by Barry Eisler
I let go of the wheel and he went down on his back, the bike on top of him. He made a hell of an effort to scramble out from under it, but he was short two functioning limbs and his progress was minimal. I stepped wide of him, my eyes scanning the ground. There, the knife. I scooped it up, a distant part of my brain registering from the distinctive logo on the blade that it was an Emerson, the recurve edge making it the Commander model, one of Dox’s favorites.
Mr. Blond managed to sit up. He took hold of the bike frame with his left hand and jerked his ruined arm out of the spokes, screaming with the effort. He stared at me, panting, his nostrils flaring with exertion, his face glistening with sweat. He pushed the bike forward as though to shield himself, but he had only one good arm and his mobility was destroyed.
“One chance,” I said. “Tell me where Dox is and I’ll let you live.”
“Jakarta,” he said, through clenched teeth.
No. They wouldn’t keep the boat in the same place after a call. He was lying.
Then again, so was I.
I feinted left and he overreacted, and I stepped easily behind him. He dropped the bike and tried to spin, but I stepped in close and shoved a knee in his back, rotating with him as he frantically continued to try to turn and face me. I covered his eyes with my left hand and cut his throat with my right.
The cut was deep but fast, and I had my hand out of the way just ahead of the geyser that followed. A horrible gurgling sound poured forth, an interrupted, bubbling scream. He fell to his side and turtled his chin in and clasped his neck with his good hand, blood pouring through his fingers. I stepped back, but that hot, acrid smell filled the air and invaded my senses, enrapturing me for an instant in the insane killing joy I had first felt in Vietnam, that almost orgasmic rush that only comes from killing a man who has just been trying his hardest to do the same to you.
I stood there for a moment, the iceman propitiated, exulting, watching as Mr. Blond struggled to get up, his legs kicking, a pool of blood spreading on the sidewalk all around him. Then the kicking slowed and his hands fell away. A long, burbling sigh issued forth, his head dropped to the pavement, and the tension drained out of his limbs. One foot continued to scrape slowly back and forth, back and forth, whether reflex or the body’s last, futile efforts to fight I couldn’t say and didn’t care.
I glanced around. A dozen bystanders stood rooted, mouths agape, shocked, not comprehending, struggling to come to grips with the evidence of their own senses. They were all twenty-and thirtysomethings with fashionable bags and trimmed goatees who’d come here for an upscale lunch of Moroccan couscous or to acquire a fabulous pair of Italian platform shoes. A safe bet none of them had ever even witnessed a dead body, let alone one newly created with a knife before their very eyes. I saw no immediate problems, neither accomplices nor anyone who looked the least bit likely to try to intervene. I would have expected more than one, but…Dox had said four people on the boat. Maybe Hilger couldn’t spare more than Mr. Blond.
I badly wanted to check for ID, but there were too many people, and not enough time. Besides, it was almost certain he was traveling sterile. I closed the knife and pocketed it, threw the chain over my head, and picked up the box. I righted the bike and almost got on, but looked down at the front wheel in time. It was too badly bent to rotate cleanly through the metal struts on either side of it. Shit.
I laid the bike down flat and stomped on the wheel, truing it sufficiently to turn. I could have just jettisoned it, and the box, too, but I preferred to leave nothing behind. And besides, I could create more distance faster on the bike.
In my peripheral vision, I saw people taking out cell phones now, snapping pictures, shooting video, and I was glad for the balaclava, helmet, and sunglasses. Keeping my head down, I got on the bike and pedaled away north on Mott, against traffic so no one in a car could try to follow me. The front wheel wobbled but it held.
I made a right on Houston, rode as fast as I could four blocks to Forsyth, then made another right, again against traffic. There was a dumpster at the northeast end of Sara D. Roosevelt Park and I stopped next to it. I used Mr. Blond’s knife to open the box and upended it into the dumpster, spilling out the styrofoam peanuts. Then I sliced open the box’s other end, folded it flat, and threw it into the dumpster, too. Witnesses would describe the box the bike messenger had been carrying, and doubtless it had been captured on some cell phone cameras, too. It couldn’t be traced back to me, but there was no advantage to making it easy to find, either. Layers of defense. Always layers.
I cut east on Stanton. Two blocks further on, I paused just long enough to dump the knife and the bike chain in a sewer. I pedaled south on Allen until I found another dumpster, this one for the bike helmet and side-view mirror. When I reached Canal, I got off the bike and leaned it against a building, confident someone would appropriate it inside fifteen minutes. Even if no one did, and the police picked it up, it was sterile. The serial number was gone, I’d paid cash when I bought it, and I’d wiped it down completely for prints before setting off that morning. More layers.
On foot now, I headed west on Canal, then north on Eldridge, then west again on Hester and into the park. As I walked, I pulled off the balaclava and the shades and stripped off the peacoat. Underneath, I was wearing my new shirt, sport jacket, and tie. Shorn of the bulky coat, my build now appeared considerably slimmer. I carried myself differently, too, imagining myself as a professional, a man who wore a tie and jacket every day and worked in an office. Anyone looking for a bike messenger now would go right by me. I took the gloves off last, and left everything on the ground near a trash can. There were homeless men in the park, and I expected the remnants of my bike messenger persona would disappear no less quickly than the bike itself.
I pulled out the second pair of sunglasses, the round ones, from inside the jacket and slipped them on, then checked the iPhone to see where Accinelli had parked. The Bowery lot, the same place I’d seen him the first time. A little closer to Mott Street than I would have liked, but no one was going to make me now. Regardless, I couldn’t leave the transmitter under his car. Probably no one would find it, and even if someone did, no one could trace it back to me, but…the way I saw it, there was still a slim chance Accinelli’s death could be ruled accidental. Maybe a heart attack from the fright of witnessing a bloody murder not ten steps from where he stood, something like that. Not likely, but…things were happening too fast for me to consider it all right now. I didn’t want to leave behind evidence suggesting Accinelli had been targeted. I’d stick with the original plan and figure out the rest later.
I heard sirens from west on Prince Street, and glanced over as I came to the Bowery lot. There was a police barricade in place, a uniformed cop directing traffic from in front of it. The lot attendant was standing outside his booth, watching.
“Excuse me,” I said, walking over. “I think I dropped my MP3 player the last time I parked here. Can I take a quick look?”
“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 day
s, 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.