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 What?
 Your favorite hotel in Bangkok.
 What is this? You don t think it s me?
 They re only letting me talk to you for a second at a time and your accent is
too easy to imitate.
 What accent?
 Tell me.
 If they hear my answer, I won t be able to go there after this. And that
would be a tragedy.
It had to be Dox. No one else could be so obstreperous. But still.
 The name, goddamnit.
 Look, I like the place because of the mirrors in the bathrooms. I tried to
tell you about a threesome I had in one, all right? With two lovely Thai
ladies. And you cut me off  cause you didn t want to hear.
I let out a long breath. It was him all right. The hotel was the Sukothai, and
yeah, I had cut him off the time he tried to tell me the story.
I heard the phone being moved, then Hilger s voice.  Satisfied? he asked.
 All right, I said.  I ve held up my end. Now let him go.
 You re not done. There are two more.
Well, it was worth a try.
 Give me the particulars, then, I said.
 Not yet. You re a little ahead of schedule.
 We re doing this on a schedule?
 The person s not in position yet. As soon as he is, I ll upload the
information you need.
On the one hand, I liked the extra time. On the other hand, once again, I
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hated the idea that Hilger would be able to follow me by my efforts to track
his target. I hoped Kanezaki would find something to help me short-circuit the
whole thing.
 How long are we talking about? I asked.
 Forty-eight hours. Check the bulletin board then.
He clicked off.
I called Kanezaki from a pay phone.  You get it? I asked.
 I got it. He s in Jakarta. Or at least he was during the time you had him on
the phone.
I was gripping the phone hard.  Where in Jakarta?
 Pluit, it looks like. The marina.
 Can you be more precise than that?
 What do you want, an address? All I know is he was near a cell tower in
Pluit. Without a formal request to the NSA, which will create a lot of
questions and take a month to process anyway, I can t triangulate. I can only
give you a radius around a single tower. From what I can see, either he was in
Pluit, or he was a little way out in the Java Sea.
I was quiet for a moment. He was right, I wasn t being reasonable. But damn,
to feel like I was that close to having him in my sights&
 He s got our friend on a boat, I said.  They probably docked in Jakarta to
make the call, maybe use an Internet café, whatever. But with the boat, they
could move anywhere, and keep moving. There are ten million people in Jakarta
alone. Leave Jakarta, and you ve got seventeen thousand islands, only six
thousand of them inhabited, and probably twenty thousand miles of coast. And
that s all assuming he stays somewhere in Indonesia and doesn t move on. Shit,
this isn t much better than knowing he s in Asia.
 It s another piece, Kanezaki said, after a moment.  Like you said.
I sighed. He was right again.  Is this anything you can use with what you ve
already got? I said.  The visas, the previous known location, the government
backing?
 I doubt it. I don t have a way to search travel records by location, only by
names. It doesn t look like our friend was traveling as himself. So it s slow
going.
 All right, I said, trying not to be frustrated. We had so many pieces& but
they still added up to nothing. I fought the urge to just go to Jakarta, see
what I could find there. Without more information it would be useless.
 What about you? he asked.  You learn anything on the call? Anything new we
can work with?
 No. Well& maybe one of the people who s holding Dox is or was a Marine. I
think Dox was trying to indicate that, but I m not sure.
 All right, I ll see if that gets us anywhere.
Even as he said it, I knew it was unlikely. It was almost nothing.
 Anyway, that s all, I said.  Hilger told me he d upload details about the
next assignment two days from now.
 Two days from now? You re doing it again, aren t you? Giving yourself time
to& 
 I m not doing anything. He told me the person isn t in position yet and
wouldn t be for forty-eight hours. I ve got nothing to do but wait. If you
could come up with something in that time, it sure would be handy.
 Otherwise& 
 Yeah, that s right. Otherwise we get to number two on the list.
 Jesus, I heard him breathe.
 Don t  Jesus me, I growled.  I m not going to let something happen to my
friend.
 Yeah, but& 
 Bullshit. I don t want to hear it. Not unless you ve ever once gotten your
own hands bloody. Have you? Ever? Or do you only send out other people for the
nasty stuff so you can sleep like a fucking baby at night?
A long moment went by. Then he said,  I wasn t judging you. I was just& a
little awed. That s all. I m trying to help, okay?
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I watched people strolling past me. A group of teenagers, laughing through
orthodontic-perfect smiles, sauntering in distressed jeans that probably cost
two hundred dollars a pair. Men whose faces bore the marks of nothing worse
than overstretched mortgage worries beat back by too much Botox. Women with
bare liposuctioned midriffs and Herculean plastic breasts. A river of well-fed
selfishness, a contagion of insecure conceit. I hated them. I hated all of
them.
 You there? I heard Kanezaki ask.
 Yeah.
 If you don t mind my saying, and you probably will, you seem like you re on a
short fuse lately.
 You re right, I mind.
 I m only bringing it up because& 
 Because what?
 Never mind.
 What? Just say it.
He sighed.  Don t push away the people who are trying to help you. You can t
afford it. And neither can our friend who s in trouble.
 Oh, now you re trying to help me. Not use me. Help me.
 Look, there s something I want out of this, yes. I ve been upfront with you
about it. But that doesn t mean& 
 That s exactly what it means, I shouted.  Exactly. When are you going to
grow up and realize you can t fucking have it both ways?
I slammed down the phone and clenched my hands into fists, fighting the urge [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]