Requiem for an Assassin

as though something had shocked him, then he buckled and collapsed to the floor.
    The sound of the shot was loud, but not terribly so. The P232 was chambered in .380, a smaller round than the .357 Hilger carried in his primary, a full-size P226. He had chosen the backup just now precisely for its reduced noise profile. And of course the pillow muffled some of the report. Maybe some guy in the next room would look up and wonder what he’d just heard, but when there was no follow-up, he’d happily go back to fucking and sucking and whatever else he was doing that brought him here in the first place.
    Drano was lying on his back now, his legs folded under him, his eyes open. A small trickle of blood began to run down his face from the hole in his forehead. Not much, though. The other reason Hilger had selected the P232 was to lessen the chance of the round blowing out the back of Drano’s head, which would have made a mess.
    Demeere pulled several tissues out of a box on the nightstand, knelt, and, with his thumb, wadded the paper into the forehead hole, stanching the trickle of blood. Hilger nodded slightly in admiration. There was nothing flashy about Demeere. There didn’t need to be; he was rock solid. How many men could prevent a mess as calmly as he just did?
    Hilger collected and pocketed the spent casing, then decocked the pistol and returned it to his ankle. The room was quiet for a moment while they listened for sounds of disturbance, for any sign that someone might want to investigate. There were none.
    Pancho said, “Looks like Drano’s gone down the drain.”
    Pancho and Demeere laughed. Only Guthrie looked at all discomfited. But he hadn’t been with Hilger as long as the other men.
    “Well,” Pancho said, “I’m glad that’s done. Been wanting to do it myself.”
    Hilger nodded. “I should have taken care of it sooner.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Pancho said with a shrug. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d want you doing lightly.”
    They laughed again. After a moment, Hilger said, “We’ll pull up the van when we’re done. Load him in, take him to the boat, punch holes in him and dump him at sea. We’ll be better with just the four of us than we would have been with a weak link like that one.”
    Everyone nodded. Demeere tossed a blanket over the corpse and sat back on the bed.
    “All right,” Hilger said, after a moment. “Dox…isn’t the ultimate objective. If he were, we could take our time. But our interest in him is secondary.”
    Pancho hunched forward, his head dropping as though he were zeroing in for a knockout. “Access agent, then?”
    Hilger nodded. “An unwilling one.”
    “Who’s the primary?” Pancho asked.
    Hilger looked at Demeere, who he suspected had already guessed.
    Demeere said, “John Rain.”
    Pancho looked at Hilger. “The freelancer? The one who took out Winters?”
    Hilger nodded. “And Calver and Gibbons, too. Those losses were why I had to dig so deep and bring in a mistake like Drano. It’s hard to find good people.”
    Pancho returned his gaze to Demeere. “How’d you know?”
    Demeere shook his head to indicate he wasn’t privy to any knowledge Pancho lacked. “I didn’t. I guessed.”
    Pancho cracked his knuckles and stared at Demeere as though considering how much credence to give the man’s response.
    Guthrie said, “Rain…this is the Japanese assassin, right?”
    Demeere nodded. “Half Japanese. His mother was American. But he looks Japanese. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve never seen him. Not many people have.”
    Hilger said, “I have.”
    The third time Hilger had used Dox, the man was supposed to eliminate Rain. Dox knew Rain from Afghanistan, a connection Hilger thought would enable the former sniper to get close enough to do the job. He’d gotten close enough, all right, so close that Rain and Dox had joined forces and then in the space of a single year had torn apart two of Hilger’s operations. True, it hadn’t been personal—neither man had understood what those operations were really about—but Hilger’s losses had been considerable. Among other things, he had been forced to abandon the Hong Kong cover he had been living and relocate to Shanghai.
    Also, at the disastrous conclusion of that second blown op, Dox had leveled Hilger from behind with a chair launched from the top of a riser of stairs. It could have been worse—if Dox had been properly armed, Hilger would be dead now. As it was,