said. "But if you told him about what my people can do for him, I think he'll still want the meeting."

"I told him."

"Good. Keep trying to contact him. When you do, tell him that the people behind the problem in Manila have been taken care of. Tell him . . ."

"I'll tell him that when it's true."

"By the time you contact him, it will be true," Hilger said, his voice as even as his gaze.

Manny nodded, and Hilger went on.

"Tell him I'll come to the meeting myself. That we can do it anywhere he likes. And give him my cell phone number. He should feel free to contact me directly."

Manny nodded again and said, "All right."

Hilger detected a slight churlishness in the set of Manny's mouth, no doubt precipitated by Hilger's willingness to discuss matters not directly related to Manny's recent difficulties. Partly to continue the debriefing, partly to a.s.suage the man, Hilger asked, "Who do you think might have been behind this?"

Manny leaned back and shrugged. "How should I know? It could have been anyone."

" 'Anyone' doesn't help me narrow it down."

"Who do you think?"

"Manny, I have my own ideas, but I doubt anyone is in a better position to say than you are. Are you holding something back from me? That's going to make my job harder."

Manny shook his head. "I'm not holding anything back. I just don't know. It could have been the Mossad, I suppose. They might not like my choice of friends, the f.u.c.king hypocrites."

Hilger had already thought of the Israelis. They were at the top of his short list. "Who else?" he asked.

Manny looked at him. "The CIA, of course."

Hilger nodded. "My contacts there are already looking into that. Any others? Maybe BIN?"

"BIN?"

"The Badan. Indonesian intelligence. They've had a lot of problems-Bali, the Jakarta Marriott, the Australian emba.s.sy . . ."

"BIN, yes. Maybe. Maybe."

Hilger realized that Manny wasn't going to be helpful here. He was the kind of man who was uncomfortable acknowledging that he had real enemies-which, given his activities, was almost funny. It seemed that this was the first time Manny had come face-to-face with the reality that someone really, truly, wanted him dead and was actively trying to make it so. It would take Manny a while to adjust to the reality of that. In the meantime, Hilger would just have to investigate on his own. Well, he was used to doing things alone. Sometimes it was the only way to get the job done.

Hilger decided to return to the previous line of questioning, on which Manny was more useful. "You say the Asian saw you and seemed to freeze," he said. "Could it have been your son that he saw?"

Manny scowled. "I think it was me."

Hilger wondered about Manny's recollection. He didn't expect it to be particularly accurate in any event; he knew that memories of traumatic incidents rarely are. Also, Manny probably wanted to believe that the men who had come after him were vicious, subhuman killers. This would make Manny feel virtuous by comparison. That one of these men might have hesitated at the sight of a child wouldn't fit with this view, would detract from the accompanying sense of comparative righteousness, and would likely be rejected. The mind of a man like Manny had so many ways of unconsciously pleasuring itself. You had to be careful.

"Still," Hilger said, "I find it odd that the man seemed to hesitate at all, regardless of the reasons. Hesitation tends to be an affliction of the inexperienced."

Manny scowled. "Maybe these men were inexperienced."

"Inexperienced men wouldn't have been able to drop your bodyguard and my people with him. They were all dispatched with tight shots, headshots. Take my word for it, the shooters were not inexperienced."

"Then why? Why did he hesitate?"

Hilger shook his head. "I don't know yet."

"My son is traumatized," Manny said. "He and his mother have gone to stay with her relatives in the provinces."

"I can arrange for extra protection."

"They're okay where they are. But I need a new bodyguard."

This was the closest thing Hilger had heard to an expression of sorrow about one of the men who had given his life in the course of saving Manny's. Me, me, me, Hilger thought. It wasn't just Manny. It was the state of the f.u.c.king world.

"Otherwise," Manny went on, "I can't continue to help you."

Hilger sighed. Manny was always making poorly timed, even unnecessary, threats.

"I've already taken care of it," Hilger said.

"And the men who tried to kill me?"

"My people will find them."

Manny clenched his jaw and said, "Find them soon. You're not my only friend, you know."

Another silly threat. Hilger had seen it coming. He said, "Manny, I know you have many friends. Has any of them been as reliable as I have?"

Manny was silent for a moment, then burst out, "You told me that your friendship would protect me! That something like this would never happen!"

Hilger looked at him. For the first time in the conversation, he let some emotion creep into his voice. Part of it was for effect. But not all of it.

"Two of my best men just died protecting you," he said. "And a bodyguard who I set you up with."

Manny didn't answer. Hilger found his silence characteristically petulant. Three men had just died for him, and he couldn't even say, All right, that's a fair point.

"If you go to other people," Hilger went on, "it complicates my job. Give me some time to solve the problem before you do something to complicate it, all right?"

"I have other friends," Manny said again.

Hilger sighed. Time for a reality injection.

"Manny, the people you're talking about aren't your friends. They're people you know, who have interests. If those people decide that their interests are out of alignment with yours, you'll find that they become decidedly unfriendly. How will I protect you then?"

Manny looked at him, resenting him for not being more fearful of the threat, and for making a veiled one of his own.

"Make them suffer," he said again, demanding something to save face.

Hilger nodded. More because he was thinking of his men than out of any particular desire to appease Manny, he said, "I will."

SEVEN.

THERE WERE A FEW HOURS to kill before I met Dox for our evening out, so I took a cab to nearby Silom to look for an Internet cafe.

I rarely take down an electronic bulletin board once I've established it. Clients need a way to reach me, and maintaining the bulletin boards provides it. But when business necessity doesn't justify the continued maintenance, pleasure, in the form of nagging hope, provides the necessary motivation instead. If I'd ever established a board with Midori, who had loved me, then shunned me after learning that I had killed her father, I would probably check it all the time. In lieu of a board, I commune with my hopes for Midori by listening to her CDs, four of them now, each deeper, more soulful, more daring than the last; by imagining enthusiasts applauding her piano in the dark jazz joints of lower Manhattan, for which she had left Tokyo; by whispering her name every night like a sad incantation that always summons, along with certain qualities of her spirit, the continued pain of her absence.

Checking the bulletin board I had established with Delilah, I told myself, was a mix: business and pleasure. The introduction she had provided was what led to the Manny a.s.signment, and, if I could straighten out the aftermath of that one, there might be more where it came from. But business wasn't really why I kept the bulletin board, or why I continued to check it almost every day. The real reason, I knew, was the stolen time we had spent together in Rio after our initial run-in in Macau and my subsequent near-death experience there.

It wasn't just the s.e.x, good as it had been; nor was it only her stunning looks. Instead it was something deep inside her, something I couldn't reach. What that thing might be I couldn't really say: regret over her role in so many killings; bitterness at her ill treatment at the hands of her organization; sorrow over the normal life, the family, that she had chosen to forgo and that probably now would be denied to her forever. She hadn't been the perfect companion with me. She could be demanding, sometimes moody, and she wasn't without a temper. But sweetness and perfection were the charade I a.s.sumed she played with the targets of her work. The uncertainty and the barriers that spiced her relationship with me made her feel real, and led me in the direction of trusting her. And trust, as I was discovering with Dox, is a dangerous narcotic. I thought I had weaned myself from its rapture, gotten the monkey off my back. But then I had a little taste, and that thing I'd lived without for so many years was suddenly indispensable.