Nothing happened.
A minute passed. I started to shiver.
Suddenly I was exhausted. And hungry. I needed to get something to eat, and find a hotel.
I got in the car and pulled out onto the road again. I felt alone, and very far from home.
Wherever that might be.
PART THREE
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving…
T. S. ELIOT, Gerontion
10
THE TICKET I had bought to get from Osaka to Washington was a round-trip. One-ways attract unnecessary attention, especially post-September 11. When I’d left I wasn’t sure that I’d be using the return, but I certainly had a reason now, and the morning after my chat with Crawley I caught a return flight from Dulles.
I slept well over the Pacific, all the way to the pre-landing announcements, the flight attendants having kindly respected my wish not to be wakened, even for champagne and caviar service. Ah, first class.
I took the rapito, the Rapid Transport train, from Kansai International Airport to Namba’s Nankai station in south Osaka. My ticket was for a window seat, and during the thirty-minute journey from airport to terminal station I sat and stared past my reflection in the glass. A sliver of sun had broken through the clouds at the edge of the horizon, shining like a sepia spotlight through an otherwise gray and undifferentiated firmament, and in the fading moments of the day I looked on at the scenes without, scenes that passed before me as disconnected and mute as images in a silent film. A rice paddy in the distance, tended by a lone woman who seemed lost in its sodden expanse. A man tiredly pedaling a bicycle, his dark suit seeming almost to sag from his frame as though wanting nothing more than to cease this purposeless forward momentum and succumb to gravity’s heavy embrace. A child with a yellow knapsack paused before the lowered gate of the rapito railroad crossing, perhaps on his way to a juku, or cram school, which would stuff his head with facts for the next dozen years until it was time for them to be disgorged for college entrance exams, watching the passing train with an odd stoicism, as though aware of what the future held for him and already resigned to its weight.
I called Kanezaki from a pay phone in Namba. I told him to meet me that night, that he could find details on the bulletin board. I uploaded the necessary information from an Internet café. The Nozomi bullet train would take him about two and a half hours, and I expected he would leave quickly after getting my message.
I checked the bulletin board I had set up for Delilah, and was mildly surprised to find a message from her: Call me. There was a phone number.
I used it. The call might be traced back to Osaka, but I wasn’t going to be in town long enough for it to matter.
“Allo,” I heard her say.
“Hey,” I answered.
“Hey. Thanks for calling.”
“Sure.”
“I wanted to tell you that it’s almost done. To ask you to be patient for just a little while longer.”
That was smart. She must have been concerned that, if I didn’t hear from her, I might get frustrated. That I might decide she was playing me and go after Belghazi unilaterally again. And better to hear my voice, and let me hear hers, rather than a dry text message left floating in cyberspace.
“How much longer?”
“A day. Maybe two. It’ll be worth it, you’ll see.”
I wondered for a moment, again, about the elevator at the Macau Mandarin Oriental. After what had happened subsequently, and after what I’d learned, my gut said that she hadn’t been part of that attempt on me, that in fact she had tried to warn me, as she had claimed. What I couldn’t understand was why. From her perspective, operationally, a warning would have been counterproductive.
I hated a loose end like that. But I couldn’t make sense of it. I’d chew it over another time.
“Okay,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Can I reach you at this number?”
“No. Not after this.”
I paused, then said, “All right, then. Good luck.”
“And you.” She clicked off.
A LITTLE UNDER four hours later Kanezaki and I were sitting in Ashoka, a chain Indian restaurant in the Umeda underground mall that I had come to like during my time in Osaka. I had employed the usual security procedures beforehand and there had been no problems.
“You were right,” I told him over Tandoor Murgh and Keema Naan and Panjabi Lassis. “There was a leak on your side. Crawley.”
“How do you know?”
The question was straightforward and I detected no sign of suspicion behind it. Apparently he hadn’t yet learned of Crawley’s recent demise. When he did, he would come to his own conclusions. I saw no advantage in having him hear it from me.
“Your NE Division has a relationship with Belghazi,” I said. “Belghazi gives them information about other people’s deals, particularly in the WMD trade, and in return they protect him in a variety of ways, including overseeing transshipments through Hong Kong.”
“Holy shit, how the hell did you learn this?”
I shrugged. “You’re telling me you didn’t know?”
“I’ve discovered a few things since we last spoke,” he said, looking at me. “But I’ve got insider access, and you don’t. Which is why I’m asking.”
I smiled. “Forget about how. Call it ‘sources and methods.’ What matters is what-and who.”
“Who-”
“There’s a CIA NOC, based in Hong Kong, attached to the CTC, formerly with NE Division. He’s the connection between Belghazi and Crawley.”
I watched him closely, looking for a reaction. I didn’t see anything.
“You know about the NOC?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“All right. My guess is, he’s part of the reason that Belghazi seems to enjoy Macau so much. Belghazi likes to handle transfers in Hong Kong, where the CIA can help with the heavy lifting. Macau is right next door.”
“You’re saying it’s not the gambling?”
I shrugged. “I’m sure he loves gambling. But he also knows that analysts focus on things like gambling when they’re creating profiles. He knows that, if his movements are tracked to Macau, his profilers will just say, ‘Ah, it’s the gambling,’ without probing deeper. He’s using your expectations about his known habits to obscure whatever his real purpose is. Feeding you exactly what he wants you to eat, knowing you’ve already got a taste for it.”
We were silent for a long moment, during which Kanezaki drummed his fingers on the table and ignored his food. Then he said, “You’re right.”
“I know.”
He shook his head. “What I mean is, last time we met, when you suggested that Macau might not be a side trip for Belghazi, but maybe the main point, it got me thinking. I did some checking. Now, I told you that we’ve got a fix on Belghazi’s sat phone. The units he uses are part of a low-earth-orbit network. People like the LEO networks because reception is clear and because the satellites’ proximity to earth means reduced signal latency, but the networks are less secure.”
“Because multiple satellites are picking up the signal?”
“Exactly. So you can always triangulate. It’s not supposed to be possible because the signals are digitized and encrypted-it’s like, okay, you know there’s a needle in the haystack, but that’s a far cry from actually being able to find the needle. But, trust me, if you use one of those phones, we can find you.”
I thought for a moment. “You said ‘units.’ Has Belghazi switched phones recently?”
“Yeah, he has.”