Killing Rain by Barry Eisler

Cross-Harbor Tunnel. There weren’t quite as many white faces in Kowloon as there were in Central, where Hilger worked, but there were enough so that neither of them would stick out, and there was a lower chance that Hilger might run into someone he knew. Not that anyone would recognize Manny—it wasn’t as though the man’s face appeared on post office walls, although probably it should—but it was better to be safe. Hilger had taken the usual precautions to ensure that he hadn’t been followed, and hoped that Manny had been equally thorough. He had indulged Manny his mandatory hysteria. When he felt he had been nodding sympathetically for long enough, he began his debriefing.
    “Tell me exactly what happened,” Hilger commanded, and he knew that his calm would now be reassuring. “Not just that day, but every day, from the moment you arrived in Manila.”
    Manny complied. When he was finished, Hilger began to drill into the details.
    “You say there were two of them.”
    “I think so, yes. Someone came in after the bodyguard.”
    “But you didn’t see his face.”
    “Not well. He was big. I think Caucasian. I’m not sure.”
    Hilger considered. “It doesn’t matter. Even if you hadn’t seen him, I could have told you he was there. The first guy, the Asian, you say he was already in the bathroom, is that right?”
    “Yes.”
    “He’d been following you for a while before he decided to anticipate you in the bathroom. But he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t have backup continuing to watch you. Otherwise, if he’d been wrong about you coming to the bathroom, he would have lost you.”
    Manny nodded and said, “Yes, that makes sense.”

    “You think you could recognize the Asian?”
    Manny nodded. “If I saw him again, yes. I got a good look at his face. Can you find him? And the other one?”
    Hilger thought for a moment. He said, “I have some photos I’ll show you before you leave. We’ll see if the men I have in mind are the ones you saw.”
    “Then you can find them.”
    Hilger knew that if he was right about the men in question, identifying them would be a trivial exercise compared with actually finding them. Still, he said, “I think so.”
    Manny leaned forward. “You better. And when you find them, you make them suffer first. They were following me with my family, they might have harmed my son!”
    Hilger nodded to show that Manny could count on him. He said, “And VBM? You can contact him, set up another meeting?” Letting Manny know that there was something of a quid pro quo here.
    Manny shrugged. “I’ve already left him a message. But he’s not an easy man to reach. And he might be spooked when he hears about what happened in Manila.”
    Hilger doubted VBM would spook that easily. Men like him tended to be tougher than that. But no sense contradicting Manny’s assessment.
    “If he’s spooked, he’s spooked,” he said. “But if you told him about what my people can do for him, I think he’ll still want the meeting.”
    “I told him.”
    “Good. Keep trying to contact him. When you do, tell him that the people behind the problem in Manila have been taken care of. Tell him . . .”
    “I’ll tell him that when it’s true.”
    “By the time you contact him, it will be true,” Hilger said, his voice as even as his gaze.

    Manny nodded, and Hilger went on.
    “Tell him I’ll come to the meeting myself. That we can do it anywhere he likes. And give him my cell phone number. He should feel free to contact me directly.”
    Manny nodded again and said, “All right.”
    Hilger detected a slight churlishness in the set of Manny’s mouth, no doubt precipitated by Hilger’s willingness to discuss matters not directly related to Manny’s recent difficulties. Partly to continue the debriefing, partly to assuage the man, Hilger asked, “Who do you think might have been behind this?”
    Manny leaned back and shrugged. “How should I know? It could have been