Requiem for an Assassin

giving them too much credit. Maybe they were just too busy making money to care.
    I found a store that sold knives, where for ten dollars I bought a nameless folder with a four-inch blade. I would have preferred something higher-quality, but I had to settle for what was available. I slapped the spine of the blade against my palm a few times, and was satisfied the lock was adequate. Certainly the edge was sharp enough, at least for the time being. Dox, who could be almost fetishistic about what he carried, probably would have sneered at it. But I tend to be a meat-and-potatoes guy about blades: insert pointy end in target. Repeat as necessary. It’s always worked for me before.
    The thought of the burly sniper bore down on me. I didn’t want to think of him just now—there was nothing I could do for him, so the thinking was a distraction, a waste. But for a moment, the sound of that last scream echoed in my mind, and my worry broke through. I paused and concentrated on where I was, what I was planning, until the emotion had passed.
    As the night grew late, fatigue crept closer. Darkness softened the contours of the city around me, and my emboldened memories emerged like insistent stars in a fading sky. Kids, ten thousand miles from home and fresh from the jungle, delirious with sudden freedom and the absence of fear, loosed upon the city and looking for booze, girls, any kind of trouble. Crazy Jake, in a bar on Dong Khoi, berserking on a navy guy who’d said something stupid to him, then denying everything to the MPs after the guy had been ambulanced off, persuading them, his shark’s smile and the insanity in his eyes letting them know you fuck with me you better be ready to die. Everyone laughing nervously after the MPs had acknowledged their mistake and shoved off, everyone but Crazy Jake himself, who’d been ready to die right then, who’d actually expected it, and maybe was disappointed that yet again it hadn’t happened, that the gods of war had plans for him far from the artifice of the city with its lights and laughter and otherworldly rules.
    I hadn’t thought of Crazy Jake in years. He had thrived on the madness of war, going deeper and deeper into that heart of darkness until he was possessed by it, until it infused his sinews and coursed in his veins. I was the only remaining person he trusted, and that’s why they sent me for him. He knew. I couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t let me. He couldn’t kill what he’d become. Someone else had to do it for him.
    All at once I wanted badly to have four plain walls around me and to sleep, especially to sleep. I caught a ride on a motorcycle cab to the New World hotel, which my guidebook had informed me was large, anonymous, and popular with Japanese tour groups. I took a hot bath, fell into the adequate but unspectacular bed, and was gone as instantly as if I’d been humping a sixty-pound ruck through the jungle, rather than wandering streets haunted by the restless ghosts of that earlier time.

9
    T HE NEXT DAY, I continued to familiarize myself with the terrain: the patterns of traffic (there weren’t any); presence of security (in front of banks, jewelry stores, and higher-end hotels); the best vantage points (the Rex, Saigon Tax, some of the hotel restaurants). I looked for anything out of place, any signs of a setup. I experimented with different personas. As an American, and carrying a map, I was assailed with offers of rides on motorcycles and in cyclos; as a Japanese, less so; when I’d bought some local clothes and started imitating the walk, the posture, the expressions of the natives, I was left alone entirely.
    I had a lunch of pho noodle soup and watermelon juice, then bought a camera tripod to augment the Nikon D70 digital SLR I had brought with me. I finished mapping things out and was satisfied. After that, I had nothing to do but wait.

    A T SIX O’CLOCK that evening, the sun had set, but the air was still hot and wet. The back and chest of my shirt were dark with sweat, the shifting crowds and insectile drone of motorcycles close upon me. I stopped in an ice cream shop around the corner from the Rex to rest and wait. I bought a cone and enjoyed it, along with the scant, periodic relief offered by a lone oscillating ceiling fan. Thirty people were crammed into the seats around me, but they paid me no heed. I’d picked up the local vibe and faded right into it.
    My phone buzzed. I glanced at the readout—Dox’s mobile—and