The Last Assassin

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.'

'That's good,' he said, and I imagined him smiling.

'You okay?' I said. 'That flu sounds pretty bad.'

'I'm all right.'

'I've got a situation I need your help with. I'll put the information on the bulletin board.'

'I may not be able to access the bulletin board for a while. I'm in the hospital.'

I frowned and pressed my ear closer to the receiver. 'What's going on?'

'Nothing, I'll be out of here soon. Tell me about your situation. It sounds more pressing than mine.'

'You sure your phone is all right?'

'Positive.'

Okay. I told him everything.

When I was done, he said, 'What are you thinking?'

'You know what I'm thinking. I can't stop halfway. The only way to finish this is to keep going until it's done.'

'You mean…'

'Look, the Chinese are just contractors on this. They don't know me, they don't know what I'm capable of, so they'll believe the obvious explanation for what happened to their people – a junior guy with a history of violence lost his temper, killed his boss, and went into hiding. But Yamaoto is going to know better. And he'll have an incentive to try to persuade the Chinese that I was behind the deaths of two of their people, as a way of getting them personally involved. So all I've done by taking out the two Chinese is buy myself a little time. If I don't finish Yamaoto, too, it'll have been for nothing. Worse than nothing, because if the Chinese figure out what really happened, they could retaliate against Midori and my son. They know where they live, goddamnit. They've been watching them.'

There was a pause. Finally he said, 'I agree.'

'Of course you agree. This is exactly what you wanted. Don't think I don't know it.'

'I had no intention of putting your son in danger.'

'You showed me those photos to make the baby more real to me, to make it impossible for me to ignore. Otherwise you could have just told me.'

'Perhaps, but…'

'You're a manipulative bastard, Tatsu. You know it's true. But I don't have time to argue with you about it. I don't even have time to hate you. I need your help.'

'You want me to move them?'

I knew he could do it. He'd moved Midori to New York in the first place, to protect her from Yamaoto. But Yamaoto had found her anyway.

'I don't want you to do anything,' I said. 'If she gets wind of what's out there she'll never see me again. Just tell me how I can get to Yamaoto.'

'You can't just get to him. He's afraid of you, you know. Even obsessed. He goes out infrequently. Uses bodyguards. Travels in an armored car…'

'I've got access to a sniper. All I need to know is where and when.'

'That's exactly the information Yamaoto now guards most jealously.'

'What about his headquarters? His residence?'

'The very locations where he most expects trouble, and where he takes the most precautions.'

We were silent for a moment. I was so frustrated I was breathing hard.

'You know,' I said, 'I wish you would just arrest this guy. I really do.'

'We've been over this before. In addition to his other activities, Yamaoto is a powerful politician, well protected by his network of patronage and blackmail. Moving against him directly would do nothing but get me fired. Believe me, I wish I could.'

'Fine, then just tell me how to get to him.'

'I'm trying to. But if something happens to Yamaoto immediately following the deaths of the Chinese, it won't look good for you. It could cause a problem between you and the triads, which you just said you would rather avoid.'

'How, then?'

'You have to turn Yamaoto and the Chinese against each other. Make them suspect each other, rather than suspecting you.'

'I'm listening.'

There was a pause. It sounded like he was taking a drink of something. He coughed, then said, 'For the last ten years there has been a boom in the manufacture of methamphetamine in China and Taiwan. Chinese triads cooperate with the yakuza in smuggling the drugs into Japan.'