“Look,” I started to say. I heard the ping of an arriving elevator and we both glanced over. The doors opened.
Another Arab started to come out. He saw us. He looked at my face, then to Delilah. He froze. His mouth dropped open.
He’d clearly recognized me. He’d also clearly seen that I’d been chatting with Delilah. The way he’d looked from me to her-he was connecting us.
He started to step back into the elevator. His hand reached out for the buttons.
It happened fast. I didn’t think about it, didn’t think about the risk. I leaped into the elevator and bodychecked him into the wall. His head slammed against the wood paneling and bounced off. He got his arms up on the rebound and grabbed at me. I returned the favor, catching his shoulders with an inside grip and shooting a knee into his balls. He doubled over with a loud grunt. I stepped behind him and slipped my left arm around his neck in hadaka-jime, the inside of my elbow pressing up against his trachea, my biceps digging into his carotid. I put the same side hand over my right biceps and brought my right hand to the back of his head. I squeezed hard. He struggled wildly for less than three seconds, then went limp, the blood supply to his brain interrupted.
Delilah had stepped into the elevator with us. The doors were closing-she must have pressed the button. “Five,” I said. “Hit five.”
She did as I asked. But had she moved inside to help this guy, then hesitated when she saw that it was impossible? I wasn’t sure.
As soon as the doors closed, I released the choke and hoisted his limp body onto my shoulder. If we were seen now and we played it right, someone might think I was just carrying a friend who’d passed out from too much drinking. Not an ideal scenario, but less problematic than being seen dragging the guy by his ankles with his face blue and contorted.
“That’s him,” she said. “The one I overhead in the lobby.”
I nodded. Maybe it was true. Maybe he’d gotten antsy when no one was checking in or returning his calls, and had decided to move on.
Second floor. Third. Fourth. No stops along the way.
The doors opened on five and we filed out and started walking down the hallway. Still all clear.
I felt the guy’s limbs begin to move in what I recognized as a series of myotonic twitches. It happens sometimes when someone emerges from an unconsciousness induced by blood flow interruption. I’d seen it many times training judo at the Kodokan and recognized the signs. He was waking up. Shit.
I leaned forward and dumped him on the ground. His arms and legs were jerking now, his eyes starting to blink.
I stood behind him and sat him up. Then I leaned over his left side until we were almost chest to chest, wrapped my right arm around his neck from front to back, grabbed my right wrist with the other hand, and arched up and back. His arms flew up, then spasmed and flopped to his sides as the cervical vertebrae separated and his neck broke.
I took hold of one of his jacket lapels and stepped in front of him. Lifting and hauling back on the lapel, I went to my knees, snaked my head under his armpit, then stood, shrugging him up by degrees until I had him up in a fireman’s carry. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out my room key. “Here,” I said, flipping it to Delilah. “Five-oh-four. Open the door.”
She caught it smoothly and headed off down the hallway.
I stayed with her. I wanted to see whether that hair had been disturbed. I stopped her outside the door and squinted down to see.
The hair was broken. Which didn’t prove anything more than her cleared cell phone had; it simply failed to prove that she had been lying about someone being in my room.
My next thought, of course, was bomb. The guy goes in, plants it, gets out. No timer, because they didn’t know when I was coming back. It would be rigged, to the door, a drawer, something like that. Backup in case the ambush in Hong Kong failed.
Delilah must have been thinking the same thing. That, or she was doing a good job acting. She was running her fingers lightly along the doorjamb, tracking closely with her eyes. I didn’t think a device, if there was one, would be triggered to the door. First, you’d need sophistication to pull it off: mercury switches, vibration switches, a way of arming the device electronically afterward for safety. Simpler means would require time spent outside the door, where the technician could be seen. In all events, working with the door would likely mean less time and less privacy than would be offered by the many other possibilities inside.
Still, it paid to check. Triggering a device to the door would ordinarily leave some evidence in the jamb, where the bomb maker would have placed something that would close a circuit when the door was opened.
Delilah stopped, apparently satisfied, and put the key in the lock. She pushed open the door wide enough to move inside-no wider than someone who had, say, taped a mercury switch vertically to the floor behind the door would have opened it to leave. She paused for a moment, then opened it wider. We went in, looking for trip wires along the way.
The door closed behind us. I set the body down next to it and we each quickly examined the room. Mercury switches, pressure release switches, photocell switches… there are a lot of ways to rig a room. The main thing is to look for anything unusual, anything out of place. We checked the desk chair, the edges of every drawer, the closet doors, the minibar cabinet, the underside of the bed, the drapes, the television. Neither of us spoke. The sweep took about ten minutes.
I stopped a moment before she did. She was bending forward, her back to me, running her fingers along the edge of the bedstand drawer. The black skirt was pulled taut across her ass, the exposed back of her legs deliciously white by contrast.
She stood up and looked at me. Her brow was covered with a light sheen of perspiration. The silk of her blouse shimmered and clung in all the right places.
“That was too close,” she said, shaking her head. “This has to stop.”
I nodded, looking at her. I couldn’t tell if the thumping in my chest was from the exertion of killing, hoisting, and carrying Elevator Boy, or from something else. My awareness of her shape, of her skin, made me think maybe it was option #2. Horniness is a common reaction of the postcombat psyche, Eros reasserting over Thanatos. If I didn’t change my lifestyle soon, I might not live long. But I’d never have to worry about Viagra, either.
“No one saw us,” I said, pulling myself back from the direction my body and the reptile portions of my brain wanted to go in, focusing on the situation. “And there are no cameras in the elevators or hallways.”
“I know that,” she said.
“All right. Tell me what you know about this.”
“Nothing more than what I just told you.” She inclined her head toward the figure slumped on the floor by the door. “Saudi. I could tell by his accent.”
“You speak Arabic well enough to recognize regional accents?”
She shook her head at the question. “We can talk about that another time. The only thing we need to talk about now is getting you off Macau. I’ve had enough of you fucking up my operation.”
I felt some blood drain from my face. “I’m fucking up your operation?” I said, my voice low. “I could as easily-”
“I was almost just seen with you,” she said, her hands on her hips, her eyes hot and angry, “by someone who until I can be convinced otherwise I will assume is working for Belghazi. Do you understand what will happen to me if he comes to suspect me?”
“Look, I didn’t ask you to-”
“Yes, you’re right, I should have just let you walk into that man’s ambush. I should have, too. You would be gone, and that’s what I need.”
“Why, then?” I said, thinking that maybe I’d have more luck finishing my sentences if I kept them short.