Страница 17 из 68
I nodded in capitulation. “All right.”
The grin got wider. “You made the right decision, Mr. Rain, and I promise you won’t regret it. You checked into the hotel yet?”
We were staying at the Sukhothai, which offered the right combination of high class and low visibility. Something like the Oriental had plenty of the first but none of the second; i
“I got an early check-in this morning,” I told him. “You?”
“The same. Nice place, too. I like those big bathtubs. You can get three people in one of them, did you know that? With all those mirrors, you can have a lot of fun. This one time…”
“Why don’t we meet in the lobby, then?” I said.
He gri
“You need to rest up first?”
“No, son, I need to go out and buy you that double dose of Viagra.”
Trying to get the better of Dox was a losing proposition. I signaled the waiter for the check and said, “Eight o’clock, then.”
SIX
JIM HILGER never got upset. It wasn’t that he didn’t show agitation; he simply didn’t experience it. The crazier things became around him, the calmer he felt at his center. The quality had made him one of the best combat shooters in the Third Special Forces during the first Gulf War. When someone was firing at him, it felt almost as though his personality had floated out of his body, leaving a machine to handle things in its place. He knew that, had he lived in the age of dueling, he would have been fucked with by nobody.
He knew, too, that his imperturbability was a useful leadership skill. In combat, when his men saw how calm and deadly he was, they became calm and deadly, too. And now, in his new role, he had found that his flatlined demeanor gave him power over the people he managed. The more upset they became in a crisis, the more his temperature dropped, cooling the people around him in the process. It was as though people assumed he must know something they didn’t; otherwise, he would be coming unglued, too. In fact, he doubted that he really knew more than others. It was just that he had come to rely on his own coolness, to believe that his coolness was the one thing he could count on to get him through, as it always had before. He didn’t believe in anything more than that.
When Ma
As Ma
“Where is VBM?” he asked, using the cryptonym they had established for the new asset.
“I don’t know,” Ma
Shit. 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 Ma
“But how do I know I can trust you,” Ma
“Those were my people who were killed,” Hilger told him. “I can’t give you better proof than that.”
Ma
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.
Ma
“Good. Where do you want to meet?” Giving Ma
“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. Ma
“Jakarta,” Ma
Hilger didn’t want to fly to Jakarta. Ma
“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 Tu
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Hilger commanded, and he knew that his calm would now be reassuring. “Not just that day, but every day, from the moment you arrived in Manila.”
Ma
“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 anticipate 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.”
Ma
“You think you could recognize the Asian?”
Ma