The Last Assassin

I felt confused and couldn’t tell how much time had gone by. I counted. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. When I reached thirty, I pulled myself back onto the pier. I dragged myself forward a few feet and lay there, exhausted. I couldn’t feel my legs. If anyone came now I was doomed.
    But they were gone. After a minute, I sat up. I sucked wind and tried to massage some life back into my useless limbs. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering like an electric typewriter. I realized I was moaning.
    I heard another car coming. This time I recognized the lights and grille of Dox’s pickup. I stood awkwardly and started stumbling toward him.
    He got out. The next thing I knew he had clapped an enormous arm across my back and was practically levitating me to the truck. He threw me into the passenger seat and a moment later we were back on the highway.
    “What the hell happened?” he asked.
    “C-cops,” I said, through convulsively chattering teeth. “Had to get in the water.”
    “Ah, Jesus, we’ve got to warm you up. You’re bluer than old Wong back there. Can you get those pants off?”
    “Yeah.” I fumbled at the belt buckle but my fingers felt thick and useless.
    Dox turned the heat on full blast and angled the vents onto me. He drove and eventually I managed to get all the wet clothes off. I rolled them up around my shoes and tossed the bundle into the back. My skin had goose bumps the size of ski moguls. The heat blasting onto my naked thighs was a godsend.
    Dox glanced over. “Son, you call that thing a penis? I don’t know what fine ladies like Delilah and Midori find interesting in you, I really don’t.”
    “You know…”
    “Yeah, yeah, I know, it was the cold water. That’s what they all say.”
    I might have laughed, but my teeth were still chattering too hard.
    Dox, like any sensible-minded person who travels prepared for the worst, had a change of clothes in the truck. He also had water, food, a tent and sleeping bag, a medical kit, and about a thousand rounds of ammunition. The clothes were too big on me, but that would be a lot less noticeable than returning to the hotel naked.
    We dumped everything I’d been wearing, the blanket, and the tainted knives in a variety of sewers and Dumpsters around town. When we were done, I realized I was famished. We stopped at a diner and I wolfed down a tureen of chicken soup and a mountainous pastrami sandwich. All the twenty-four-hour places in New York were certainly handy if you had a job that kept you out at night.
    By the time Dox dropped me off near the Ritz, the sun was coming up and I was flat-out exhausted. I told him I’d call him later in the day, after I’d slept and could think clearly.
    I took the hottest shower I could stand to get the last traces of cold from my bones and the stench of blood and the Hudson from my skin. I fell into bed, and for a moment, I was outside Midori’s apartment again, suffused with beguiling hope. I wasn’t yet asleep, but it already felt like a dream.

10
    I SLEPT UNTIL LATER that morning, then went out to a pay phone and called Tatsu in Tokyo.
    It took him four rings to answer. Ordinarily he got it on the first.
    “Hai,” he said. He sounded tired. Well, it was night out there.
    “Ore da,” I said in Japanese. It’s me.
    “Let me call you back from a different line.”
    His voice was really raspy. Must have been a hell of a case of the flu he was fighting.
    “Sure,” I said, and clicked off.
    A moment later the phone rang. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m changing phones more frequently lately than I used to.”
    “Not using scrambled?”
    He laughed, then coughed. “Only when we’re trying to get the NSA’s attention.”
    I smiled. A scrambled digital signal attracts the NSA the way blood brings sharks. It’s as useful as leaning close to whisper in someone’s ear: anyone who sees you do it will immediately start listening intently. Better to just move the conversation somewhere else, where no one is looking.
    “How did things go?” he asked. “Were you able to meet her?”
    “Yes.”
    “And your son?”
    “I saw him, too.”
    “Just saw him?”
    “No, it was more than that. I…” I paused, the memory seeming to shift something inside my chest. “I held him in my arms while he slept.”
    “That’s good,” he said, and I imagined him smiling.
    “You okay?” I said. “That flu sounds pretty bad.”
    “I’m all right.”
    “I’ve got a situation I need your help