RainStorm

if Keiko would be waiting for
    me back at the room.
    Strangely enough, I hoped the answer was no.

    FIVE
    Keiko and I spent the next two days doing the things tourists do. We visited Coloane Village and Taipu. We went
    to the top of the Macau Tower. We toured Portuguese churches
    and national museums. We gambled in the Floating Casino. Keiko
    seemed to enjoy herself, although she was a pro and I couldn't
    really know. For me, it all felt like waiting.
    I found myself wishing I didn't need the cover Keiko provided.
    She was a sweet girl, but much as I enjoyed her body I had tired
    of her company. More important, I didn't like that Belghazi and
    Delilah both knew that I was staying at the Mandarin. The risk was
    manageable, of course: Belghazi had no way of knowing that I presented
    a threat, and Delilah had reason to refrain from moving
    against me, at least for the time being. The risk was also necessary:
    if Belghazi somehow learned that I had checked out of the hotel
    but saw me again in Macau, it would look strange to him, suspicious.
    I knew he was attuned to such discrepancies. So I had to stay
    put, and simply stay extra alert to my surroundings.
    Twice we took the Turbojet ferry to Hong Kong. I gave Keiko
    money to indulge herself in the island's many boutiques, a small
    salve for what I recognized as my recent remoteness. While she
    shopped, I wandered, observing, imitating, practicing the Hong
    Kong persona that helped me blend here and in Macau: the walk,
    the posture, the clothes, the expression. I bought a pair of nonprescription
    eyeglasses, a wireless, sleek-looking design that you see
    everywhere in Hong Kong and only rarely in Japan. I picked up
    one of the utilitarian briefcases that so many Hong Kong men seem
    to carry with them at all times, part of the local culture, I think,
    being comprised of a constant readiness to do business. I bought
    clothes in local stores. I was confident that, as long as I didn't open
    my mouth, no one would make me as anything but part of the indigenous
    population.
    At the outset of the second of these Hong Kong excursions, I
    noticed an Arab standing in the lobby of the Macau Mandarin
    Oriental as we moved through it. He was new, not one of Belghazi's
    bodyguards. I noted his presence and position, but of course
    gave no sign that he had even registered in my consciousness. He,
    however, was not similarly discreet. In the instant in which my gaze
    moved over his face, I saw that he was looking at me intently, almost
    in concentration. The way a guy might look, in a more innocent
    setting, at someone he thought but wasn't entirely sure was a
    celebrity, so as not to appear foolish asking the wrong person for an
    autograph. In my world, this look is more commonly seen on the
    face of the "pedestrian" who peers through the windshield of a car
    driving through a known checkpoint, his brow furrowed, his eyes
    hard, his head now nodding slightly in unconscious reflection of
    the pleasure of recognition, who then radios his compatriots fifty
    meters beyond that it's time to move in for the kidnapping, or to
    open up with their AKs, or to detonate the bomb they've placed
    along the road.
    General security for Belghazi, maybe. Watching hotel comings and goings,
    looking for something out of place, someone suspicious.
    But my gut wouldn't buy that. And I don't trust anything more
    than I trust that feeling in my gut.
    Delilah, I thought. I felt hot anger surging up from my stomach.
    I don't get suckered often, but she had suckered me. Lulled me into
    thinking that our interests could be aligned.
    But they were aligned, that was the thing. What she had told me
    made sense. Moving against me, rather than trusting me to wait as
    I had told her I would, was unnecessarily risky. And even if she had
    decided to take the risk, she would know not to be so obvious. A
    non-Asian, standing in the lobby of the hotel, getting all squinty-eyed
    and flushed with excitement at my appearance? Not on her
    team. She was good, and she knew I was good. She wouldn't have
    used such a soft target approach.
    But I might have been missing something. I couldn't be sure.
    Drop it. Work the problem at hand.
    Okay. Keiko and I kept moving, smiling and talking, just a couple
    of happy tourists, wandering around in a daze. I might have
    turned around and taken us out through the back entrance. But
    that would have interfered with the spotter's sense that I was clueless,
    and that sense might offer some