RainStorm

wasn't a
    problem. I was looking forward to finding out why.
    "Speaking of the two hundred thousand," Dox said, "you've
    been shortchanging me, son. My price just went up."
    "See, this is what I was afraid of," Kanezaki said. "A damn
    union."
    We all laughed. Kanezaki asked, "How'd that doctor work out?"
    Reminding me of how he'd come through when I needed him.
    "Well, he gave me a quart of Dox's blood," I said. "That ought
    to be grounds for malpractice."
    "Crimson Viagra!" Dox crowed, and we all laughed again.
    "Check the papers," Kanezaki said. "You'll see what you've
    done. You should be damn proud, no shit."
    it was on CNN that night. A joint Hong Kong police/CIA
    operation had stopped a transfer of radiologically tipped missiles at
    Kwai Chung port container facility. Several Arab terrorists involved
    had been killed in a shootout. A CIA officer, whose identity could
    not be revealed, was wounded in the operation. All missiles were
    recovered. No one mentioned anything about a duffel bag with five
    million U.S. in it.
    So Hilger must have survived. Maybe he'd finally managed to
    put a round in the last Arab. No wonder Kanezaki hadn't been uptight
    about the abandoned binoculars and parabolic microphone.
    Apparently their presence hadn't been inconsistent with the new
    cover story.
    The next morning I checked the appropriate offshore account.
    The two hundred thousand was in there, as Kanezaki had promised
    --fifty thousand that had been paid up front, one hundred fifty
    moved in the day before.
    Dox had given me the number of his own account. I transferred
    him all two hundred. My way of saying thank-you.
    I called Kanezaki from a pay phone.
    "I saw the news," I said. "Another heroic success for the defenders
    of the free world."
    He chuckled. "Be happy. The clean-up suits everyone--you, especially.
    No one here is disputing the official story. They're all
    scrambling to try to make themselves part of it, in fact. So no one's
    arguing about the definition of 'natural.'"
    "What are those missiles?" I asked.
    "They're called Alazans. They're surface-to-surface rockets with
    a ten-mile range. They were originally designed by Soviet scientists
    for weather experiments, but seemed to work better as a terror
    weapon. Conventional versions were employed by Azerbaijan forces
    in the war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of NagornoKarabakh,
    and by separatists in South Ossetia in clashes with Georgian
    troops."
    "The news said the ones recovered were radiologically tipped."
    "Yeah, two years ago, we uncovered documents showing that at
    one time one of the Alazan batteries had been fitted with radiological
    warheads--turning the rockets into 'dirty bombs.' The radiological
    battery was stored in Transdniester, a separatist enclave that
    broke away from Moldova twelve years ago. Transdniester is currently
    recognized by no government but its own, and, with its huge stock-
    piles of Soviet-era arms, it's become a clearinghouse for black arms
    weapons."
    "Those two guys," I said, thinking aloud. "The Russians. They
    were from Transdniester?"
    "Yeah, the military junta that's running Transdniester now is
    pro-Russian. The rest of the enclave speaks Moldovan, which is
    really just Romanian. It's complicated."
    "Sounds it."
    "Anyway, what you've got now is a small clique that runs the
    'country' of Transdniester by its own rules. Much of the enclave's
    trade is controlled by a single company, Sheriff, which is owned by
    the son of Transdniester's president. The son also heads the Transdniester
    Customs Service, which oversees all the goods flowing in
    and out of the country. The shipments move through the Tiraspol
    airport; overland by truck to Ukraine or Moldova; and on a rail-to-ship
    line that connects the capital to Odessa."
    "Or through Hong Kong."
    "Not a likely route, if you look at a map, but brilliant if you had
    the local connections that Belghazi was using. He was snowing his
    handlers in NE Division. They thought he was a 'good' arms dealer
    who was informing on the 'bad' arms dealers. In fact, he was informing
    on his competitors, and meanwhile dealing in whatever
    would make him the most money. The Alazans were probably just
    one example. Who knows what he was moving right under the
    Agency's nose."
    "Not anymore."
    "That's right. I meant it when I said you should be proud. The
    people who he would have sold those missiles to would have used
    them anywhere they could. If they had been smuggled into