Requiem for an Assassin

our chances of quietly getting Boezeman into his apartment, of controlling him and anyone else we found there, and of establishing the necessary fear that might induce the proper talkativeness. And there were other tools we would probably need to track Hilger, if in fact he were in town.
    “I’ll call you again at fifteen hundred,” I said. “We’ll see how far along you are then.”
    I found an Internet coffee shop, or koffieshop, as the locals knew them, a place called Get Down To It, on a side street off Leidseplein, and descended the stairs to find a terminal and see what Kanezaki had for me. Halfway down, the rich, heady smell of cannabis enveloped me, and for the second time in not much more than a week I was back in Saigon, a young man this time, a boy, really, on leave and smoking the Thai Stick an enterprising rear-echelon type had smuggled in on a military flight from Bangkok. The iceman breathed it in, exulting in an almost physical sense of recall, the memory of what it was to be a teenager with skills and a license to use them, ten thousand miles from home and making it up as we went along, knowing no one had ever been here before us, like Neil Armstrong on the moon but better, juiced with hormones and adrenaline, excitement and fear, an adolescent’s curious mind and a predator’s deadly instincts. We knew we were special, anointed for our role, baptized by our experience, our childhoods shed, as lost and useless to us now as empty snakeskins. Everything else would come later—the horror, the cost of it, the regret. But on leave in Saigon, in the back of a dark Dong Khoi bar, high on Thai Stick and our status as gods, we had no idea what was being mortgaged, or what we would have to pay for it.
    The koffieshop was a quietly lit space with a low beamed ceiling and a red-tiled floor, the walls darkened by years of accumulated smoke. There was a pinball machine, pool tables, a dark wood bar and a handful of black stools in front of it. In one corner were cushioned seats, a half-dozen young people sitting on them, absorbed in their smoking and conversation; in the other, three Internet terminals, all empty. Soft house music played in the background. I used one of the terminals to access the Kanezaki bulletin board. As promised, he had left me a full dossier on Boezeman, including photographs. I wrote down what I needed to and memorized the rest. Then I purged the browser and, without really thinking, took a seat at the bar. A sign was taped to the counter:
    SPECIAL OFFER : WHITE WIDOW AND SUPER PALM POWER HASH , 24 EUROS . DUTCH , 12 EUROS . THAI , 3 GRAMS , 12 EUROS .
    Thai, huh. That shit was still around.
    I looked at my watch. Close to five hours until I needed to call Boaz.
    The bartender came over, a tall guy with thinning brown hair. “What can I get you?”
    Fuck it. “Thai,” I said. “And some papers.”
    I rolled a single joint. Just a little, I thought. Just to see what it feels like after so long away.
    I took a very small hit and coughed anyway, and the bartender smiled. Not the first time he’d seen a coughing patron, no doubt. He brought over a glass of water and moved off again.
    The iceman liked it, I could tell. I gave him another small one, which went down easier, and then a third.
    What the fuck are you doing? I thought. I looked at the joint with horror and stubbed it out. I was exhausted, I’d let my guard down, but shit, I was in the middle of an op. Was I trying to get myself killed?
    Amazing, though, the association of the smell, and now the taste, with Saigon. I’d never smoked dope before or after. It was purely a Vietnam thing for me.
    You’ll be okay, I told myself. It was only a little. What the hell…
    I felt the outer edges of my perception beginning to fuzz over. It was nice, actually. It reminded me of a time I hadn’t realized I’d missed. And it made me aware of how strung out I’d been since receiving Hilger’s message in Paris. Sex with Delilah, and all the booze that night…it was like I had been trying to get outside myself, or anesthetize something within.
    Sometimes you need the anesthesia. Because what you learn about yourself when fear finally overtakes you isn’t pretty. You understand that the person you thought of as yourself, your immutable, indivisible self, is just an overlay, fragile and frail. Fear strips away the façade. And having to see what lies beneath, and accept it, makes you different from everyone who hasn’t been