RainStorm

those numbers would be important.
    I drank my tea and left. I took out Kanezaki's cell phone and
    called him from it, moving on foot as the call went through.
    "Moshi moshi," I heard him say.
    "It's me."
    "What's going on?"
    "I'm concerned about something."
    "What?"
    "Three guys just tried to kill me in Hong Kong."
    "What?"
    "Three guys just tried to kill me in Hong Kong."
    "I heard you. Are you serious?"
    I didn't detect anything in his voice, but it was hard to tell over
    the phone. And he was smoother now than when I'd first met him.
    "You think I make this shit up to amuse you?" I said.
    There was a pause, then he asked, "Are you all right?"
    "I'm fine. Just concerned."
    "Are you in danger now?"
    "Not from the three who were after me."
    "You mean--"
    "They're harmless now."
    Another pause. He said, "You're concerned about how they
    found you."
    "Good for you."
    "It wasn't me."
    I already half-believed that, I supposed. Otherwise, I wouldn't
    have warned him by calling. Or I would have conceived of the call
    simply as a way to lull him, to set him up. I couldn't imagine why
    he would have turned on me, but you never have the full picture
    on things like that. Circumstances change. People develop reasons
    where they had none before.
    "Who else knew I was in Macau?" I asked. "They tracked me
    from there. One of them was waiting to pick me up when I arrived
    at Shun Tak in Hong Kong."
    "I don't. . . Look, I have absolutely no reason to try to fuck
    you. No reason. I don't know who they were or how they got to
    you. But I can try to find out."
    "Convince me," I said.
    "Give me what you've got. Let me see what I can do."
    I decided to give him a chance. I didn't see any downside. I also
    didn't see a good alternative.
    "They look Arab to me," I said. "Maybe Saudi. They dress like
    they've got money. One of them was carrying a cell phone with an
    Arabic interface, and was using it to make or receive calls while
    they were following me. I'll put all the numbers from the phone's
    log on the bulletin board. You can run those down. They had at
    least one partner on Macau, probably more, and probably all of
    them transited Hong Kong recently. They were sloppy, they might
    all have arrived at the same time, maybe even on the same plane."
    "That's a lot. I can work with that. You think there's a connection
    with our friend?"
    Belghazi. There were only a few Arabs in my life, and they were
    all recent arrivals. Although my thinking might not go down well
    with the anti-profiling crowd in the U.S., it was hard not to suspect
    that they were all connected.
    But I didn't see anything to be gained from speculating aloud.
    "You tell me," I said.
    "I'll try."
    "You need to convince me," I said again.
    We'd known each other long enough for him to understand my
    meaning. "How do I contact you?" he asked.
    "I'll check the bulletin board."
    "It would be more efficient if you would just leave the cell
    phone on."
    "I'll check the bulletin board."
    He sighed. "Okay. And you can always call me at this number.
    Give me twelve hours. Anything else?"
    "The blonde?" I asked.
    "Nothing. Still working on it."
    I hung up.
    I found an Internet cafe, where I uploaded the information to
    the bulletin board. Then I sat for a minute, thinking.
    The three guys who had come after me here in Hong Kong
    were obviously in touch with someone in Macau. In fact, I was
    pretty damn sure that the one with the cell phone, Sunglasses, had
    called his Macau contact to confirm that I had arrived. The guy in
    Macau would now be waiting for news of the operation. The bodies
    of his buddies had only been cooling for about an hour now.
    Chances were good that he wouldn't have heard yet of their tragic
    demise. He certainly wouldn't be expecting, and he wouldn't be
    prepared, to see me in Macau without first getting a heads-up from
    Hong Kong. And, even if he had somehow heard about the way
    things had turned out here, the last thing he would expect me to
    do would be to head straight back to the place where the ambush
    had obviously initiated: the Macau Mandarin Oriental.
    In either case, I realized I had an opportunity to surprise someone.
    Which is always a nice thing to be able to do.
    I headed back to Shun Tak to catch the next ferry to Macau. I
    tried not to think too much about what I was about to do. Charging
    an ambush is counter-instinctive: when your lizard brain identifies
    the direction the threat is coming from, it wants you to run
    away.
    But your lizard