RainStorm

The
    kid was trying so hard. Managing characters like Dox and me
    would be tough on anyone, let alone someone as young as Kanezaki.
    He was actually doing well, too, and getting better all the time. He
    just wasn't as good yet as he wanted to be, and that was frustrating
    him. But he'd get there.
    "All right," he said, "what do you want to know that I haven't
    already told you?"
    "First, I want to know about Crawley. I want to know his interest
    in this, so I can understand whether, why, and how he's connected
    to Belghazi."
    "I don't know," he said, again not bothering to argue with me
    about the name. "I'm going to try to find out."
    So am I, I thought, thinking of the digital photos Dox had
    showed me. And I bet I can get more information than you can.
    "Do that," I said. "Now, let's talk about Belghazi. You told me
    originally that he was in Southeast Asia to build up his distribution
    network, that Macau was just gambling, incidental to the real purpose
    of his trip."
    He nodded. "That seems to have been incorrect."
    "It does. So the question is, why Macau?"
    He rubbed his chin. "Well, it's got good port facilities. Likewise
    for Hong Kong, of course. So a possible transshipment point for
    the arms he's selling to Jemaah Islamiah and Abu Sayyaf and other
    fundamentalist groups in the region."
    "But you've got other ports in the area, too. Macau itself, Singapore,
    Manila--"
    "True, but Hong Kong is the busiest. Busiest in the world, in fact."
    "So?"
    "So, if you're trying to hide something, obscure its appearance,
    you might want to send it through a port that handles, say, sixteen
    million containers a year. A needle in a haystack. Also, these guys
    have learned not to rely too much on any particular facility. They
    ship small and distributed. Then, even if any given shipment gets
    interdicted, the balance gets through. And overall, the distributed
    approach makes it much harder to shut down the pipeline, or even
    to get an accurate understanding of its true size. And Belghazi has
    been moving around, you know. We intercepted calls from Kuala
    Lumpur and Bangkok."
    "Yeah, I know he was off Macau at one point," I said, remembering
    Delilah telling me that he had meetings in the region. I
    thought for a moment, wondering if there was an opportunity there.
    "How closely can you track him in those other cities?" I asked.
    "As closely as we can in Macau. Which is to say, not very. We
    can only pinpoint his location for as long as he stays on the phone,
    and he tends to keep his calls short. Once he's off, we only know
    where the call came from."
    I nodded, realizing that none of this would be enough for me
    to use if Belghazi's visits in the region were short-term. My best
    chance was still Macau, where something special seemed to be going
    on, and where I'd already familiarized myself with the local terrain.
    Kanezaki said, "Maybe he's in Macau for the same infrastructure
    reasons that have taken him elsewhere."
    "Maybe. But the thing is, if Macau were just one of many distribution
    points for him, he wouldn't be there now. The benefit
    wouldn't be worth the risk, because he knows he's been tracked
    there. So why? More meetings there, like the ones he's doing elsewhere?"
    He shook his head. "Maybe, but I don't think so. Southeast Asia
    is big for him now because of groups like Jemaah Islamiah. You
    don't have anything like that on Macau. The players, and likewise
    the meetings, would be elsewhere."
    "Well, something is going on there. If you can find out what
    that is, why he's really there, what he's really doing, who he's really
    meeting with, I'll have a much better chance of getting close to
    him again."
    "I understand."
    I nodded slowly, then looked at him. Or rather I looked through
    him, as though he was somehow immaterial, a thing that mattered
    to me only slightly, something I could leave on or turn off as easily
    as I might flip a lightswitch. I said, "Kanezaki, I hope none of what
    you've told me today is untrue."
    He looked at me, keeping his cool. "The facts are true," he said.
    "The speculation is only that. Keep in mind the difference before
    you decide to go precipitous on me, okay?"
    I nodded again, still looking through him. "Oh, don't worry
    about that," I said.
    I left Kanezaki and made my way to the Fiorentina trattoria, a restaurant in the new Grand Hyatt hotel, 'where I had told Tatsu
    to meet me. I arrived early, as I always do, and sipped iced coffee
    from a tall glass while I waited. I