Black Rain

She gazed out over the balcony once again, guessing that their attackers were not about to shoot their way into a crowded club, even if they knew where she and Hawker had gone. She dialed the hotel on her cell phone, making sure they increased security on the NRI’s private floor, and made a mental note to move Verhoven and his people there in the morning. She turned her attention back to Hawker, realizing he had lied to her. “You said you were unarmed.”

“I did,” he admitted.

She reached for a glass of water. “Apparently, that wasn’t entirely true.”

He smiled. “You all right?”

“Deaf in one ear, but I’ll live.”

Hawker’s face grew serious. “Someone set you up. Your old partner, maybe?”

There was no way Arnold Moore would have put her in danger. They’d been too close for too long. “I don’t think so. I’m not saying it was an accident, but it wasn’t a setup from our end.”

“What, then?”

“A shakedown maybe, or a kidnapping attempt. Well-connected American disappears and gets held for ransom. Like your friend. It happens more often than you’d think down here.”

“I know all about ‘down here,’” he said. “And you’re right, it could have been anything. But it wasn’t. It was connected with this expedition.”

She didn’t want to go down this road. But if they were going to do so, she preferred for it to happen quickly. “What’s your point?” she said.

He hesitated, appearing to be put off by her directness. “I still know a few people,” he said. “And I’ve done some checking. I know your responsibilities and your reputation. You’ve been all over the world, but that was prior to becoming a regional director.”

The words lingered. It was the promotion that had come through as part of this assignment, but in reality she was still Moore’s lieutenant. The promotion would take effect only upon successful completion of the mission. “You’re half right,” she said.

“That’s more than usual,” he replied. “And it’s enough to make me wonder what the hell is really going on here. In the Agency, big shots ride desks and read reports; they tell other people where to go and what to do.”

He sat back, looking very pleased with himself. “But then here you are,” he added. “And until your partner left a few days ago, here you both were, two high-ranking directors working the ground floor like a couple of stiff necks, dragging around a bunch of civilians who have no idea what they’re getting into.”

She glared at him. “Not my choice.”

“And yet, I’m guessing it would cause problems if I told them we’d been shot at.”

“Mostly for you,” she said coldly.

He studied her, seeming to agree. “Funny thing is, I rode shotgun on an operation like this once. We had a Chinese defector coming in through Hong Kong with a list of operatives and part of a cipher code. The only face he trusted was a pretty bank teller’s from Macau, so we brought her in, covered her seven ways from Sunday and prayed that no one got killed. Security was so tight that the Asian director of field ops met with the guy himself. No regulars around, no station involvement or paper trail. Just a couple of guys who don’t exist, a DFO who was never there and a young woman who went back to her normal life, a little wealthier and none the wiser.”

She listened, hoping that her own team would fare as well and contemplating the concept of a man who doesn’t exist. At the very least the China operation did not appear in his file.

“Look,” he said, “I have no idea what you’re after down here, and to be honest, I really don’t care. But whatever it is, it’s big and it has to be kept quiet. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Your partner wouldn’t have been here. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have come looking for me. Not with my situation.”

His “status,” she thought. “By situation, you mean the fact that you’re wanted.”

He seemed offended. “I’m not ‘wanted,’ like some common criminal.”

“Really?” she said. “The State Department has a warrant out for you. Interpol does as well. NSA, CIA, FBI, they’d all like to have a few words with you, preferably in a locked room somewhere. How much more wanted could a man be?”

“Right,” he said. “Well, where the hell are they? Don’t you think they could find me if they tried? You did.” He shook his head. “They don’t want to find me. They just want to make sure they don’t lose track of me.”

This much she knew, though it was unclear as to why.

“Besides,” he said. “That just proves my point. You say I’m wanted, but you hired me anyway. You made a four-hour drive to the middle of nowhere to do it, when a single phone call could have brought in one of your own. And that can mean only one thing: this operation goes beyond quiet; it has to be invisible, even to your own people. To make sure that’s the case, you hire a guy who can’t talk to anyone, a guy no one would listen to even if he did.”

“I see,” she said. “Apparently, we’re smarter than I thought.”