RainStorm

bet on the next round. I stayed with the
    minimum. This time we both won.
    The attendant came by with the drinks, carrying them perched
    on a silver tray. She placed Belghazi's on the table next to him, then
    leaned forward and moved to do the same with mine. He was
    watching the banker, who was getting ready to deal. Now.
    I half rose from my seat, reaching for my drink with both hands
    as though concerned that I not spill it during the transfer. As my
    right hand passed over Belghazi's glass, I paused for an instant and
    squeezed, and the seal at the squib's bottom, thinner than the surrounding
    plastic, parted silently and released the contents within. I
    used my torso to obscure the move from above, where the overhead
    cameras might otherwise have recorded it. Done. I eased back
    into my seat, tonic water in hand.
    Belghazi ignored his drink during the next round, and during
    the one after. The ice in his glass was melting, and I began to grow
    concerned that one of the attendants would come and replace it. I
    had another squib, of course, but didn't want to have to repeat the
    risky maneuver of getting it into his glass.
    As it turned out, there was no need. At the end of the fifth
    hand, he picked up his glass and drank. One swallow. A pause, then
    another. He put the glass down.
    That was enough. It was time for me to go. I played one more
    hand, then collected my chips. "Good luck," I said to him, moving
    to stand.
    "So soon?" he asked.
    I'd been there less than an hour--a twinkling, by the standards
    of the room's diehards. He was still probing, I saw. He had a cop's
    instinct for irregularities. I nodded and smiled. "I've learned to quit
    while I'm ahead," I told him, holding up my chips.
    He smiled back, his gaze cool as always. "Yes, that's usually
    wise," he said.
    On my way out of the casino I stopped to use one of the restrooms.
    A full bladder would be a nuisance later this evening, and I
    also wanted to thoroughly wash my hands. Staph is nasty stuff, and
    I had no wish to consume some of it inadvertently.
    I took a cab to the Oriental and went straight to my room.
    Keiko was out, presumably still gambling with the money I'd given
    her. I grabbed what I needed from the safe, placed it in a small
    backpack I'd brought along for just this occasion, and went straight
    to Belghazi's suite. He would start feeling sick shortly and could be
    expected to return soon after that, and I needed to let myself in
    ahead of him. If he got in first, he might engage the dead bolt-- low tech, but inaccessible from the exterior--and I would lose this
    opportunity.
    I used the SoldierVision before going in. The blonde had said
    she was going to play craps, but people change their minds. The
    room was empty. I let myself in with my homemade master key. It
    would have been nice if I could have just stood in the closet or lain
    down under the bed, but those would be among the first places the
    bodyguards would check if they performed even a cursory sweep.
    Instead, I moved quickly to the larger of the suite's two bathrooms.
    I saw two sets of toiletries arranged across the expansive marble countertop
    around the sink--Belghazi's, presumably, and the blonde's.
    There was a vertical slab of marble joined to the front edge of
    the countertop, extending about a quarter of the distance to the
    floor. I took a SureFire Ele mini-light from the backpack--three
    inches, two ounces, fifteen bright white lumens--squatted, and
    looked under the slab. Hot and cold water pipes ran down from the
    sink handles above and disappeared into the wall. I saw the curved
    bottom of the ceramic sink, and an attached drainage pipe snaking
    down, then up, then, with the other pipes, into the wall behind.
    I smiled. If Belghazi had taken a more modest room, I wouldn't
    have been able to get away with this, and would have had to come
    up with something less optimal. As it was, the countertop was sufficiently
    grand to leave a sizeable gap between the back of the vertical
    marble facade and the underside of the sink basin behind it. It
    would be a bit of a squeeze, but there was just enough room in
    there for a man of my size.
    I reached into the backpack and took out a specially designed
    nylon sling, which, unfurled, looked something like an uncomfortably
    thin black hammock with four aluminum cams on its ends. I
    squatted down again, held the SureFire in my mouth, and looked
    for places to secure the cams. I could have replaced the cams with
    suction