RainStorm

when you ordered."
    "No."
    She nodded. "The waitress was ethnic Portuguese, so at the
    time I thought you were just using some trivial knowledge of the
    language. But, when the technicians said they had tracked you to
    South America, I started thinking about what you had ordered, the
    way you had ordered it, your accent, the Japanese community in
    Brazil--"
    "That's the problem with being multilingual," I said. "You forget
    what the hell language you're speaking."
    She laughed. "Tell me about it. Can you imagine what Belghazi
    would have said if I had greeted him, 'Shalom'?"
    We both laughed. She said, "Anyway, Rio felt right to me.
    Partly because of what you said about retiring to a sunny place, a
    place with beaches. But partly because ... it just felt right. I decided
    to give it a try. Sao Paulo would have been my second choice.
    But a caipirinha wouldn't taste nearly as good there, would it?"
    "You want to get one now?"
    She smiled. "It's ten in the morning."
    I shrugged. "I've got a room at the Copacabana Palace, right behind
    us. We could kill some time first."
    Her smile broadened. "That sounds nice," she said.
    Maybe it was all part of some larger plan, wheels within wheels.
    Maybe this was the job offer, and she was my signing bonus.
    I supposed I would never know. Her motives, I understood,
    would remain a mystery, the time I might share with her a mirage,
    a kaleidoscope animated by the engine of my own foolish hopes,
    an attractive illusion, a projection.
    On the other hand, she had warned me about that guy who'd
    been waiting for me in my room in Macau. That was the one thing
    that refused to fit, the one telling detail. Because, based on everything
    I'd learned since, I still couldn't see any operational benefit
    that she would have derived from that warning. And if operational
    imperatives couldn't explain it, it had to be something else.
    Watching her there on the sand, I realized I'd been evaluating her
    too one-dimensionally, perhaps in unconscious and unflattering reflection
    of the way I view myself. She had refused to answer at the
    time when I'd asked her why she'd warned me. She might not even
    have known herself. But now I thought I might know. It was the desire,
    in the midst of a horrible business full of deceit and killing and
    regret, not to be responsible for an additional death. To expiate the
    sins of righteous butchery through the saving of a single life.
    I could understand that. I could even hope for it. It was a pretty
    slim reed on which to try to build trust, but it was something.
    It was a start.
    I looked at her and asked, "How long are you going to be in
    town?"
    She smiled. "A while, I hope."
    I held out my hand. She took it and we stood. Then we walked
    back to the hotel.
    AUTHOR'S NOTE
    The Hong Kong, Macau, Rio, Tokyo, and Virginia locales that appear
    in this book are described, as always, as I have found them.
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Deepest thanks:
    To my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber of Sobel Weber Associates,
    for the conception; to my editor, David Highfill of Putnam,
    for the execution; and to Michael Barson and the Barsonians
    of Putnam, for the dissemination. What a team!
    To Lori Andreini, for her continued insights into what sophisticated,
    sexy women like Delilah wear and how they think, and for
    helpful comments on the manuscript.
    To my once and future sensei Koichiro Fukasawa of Wasabi
    Communications, for years of insight, humor, and friendship, and,
    as always, for helpful comments on the manuscript.
    To Doug Patteson, for consistently pointing me in the right di
    rection, for refining numerous ideas for the book's backstory, and
    for his enthusiasm for John Rain generally.
    To Evan Rosen, M.D., Ph.D., and Peter Zimetbaum, M.D., for
    once again offering (reluctant) expert advice on some of the killing
    techniques in this book, and for helpful comments on the manuscript.
    To Ernie Tibaldi, a thirty-one-year veteran agent of the FBI, for
    continuing to generously share his encyclopedic knowledge of law
    enforcement and personal safety issues, and for helpful comments
    on the manuscript; to Michael Stapleton, a thirty-three-year veteran
    Special Agent of the FBI, for sharing his expertise on fingerprinting
    and DNA forensic science; and to a certain active-duty
    FBI agent, who must remain nameless, for sharing his expertise on
    defending against improvised explosive devices.
    To Amelia Chan, Monica Chan, Norman Chan, Daniel Fok,
    and Kai Cheong Fok, for being