Requiem for an Assassin

one of the outdoor food courts that dot the city and serve cheap, delicious Singaporean food. The centers are popular and can be crowded and noisy well past midnight, but we were ahead of the lunchtime crowd and had no trouble getting a table. We sat on plastic chairs under the shade of a big beach umbrella and enjoyed skewers of chicken and beef satay washed down with mango juice. While we ate, Boaz invited me to take a look in the backpack, which he had placed on the concrete floor between us.
    I did. As he’d mentioned, the pack seemed to be full of camera equipment: a Nikon camera body, a variety of lenses, portable lighting equipment, a tripod, and battery packs.
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
    He gave me the boyish grin again. “Have you heard of an ‘active denial system’?”
    “No. Should I have?”
    “ADS is the Pentagon’s name for a nonlethal millimeter wave energy weapon. America’s troops have used it in Iraq.”
    “Okay…” I said, getting interested.
    “It shoots electromagnetic radiation at ninety-five gigahertz. Boils moisture in the skin, but only to a depth of one sixty-fourth of an inch. So it hurts like hell, but doesn’t cause damage.”
    I glanced down at the backpack. “Your guys have developed a portable version.”
    “Correct. The Pentagon’s unit, which they had developed by Raytheon, is truck-mounted. Very powerful—the range is over a kilometer—but big. What I’ve got here has to be employed close up, but you can carry it on your back.”
    “It goes through walls?” I asked, doubtful.
    “That’s…the tricky part. You can adjust the frequency. Shorter-range frequencies go through walls, yes. But they also cause more damage.”
    “So if you don’t calibrate it right…”
    “Right, you can cook the hostages along with the terrorists. It looks bad on TV after. Do it right, though, and no one gets worse than a sunburn.”
    I nodded. “What does it feel like?”
    He smiled. “You want to try?”
    “Just tell me.”
    He laughed. “A wise decision. I had it done to me—once. It feels like your skin is on fire, simple as that. The Sayeret Matkal had a little competition. Five thousand shekels to anyone who could group three rounds in a five-inch cluster from ten yards away while being hit with the beam. This is a joke for these men, they’re expert shooters. Ordinarily they group in one inch from much farther.”
    “What happened?”
    He laughed again. “They couldn’t shoot at all. They were too busy writhing and running away. No one asked to try twice. When word got around about what it felt like, people stopped volunteering.”
    “I like it,” I said.
    He nodded. “You should. Without intelligence…”
    “Yes, I know. Delilah’s already been persuasive on that point.”
    He looked at me. “You’re treating her right?”
    I returned the look. “That’s really none of your business, is it?”
    He shrugged. “She’s my colleague, and as close as a sister. We watch each other’s backs.”
    I nodded. “It’s good of you to ask, then.”
    “So? You’re treating her right?”
    I couldn’t help laughing. He laughed, too. “I know, I know,” he said. “We Israelis are pushy. You know, there’s no word for ‘Excuse me’ in Hebrew?”
    “What?”
    He shrugged. “An old joke. But with some truth. If I put my nose where it doesn’t belong, forgive me.”
    “We’re…managing,” I told him, thinking of what she had said to me on the phone just a few hours earlier. “It’s not easy, though.”
    He laughed again. “It never is, my friend. It never is.”
    We were quiet for a moment. I said, “You…have a family?”
    He nodded. “Three sons and a baby daughter. Thank God we finally had a girl. My wife was ready to give up. And you?”
    “It’s a long story,” I said, after a moment.
    We were quiet again, and this time he didn’t push.
    “Why did Hilger take your friend?” he asked.
    “Does it matter?”
    He shrugged. “It won’t affect what happens to Hilger.”
    “It did affect it. It guaranteed it.”
    “Good.”
    We finished the food. He said, “So? How do you want to do it?”
    I shrugged. “Show me how to use the device. I’ll take care of the rest.”
    He nodded. “I owe Delilah a hundred shekels.”
    “What?”
    “She told me you would say that.”
    I looked at him, nonplussed.
    “I can’t show you. It takes training and experience. I have to see the terrain. Set the