RainStorm Read Free Page A

voice said.
    "Very good," I said. "Please enjoy your stay."
    that night, while Keiko was out, I sat in the hotel room and
    used an earpiece to listen in on Karate. He was in his room, from
    the sound of it watching CNN International Edition. Go to sleep,
    or go out: I would take my cue from him. I was already dressed in
    a pair of charcoal worsted pants, navy pullover, and comfortable,
    rubber-soled walking shoes in case we wound up with the second
    option, a night on the town.
    I looked out at the massive cranes and earth moving equipment
    that Macau was using to build yet more bridges to China's Guangdong
    province, the low mountains of which crouched a few kilometers
    distant. The machines rose from the harbor like mythological
    creatures provoked from the seabed, hulking, misshapen, slouching
    toward land but held fast by the muck below.
    The cranes reminded me of Japan, where I'd lived most of my
    adult life and where reclaiming land from the sea for the construction
    of redundant bridges and unneeded office parks is a national
    sport. But where the ubiquitous construction in Japan always felt
    familiar, almost comforting in its obviousness, here the excess was
    mysterious, even vaguely menacing. Who made the decisions?
    Who rigged the environmental impact statements to ensure that
    the projects were approved? Who profited from the kickbacks? I
    didn't know. In many ways, Macau was a mystery.
    I had spent the previous three weeks here, moving from hotel
    to hotel, keeping a low profile, getting a solid feel for the place.
    Before accepting the Belghazi assignment, I hadn't known much
    more about the place than what I picked up from reading the Far
    Eastern Economic Review: Portugual's return of the territory to
    China in 1999 had been amicable, as these things go, and the territory's
    five percent ethnic Portuguese population was unusually well
    integrated, speaking Cantonese and mixing with the locals in a way
    that might make most British-derived Hong Kongers blush; its
    service economy was staffed largely by Filipinos and Thais; for a
    territory that until recently had been the ball in a five-hundred-year
    game of Great Power Ping-Pong, it had an unusually firm
    sense of its own identity.
    At the end of my three-week sojourn, I knew much more: how
    to dress, walk, and carry myself to look like one of the millions of
    visitors from, say, Hong Kong; the layout and rhythms of the stores
    and streets; the codes and mores of the casinos. All of which would
    confer an important advantage in the job at hand.
    I heard the phone ring in Karate's room. The television went
    quiet.
    "Allo," I heard him say. A pause, then, "Bien. "
    French, then, as I had suspected from the nicotine permeating
    his room. And with a cultured Parisian accent. My French was
    mostly left over from high school, and the receiver reception was
    muffled and obscured by periodic static. This was going to be
    tough.
    "Oui, il est arrive ce soir."
    That I understood. Yes, he arrived tonight.
    Another pause. Then, "Pas ce soir." Not tonight.
    Pause. Then, "Oui, la reunion est ce soir. Ensuite cela." Yes, the
    meeting is tonight. Then after that.
    Pause. A thicket of words I couldn't pick apart, followed by, "Tout va bien." Everything is fine. Another impenetrable thicket.
    Then, "Je vousferai savoir quand ce sera fait." I'll let you know when
    it's done.
    Click. Back to CNN.
    A half hour later, the TV went off again. I heard his door open
    and close. He was going out.
    I grabbed a dark windbreaker and took the stairs to the ground
    floor. A professional could be expected to use the rear entrance,
    which would represent the less trafficked, less predictable alternative,
    and I ducked out through the back doors on the assumption that
    this was the route Karate would be using. There were three exits
    back here--one from the hotel, one from the beauty parlor, one from
    the restaurant--but all of them fed into the same courtyard, which
    in turn fed onto a single