The Last Assassin

Kotto-dori, cold in the capelet and skimpy dress, past an intriguing mix of restaurants, boutiques, office buildings, and residences. Cars and small trucks and motor scooters navigated up and down the street, their engines whining and revving at discordant pitches and resounding off the walls of buildings to either side. An occasional horn honked, but never aggressively. A few bicyclists maneuvered around her on the sidewalk. A number of older women were out walking squirrel-sized dogs, some of the animals in tiny wool sweaters. The women and their overly precious canines you saw everywhere in Paris. But here, she noted, looking down, the custom was to clean up after the pets.
    She liked the city. Tokyo seemed to have little in the way of zoning ordinances, something that would have horrified the overseers of Paris. But the planning that worked there would have suffocated the eclectic charm that she sensed was what made Tokyo tick.
    She turned left on one of the narrow, nameless side streets running east off Kotto-dori. Fifty meters ahead, she saw two men standing purposefully and sensed they worked for the club. When she had walked by earlier that day, there had been no one around, and, if she hadn't known at the time what she was looking for, she would have gone right past without even knowing. There was no sign or any other announcement, just a slate path leading away from the street, now flanked by these two.
    They watched her as she approached. They were wearing identical dark suits, fully buttoned, and each had the same metrosexually refined eyebrows and carefully coiffed hair. They were way too soft-looking to be security, and she made them as the valets Rain had mentioned. That made sense — the place was more than upscale enough, and there seemed to be no parking nearby. They bowed as she approached and she nodded to them, catching sight of the wired earpiece each was wearing.
    She turned onto the path, head swiveling as she walked, as though impressed by the design of the place. And it was impressive: to either side of the path were dark rectangular pools of water and lush ferns, all of it illuminated softly from below. A pair of clean-cut concrete walls rose out of the ground and increased in height as the path got closer to the building, eventually reaching about three meters and creating a sense of privacy that grew as she walked. There was a faint smell of incense, and the sound of water moving over stones. It was as though the club was gradually taking her in from the noisy, public city outside.
    The effect increased as the path turned right. Suddenly everything was quiet: nothing but her footfalls and that calming sound of water trickling in the pools. She walked up a short riser of concrete steps and into a large vestibule discreetly lit with wall sconces. A small square of glass was embedded in the wall to the right of a pair of large wooden doors, surrounded by a metal plate.
Camera,
she thought. She felt the detector Rain had given her buzz in her purse, and was glad to know it was working. Next to the camera was a button. Below it, an embedded plastic unit she recognized as a magnetic card reader. There was no keypad, just the reader itself, and she guessed that the valets carried swipe keys. That meant the door would be kept locked and, valets and other employees excepted, controlled from inside.
    She looked around again, just an out-of-town girl taking it all in, and noted no other surveillance equipment. She pulled on both doors, then pushed. They were indeed locked. Okay.
    She looked at the button next to the camera as though noticing it for the first time, then pressed it. A moment later, she heard the distinct
clack
of an electronic lock, then the door to her left was swinging outward, guided by another man in a dark suit. Unlike the two out front, this guy had security written all over him. His hair was crew-cut — functional, not stylish — and something in his eyes suggested that if anyone ever tried to metrosexually reshape his brows they'd be hospitalized for their troubles. He held open the door and bowed his head in welcome.
    The way he had immediately welcomed her, without checking to see whether she was alone, confirmed that she had been watched via the camera before she pressed the buzzer. The man had opened the door already knowing, or having been told, exactly what was outside.
    She nodded and walked in. Soft techno music played from unseen speakers and the air smelled