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He shook his head. “Forget about it. Like I told you, you were good to me in ’Stan. I don’t forget.”
“Well, I reckon we’re even, then,” I said.
His eyebrows shot north. “Did he say ‘reckon’? My God, son, it’s working already!”
WE CALLED KANEZAKI the next day, after we had changed hotels. We put him on the speakerphone on Dox’s cell phone.
“I was always afraid the two of you were going to join forces,” he said.
Dox gri
“You’re closer to the truth there than you know,” Kanezaki replied.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I can’t go into it now. But it’ll all be in the news tomorrow. We’ll talk after that.”
“The two hundred thousand?” I asked.
“The balance has already been transferred. Congratulations.”
That was good. In our haste to depart, Dox and I had left behind the binoculars and parabolic microphone, and I had been mildly concerned that Kanezaki might argue that this evidence made things look too well pla
“Speaking of the two hundred thousand,” Dox said, “you’ve been shortchanging me, son. My price just went up.”
“See, this is what I was afraid of,” Kanezaki said. “A damn union.”
We all laughed. Kanezaki asked, “How’d that doctor work out?” Reminding me of how he’d come through when I needed him.
“Well, he gave me a quart of Dox’s blood,” I said. “That ought to be grounds for malpractice.”
“Crimson Viagra!” Dox crowed, and we all laughed again.
“Check the papers,” Kanezaki said. “You’ll see what you’ve done. You should be damn proud, no shit.”
IT WAS ON CNN that night. A joint Hong Kong police/ CIA operation had stopped a transfer of radiologically tipped missiles at Kwai Chung port container facility. Several Arab terrorists involved had been killed in a shootout. A CIA officer, whose identity could not be revealed, was wounded in the operation. All missiles were recovered. No one mentioned anything about a duffel bag with five million U.S. in it.
So Hilger must have survived. Maybe he’d finally managed to put a round in the last Arab. No wonder Kanezaki hadn’t been uptight about the abandoned binoculars and parabolic microphone. Apparently their presence hadn’t been inconsistent with the new cover story.
The next morning I checked the appropriate offshore account. The two hundred thousand was in there, as Kanezaki had promised-fifty thousand that had been paid up front, one hundred fifty moved in the day before.
Dox had given me the number of his own account. I transferred him all two hundred. My way of saying thank you.
I called Kanezaki from a pay phone.
“I saw the news,” I said. “Another heroic success for the defenders of the free world.”
He chuckled. “Be happy. The cleanup suits everyone-you, especially. No one here is disputing the official story. They’re all scrambling to try to make themselves part of it, in fact. So no one’s arguing about the definition of ‘natural.’ ”
“What are those missiles?” I asked.
“They’re called Alazans. They’re surface-to-surface rockets with a ten-mile range. They were originally designed by Soviet scientists for weather experiments, but seemed to work better as a terror weapon. Conventional versions were employed by Azerbaijan forces in the war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and by separatists in South Ossetia in clashes with Georgian troops.”
“The news said the ones recovered were radiologically tipped.”
“Yeah, two years ago, we uncovered documents showing that at one time one of the Alazan batteries had been fitted with radiological warheads-turning the rockets into ‘dirty bombs.’ The radiological battery was stored in Transdniester, a separatist enclave that broke away from Moldova twelve years ago. Transdniester is currently recognized by no government but its own, and, with its huge stockpiles of Soviet-era arms, it’s become a clearinghouse for black arms weapons.”
“Those two guys,” I said, thinking aloud. “The Russians. They were from Transdniester?”
“Yeah, the military junta that’s ru
“Sounds it.”
“Anyway, what you’ve got now is a small clique that runs the ‘country’ of Transdniester by its own rules. Much of the enclave’s trade is controlled by a single company, Sheriff, which is owned by the son of Transdniester’s president. The son also heads the Transdniester Customs Service, which oversees all the goods flowing in and out of the country. The shipments move through the Tiraspol airport; overland by truck to Ukraine or Moldova; and on a rail-to-ship line that co
“Or through Hong Kong.”
“Not a likely route, if you look at a map, but brilliant if you had the local co
“Not anymore.”
“That’s right. I meant it when I said you should be proud. The people who he would have sold those missiles to would have used them anywhere they could. If they had been smuggled into the U.S., it would have been catastrophic.”
“The two who died at Kwai Chung,” I said. “What was their co
“Why?”
“I just like to keep tabs on people who might want to take me off their Christmas card list.”
There was a pause. “Nephews of the president. Cousins of the son.”
I thought about that for a moment. “The family is probably unhappy about losing them,” I said. “Just guessing.”
“They have no way of co
“What about Hilger?”
“Hilger?”
Kanezaki might have been playing dumb. Or the “Hilger” moniker might have been a pseudo, used operationally, that Kanezaki didn’t know. It didn’t really matter.
“The NOC,” I said.
There was a pause, during which he digested the fact that I had learned the NOC’s identity, or at least an operational pseudo. “Without confirming any names,” he said, “I can say that everyone involved has an incentive to stick to the official story. This was a joint CIA/Hong Kong law enforcement operation.”
“It sounds like Dox and I ought to get a bonus,” I said. “You got a lot more than you bargained for.”
“I can’t do that,” he said, “but you can charge me more for the next job. I don’t think anyone would argue.”
“Where’d the money go?”
“The money for the missiles?”
“Yeah.”
“It was recovered at the scene.”
“How much was recovered?”
“About three million.”
I laughed. “ ‘About three million’? Anyone wonder why such an odd amount?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your man Hilger scooped out about two million after executing the remaining people at the scene. It was dark and he was in a hurry, though, so he couldn’t very well count it all out bill by hundred-dollar bill.”
“No. Why wouldn’t he have taken all of it?”
“This was a sale. It would have looked suspicious if there had been no funds at the point of purchase. Hilger is smarter than he is greedy.”
There was a long pause. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Do you think he knew what was in those shipping crates?”
I considered for a moment. “I don’t think he knew beforehand, no. He seemed surprised when he heard the word ‘missiles,’ and Belghazi said something to him about not asking questions he didn’t want answered.”