Killing Rain

“Hong Kong Cat Club. Hong Kong . . . China Club.”
    “China Club?”
    I nodded. “It’s a private club with a five-star restaurant at the top of the old Bank of China building in Central. They’ve got one in Beijing now, too, and in Singapore.”

    “We didn’t get a hit for that, though.”
    “Yeah.” I keyed in “China Club Hong Kong” and hit “enter.” I got about three million hits, none for what I was looking for.
    “You sure about this place?” Dox asked.
    “It’s exclusive. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t have a website and I doubt they advertise.” I keyed in a number of variations on what I was looking for until I came up with a phone number. I picked up my cell phone, turned it on, and input the number.
    The phone on the other end rang once, then again. A woman’s voice answered: “Good evening, China Club. How may I assist you?”
    “Restaurant reservations,” I said.
    “My pleasure,” the voice said.
    I waited a moment, then a man’s voice said, “China Club Restaurant. How may I assist you?”
    “I’d like to confirm a reservation,” I said. “Jim Hilger. Tomorrow.”
    There was a pause, then the voice said, “Yes, sir, seven o’clock tomorrow evening, private dining room, party of four.”
    “Thank you so much,” I said, smiling.
    I hung up and looked at Dox. “Dinner tomorrow night at the China Club, party of four, private dining room. I think they must have forgotten to invite us.”
    He grinned. “Well, maybe we ought to just join them anyway.”
    “I’m beginning to think we should.”
    “Do we know who else will be there?”
    I shook my head. “I couldn’t ask that. They probably wouldn’t have known, and anyway the question would have seemed odd.”
    “Well, it was a near thing back there in front of Brown Sugar,” he said, “but now that I think about it, it might have loosened things up for us, given us the break we’re looking for. Nothing like a little serendipity to make a man feel all is right in the universe.”
    The massive adrenaline surge that had helped me surviveBrown Sugar and its aftermath was ebbing, but I could still feel its effects. Getting to sleep tonight was going to be a bitch.
    “So it looks like Hilger was behind Winters,” I said. “For a while there, I was concerned it was the Israelis.”
    “You think Delilah would set us up? I don’t believe that. Plus she doesn’t know my number.”
    “Oh, you didn’t get around to giving it to her?”
    “Stop it. That wouldn’t be right.”
    I scrubbed a hand over my face and thought. “Even before we found that Treo entry, I doubted it was the Israelis. Although if some Russians have your number, I suppose there are a lot of other players who might have gotten ahold of it, the Israelis included. But Delilah only just found out about you. I don’t see how the Israelis could have gotten your number that quickly. Plus, they’re relatively weak in Asia, which is part of the reason they wanted me to do Manny in the first place. I doubt they have the technical means, on the ground, immediately deployable, to track a cell phone in Bangkok.”
    He nodded. “All right, so we can rule out the Israelites, I agree.”
    “Now let’s assume that Winters was hooked up with Hilger. It sure looks that way—we’ve got the entry in the Treo, the Hong Kong connection, the dinner reservation. We think that Hilger is CIA. Does that mean that all this is coming from the CIA?”
    “Not necessarily. Hilger might be with the CIA, but he’s not synonymous with the CIA.”
    “Correct. But the Agency has your phone number, don’t they?”
    “They do, yeah, they’ve been a client. Never thought that would be a problem before.”
    “Does the Agency know about the work you’ve done for the Russians?”
    “I never told them about it. When I’m not leaving my cellphone on and trying to have my way with the lady-boys, I can actually be fairly discreet.”
    I chuckled. “Well, the Agency might know anyway. They’re spies, after all. Winters might have told us he got the number from the Russians to hide the CIA’s involvement.”
    “Or he might really have gotten it from Ivan.”
    “Yeah. No way for us to know, not yet. But whoever Winters was with, they had access to some pretty sophisticated equipment. They had to be able to track your cell phone to Bangkok, which would mean access to the carriers, and they had to pinpoint it at Brown Sugar, which required sophisticated