Requiem for an Assassin

and responding in the evening my time…morning his. A reasonably safe bet, then, that he was still in Asia somewhere, on a boat as Dox had said. It wasn’t much, but the more pieces I had, the better I’d be able to recognize and exploit each one of them, until hopefully, finally, they’d all add up to a breakthrough.
    I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “Heads up,” I told him. “There’s going to be a call at oh-eight-hundred GMT. Less than four hours from now. If you have a way to track the signal, that’s your moment. I’ll keep him on for as long as I can.”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “If our man is careful enough to keep the phone off the rest of the time, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to call from an insecure location.”
    Kanezaki had grown a lot since I’d first met him, but he still had an annoying tendency to try to show his smarts by stating the obvious. “Of course he wouldn’t,” I told him. “But it’ll be one more piece of data to work with. I’d rather know where he places the call than not know, wouldn’t you?”
    There was a slight pause while he absorbed the rebuke. Then he said, “You’re right.”
    “What about the guy I posted about? Any leads on that?”
    “No.”
    “The government venture-capital backing? You don’t think that’s a coincidence, do you?”
    “I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I haven’t turned it into anything workable yet, either.”
    “All right, then. Oh-eight-hundred GMT. I’ll call you when it’s done.”
    I had a burrito and a fruit smoothie at a place on the pier, then killed time by strolling, loosening up after the long drive. I went to a pay phone at exactly midnight and made the call.
    One ring, then Hilger’s voice: “Yeah.”
    I noted that he picked up directly. Maybe he’d made his point about the strength of his numbers last time, and didn’t feel the need to repeat it.
    “It’s done,” I said.
    “I know. Nice work. You complained about five days, but in the end you only needed two.”
    Maybe he already knew about Jannick. Maybe he was bluffing to impress me with his omniscience. It didn’t really matter.
    “Let me talk to Dox,” I said.
    There was a short pause, and then I heard the big sniper’s baritone, tinny through the speakerphone. “Dox here.”
    “How are you doing?”
    “Bored. This is one of the dullest groups of nitwits I’ve ever been forced to spend time with. It’s a dark day to be a Marine.”
    He was telling me they weren’t leaving him alone, that there was someone with him at all times. With a little luck, they’d notice only the insult, and not the substance it concealed. But why the mention of the Marines?
    I heard static, then Hilger’s voice again. “All right, you heard him, he’s fine.”
    That was the second time he’d grabbed the phone in a hurry. The Marines…was that what Dox was going to say when Hilger had grabbed the phone from him last time? And what did he mean by it now? Hilger was former Army. But what about the people with him? Did Dox know one of them from his Marine days? Or did he have some other way of knowing one of them was a jarhead?
    Why did Hilger keep cutting me off so fast? I had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. Far-fetched, maybe, but…
    “Put him on again,” I said.
    “No.”
    “Put him on. You can listen, I just want to make sure it’s him and not one of your people imitating his voice.”
    There was a pause, then I heard Dox’s voice. “Yeah.”
    “What’s your favorite hotel in Bangkok?”
    “What?”
    “Your favorite hotel in Bangkok.”
    “What is this? You don’t think it’s me?”
    “They’re only letting me talk to you for a second at a time and your accent is too easy to imitate.”
    “What accent?”
    “Tell me.”
    “If they hear my answer, I won’t be able to go there after this. And that would be a tragedy.”
    It had to be Dox. No one else could be so obstreperous. But still.
    “The name, goddamnit.”
    “Look, I like the place because of the mirrors in the bathrooms. I tried to tell you about a threesome I had in one, all right? With two lovely Thai ladies. And you cut me off ’cause you didn’t want to hear.”
    I let out a long breath. It was him all right. The hotel was the Sukothai, and yeah, I had cut him off the time he tried to tell me the story.
    I heard the phone being moved, then Hilger’s voice. “Satisfied?” he asked.
    “All right,” I said. “I’ve held up my end. Now let him