Rainfall

serious.”

    “You wouldn’t forgive me for getting you up otherwise,” I said.

    We ordered coffee and breakfast and I filled him in on everything that had happened since the last time I saw him, beginning with how I met Midori, through the attack outside her apartment and then mine, the meeting with Bulfinch, the disk. I didn’t tell him about the previous night. I just told him we were using a love hotel as a safe house.

    Looking at him there, feeling his concern, I realized I trusted him. Not just because I knew that, operationally, he had no way to hurt me, which was my usual reason for extending some minimal measure of trust, but because he was worthy of trust. And because I wanted to trust him.

    “I’m in a bit of a tight spot here,” I told him. “I could use your help. But . . . you’re going to need to know some fairly deep background first. If that’s not comfortable for you, all you need to do is say so.”

    He reddened slightly, and I knew that it would mean a lot to him that I would ask for his help, that I needed him. “It’s comfortable,” he said.

    I told him about Holtzer and Benny, the apparent CIA connection.

    “I wish you’d told me earlier,” he said when I was done. “I might have been able to do more to help.”

    I shrugged. “The less you know, the less I have to worry about you.”

    He nodded. “Typical CIA outlook.”

    “Takes one to know one.”

    “No, no. Remember, I worked at the Puzzle Palace. It’s the Agency types who turn paranoia into a point of pride. Anyway, why would I want to hurt you?”

    “Just being careful, kid,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.”

    “You saved my butt that time in Roppongi, remember? You think I’d forget that?”

    “You’d be surprised what people forget.”

    “Not me. Anyway, has it occurred to you how much I’m trusting you by letting you share this information with me, letting you make me a potential point of vulnerability? I know how careful you are, and I know what you’re capable of.”

    “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said.

    He looked at me for a long time before he responded. “I’ve kept your secrets for a long time. I’ll continue to keep them. Fair enough?”

    Never underestimate Harry,
I thought, nodding.

    “Fair enough?” he asked again.

    “Yes,” I said, not having anywhere else to go. “Now, enough of the I’m-okay-you’re-okay routine. Let’s work the problem. Start with Holtzer.”

    “Tell me more about how you know him.”

    “Not right after I’ve eaten.”

    “That bad, huh?”

    I shrugged. “I knew him in Vietnam. He was with the Agency then, attached to SOG, a joint CIA-military Special Operations Group. He’s got balls, I’ll give him credit for that. He wasn’t afraid to go into the field, unlike some of the other bean counters I worked with out there. I liked that about him when I first met him. But even then he was nothing but a careerist. The first time we locked horns was after an ARVN — Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the South’s army — operation in Military Region Three. The ARVN had mortared the shit out of a suspected Vietcong base in Tay Ninh, based on intelligence from a source that Holtzer had developed. So we were involved in the body count, as a way of verifying the intelligence.

    “The ARVN had really pounded the place, and it was hard to identify the bodies — there were pieces everywhere. But there were no weapons. I told Holtzer this didn’t look like Vietcong activity to me. He says, What are you talking about? This is Tay Ninh, everyone here is Vietcong. I say, Come on, there aren’t any weapons, your source was jerking you off. There was a mistake. He says no mistake, there must be two dozen enemy dead. But he’s counting every blown-off limb as a separate body.

    “Back at base, he writes up his report and asks me to verify it. I told him to fuck off. There were a couple officers nearby, out of earshot but close enough to see us. It got heated, and I wound up laying him out. The officers saw it, which is exactly what Holtzer had wanted, although I don’t think he bargained for the rhinoplasty he needed afterward. Ordinarily that kind of thing wouldn’t have aroused much attention, but at the time there was some sensitivity to the way Special Forces and the CIA were cooperating in the field, and Holtzer knew how to work the bureaucracy. He made it sound like I wouldn’t verify his report because I had a