RainStorm

returned my attention to Keiko
    until the blonde's gaze had passed over us. When I glanced over
    again, she was standing beside Belghazi, her arm linked through his.
    Something about her presence was as relaxed and, in its way, as
    commanding as his. Everything about her seemed natural: her hair,
    her face, the curves beneath her clothes.
    A
    minute later she, the porter, and one of the bodyguards headed toward the elevators. Belghazi and the other bodyguard remained
    at the front desk, discussing something with the receptionist.
    The front door opened again. I glanced up and saw Karate.
    Christ, I thought. The gang's all here. I wondered half-consciously
    whether he'd been tipped off somehow.
    Karate walked slowly through the lobby. I saw his gaze move to
    Belghazi, saw his eyes harden in a way that would mean nothing to
    most people but that meant a great deal to me. From this gaze I understood
    that Karate wasn't looking at a man. No. What I saw instead
    was a hunter acquiring a target.
    And, I knew, but for my long-practiced self-control, had anyone
    been watching me as I confirmed my suspicions about why Karate
    was here, they would have seen an identical involuntary atavism
    ripple across my own features.
    A few minutes passed. Belghazi and his man finished at the front
    desk and made their way to the elevator. I gave them four minutes,
    then told Keiko I needed to use the restroom and would be right
    back.
    I went to a house phone and asked the operator to connect me
    to the Oriental Suite. There were only two suites in the hotel--the
    Oriental and the Macau--and, judging from his file, I had a feeling
    Belghazi would be occupying one of them.
    No answer at the Oriental. I tried again, this time asking for the
    Macau.
    "Hello," a man's voice answered.
    "Hello, this is the front desk," I said, doing a passable imitation
    of a local Chinese accent. "Is there anything we can do to make
    Mr. Belghazi's stay with us more comfortable?"
    "No, we're fine," the voice said.
    "Very good," I said. "Please enjoy your stay."
    that night, while Keiko was out, I sat in the hotel room and
    used an earpiece to listen in on Karate. He was in his room, from
    the sound of it watching CNN International Edition. Go to sleep,
    or go out: I would take my cue from him. I was already dressed in
    a pair of charcoal worsted pants, navy pullover, and comfortable,
    rubber-soled walking shoes in case we wound up with the second
    option, a night on the town.
    I looked out at the massive cranes and earth moving equipment
    that Macau was using to build yet more bridges to China's Guangdong
    province, the low mountains of which crouched a few kilometers
    distant. The machines rose from the harbor like mythological
    creatures provoked from the seabed, hulking, misshapen, slouching
    toward land but held fast by the muck below.
    The cranes reminded me of Japan, where I'd lived most of my
    adult life and where reclaiming land from the sea for the construction
    of redundant bridges and unneeded office parks is a national
    sport. But where the ubiquitous construction in Japan always felt
    familiar, almost comforting in its obviousness, here the excess was
    mysterious, even vaguely menacing. Who made the decisions?
    Who rigged the environmental impact statements to ensure that
    the projects were approved? Who profited from the kickbacks? I
    didn't know. In many ways, Macau was a mystery.
    I had spent the previous three weeks here, moving from hotel
    to hotel, keeping a low profile, getting a solid feel for the place.
    Before accepting the Belghazi assignment, I hadn't known much
    more about the place than what I picked up from reading the Far
    Eastern Economic Review: Portugual's return of the territory to
    China in 1999 had been amicable, as these things go, and the territory's
    five percent ethnic Portuguese population was unusually well
    integrated, speaking Cantonese and mixing with the locals in a way
    that might make most British-derived Hong Kongers blush; its
    service economy was staffed largely by Filipinos and Thais; for a
    territory that until recently had been the ball in a five-hundred-year
    game of Great Power Ping-Pong, it had an unusually firm
    sense of its own identity.
    At the end of my three-week sojourn, I knew much more: how
    to dress, walk, and carry myself to look like one of the millions of
    visitors from, say, Hong Kong; the layout and rhythms of the stores
    and streets; the codes and mores of the casinos. All of which