Requiem for an Assassin

does this have to do with Rotterdam?”
    “It has everything to do with Rotterdam. America’s oil addiction is a sickness that’s killing the patient. Christ, Americans would rather send soldiers to war than carpool to work. And Congress is worse. The idiots actually proposed to offer taxpayers a hundred-dollar rebate to buy more gasoline—they want to give the addicts more money for a fix, more money to send to the mullahs and the al Saud, our enemies.”
    “So Rotterdam is an inoculation.”
    “Yes. That’s well put. You increase the price of oil enough to lower demand and create market incentives for alternatives, but not so much that the patient goes into the shock of economic depression. It’s a shame the patient doesn’t have the sense or the will to inoculate himself through a carbon tax, but denial is the nature of addiction, and doesn’t change the fact that the patient badly needs help.”
    “What about British Petroleum, then? Prudhoe Bay?”
    He looked at me. “How do you know about that?”
    “What difference does it make?”
    There was a pause, and I thought he would refuse. But I’d told him I might let him live. No matter how tough you are, in extremis, it doesn’t take much for a drop of hope to blossom into a full-blown mirage of salvation.
    “Prudhoe Bay was a test of the new treatment,” he said. “On the one hand, it was a failure because it didn’t have the desired effect. But it was successful, too, because it demonstrated that for the patient to get well a higher dose was needed. There were other possibilities, including Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia. But…”
    “You had an unwitting access agent in Rotterdam. Boezeman.”
    “That’s right. And I wanted to keep casualties to a minimum. The layout at Rotterdam is good for that.”
    “So with Rotterdam inoperable…”
    “Right. The price of oil would spike, demand would slacken, and I would single-handedly have hastened the advent of a post-oil, post-OPEC world economy. You get it now? Do you understand what’s at stake? We live in perilous times. We’re battling a new kind of enemy. An enemy that can’t be deterred. What do we do to fight him? Become like him?”
    “Haven’t you?”
    “I didn’t say ‘me.’ I said ‘we.’ Someone has to do what needs to be done, Rain. Someone has to live in the shadows so others can enjoy the light. Someone has to sin so others can enjoy innocence. Now, if you don’t understand my reasons, go ahead. Do the only thing you’re good for. You beat me. You won. Again.”
    I didn’t say anything. The only thing you’re good for. It was stupid, but the words cut into me.
    “But grant me a last request,” he said. “Let me call my sister. She’s the only one I have to say goodbye to. Or is a small mercy against your code of killing?”
    I watched him, the front sight of the pistol even with his forehead. I thought about how easy it is to retract a fingertip, how easy to take a life.
    It had always been easy for me. What others could accomplish only with the greatest encouragement, with fear and regret and swallowed revulsion, I could just…do. And I’d kept on doing it. There would always be a reason, it seemed. And if there weren’t, maybe I would invent one.
    “My mobile phone is over there,” he said, inclining his head toward the dead guy by the tree. “My knee is broken, I can’t get to it. Would you lend me yours? Please?”
    What difference did it make? A small mercy, like he said. I pulled my mobile out and tossed it to him.
    “Thank you,” he said. He grimaced and flipped it open with his good hand.
    If I was going to stop, I had to find a way to stop, a time and place to stop. I would have to make a decision to stop. The decision would carry risks, it was true. But so, always, would the alternative.
    Maybe this was what Delilah had been talking about, when she told me about choices, and how I would make the right one.
    Hilger was supporting himself on his left elbow, inputting his sister’s number with his left thumb. It embarrassed me to have to hear whatever he might say to her.
    Yes, that was it. I’d been telling myself for so long I had no choice, that maybe my choice reflex had atrophied. But I could reawaken it. I could let him live. By walking away, I would prove that Dox and I were no threat to him. He’d have no incentive to come after us after that.
    It made sense. I could do this. It was up to me. My choice. Everything would be possible. A