Requiem for an Assassin

didn’t trust him enough to have him filtering my messages from Hilger, not on this. He had an agenda, and saving Dox was only tangentially a part of it. For a dozen reasons, personal as well as professional, I didn’t want to go to her. But there was no one else but Delilah.
    As soon as we landed and I was off the plane, I headed to a pay phone in the terminal to call her. It was midnight in Paris, but she was a night owl, and I knew she’d be awake. The only question was whether she was alone. If she was operational, she wasn’t going to answer the phone.
    But luck was with me. She picked up right away with a throaty “Allo.”
    “Allo,” I said. “C’est moi.”
    There was a pause. She said, “Is everything okay?”
    “No breakthroughs, but some movement. I…need your help with something. Is that okay?”
    “You know it is.”
    “All right. Our friend uses a bulletin board to contact me. But he may have a way to check the location from which I’m accessing it. I don’t want him to know where I am now. So I need you to access it for me.”
    “That’s nothing. I thought you were going to ask for more.”
    “I might. But this is all I need for now. Just for you to access it, cut and paste the message into the bulletin board you and I use, and then cut and paste my response back into the bulletin board I use with him. If we do it this way and he checks as I expect, he’ll think I’m in Paris. That’ll give me an advantage.”
    “I understand.”
    “You have to go someplace sterile. You don’t want him to be able to trace…”
    “Yes, I know that.”
    I thought of Kanezaki’s peeved “of course” responses for a second, and some of the comments I’d received from Dox over the years, too.
    “Do I…micromanage?” I asked.
    “Yes.”
    I cleared my throat. “Listen, don’t sugarcoat it. I can handle it straight.”
    She laughed. “I’ll leave right now. Give me a half-hour.”
    I went to an Internet terminal. After the usual check for spyware, I uploaded the Hilger URL to Delilah. Then I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. I’d found nothing on it so many times in the last week that I was expecting nothing now.
    I was wrong. Kanezaki had hit the jackpot.
    The dead man in NYC was named Wim Demeere. He applied for a Vietnamese visa under the name William Detts and traveled to Saigon at the same time as you. Here’s the photo from the visa application.
    There was a postage stamp–size photo attached. It was him: the blond man I’d seen in Saigon, then killed in New York.
    A James Hillman applied and traveled at the same time. Here’s his photo. Look familiar?
    There was a second photo. I recognized it instantly. Hilger.
    Here’s the best part. You were right, Dox was trying to tell you about a Marine. The guy’s name is Frank “Pancho” Garza, and Hilger knows him from Iraq. There’s a thirty-foot fishing boat, Ocean Emerald, registered to Garza in Shanghai, berthing privileges at the Shanghai Boat and Yacht Club. Ocean Emerald docked in Jakarta last week, and two days ago made a port call at the Republic of Singapore Yacht Club. As far as I know, it hasn’t left Singapore.
    I realized I was gripping the mouse hard and made myself stop. Singapore…damn, they were right here. I didn’t even have to make the short hop to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, wherever. It was the best omen I’d felt since this whole thing started.
    Now, secondary effects: Jannick had a brother, Henk Jannick, who cleared customs in San Francisco last week, apparently to take care of his brother’s family and help with burial and estate matters. Henk is the head of security at the port at Rotterdam. Henk’s number two is another Dutch national, Joop Boezeman.
    Two things about Boezeman. First, presumably he’s in charge of security while Henk Jannick is away. Second, he attended a conference in New York City in September last year: the U.S. Maritime Security Expo. Accinelli was one of the speakers. Demeere was another attendee.
    Here’s my take: Boezeman works for Hilger. Whatever Hilger is up to, it involves something in Rotterdam, something that the head of port security there could prevent. But a hit on the security head himself is too difficult, or too high profile, or both. So Hilger kills Henk’s brother in California, forcing Henk to take leave, and in Henk’s absence, the #2 guy, Boezeman, is in charge. Boezeman in charge creates an opening for Hilger to do something. The question is