The Detachment - Barry Eisler [12]
Use the others to finish Hort, then finish them, too. Walk away with the diamonds, and silence everyone who posed a threat.
It was perfect. It could be done. All he had to do was bait the hook. The rest would take care of itself.
He tried not to smile. “Let’s just call Rain,” he said.
I had nearly reached Ogawamachi subway station, where I would catch a train and examine the items I’d taken from the two dead men, when one of their phones vibrated. I stopped and checked the readout—just a number, no name.
I looked around at the bustling street scene, cars crawling, pedestrians hurrying past me, the sky dark now, the area lit only by streetlights and headlights and storefronts. I pressed the “receive call” key, held the unit to my ear, and listened.
A low voice, almost a whisper, said in American-accented English, “I know who you are. Don’t worry, I won’t say your name on an open line. You took the phones you’re carrying from the two men I was with. It’s okay. I know they don’t need phones anymore.”
The natural question was, Who is this? I ignored it because of its likely futility, in favor of something more relevant.
“What do you want?”
“To meet you. I have a message from a fan.”
“Tell me over the phone.”
“No. If this is going to work, we’ll need to establish our bona fides.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My partner and me.”
“Two messengers?”
“There were four originally, but yes.”
I paused, thinking about the video camera, trying to get my mind around what the hell this could be about. The evening was still sultry and I realized my shirt was soaked with sweat.
“Look,” the voice said, “I wasn’t any more enamored of the two guys you just met than you were. If I had been, I wouldn’t have encouraged them to get so close. I sent them inside twice. I knew you’d see them.”
I wondered whether that was bullshit. But the timing of the call and the calm confidence of the voice suggested I was talking to someone who’d foreseen this, even planned it.
“It’s up to you,” the voice said. “But I have something you’ll want. A unit that was receiving from the two you’re carrying now. Take your time examining them, you’ll see I’m telling the truth. Then, if you want the one I’m holding, we can meet.”
I considered proposing a creative rectal use for the unit he claimed to be carrying, but decided against it. The calculus was the same as for the two giants. I could face this now, tonight, or I could spend the rest of my days wondering who was after me, what they wanted, how far they were willing to go. And let whoever it was answer my questions at a time and in a manner of their choosing, not mine.
“Where are you right now?” I asked.
“If you’re still on foot, we can’t be more than a half mile apart.”
“There’s a coffee shop near the subway station I came out of. I’m assuming you were somewhere behind the two who followed me out?”
“That’s right.”
“You passed it ten seconds after you hit the street. Big yellow sign, distinctive frontage. On the right coming around from the station.”
I clicked off and pulled the batteries from the phones and the video cameras. The timing wasn’t great—if they’d been behind me the whole time, they were closer to Saboru than I was. I would have preferred to get there first and watch from the street. But there would have been disadvantages in proposing someplace farther away, too. First, I would have had to give explicit rather than oblique instructions over the phone. Second, they would have had more to time to set something up, if that’s what this was about. Overall, I judged my chances best if I could keep them on a short clock.
It took me less than ten minutes to get back to Saboru. I made two circuits, the first wide, the second passing directly in front. Sepia lights glowed in the windows but the bamboo plantings made it impossible to see inside. I stood at the dim corner of the street for a moment, looking left and right, considering. The cicadas had gone temporarily quiet, and the only sound was of the suzumushi—bell crickets—Saboru’s centenarian proprietor keeps in a cage by the entrance