Killing Rain

understand why Dox sometimes got annoyed with me for asking questions that to him must have seemed obvious. “Of course,” I said. “There’s nothing.”
    “I’ll look into it,” she said. “You sure about those guys, though?”
    “Not sure, no. But I’ve got two independent sources, one of them in the organization itself, and their information tracks. My guess is that your people have it wrong, although I don’t know why.”
    “I don’t know what more I can do on that one. I’ve already asked. If I press further, they’ll know something’s up.”
    There was a pause. “How long will you be in Bangkok?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. I’m supposed to post something on our bulletin board about how I’m angry and hurt that you took off, that
    I want to see you again. I can probably wait a couple days or so to see if you’ll contact me.”
    “Then let me check on a few things, use the information you gave me. I’ll be in touch.”
    “Don’t keep me out of this. I’m in too deeply already.”
    She had good antennae. “I won’t keep you out,” I said.
    I imagined her thinking, Like hell.
    But what could she say.
    “I’ll be in touch,” I told her.
    There was a pause. She said, “You better be.” And clicked off.
    I briefed Dox on the cryptonyms and everything else.
    “Hilger, Manny, the dear departed Mr. Winters, and the mysterious Mr. VBM,” he said. “Damn, partner, sounds like Hong Kong is going to be the place to be.”
    “Yeah, but if we go there, are we taking on the whole CIA? Or something else?”
    “Well, let’s consider. We’ve got the Israelites telling us one thing, and Kanezaki and your Japanese contact telling us something different. Whose information do you trust more?”
    I shrugged. “Kanezaki’s in the best position to know.”
    “I agree with that, as long as he’s playing it straight.”
    “Plus we’ve got the independent confirmation.”
    “Agreed again. So what could have led the Israelites astray?”
    I thought for a minute. “One, someone could be lying. Two, and more likely, I think, someone’s just made a mistake. Which isn’t so hard to imagine. I mean, Delilah said that Gil knew Hilger and the other two guys when they joined the Company. Then, during surveillance, Gil saw Hilger with Manny. He naturally assumes Hilger is still with the Agency and that Manny is an asset. When the two guys get killed while meeting with Manny, it reinforces the existing assumption that they were active-duty CIA. No one thinks to ask, Have these people moved on to something else? And they can’t make too many inquiries because the whole thing is so sensitive. Plus, there’s this media leak we just saw in the Washington Post.
    They might have seen that, too. More reinforcement of a mistaken assumption.”
    He nodded for a long moment, as though thinking. Then he said, “You know, maybe we’re being too limited with this either/or perspective we’ve adopted.”
    I looked at him, intrigued.
    “I mean, look at us,” he went on. “Are we CIA? No, not really, we’re contractors. But the CIA uses us from time to time. And it ain’t just us. Hell, these days you’ve got Halliburton and Blackwater and DynCorp and Vinnell and Kroll-Crucible . . . these outfits are springing up all over, and it can be hard to tell where the government ends and the private sector begins.”
    “That’s true,” I said.
    “Plus you’ve got the government turning everybody into a bounty hunter by offering twenty-five million for Osama’s scrawny ass.”
    “Capitalism at work,” I said. “Supply and demand.”
    “I know. Hell, when I was watching us shock and awe the Iraqis on CNN when we first went in, I kept expecting the announcer to say, ‘This sortie brought to you by Kellogg’s Rice Krispies,’ or something like that. It just ain’t as clear as it used to be.”
    I nodded. “You know who is the third largest contributor of forces to the coalition there, after the U.S. and the Brits?”
    “Private contractors, son, no doubt about it. We’re the wave of the future. Ought to form a union.”
    I nodded. “The U.S. doesn’t go out of its way to advertise it, but yeah.”
    “Well, that’s what I’m talking about.”
    He rubbed his chin as though considering something.
    “But on balance,” he went on, “I don’t think we’re dealing with Uncle Sam here. Not with the Thais, not with the Jew-boy thing. And like you said, Christians In Action has a fairly dismal