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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.”
Ma
Hilger nodded to show that Ma
Ma
Hilger doubted VBM would spook that easily. Men like him tended to be tougher than that. But no sense contradicting Ma
“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.
Ma
“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.”
Ma
Hilger detected a slight churlishness in the set of Ma
Ma
“ ‘Anyone’ doesn’t help me narrow it down.”
“Who do you think?”
“Ma
Ma
Hilger had already thought of the Israelis. They were at the top of his short list. “Who else?” he asked.
Ma
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 embassy…”
“BIN, yes. Maybe. Maybe.”
Hilger realized that Ma
Hilger decided to return to the previous line of questioning, on which Ma
Ma
Hilger wondered about Ma
“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.”
Ma
“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,” Ma
“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 Ma
“Otherwise,” Ma
Hilger sighed. Ma
“I’ve already taken care of it,” Hilger said.
“And the men who tried to kill me?”
“My people will find them.”
Ma
Another silly threat. Hilger had seen it coming. He said, “Ma
Ma
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.”
Ma
“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,” Ma
Hilger sighed. Time for a reality injection.
“Ma
Ma
“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 Ma