The Last Assassin

'I mean what's your primary. Right now.'

'Right this very second that would be an Emerson CQC-12 Comrade. Hell of a knife. You could cut through a car door with it if you needed to. Here.'

He reached down, eased the blade out of his pocket, and handed it to me. I opened it. Yeah, this would do. And then some.

Bodies that have been thrown into rivers resurface because gases produced by putrefying bacteria can turn the digestive tract and other areas into balloons. If you don't want the body to float, you have to puncture the balloons so they can't fill. The problem is, it's not just the stomach you're worried about. The phenomenon can occur in the limbs, trunk, face, and other areas, too. Preventing it entirely is therefore a grisly task.

We found a suitably dark stretch along the Hudson River piers south of the Holland Tunnel. Dox pulled off the West Side Highway, cut the lights, and pulled in behind an empty playground. The river was right next to us.

We dragged Wong out and dumped him on the ground. Dox started to lift him.

'No,' I said. 'I'll take care of it. You drive out of here and swing past every five to ten minutes. When I'm done I'll be waiting.'

'Come on, man, let me give you a hand. It'll go quicker.'

'I don't want the car here. It'll draw attention. Besides, I've put you at enough risk as it is. I'll be fine. Just go.'

'All right. I'll be back in five, and five after that.'

I nodded. Dox drove off. I hauled Wong into a fireman's carry and lugged him to the end of the pier, my breath fogging in the chill air. The body felt heavy as hell and I realized how tired I was.

I set him down as close as possible to the edge, took out Dox's knife, and started doing what was necessary. There were going to be some stains on the planks when I was done, no doubt. But dead bodies, lacking a beating heart, bleed a lot less than live ones. Besides, it looked like the city was in for another spell of rain. That would clean things up. And who was going to pay any attention to a dark spot on a Hudson River dock anyway?

I worked. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but my mind kept offering up images from Midori's apartment. My son in my arms. Midori's expression as she handed him to me. I looked down at what I was doing and the contrast made me feel sick. The hope and wondrous sense of possibility I'd felt just hours earlier were receding with each stab of the knife. Just finish this. Just get through.

The whole thing couldn't have taken longer than a minute, but it seemed like more. When I was done, I pocketed the knife and paused, kneeling, to catch my breath. I leaned my head back and breathed the cold air and tried not to think at all.

I heard a car coming south on the access road paralleling the highway. I looked over and saw the outline of police flashers eighty yards away. A spotlight was trained over the water.

Oh, shit. Without another thought, I rolled Wong into the river and vaulted in after him.

I hung on to the edge of the pier with my fingertips, but even so I was dangling past my waist in freezing water. The cold hit my testicles like a blow and I struggled not to gasp.

I heard the car coming closer, closer. It seemed to be taking forever. Were they slowing? Looking for something? At something?

I looked down. Wong was already gone, sunk beneath the surface.

I listened but couldn't hear anything. Had they stopped? The spotlight lit up the pier and I was sure they had. I pictured two cops coming toward me with guns drawn. There was nothing I could do but hang there and wait.

Finally, the light moved on. I heard their tires moving past. I felt confused and couldn't tell how much time had gone by. I counted. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. When I reached thirty, I pulled myself back onto the pier. I dragged myself forward a few feet and lay there, exhausted. I couldn't feel my legs. If anyone came now I was doomed.

But they were gone. After a minute, I sat up. I sucked wind and tried to massage some life back into my useless limbs. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering like an electric typewriter. I realized I was moaning.

I heard another car coming. This time I recognized the lights and grille of Dox's pickup. I stood awkwardly and started stumbling toward him.

He got out. The next thing I knew he had clapped an enormous arm across my back and was practically levitating me to the truck. He threw me into the passenger seat and a moment later we were back on the highway.

'What the hell happened?' he asked.

'C-Cops,' I said, through convulsively chattering teeth. 'Had to get in the water.'

'Ah, Jesus, we've got to warm you up. You're bluer than old Wong back there. Can you get those pants off?'

'Yeah.' I fumbled at the belt buckle but my fingers felt thick and useless.

Dox turned the heat on full blast and angled the vents onto me. He drove and eventually I managed to get all the wet clothes off. I rolled them up around my shoes and tossed the bundle into the back. My skin had goose bumps the size of ski moguls. The heat blasting onto my naked thighs was a godsend.

Dox glanced over. 'Son, you call that thing a penis? I don't know what fine ladies like Delilah and Midori find interesting in you, I really don't.'

'You know…'

'Yeah, yeah, I know, it was the cold water. That's what they all say.'

I might have laughed, but my teeth were still chattering too hard.

Dox, like any sensible-minded person who travels prepared for the worst, had a change of clothes in the truck. He also had water, food, a tent and sleeping bag, a medical kit, and about a thousand rounds of ammunition. The clothes were too big on me, but that would be a lot less noticeable than returning to the hotel naked.

We dumped everything I'd been wearing, the blanket, and the tainted knives in a variety of sewers and dumpsters around town. When we were done, I realized I was famished. We stopped at a diner and I wolfed down a tureen of chicken soup and a mountainous pastrami sandwich. All the twenty-four-hour places in New York were certainly handy if you had a job that kept you out at night.

By the time Dox dropped me off near the Ritz, the sun was coming up and I was flat-out exhausted. I told him I'd call him later in the day, after I'd slept and could think clearly.

I took the hottest shower I could stand to get the last traces of cold from my bones and the stench of blood and the Hudson from my skin. I fell into bed, and for a moment, I was outside Midori's apartment again, suffused with beguiling hope. I wasn't yet asleep, but it already felt like a dream.

10

I slept until later that morning, then went out to a pay phone and called Tatsu in Tokyo.

It took him four rings to answer. Ordinarily he got it on the first.

'Hai,' he said. He sounded tired. Well, it was night out there.

'Ore da,' I said in Japanese. It's me.

'Let me call you back from a different line.'

His voice was really raspy. Must have been a hell of a case of the flu he was fighting.

'Sure,' I said, and clicked off.

A moment later the phone rang. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm changing phones more frequently lately than I used to.'

'Not using scrambled?'

He laughed, then coughed. 'Only when we're trying to get the NSA's attention.'

I smiled. A scrambled digital signal attracts the NSA the way blood brings sharks. It's as useful as leaning close to whisper in someone's ear: anyone who sees you do it will immediately start listening intently. Better to just move the conversation somewhere else, where no one is looking.

'How did things go?' he asked. 'Were you able to meet her?'

'Yes.'

'And your son?'

I saw him, too.

'Just saw him?'

'No, it was more than that. I…' I paused, the memory seeming to shift something inside my chest. 'I held him in my arms while he slept.'