She looked at me, saying nothing.
“Why did you warn me?”
Her nostrils flared and her face flushed. “It’s none of your business why I do or don’t do something. I made a mistake, all right? I should have just stood aside! If I could do it over and do it differently, I would!”
She stopped herself, probably realizing that she had been raising her voice. “I want you to leave Macau,” she said, more quietly.
I wondered for a moment whether her outburst had been born of frustration. Frustration that whatever she had just set up to get rid of me had failed to get the job done.
“I know how you feel,” I said. “Because I want the same thing from you.”
She shook her head once, quickly, and grimaced, as though what I had said was ridiculous. “We both understand the situation. We’ve already discussed it. Even if our positions were symmetrical before, they’re not any longer. He’s on to you. Even if I were to leave, and I won’t, you can’t finish what you came here to do.”
“I don’t know that.”
“My God, what more proof do you need?”
I stopped for a moment and thought. She was probably right, of course. But I still hadn’t heard back from Kanezaki. I might learn more from him. And maybe from her, too, if I could find a way to get her to tell me.
She wanted me to be gone. Wanted it so much that whatever had happened in the elevator might have been a bungled attempt to make it happen. Regardless, a minute ago the issue had caused her to lose some of her considerable cool.
Which created a bargaining chip. I decided to play it.
“Meet me later,” I said. “I’m going to check on a few things in the meantime, and then we’ll fill each other in. If I’m convinced at that point that I’ve got no chance of finishing this properly, I’ll walk away.”
“I’m not meeting you again. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not if we do it right.”
There was a pause, then she said, “Tell me what you have in mind.”
“Where’s Belghazi right now?”
“He’s off Macau.”
“Where?”
“He has meetings in the region. I’m not supposed to know where.”
Not being supposed to know and not knowing were quite different things. She was afraid that, if she told me, I might try to go after him. Not an unreasonable concern.
“When will he be back?” I asked.
“He wasn’t sure. A day, maybe two.”
“All right. Take a trip to Hong Kong. Tonight. There are lots of Caucasians there and it’s much bigger than this place. You’ll have an easier time blending in. If he asks, you tell him Macau started to feel small, you got bored, you wanted to do some shopping, take in the sights.”
There was a long pause. Then she said, “Where do I find you?”
“I haven’t decided that yet. Give me your cell phone number and I’ll call you from a pay phone. Ten o’clock tonight. I’ll tell you where then.”
She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper from next to the telephone and wrote down the number she gave me, in code, as always, so that she wouldn’t be compromised if I were ever found with the paper.
She walked to the door. I watched her glance down at the body as she stepped over it. She checked through the peephole, opened the door a crack, looked through it, and moved out into the corridor. The door closed quietly behind her.
I had to be careful now. I knew there were only two possible reasons that she’d agreed to meet me. One, because she was afraid that, if she didn’t, I might go after Belghazi again and screw things up for her. In this sense, I was coercing her, and I was aware that coercion is an inherently dangerous way to gain someone’s cooperation.
Two, she wanted another shot at using a little coercion herself.
I realized that she hadn’t even asked what I was going to do about the dead guy. I decided to take that as a compliment: she knew I would handle it and hadn’t felt the need to inquire.
In the end, it took me the rest of the afternoon to make Elevator Boy disappear as he needed to. I could have simply left him in the room, but doing so would have undone all my efforts to disconnect myself from the other dead Arabs. Hmm, the police would be saying, three dead Saudis in Hong Kong, another two near the Macau Ferry Terminal, and now this one, in a hotel room? Dumping him in one of the Oriental’s stairwells would have been a marginal improvement, but it would still mean the police would focus on the hotel where I had been staying. I didn’t want that kind of attention. Sure, I’d checked in under an appropriate alias and could have just evaporated, counting on the alias to break the connection between the perpetrator and the crimes, but I decided that the risk of bringing that much heat down on the alias was greater than the risk of cleaning up the mess and avoiding the heat entirely.
Of course, the “cleaning up the mess” option involved a bit more than just tidying up after a dinner party. I had to shop for proper luggage, in this case a Tumi fifty-six-inch wardrobe, billed as “The Goliath of Garment Bags”; sheet plastic to prevent contamination of the interior of the bag during transportation; and plenty of towels to absorb any leakage. As for the packing itself, suffice to say that Elevator Boy, although not a particularly large man, wasn’t just a couple of suit jackets, either, and I had to make a few unpleasant adjustments to get the desired fit. The Goliath worked as advertised, though, and I was able to wheel it and its unusually heavy load out of the hotel, eschewing offers of assistance from two bellhops along the way. Under the causeway a kilometer or so from the hotel, I ducked behind a pillar and unloaded the Goliath’s contents, then continued on my way, wheeling the bag along behind me with considerably less effort than before. I left it far from the body and the hotel, at the other end of the causeway, where I knew someone would quickly and happily “steal” it, marveling at his good luck in acquiring such expensive, high-quality luggage, and saying nothing to anyone about where it had come from.
Back at the room, I took an extremely long, extremely hot shower. I changed, packed my things, and headed down to the lobby. At the hotel checkout counter, I told them that my plans had changed suddenly, that I needed to check out earlier than planned. They told me they would still have to charge me for that evening. I told them I of course understood their policy.
I took a cab to the ferry terminal. I saw no police barricades, technicians sniffing for evidence, or other evidence of official interest in what had happened here earlier. On the contrary, in fact: it seemed that things had been quickly cleaned up and returned to normal. I had been right about law enforcement priorities on Macau.
I went to the TurboJet counter to buy a ticket. The ticket clerk informed me that only first-class seats were available on the next departing ferry. I told her first class would be wonderful.
Once aboard, I settled into my first-class seat and watched the lights of Macau fade into the distance. I felt myself beginning to relax.
Yeah, there were problems. There had been a breach in the security I depend on to do my work and get away alive afterward. And, although the evidence was so far circumstantial, it looked like Belghazi was on to me, which would make it a hell of a lot harder to get close to him and finish what I had started.
The thing in the elevator had been a close call, too. But it had turned out all right. Maybe that was an omen. Nothing like a little luck to give you that wonderful sense of well-being. That, and having killed and survived someone trying to do the same to you.
I smiled. Maybe I would write a self-help book. Live off the proceeds.
I would worry about the problems later. There was nothing I could do about them on the ferry. My relaxation deepened, and I actually indulged a light snooze on the ride over. I woke up refreshed. The Hong Kong skyline was already looming before me, its proud towers eclipsing the silhouetted hills behind them, dense crystals of light that seemed to have erupted out of the earth to embrace the sky and dominate the harbor.