The Last Assassin

1

    I 've never liked doing a job in a new place. You don't know how to get in and out undetected, you don't know what tools you'll need to access the target, you don't know where you'll stick out and where you'll be able to fade into the background or disappear in a crowd.
    To compensate, I start by studying the area from afar, move in only when I've learned as much as possible, and always arrive early enough to become familiar with the local terrain before it's time to act. Tactics like these have kept me alive, and even reasonably prosperous, during more than a quarter century of doing the thing I've always been best at.
    But this time the preparation was reflex, not necessity. I wasn't on a job, for one thing; I was done with the life. Or almost done. There was one last thing, a big one, but I didn't want to face that just yet. Barcelona was supposed to be an interlude: pleasure, not business, and it was disturbing that some part of my mind seemed not to understand the difference.
    Still, in alien circumstances, we tend to cling to habit, and so I found myself defaulting to my usual approach. I should have known better. Barcelona was unfamiliar, but the real territory I was trying to navigate isn't marked on any map.
    I flew JAL from Tokyo via Amsterdam and arrived at Barcelona El Prat on a mild winter evening with nothing more than the plain carry-on bag in my hand and the cheap business suit on my back. On my feet were a pair of plain brown leather loafers, purchased in a mass market Aoyama men's store; on my nose, nonprescription steel-framed eyeglasses, calculated to obscure my features; in my pocket, a guidebook in Japanese. For my first days in the city, I would be an anonymous salaryman, recently divorced, his children grown and out of the house, seeking distraction through travel slightly more intrepid than last year's jaunt to Hawaii or Saipan. When Delilah arrived I would morph into something else.
    The staff at Le Meridien hotel on Las Ramblas spoke their delightfully Catalan-accented English slowly, as my own halting, heavily Japanese-accented attempts indicated I would need. I certainly looked the part. My face is courtesy mostly of my Japanese father, and what vestiges my American mother contributed to the mix were diminished by surgery many years ago. The act came easily, too. I've had a lifetime to practice playing roles: no drama school training, true, but if you've lasted as long as I have in a business as literally cutthroat as mine, you learn a thing or two.
    I was tired. Jet lag had been a nonissue in my thirties, a nuisance in my forties, and now it was more noticeable than ever. I went straight to my room, ate a room service meal, took a hot bath, and slept fitfully through the night.
    I got up at dawn. I'd never been to Barcelona before, and wanted to see the city at first light, not yet on its feet, not yet wearing its makeup. I showered quickly and went out just as the sun was cresting the horizon. I scanned the street as I moved past the lobby window, then checked ambush positions from in front of the hotel. Everything looked fine.
    I walked out to Las Ramblas, my breath fogging just slightly in the morning-chilled sea air, and paused. Ten meters down, three men in sanitation overalls and rubber boots were rolling up a dripping hose; the cobblestones were still slick from their work. I stood silently and didn't let them notice me. They finished with the hose, got in a truck, and drove off. When the sound of the engine had faded, it was followed only by silence, and I smiled, pleased to have the city to myself for a while.
    I strolled east into the Barri Gòtic, the gothic quarter. I sensed I had arrived during a tenuous interlude between the departure of the night's last revelers and the morning's first arrivals, and I paused, enjoying the feeling that I was privy to some secret transition. I wandered for a long time, listening to my footfalls on the narrow stone streets, enjoying the aroma of fresh bread and ground coffee, watching as the area's residents gradually emerged from behind the centuries-old façades of scarred but stalwart dwellings to start another day.
    After a breakfast of croissants and coffee
cortado,
I paid a visit to Ganiveteria Roca, a famous cutlery store I'd read about while preparing for the trip. There, among the pewter razors and steel scissors and related items, I selected a Benchmade folder with a three-inch blade. I'd gotten used to carrying a knife in the