Killing Rain

and shouted, “They’re shooting in there! Somebody call a guard!”
    I heard Dox add, “I’m scared! I’m scared!”
    An unhelpful thought flashed through my mind— My partner is insane —but I kept moving. My quick scan of the crowd hadn’t revealed my biggest concern—that individual or handful of individuals you will always encounter in a crisis who, sometimes by instinct but more often by experience, are not fleeing and not in denial, but instead calmly watching and evaluating, and perhaps looking for an opportunity to intervene. Ordinarily, these people simply make better than average witnesses later on, although sometimes they can access some deep-seated protective impulse and actually attack. I kept my head down and avoided anyone’s eyes, and we joined the crowds hurrying down the escalator. In my peripheral vision, I saw two white-shirted security guards heading up opposite us. Neither had drawn his gun; they weren’t sure what the trouble was and weren’t yet taking it fully seriously.
    On the second floor, the crowd was less agitated but still distracted. People were looking around, trying to figure out what had happened, what was the disturbance, whether they needed to do anything or if they could just get back to their shopping.
    We moved laterally, heading in the direction of the next set of down escalators. As we walked, we each automatically removed the hats, then, one at a time, pulled off and balled up our outer shirts, which were navy blue. Underneath we both wore a second shirt, in cream—typical Filipino attire.
    “We need to split up,” I said. “Big white guy, Asian guy, that’s about as much as people are going to remember, but it’s enough to ID us right now.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    “Go straight to the airport. I’ll get the gear from the hotel. We’ll meet at the backup in Bangkok.”

    “You saved my life back there, partner. You really did.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “That bodyguard would have drilled me clean if you hadn’t gotten to him first. I saw his eyes, and he meant business.”
    I shook my head. There was no time to explain. And I still didn’t understand what had happened to me in there.
    “Think those guys were Agency?” he asked. “They sure got there fast and they moved like pros.”
    The agitation was behind us now; the next set of escalators, and the exits below, just a few meters away.
    “That’s one of the things we need to find out,” I said. “But first we have to get out of Manila. I doubt Manny is going to report this to the authorities—it would mean too much attention for him. But I don’t want to stick around waiting to find out.”
    We reached the escalators and paused for a moment.
    “You go down here,” I said. “I want to lose the gun and the mag. I’ll drop them in a toilet tank in one of the bathrooms. With a little luck I can find some bleach or other cleaning supplies in a janitor’s cart and douse them first.”
    He grinned like a schoolboy about to brag of a prank or some other exploit. “I guess I need to break my date with the girl at the concession stand,” he said.
    In the craziness of the moment, half of me wanted to laugh. The other half wanted to strangle him. I looked at him for a moment, shaking my head, and in the instant before I walked away his grin actually broadened.

FOUR

    T HE ARRIVALS AREA of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport was crowded, bustling, and noisy. Tourists in tee-shirts and shorts jostled with haredi, the tremblers before God, in their black suits and hats. Announcements in English and Hebrew reverberated off the long concrete walls. The sun was setting beyond the western windows, and for a moment the terminal’s interior burned headache bright with its sideways orange glow.
    Delilah no longer felt comfortable here. Although her employer arranged for her to return at least annually to visit her parents and other relatives, the years of living a foreign cover had pulled her inexorably from the shores of the Levant, farther and farther until finally she had lost sight of land. This was her country, but she was no longer supposed to be here. The extraordinary security measures that accompanied these visits—falsepapers, disguise, countersurveillance—were testament to that. She was more comfortable now ordering pain au chocolat in French in Paris than she was giving instructions to a taxi driver in Hebrew in Tel Aviv. She told herself that this was the natural and perhaps not undesirable