Killing Rain

done.”
    “Okay. Good.”
    Hilger clicked off. He looked at his phone, wondering how it was going in Bangkok. For a moment, he thought that maybe he should have been there himself, to oversee things. But no. Winters was the best. Hilger had seen him in action and it wasn’t a pretty sight. But the man got results.
    Hilger glanced at his desk clock. Maybe he was getting those results right now.

TWELVE

    D ELILAH WAITED AN HOUR to make sure that Rain and Dox had sufficient time to depart, then called Gil on his cell phone.
    He answered on the first ring, and she imagined him as she always did at this stage in an operation, sitting alone in a dim hotel room, needing neither food nor other sustenance, the cell phone placed on a table or desk in front of him, silently and patiently waiting for the unit to ring so that he could venture wraith-like into the world and do what he was best at.
    “Ken,” she heard him say in Hebrew. Yes.
    “It’s me,” she answered. There was no response. Ignoring what she interpreted as one of his little power games, she went on. “Our friend left this morning. Packed his bags and took off.”
    There was a pause, then he said, “Shit. Where are you?”

    “Phuket.”
    “Why didn’t you call sooner?”
    “I never had a chance. I was with him the whole time.”
    “Doesn’t he sleep?”
    “Do you?”
    There was a pause, no doubt while he tried to think of a good response. When he couldn’t, he said, “So he took you to Phuket.”
    She caught the innuendo and felt a surge of anger. “You know how it is, Gil,” she said. “Some men just have the right touch with women. They know how to get what they want.”
    As soon as it was out, she regretted it. Mostly, her deep-seated need not to take shit served her well, but this time it was going to hinder her. She wanted information from Gil. To get it, she had to manage him, manipulate him, not react by reflex to his constant, petty provocations. Yes, she was counterpunching, but he was still making her fight his kind of fight. The way to win was to change the game entirely.
    Gil was silent on the other end of the phone, and she considered the possibility that her comment had actually wounded him. The thought softened her anger, made her feel more generous. She sensed that this feeling might be useful.
    She considered. Maybe what Gil needed was just a victory in their constant verbal sparring. Maybe it would restore his sense of manhood, allow him to behave in some way other than trying to hurt her. She’d often thought that this was what the government needed to do with the Palestinians. After all, it was only after the Yom Kippur War, after giving Israel a bloody nose, that Egypt had been willing to make peace. Maybe Gil was the same. And maybe, if he found himself enjoying an unfamiliar position of success and power, he might be generous, or anyway careless, with information. Yes, that was the way to play it. Let him win.
    After a moment he asked, “Well, what happened?”
    “I think he got suspicious.”

    “Any idea about where he’s gone?”
    “No.”
    “Shit,” he said again.
    Shit, sure. For Gil, not being able to kill someone he had fixed in his sights must have felt like coitus interruptus.
    “Where are you?” she asked.
    “Bangkok.”
    She had expected that. She had told them she was traveling to Bangkok to meet Rain. Gil would have wanted to be as close as possible so he could move quickly.
    “I have to pass through Bangkok to get wherever I’m going next,” she said. “Why don’t we meet there and I’ll brief you?” And then, as though she had only just thought of it and hadn’t actually been planning this, she added, “Or you could come here. It’s beautiful and I don’t know when either of us will have another chance.”
    There was a long pause. Then he said, “It’s better if you come here.”
    The pause told her he had been tempted by her suggestion of Phuket as the venue, perhaps by the way she had subtly conjoined the two of them with her use of the plural pronoun. The reply itself told her he was suspicious; otherwise, the temptation would have prevailed.
    “Okay,” she said. “I’ll catch the next flight and call you when I arrive. It should be just a few hours, if that.”
    “Okay,” he said, and hung up.
    She nodded. An unfamiliar place, just the two of them, far from the people they knew . . . all an ideal environment for getting someone to relax and open up. She had seen it many