RainStorm

intent
    on protecting the Saudis."
    We were quiet for a moment, "Then the speculation," I said, "is
    that Crawley--sorry, the guy from NE--finds out about me and
    warns Belghazi, who contacts Mahfouz for help, who sends in the
    Saudi team?"
    "Yes."
    I considered. If the facts were true, the speculation was reasonable.
    But I wasn't entirely comfortable with the way Kanezaki had
    presented it all to me. He'd given me a few juicy tidbits, then
    paused to allow me to reach my own conclusions. And I could too
    easily imagine him taking diligent notes in a "How to Run Your
    Assets" course at Langley: Let the subject reach his own conclusions . . .
    the conclusions we reach ourselves are always more convincing than the ones
    someone eke proposes. . . .
    "How did Belghazi get on the list?" I asked. "Given that various
    important personages at the Agency seem less than thrilled to find
    him there."
    He shrugged. "Like you said, sometimes the right hand doesn't
    know what the left is doing. And, like I said, there are plenty of
    people who don't want to know more about the list than they have
    to. Also access is tightly controlled through the CTC in any event.
    The good news is, the relative lack of oversight means that the list is
    one of the few intelligence items out there that isn't distorted by politics
    and corruption. The bad news is, the lack of the usual watered-down
    consensus means the product might offend some people."
    I took a sip of coffee and considered. "If Crawley found out
    about Belghazi being on the list and was upset about it, why not
    just have him removed from it?"
    This time he didn't even react to the mention of the name. "I
    don't know for sure, but probably because he doesn't 'want to draw
    too much attention to himself or his motives, whatever they are.
    Belghazi is practically the poster boy for terrorist infrastructure. It's
    easy to use a wink and nod and a slick line of bullshit about 'counterpart
    relations' and 'national security' to imply that someone's name
    shouldn't be added to something like the list, that there might be
    repercussions if it is. It's a lot harder to explain why you outright
    want the name off. You'd have a lot of explaining to do at the time.
    And people would remember afterward."
    "So you think the Hong Kong team came from Belghazi."
    There was a pause, then he said, "I see two possibilities. One is that
    the woman spotted you for what you are and didn't want you to interfere
    with whatever she's doing, so she's behind it. Two is that Belghazi
    is on to you, and the team in Hong Kong came from him. But
    Belghazi seems the more likely of the two. I don't think all those
    phone calls, or the Belghazi/Mahfouz connection, are a coincidence."
    His assessment tracked pretty closely with my own. I wondered
    whether he knew more than he was saying. Regardless, I didn't
    see him being behind the Hong Kong/Macau team. Since I had
    contacted him from Rio, he'd had numerous and better opportunities
    to set me up, if that's what he'd had in mind.
    "Are you still tracking Belghazi?" I asked.
    "Of course."
    "Where is he now?"
    "Still on Macau."
    I looked at him. "How do you know that?"
    He shrugged. "Let's just say there's a certain satellite phone that
    Belghazi thinks is clean, that isn't. Why are you asking?"
    "Because it doesn't make sense that he'd still be in Macau. Why
    is he still there, do you think?"
    He shrugged. "We've already talked about this. He has business
    in the area, and he's a gambler. We expected him to spend time at
    the casinos. He always does."
    I nodded. "So you're telling me he's still there--to gamble? This
    is a guy who learns that he's been tracked to Macau, that one or
    maybe two contractors have been sent after him there, he's sufficiently
    concerned about this chain of events to call in a favor in the
    form of a six-man Saudi team to eliminate the threat, the team gets
    wiped out and the threat is still at large, and you're telling me he's
    still there because he doesn't want to interrupt his vacation?"
    He looked at me, his cheeks flushing. After a long moment, he
    said, "You're right. That was stupid of me, not changing my interpretation
    of his behavior in light of subsequent facts. You're right.
    Let me think for a minute."
    "You can think on your own time. If you want me to continue
    this op, you need to share information with me, not spend more
    time meditating on things in solitude."
    His flush deepened, and I felt an odd twinge of sympathy.