Requiem for an Assassin

similarly forged. You’ve been aged; they remain neophytes. You have brutal clarity; they, comforting illusions. You’ve looked into the abyss, and can still feel it looking back; they don’t even know such a place exists. And for all of it, you hate them.
    Why had I insisted on Saigon with Hilger? There were other places we could have gone, places that offered the same operational advantages. But the iceman wanted Vietnam. He wanted to take me back, back to the place he was born, where he thrived, the place that was purely him. Why?
    Because you need me.
    I started. The voice was whispered, intense, familiar.
    I looked around. No one had spoken. The bartender was at the other end of the bar, talking to one of the girls at the corner tables. The house music seemed far away.
    What are you talking about? I thought. I know I need you.
    No. You’ve been trying to kill me.
    I’ve been trying to accommodate you.
    Bullshit. You’re ignoring me. Smothering me. Letting me run loose at night in Paris like I’m a fucking dog that needs to be walked so it won’t crap the house. And then when you need me for Dox, you second-guess me, fight me, tolerate me like I’m the hired help and you can’t wait until I’m finished with the chores so you can send me off again. That shit is over. Get the fuck out of my way.
    No. You don’t own me.
    The hell I don’t. You’d be dead now if it weren’t for me. You would have died the first night you pissed your pants in a firefight. Your life is mine. I don’t own you? I fucking am you.
    “You okay?”
    I jumped to the side and my right hand went to clear a blade clipped to my pocket, a blade that wasn’t there. Before I knew it, I had the stool in my hands, cocked back like a baseball bat.
    It had been the bartender talking to me. He took a step back and raised his hands, his eyes wide.
    “Hey, man,” he said. “It’s cool. It’s cool.”
    Fear had blown away the marijuana trance like an arctic wind. I looked around and realized where I was. And what I was doing.
    I put the stool down. Everyone was looking at me.
    The bartender slowly lowered his hands. “You were pretty zoned out there, man. That Thai weed can be strong.”
    “Yeah, it can be,” I said, nodding. “I don’t think I’ll be having any more of it.”
    I walked in the wet, cold air until I found a cheap hotel, where I slept for several hours. When I woke, I still felt exhausted, the way you do from a post-combat parasympathetic backlash, but at least my head was clear again. All the flying, the stalking, the near catastrophes. Then getting Dox out, knowing he was all right. And now that thing in the coffeehouse…it was like facing off with your worst enemy, then getting pulled apart with everybody still armed, nothing really resolved.
    I stopped for some food and coffee at a place called Café Bouwman, on Utrechtsestraat along the Prinsengracht canal. It was good—a neighborhood kind of place, low-key, unpretentious, with old wooden tables and leather seats, and a bartender who knew her customers. When I was done, I called Boaz from a pay phone.
    “How are we doing?” I said.
    “We finished up ahead of schedule. We were waiting for your call.”
    “Good. How soon can you be in the place we talked about?”
    “We’re here now. But we have a car, we can meet you anywhere.”
    Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have accepted the proposal. But I wasn’t worried about Boaz right now. And the Krasnapolsky was less than a fifteen-minute walk from where I was. It would save time to go straight there.
    “I’ll meet you in front in fifteen minutes,” I said.

    B OAZ AND N AFTALI were waiting out front as promised. Boaz had lost the Hawaiian shirt and was wearing a bulky down jacket and jeans. He looked thoroughly unremarkable, nondescript, unmemorable. Naftali had on a nylon windbreaker and a backpack. But for a certain hard look in his eyes that not everyone would know what to make of, Gil’s brother looked like a young European tourist on a budget. We walked down the street to a pizza place. Boaz and Naftali ordered a few slices, and we sat in back to talk.
    “Do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah?” Boaz asked.
    “Neither.”
    “Well, you’ll like our presents regardless. USP tacticals and suppressors, and some sharp pointy things, too. I love the holidays.”
    I briefed them on the layout around Boezeman’s building, then we discussed how to proceed. Boaz agreed that intercepting Boezeman as he came