Requiem for an Assassin

that he was alive, worry about what might happen next, anger that he’d allowed himself to be taken. I struggled to push it all aside, then felt that deep, icy part of me breaking through to the surface and taking the controls. And the feeling that came with it was nothing but relief. Finally, a reason for my fear. A reason not to struggle against the creature inside me.
    “You all right?” I asked.
    “I’m alive. I reckon that’s what this conversation is intended to establish.”
    “You know where you are?”
    “On a boat. Wish I could tell you more.”
    Then he was gone, and Hilger was back on the line. “We’ll use the bulletin board,” he said.
    From the suddenness with which he’d grabbed the phone, I gathered he was concerned Dox might tell me something more, something useful. But what?
    “No,” I told him. “What you’ve got to tell me, you can tell me to my face.”
    “No. We do it my way, or…”
    “Or you can fuck off.” And with that, I pressed the “End call” button.
    Or rather, the iceman did. The iceman knew that if I didn’t establish some measure of control early on, I’d always be reacting, always trying to recover, every step of the way, until finally, no matter how desperate my efforts, or feverish my hope, Dox would be dead, and probably I along with him.
    I looked at the Grande Taille again, watching the second hand’s smooth sweep. I could feel my heart beating steadily, my pulse rate just a little above normal. I was inside myself, suspended somewhere only I could recognize, disconnected, severed from events.
    I watched the second hand’s slow sweep. One circuit. Two. Another. The street was gone. My focus was no larger than the movement on the watch face.
    The second hand was beginning its fifth rotation when the phone buzzed. I saw Dox’s number on the screen and pressed “Answer.”
    Hilger said, “You’re lucky your number got stored in this phone’s caller ID just now. Otherwise your friend would already be dead. Now listen, there’s something I want you to hear.”
    In the background, Dox started screaming. I held the phone far from my ear and looked at the watch again.
    Whatever they were doing, they did it for ten seconds. Then the screaming stopped. Hilger said, “I hope you won’t do that to him again.”
    “Where do you want to meet?” I said, my voice as flat as a hockey rink and twice as cold.
    “We’re not going to meet. I told you, the bulletin board. It’s nonnegotiable.”
    “Then we have nothing to negotiate.”
    There was a pause. He said, “You want to hear him scream again?”
    “You can make him scream all you want. You want me to work for you, you’ll give me the assignment in person. I want to look in your eyes when you tell me. I’ll know from that how much I can trust you to let him go when this is done.”
    There was another pause, longer this time. I could feel him considering, weighing the odds. He was thinking, I’d ask for the same thing. And I’d be looking for a way to take a run at me, sure. But that’s a dead end…hit me while my men have Dox, and Dox dies, too. Besides, if I choose the time and place, I can control the situation.
    Of course, there was another possibility: Hilger’s reticence was feigned. He didn’t want me to kill anyone; he had grabbed Dox simply to flush me into the open so he could kill me. In which case, by insisting on a meeting, I was giving him exactly what he wanted.
    But I would have to take the chance. Dox had saved my life twice. Playing it safe now would be no way to return the favor. Because if I didn’t keep Hilger moving, if I couldn’t get him to depart from his game plan, I would always be one step behind on this thing, all the way to its bitter end.
    “Hong Kong,” he said.
    Hong Kong was his territory. He could control it too well. But I wanted an Asian background. It would make it easier for me to blend, and harder for him. I said, “Tokyo.”
    “No good,” he said, knowing he would be at as least as much of a disadvantage in Tokyo as I would be in Hong Kong. “Bangkok.”
    We were getting closer. But not long ago he’d fielded a team in Bangkok on short notice, a team that had very nearly gotten to Dox and me after we’d spoiled one of his ops. I knew he had reach there. It wouldn’t do.
    I needed a place that was familiar to me, but where he was unlikely to have much local capability. Something inside me spoke up, and before I could think more about it, I