Killing Rain

hadn’t called or had to break an engagement. Even their different affiliations, and the potential conflicts of interest those affiliations might present, as indeed they had, were understood. In French they would call it sympa, simpatico. In English, the banal but perhaps more descriptive “same sheet of music.” In its quiet way, it was really quite wonderful.
    All of this mattered to her, but there was something more important, more improbable, still: she knew he trusted her. Of course he never abandoned his tactics, she wouldn’t expect that. His moves were as subtle as she’d ever seen, and usually disguised as ordinary behavior, but she knew what he was doing.
    Meeting her at the gate in Bangkok and taking her to the domestic terminal by taxi had been a particularly nice, albeit undisguised, way to play it. If Gil or anyone else had been with her, the game would have been over right there. She suspected that there were other layers, possibly involving electronics, in his countermeasures, layers she hadn’t detected. And she was aware from time to time that his “innocent” questions involved hidden meanings and traps. But all of this was reflex for him, habit. She sensed the tactics were his way of reassuring himself that he hadn’t gone soft, that he was still protected, that he wouldn’t be so foolish as to trust someone like her.
    She never would have told Gil or anyone else, but she knew from the moment they asked that Rain would take the meeting. She wondered what series of rationalizations he must have employed in agreeing to see her in Bangkok. Probably he told himself that it would be worth the risk because she might be able to tell him more about Lavi. And maybe he had been hoping for something like that, but she knew the real reason. The real reason was trust.
    Watching him sleep, she felt a surge of gratitude so strong it brought tears to her eyes. She wanted to wake him with a kiss, hold his face in her hands and look in his eyes and thank him, really thank him, so that he could understand how much that trust, which not even the men she worked with extended to her, was worth. She smiled faintly at the ridiculous urge and waited for it to pass.
    He was a strange man in many ways, and she found his strangeness appealing. Sometimes what she saw in his eyes reminded her of what had settled into her parents’ after her brother had been killed in Lebanon. She found herself moved by that look, and by the way he would force it away if he saw her watching too closely. Once she had asked him if there had ever been a child. He told her no. She hadn’t pressed, sensing that whatever equivalent events could produce that expression had to be approached gradually and obliquely, if at all.
    She knew the odds were against them, but she didn’t want to think about that now. She thought instead about how, when things were fixed, they would make up for how they had almost been set against each other. They’d been together in Macau, Hong Kong, now Thailand. All his territory. And, of course, Rio, which was somewhat of a neutral corner. She found herself wanting to take him to Europe, which felt like home now even more than Israel. Maybe Barcelona, or the Amalfi Coast. Somewhere he had never been, somewhere their time together would be fresh and unburdened by memory.
    She watched him. She had never known a man who slept so silently. It was almost unnerving, that someone could be stealthy even in his sleep.
    After a long time, she joined him.
    TEN
    I WOKE UP EARLY the next morning. Delilah was still sleeping. I got out of bed and padded silently over to the living area, sliding shut the teak doors that divided it from the sleeping area behind me. I picked up my cell phone and inserted one of the spare SIM cards I had purchased in Bangkok, effectively giving the phone a new identity. Then I went into the toilet stall, closed the door behind me, and turned the unit on. I needed to make two calls, and for the moment I wanted to keep them private. Ordinarily I prefer not to use a cell phone from a fixed location, but with the new SIM card the unit would be sterile. And the conversations would be brief.
    First Tatsu, my old friend and nemesis at the Keisatsu-cho, the Japanese FBI. Tatsu owed me a lifetime of favors for having taken out Murakami, a yakuza assassin he’d wanted dealt with extrajudicially, and it was time for me to call one of those favors in.
    His cell rang only once. Then I heard his voice. Never