The Last Assassin

You shipped me your share of the proceeds from the Hong Kong operation, remember? That ought to cover my current expenses, and then some.'
    In Hong Kong, Dox had walked away from a five-million-dollar payday to save my life. Afterward I'd given him the fee I'd collected for the op as a small way of saying thank you. He hadn't wanted to take it, but had finally agreed.
    'All right, I'm not going to argue with you,' I said.
    'Good. You can buy the beer, though. Or that fancy whiskey you like.'
    I smiled. 'I'll call you Monday.'

4

    I wasn't pressed for time, so I flew indirectly, which is always safer. I cleared customs at Dulles, outside Washington. The Watanabe identity I had created to get me to Brazil three years earlier was still functional, and it took me through customs without a hitch. From there, it was just a short flight to New York.
    Despite my oblique approach, when I arrived at JFK, I scanned the crowd outside the arrivals area, then followed a circuitous route through the airport that would draw out any surveillance and render it visible. Arrival areas are natural choke points, typically with lots of waiting people who unintentionally offer good concealment for an ambusher, and I always go to a higher level of alertness, and engage in appropriate countermeasures, at this point when I'm traveling.
    When I was confident I was alone, I went outside. I emerged to a cold and rainy New York afternoon. The sky was lead gray, and it looked like the rain might turn to wet snow any minute.
    I hadn't been here in several years. My childhood was divided between Tokyo and upstate New York, and Manhattan was the first big American metropolitan center I ever saw or spent significant time in. Since then, I've been back on business any number of times, but never business like this.
    The cab line wasn't long. When it was my turn, I got in and told the driver to take me to the Ritz Carlton Battery Park. I'd made a reservation from Barcelona, but hadn't wanted to mention that over the phone when I was talking to Dox. Maybe I was loosening up a little, as he'd suggested. But some habits die hard.
    I watched through the fogging windows as we drove. The cab's wipers beat relentlessly, thump-thump, thump-thump, and I heard thunder in the distance. We crossed into Manhattan, and what pedestrians there were all had their heads down in the hoods of raincoats and under the canopies of umbrellas, their shoulders hunched as though by the weight of some ominous circumstance.
    I thought I was going to be excited when I arrived here, but I wasn't. Instead I felt scared.
    When you live your life in danger, you're afraid a lot of the time. But you develop a system for dealing with it. You favor certain tools, you refine your tactics, and with success you come to trust both. You learn to focus more on the approach than on the destination, and that keeps the fear at bay. Gearing up calms you down.
    So as we pulled up to the hotel, I tried to focus on how I would get to Midori, the kind of thing I'm comfortable with, and not on what I would do afterward, about which I had no idea.
    I checked in and headed to my room on the twelfth floor. I liked what I saw: spacious layout, high ceilings, and a wall-to-wall window overlooking the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. Somehow the location felt right: Manhattan, yes, but at a safe distance, literally the water's edge, not the tangled inland terrain where I might easily find myself confused or lost or worse. I unpacked, showered, and called housekeeping to have my laundry picked up. Then I grabbed a hotel umbrella and headed out to do a few evening errands.
    I walked north on West Street, the rain beating steadily against the umbrella. A few financial district commuters hurried past me, but the area was otherwise dark and deserted. At Vesey, I walked up a gray riser of stairs and cut east along an elevated walkway. Water dripped from the corrugated roof into puddles on the concrete. On the left, through chain mesh fencing, clusters of construction equipment lay dormant in dust and darkness. I moved to the right and paused for a moment before the metal wall like a visitor in front of a hospital curtain, then looked down through a gap. Below me, frozen in the glow of sodium arc lamps as unflinching as those of any coroner's examination room, was the enormous hole where the towers had burned. At first glance, it was just a large construction site, much like any other. And yet the air was