RainStorm

Enough to create the
    incentive, but not so much that I wouldn't be tempted to do it
    again later. Not a bad deal for them, really--about the cost of a
    Hellfire or two, and a lot less than a cruise missile. And more deniable
    than either.
    "I'll think about it," I told him. "And while I'm thinking, pay
    Naomi what you owe her."
    "She didn't hold up her end," he said, shaking his head, not
    bothering to deny the connection. "So she's out of luck."
    "What was 'her end'?"
    "She was supposed to contact us if you contacted her."
    I looked at him. "If she didn't contact you, how . . ."
    "Voice analysis. Like a lie detector. We used it every time I
    called her. Every time I asked whether you'd shown up, she said no.
    On the last time, the machine detected significant stress patterns."
    "So you knew she was lying."
    "Yeah. We sent people to watch her. You know the rest."
    I looked away and considered. So she had been telling me the
    truth--she really hadn't given me up. Damn.
    Or maybe she had, and Kanezaki was just protecting her. There
    was no way to know, and I supposed there never would be.
    "Pay her anyway," I said.
    He started to protest, but I cut him off. "She still led you to me,
    even if it was inadvertent. Pay her the fucking finder's fee."
    "I'll see what I can do," he said, after a moment.
    I wondered briefly whether this was bullshit, too, designed to
    make me feel that I'd won something. Again, no way to know.
    "I'll contact you," I said. "If you've paid her, we'll talk more. If
    you haven't, we won't."
    He nodded.
    I thought about adding something about leaving her alone,
    some threat. But all an admonition would accomplish would be to
    reveal, more than I already had, that I cared, thereby making Naomi
    more interesting to them. Better to say nothing, and simply steer
    clear of her thereafter.
    Maybe you could have trusted her after all. The thought was
    tantalizing.
    And sad.
    It didn't matter. Even if there had been some possibility of trust,
    my reflexive assumptions, my accusations, had extinguished it.
    I thought of an apology. But there are things that just aren't subject
    to an "I'm sorry" or a "please forgive me" or a "really, I should
    have known better."
    Let it go, I thought. The twenty-five grand would have to do.
    "Now tell me about Dox," I said.
    He shrugged. "I needed someone you knew, so you could see
    that the program, and the benefits of the program, were real. If it
    weren't for that, then, other than your history, you would never
    have known about him."
    "Are there others?"
    He looked at me over the top of his glasses. The look said, You
    know better than to ask something like that.
    I looked back.
    After a moment, he shrugged again and said, "I'll just say that
    men like you and Dox are rare. And even he can't operate in some
    of the places you can. Asia, for example. Also he tends to be a little
    less subtle in his methods, meaning not well suited for certain
    jobs. Okay?"
    We left it at that. He gave me the URL for a secure bulletin
    board. I called him a few days later on his Japanese cell phone. He
    was back in Tokyo. He told me Naomi had gotten the money.
    I used a pay phone to call her at Scenarium. The club was noisy
    in the background. She said, "I didn't want the fucking money. I
    could have had it, but I didn't want it."
    "Naomi ..." I started to say. I didn't know what I was going to
    add. But it didn't really matter. She had already hung up.
    I looked at the phone for a long time, as though the device had
    somehow betrayed me. Then I put it back in its cradle. Wiped it
    down automatically. Walked away.
    I went to an Internet cafe and composed a message. The message
    was brief. The salient part was the number of an offshore account,
    to which they could transfer the fifty thousand down payment.
    I heard laughter and looked up. Some kids at the terminal next
    to me, playing an online game.
    I wondered for a moment how I had gotten here.
    And I wondered if maybe this is what Tatsu had meant when he
    said I could never retire. That I would inevitably ruin every other

possibility.
    We shall not cease from exploration, some poet wrote. And the end
    of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place
    for the first time.
    How incredibly fucking depressing.
    FOUR
    after leaving Belghazi's suite, I took a long, solitary
    walk along the waterfront. I wanted to think about what
    had just happened, about what I wanted to happen next.
    Delilah. Who was she? How