Killing Rain

“Hai.”
    “Hello, old friend,” I said in Japanese.
    There was a pause, and I imagined a rare smile. “Hello,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
    “Too long.”
    “Are you in town?”
    “No.”
    “Then you are calling for information.”
    “Yes.”
    “What do you need?”
    “Four days ago there was a shootout in a Manila shopping mall. I want to know everything you can tell me about the men who died there.”
    Tatsu would be wondering whether I’d been involved, but he knew there would be no point in asking. “All right,” he said.
    “Thank you.”
    “Everything is good?” he asked.
    “The usual.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    I chuckled. “Thank you, my friend.”
    “Call me if you’re ever in town. We can make small talk.”
    I smiled. Tatsu was congenitally incapable of small talk, something I used to rib him over.
    “We’ll do that,” I said.
    “Jaa.” Well then.
    “Jaa.” I hung up.
    The next call, I knew, would be more problematic. Higher risk, but also higher reward.
    I punched in the number and waited while the call went through. I told myself that, if the men in Manila really had beenCIA, I was in a world of shit anyway and the call couldn’t do much to worsen my position. If they weren’t, though, a call to the CIA itself would be my best chance of finding out.
    This time, too, the phone was answered promptly with a curt “Hai.” I smiled, wondering briefly whether Tatsu was mentoring this young man. I suspected he was.
    Tomohisa Kanezaki was a third-generation Japanese American and rising star at CIA Tokyo Station. We had found ourselves involved in several of the same off-the-books projects over the last couple years, and, as was the case with Tatsu, we had managed to work out what seemed to be a mutually beneficial modus vivendi. It was time to test the limits of that ambiguous relationship.
    “Hey,” I said to him in English, knowing he would recognize the greeting and my voice.
    There was a pause, then he said in English, “I’ve been wondering when you would get in touch.”
    “Here I am.”
    “Looking for work?”
    “Have you got any?”
    “Not like we did. The post–nine-eleven urgency is beginning to fade. For a while there, we were really in a take-no-prisoners mindset, but that’s going now. Shit, if we were the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, we’d call what we’ve got now a ‘catch and release’ program.”
    “Sorry to hear that.”
    “I’m sorry to say it.”
    “I’m not looking for work anyway.”
    “No?”
    “No. I’m staying out of that business. It’s too dangerous.”
    He laughed.
    “I need a favor,” I said.
    “Sure.”

    “I heard there was a shooting recently. In a Manila shopping mall.”
    There was a pause, then he said, “I heard the same thing.”
    Shit. I couldn’t imagine he would have heard about the shooting if the CIA weren’t in some way involved. Maybe I shouldn’t have called him. Well, too late now.
    “You know anything about the deceased?” I asked. “I heard they were company men.”
    There was another pause. Then: “They were ex-company.”
    Ex-company. Interesting.
    “You know what they were doing there?” I asked.
    “I don’t.”
    “I think I might know something. If I tell you, can you see what you can find out?”
    “I’ll do what I can.”
    Not exactly a binding promise, but I’d take what I could get.
    “They were there for a meeting with a guy named Manheim Lavi. Israeli national, resident of South Africa. Check your files, you’ll find out who he is.”
    There was a pause. “How do you know this?” he asked.
    It was only reflex. He knew I wouldn’t answer.
    “Check your files,” I said again.
    “I know who Manny is.”
    I should have realized. When we were last in touch, Kanezaki had been responsible for a number of antiterrorism initiatives in Southeast Asia. If he knew his brief, and of course he did, Manny would be very much on his radar screen.
    “All right. Any ideas about why some ex-company guys would be meeting with him in Manila?”
    “All I know is that they were named Calver and Gibbons. They retired from the Agency two years ago. They were with NE Division—the Middle East. I didn’t know them while theywere here, but enough people did to make their deaths pretty big news. Everybody’s talking about it.”
    “If you can find out more, I’d like to know. Who they reported to when they were with the government, what they were up to lately. That