The Last Assassin

by Barry Eisler

The booths, the booths, I thought. I kept going, as fast as I could while keeping my back to the wall. I knew there were four bodyguards in the room, and I scanned for them constantly, but in the chaos I couldn't spot them.

  A man came stumbling toward me, his arms pawing the air in front of him. I shoved him to the side and he spilled to the floor with a wail.

  The blocked emergency exit was just ahead, the booths along the wall to its left. I moved closer, still scanning. There, in front of the nearest booth, some kind of pileup on the floor, and…

  There were the bodyguards, two of them, guns out, facing the room, looking sightlessly for the threat.

  I cut left to the nearest row of seating surrounding the bar, avoiding stumbling, howling patrons, scanning as I moved. I hopped down onto one of the benches, wanting some cover in case anyone trained on my muzzle flashes and returned fire. I braced the gun on top of the back of the bench and put the laser on the first bodyguard's head.

  Pffft. The man quivered and sank to the ground.

  The flash was reduced by the suppressor. The other guy didn't see it, or if he saw it he didn't know what it meant. And the reduced muzzle report was eclipsed by the shouting all around us. The man stood there, still looking around, probably not even realizing his partner was now dead on the floor.

  Pffft. I dropped him, too, another head shot.

  I scrambled over to the opposite side of the bench, in case anyone else had tracked my muzzle flashes. There were still two bodyguards in the room, plus Yamaoto, Kuro, Big Liu, and Big Liu's associate.

  But where? I scanned the room left to right. People were still scrambling in all directions. I wanted to shout, Delilah, where are you?

  A light flared in front of the corner booth. I looked over. It was Yamaoto, holding up a cell phone, trying to see what was going on.

  Son of a bitch. The corners of my mouth crept up. I brought the HK around and put the laser on his forehead.

  The green inside the goggles was eclipsed by a huge white flash. I blinked and jerked my head away.

  I knew instantly what had happened. The power was back on. The goggles had an automatic high-light cutoff feature that saved me from being blinded, but it still took a moment for my vision to adjust. I dropped behind the bench and tore off the goggles. When I popped back up, the HK pointed over the back of the seat, Yamaoto was gone.

  Fuck. I scanned the area.

  There he was, moving to my left. I zeroed in on his torso.

  Bam! A shot slammed into the back of the bench inches from my head. I tracked to my right and saw one of the bodyguards, kneeling on the floor in front of one of the booths.

  Bam! Another shot tore into the back of the bench. I didn't think. I just squeezed the grip, put the front sight on his torso, and pressed the trigger. Pffft. The shot caught him in the sternum. He fell backward and I put two more in him before he'd even hit the ground.

  I swiveled back to Yamaoto. He was running now, and everyone was running with him, away from the gunfire. I brought the gun around, looking for a shot.

  'Down!' I heard Delilah call from behind me. I ducked and a bullet whizzed over my head, the crack of a pistol following a split instant later. I scooted to my right and snuck a peek over the back of the bench. It was the fourth bodyguard. He swung the pistol over to my new position and fired again. I scrambled to the edge of the seat, thinking absurdly, Well, this is going well, isn't it?

  I brought the HK out alongside the bench. The bodyguard saw me and adjusted again.

  There was a Bam! Bam! Bam! of pistol fire, but not from him. His body jerked and he slumped to the ground. I glanced over. It was Delilah, holding one of the fallen bodyguards' guns.

  I brought out a fresh magazine, dropped the nearly spent one, and slammed the new one into place. I reached for the one I'd dropped and said, 'Dox, Yamaoto's on his way out right now — front door or basement emergency exit, I don't know which.'

  'Yeah, lot of people streaming out from both,' he said, his voice with that supernatural calm it got when he was behind the scope. 'I'm looking for him, I'm looking for him.'

  I turned to Delilah. Her dress was half torn off and she was naked down to her waist, but she seemed oblivious to it. She had the bodyguard's gun up in a two-handed grip and she was scanning the room for danger.

  'You all right?' I called to her.

  She kept scanning. 'Go! You have to take out Yamaoto, he knows it was you in New York!'

  I spun off the bench without another word and ran toward the swinging doors. I peeked through the crack at the center — one side, then the other. The hostess and the valet were gone. I went through, my head swiveling left and right, the HK tracking with it. Island. Office door. Stairwell.

  'Goddamnit!' Dox said. 'I hit him, but I didn't drop him!'

  'Where is he?'

  'Out the basement exit, heading west! He came up the stairs with a crowd of other people and I only had a second, I didn't have the head shot. Drilled him from the side and he went down, but people were in the way and he got back up before I could put him away.'

  I started for the stairs. 'West, toward Kotto-dori?'

  'Yeah, he's stumbling, you can still catch him!'

  I took the stairs three at a time. As I turned the riser, I heard shots from back in the main room. Delilah's position.

  I stopped and looked back. Then I looked down again. Just a few more steps and I'd be at the exit, close on Yamaoto.

  I took another step down and stopped again.

  Dox said, 'Where are you, man? You've got to hurry or we're going to lose him!'

  I took one more step down. I heard myself groan. Then I raced back up the stairs the way I had come.

  'Shots from the main room,' I said. 'Delilah's in there.'

  'Shit! All right, I'm taking off after Yamaoto, you go to Delilah.'

  'On my way,' I said. I raced back across the entrance room, repeated my sneak and peek through the swinging doors, then went in.

  I saw Delilah, standing in front of one of the booths. I crept closer, tracking with the HK as I moved. The room was empty.

  I moved closer. There was something under the table in the booth.

  I came up alongside her and looked. It was Big Liu and his associate, their mouths and eyes open as though in dull surprise, a clean red bullet hole in the center of each man's forehead.

  Delilah looked at me. 'Did you see Kuro?'

  I shook my head.

  'We have to find him,' she said. 'Yamaoto told him you were behind New York and Wajima. I don't think Kuro believed him, but he will now.'

  I gestured to Big Liu. 'You mean…'

  'I couldn't let him leave,' she said. 'Yamaoto told him, and this whole thing would have been proof. The triads would have come after Midori and your son, they wouldn't have had a chance.'

  But Yamaoto had made it out. He knew it was me, and I could imagine what he would do next. I had to get out of here and call Midori, tell her to take Koichiro and go, hide. She would never see me again, but at least they'd be safe.

  Focus, I told myself. Deal with the situation at hand, then you can warn Midori. Nothings going to happen that fast. Use your head.

  I heard Dox from the other side of the room: I'm coming in, don't shoot.'

  We turned and saw the burly sniper moving toward us, the butt of the M40A3 shouldered, the muzzle pointed downrange. A slight lift of the eyebrows was his only reaction to Delilah's half nakedness.

  'Yamaoto's gone,' he said. 'Saw his driver pick him up. Shot out the tires, but they're the run-flat type and they kept going. He's bleeding, though. It's all over the street. I knew I hit him good.'

  I heard sirens outside. We all stopped and listened for a second. Dox said, 'I respectfully propose that now would be an appropriate time for us to beat feet.'

  'Did Kuro leave?' Delilah asked.

  'I didn't see him,' Dox said. 'But there were a lot of people and I was looking for Yamaoto. Why, was I supposed to shoot him, too?'

 
'I'll explain later,' I said. 'Come on, let's go.'

  'He might still be here, hiding somewhere,' Delilah said. 'We should…'

  I shook my head. 'You've done enough, more than enough. We need to go.'

  I pulled off my jacket and helped Delilah into it, and the three of us hurried out through the basement exit.

  The sirens were close now. We cut along the eastern side of the building and through an alley, emerging on the street that bracketed the club complex to the south. The van was there, where I'd parked it earlier. We got in and drove off, Delilah in the passenger seat, Dox in back. Soon we were heading south on Nireke-dori, the serene streetlights and shuttered boutiques surreal after what we'd just been through.

  'What about Yamaoto?' Delilah asked.

  Dox told her what had happened. I could tell he felt bad he hadn't gotten a confirmed kill.

  'That was a hell of a shot you took,' I said. 'Moving, only a second, all those people running around in a panic…'

  'Yeah, but…'

  'Yeah, nothing. You hit him badly, no one could have done better.'

  'Not as bad as I'd like, but that was a hollow point round and he's wearing a hell of a hole somewhere on his chest right now. Only thing that got that boy to his car was a bucketful of adrenaline and a shitload of luck. I just hope there aren't any hospitals nearby.'

  Hospitals, I thought. Of course.

  I pulled out the cell phone and called Tatsu.

  44

  I briefed Tatsu on everything that had just happened. He was weak and groaning in pain, but his mind seemed alert as ever.

  When I was done, he said, 'Don't worry about Kuro. He can be handled. It's Yamaoto who's the concern. And from what you just told me, within a very short while he'll either be in a hospital or a morgue. I'll find out which and call you back.'

  I clicked off and said to Dox and Delilah, 'My source is having his people check all the area hospitals. If Yamaoto shows up in an emergency room, we'll know about it.'

  We drove around for an hour, taking turns filling each other in on our different perspectives of what had happened at the club. Tatsu didn't call.

  When we were done, it was past midnight and there was nothing else to do but wait for Tatsu. I drove into Akasaka and dropped Dox off first, near the Akasaka Prince Hotel, where he'd reserved a room earlier. After the kind of op we'd just pulled, it was best for all of us to move. Delilah opened the door and he climbed out over her, then turned back to us.

  'The second you hear something, you call me,' he said.

  I nodded. 'I will.'

  'I'm serious. Don't go running off on your own again, like you did in New York.'

  'Okay.'

  He looked at me, obviously doubtful, then turned to Delilah. 'Will you talk some sense into the man? He has this lone wolf complex.'

  Delilah smiled. 'I'll try.'

  He patted her on the knee and looked at her. 'Delilah, I'd trust you to watch my back anytime. And you can count on me to watch yours.'

  She smiled again. 'You got to see quite a bit of my back tonight.'

  Dox blinked and his cheeks flushed crimson. 'What I meant was…'

  She leaned over and kissed his cheek. 'I know what you meant. And thank you.'

  He looked at me and said, 'I have good bones, you know.' Then he closed the door and was gone.

  I drove off. Delilah said, 'There's one thing. I didn't want to say in front of Dox, because I can tell he feels bad he didn't finish Yamaoto.'

  'What is it?'

  'Yamaoto got ahold of me at one point, and I slashed him twice across the arm with the Hideaway. That might have been part of the blood on the street, I don't know.'

  I nodded, feeling grim. 'Well, we'll find out.'

  'Yeah.'

  I parked on a quiet side street near the New Otani, her new hotel. 'I would walk you,' I said, 'but we still need to be careful about being seen together. Especially now.'

  She started to answer, but then one of us or maybe both of us leaned in and we were kissing like a pair of drowning victims getting their first taste of air.

  She pulled me into the back of the van, where Dox still had his mattress pad laid out. The jacket I'd thrown over her shoulders came off easily. And the dress was half gone anyway. I hiked what was left of it up to her belly while she kissed me and got my pants open. We were breathing hard and my head was pounding and when I touched her and felt how wet she was it drove everything else from my mind. She pushed me back onto the mattress pad and there was no time to get her panties down her legs so I just pulled, hard, and they were gone. She leaned over and straddled me and then I was inside her and I'd never felt anything so good. I thought, Fuck, not again, not without a condom, and it was the most fleeting and inconsequential thought I've ever had in my life.

  It was as brief as it was furious. Our hands were everywhere and we never stopped kissing. When she came, she groaned something in Hebrew, groaned it right into my mouth, and I came with her.

  I settled back onto the mattress pad, spent. She stayed as she was, looking down at me, hands on my shoulders.

  'I like when you do that,' I said, looking into her eyes, gray in the interior gloom of the van.

  'What?'

  'Talk in Hebrew.'

  She nodded. 'You make me.'

  I watched her. The last time I'd seen her kill someone, she got the shakes afterward. But that had been her first time. It gets easier after that.

  'You all right?' I said.

  She nodded. 'I shouldn't be, I guess, but I am.'

  I reached up and touched her cheek. 'I can't… I don't know how to thank you for what you did tonight. For everything you've done.'

  She said nothing.

  'I don't know what's going to happen,' I told her. 'I do know I don't want to lose you.'

  'That's up to you,' she said, her eyes down. 'It always has been.'

  We stayed like that for another minute. I thought about Midori again. I could call her and tell her everything, make her understand how bad it was and convince her to move someplace with Koichiro, at least until I'd settled this.

  But that would be it for us. I knew it. Whatever tenuous possibility of rapprochement she had hinted at in New York would be extinguished like a flickering ember under a boot heel.

  And Yamaoto was wounded now, wasn't he? Hell, for all I knew he had just finished bleeding out in the back of his limousine. Or he was in emergency surgery somewhere. Any minute now I might get news from Tatsu about where to get to him. Nothing was going to happen to Midori and Koichiro just this moment. I could wait a little while longer, see how the situation with Yamaoto played out. If I learned he'd made it, if it seemed I couldn't finish him, I could warn Midori then.

  We pulled on what was left of our clothes. I said, 'A lot of people saw you at the club. With Big Liu dead and Yamaoto wounded, they're all going to be in disarray. But Kuro's still at large. You have to be careful.'

  She smiled. 'I know.'

  'Sorry. I just…'

  'I know,' she said again, and kissed me.

  She got out of the van and I watched her until she had turned off the street. Then I drove to find a new hotel.

  45

  I checked into a business hotel in Shinjuku and took a shower and then a long, hot bath. It didn't do much to relax me. I couldn't stop thinking. The thoughts weren't good.

  What if Yamaoto didn't wind up in a hospital? What would it mean? A guy that powerful would have doctors on the payroll, people who could patch a bullet hole without involving the authorities. Maybe one of them was making a house call right now. But from what Dox had said, Yamaoto was going to need a lot more than that. A trauma surgical team, probably, and a lot of blood.

  Regardless, what if he lived, and told his people, and Big Liu's, what happened at the club? With all the bad blood, the Chinese might not have believed him, but the bullet hole in his chest might be persuasive of truthfulness. And regardless of what the Chinese thought, Yamaoto's own people would
do what he told them. If he got the chance to send them after Midori and Koichiro…

  I glanced at the phone, perched on the edge of the sink counter within grabbing distance of the tub.

  Call her, I thought. Call her right now.

  Just a little while longer. I can get to him. I can finish this. All I need to know is where.

  The phone rang. I half leaped out of the bath to grab it. I looked at the caller ID. Tatsu.

  I flipped it open, my heart pounding. 'Yeah.'

  'You'll never guess where our friend is.'

  'Tell me.'

  'Right here at Jikei hospital. In surgery. It took my people some time to find him. There are quite a few hospitals in Tokyo, and Yamaoto is here under a false name.'

  I was gripping the phone hard and tried to relax. 'Is he going to make it?'

  'The doctors seem optimistic. He was lucky. From what I understand, another centimeter and he would have been past saving.'

  'How do I get to him?'

  'You can't while he's in the operating room. And he'll be in the ICU afterward for at least twenty-four hours, being monitored constantly. You have to wait until he's in intermediate care.'

  'I can't wait that long,' I said. I felt like shouting, putting my fist through the wall, smashing things. 'He could move against Midori.'

  'I don't believe so. He's fighting for his life now. That's all he's doing. That's all he can do.'

  'What about when he's out of the ICU? Won't he have people guarding him?'

  'He already does, quite a few of them. Don't worry. I'm going to take care of it.'

  'What about Kuro? What's his status?'

  'Leave Kuro to me. You focus on Yamaoto.'

  I looked left and right as though I might see a way out. Finally I said, 'Goddamnit, just keep me posted.'

  'I'll call you the moment I learn more.'

  I clicked off and put the phone back on the sink counter.

  I thought again about calling Midori. The thing was, even if I warned her, she might not listen. She hated everything about the life and didn't want any part of it.

  I realized I might be rationalizing, but I decided to hold off for just a little while longer.