RainStorm

for a taste
    of the area's sumptuous buffet of prostitutes. No doubt she assumed
    I was married--the resulting associated paranoia of which would
    explain any counter surveillance moves she might have noticed-- and I doubted that she would have found the notion of additional
    philandering excessively shocking.
    Watching her walk out the front entrance to catch a cab into
    town, I felt an odd surge of affection. Most people would think of
    someone in Keiko's line of work as being anything but innocent,
    but at that moment, to me, innocence practically defined her. Her
    job was to offer me pleasure--and she was doing very well at it-- and for her, our presence in Macau was no more complicated than
    that. She was as oblivious to the deadly dance playing out around
    her as a sheep grazing in a field. I told myself that she would go
    home with that innocence intact.
    I called 812 from the lobby phone. There was no answer. A
    good sign, although not proof-positive: someone might have been
    in the room and not answering the phone, or Karate might have
    written down an incorrect room number, which I certainly would
    have done. Still, it was worth a look.
    I stopped in my room to pick up a few items I would need, then
    took the elevator to the seventh floor. From there, I took the
    stairs, the less trafficked route, and therefore the one less likely
    to present problems like witnesses. On my left -wrist, concealed under
    the baggy sleeve of a fleece pullover, was a device that looked
    like a large PDA, secured with Velcro. The device, which saw its
    initial deployment in the second Gulf War, is called Soldier-
    Vision. It takes a radar "picture" of a room through walls and feeds
    the resulting image back to the wrist unit. Not exactly something
    you might pick up at your local hardware store, and definitely
    one of the advantages of working with Christians In Action
    again.
    Earlier in my stay I had taken the trouble of securing a master
    key for just this sort of occasion, although at the time it was Bel-ghazi
    I had in mind, not Karate. The hotel used punched-hole mechanical
    key cards, the kind that look like slightly thickened, plain
    gray credit cards with patterns of two-millimeter holes cut in them.
    It also used, as part of its campaign to "Protect Our Environment!",
    a system whereby the key had to be inserted into a wall slot
    next to the door for the room lights to become operable. When
    you withdrew the key in preparation for leaving the room, there
    was about a one-minute delay before the lights would go out. The
    maids carried master keys, of course, and it had been easy enough
    to walk past a room that was being cleaned, pull the maid's master
    from the reader, make an impression in a chunk of modeling clay
    I'd picked up in a local toy store, and replace the key, all in about
    six seconds. Using the impression as a template, all I had needed to
    do was punch the appropriate additional holes in my room key, fill
    in the inappropriate ones with fast-setting epoxy clay, and presto, I
    had the same access as the hotel staff.
    Karate's room was on the left of the corridor. I used the Soldier-Vision
    to confirm that it was empty, then let myself in with my
    homemade master. I wasn't unduly concerned about disturbing the
    room's contents in a way that might tell Karate someone had entered
    in his absence--the daily maid service could account for that.
    I walked in and sniffed. Whoever he was, he'd been taking full
    advantage of his stay on the smoking floor. The room was thick
    with the lees of strong tobacco--Gauloises or Gitane, something
    like that--which you can smell outside those Tokyo bistros whose
    fervently Francophile patrons believe that emissions from a Marlboro
    or a Mild Seven might ruin the pleasant illusion of an afternoon
    in a Latin Quarter cafe.
    I pulled on a pair of gloves and did a quick search of the closet
    and drawers, but found nothing remarkable. The small room safe
    was closed and locked, probably with his identification and other
    goodies inside. There was a Dell laptop on the desk, but I didn't
    have time to wait for its Windows operating system to boot. Besides,
    if he had enabled the boot log feature, he would see that
    someone had fired the laptop up in his absence and would get suspicious.
    I picked up the room phone and hit the key for room service.
    Two rings, then a Filipina-accented voice said, "Yes, Mr. Nuchi,
    how may I help you?"
    "Oh, I think I hit the wrong button. Sorry to