“You’d have to be pretty confident that I could make that happen.”

She shrugged again. “Your behavior in his suite tells me that you intend for it to happen that way. And if you are who we think you are, we’re also confident that you have the capability.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“You were right, I had my people run a background check on you,” she went on. “I didn’t have too much for them to go on: Asian male, about fifty, American-accented English, adept at close-quarters combat, good with surreptitious entry, very cool under pressure.”

“Sounds like something you came across in the personals,” I said.

She ignored me. “And probably intending to put Belghazi to sleep in a way that would look natural.”

“Any response?” I asked, my tone mild.

“We had nothing specific in our files,” she said, “but we did come up with some interesting information from open sources, primarily Forbes magazine. A series of articles written by a reporter named Franklin Bulfinch, who died not so long ago in Tokyo. His articles suggested that there is an assassin at work in Japan, an assassin expert at making murder look like anything but.” She paused, looking at me. “I think we may be dealing with this man.”

Whoever they were, they were good, no doubt about it. I liked the way they used open sources. Your typical intelligence service suffers from the belief that if it’s not stamped Top Secret and not nestled between the service’s own mauve-hued folders, it’s not worth considering. But I’ve been privy to some of the secret stuff, as well as to the work of the Bulfinches of the world. I know the spooks would learn more reading Forbes and The Economist than the magazines would learn from perusing “intelligence assessments.”

“How long are we talking about?” I asked.

“Not long. Two days, maybe three.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t tell you that. But we know.” She took a sip of caipirinha. “Just trust me.”

I laughed.

She retracted her head in mock indignation. “But I trusted you. I got you out of his suite, didn’t I?”

“When you thought I had a videotape. That’s not trust, it’s duress.”

She smiled, her eyes alight with humor. “You need me to get to him, and you can’t get to him while I’m in the way. This means you’ll have to trust me. Why use an ugly word like ‘duress’?”

I laughed again. What she said was true. I didn’t have a lot of attractive alternatives. I would have to try “trusting” her.

Because direct means of contact would be unacceptably dangerous, we agreed that, if I needed to see her, I would place a small, colored sticker just under the buttons in the Oriental’s four elevators. I had seen the stickers in a local stationery store. The elevator placement would enable me to leave the mark in private, would give Delilah the opportunity to check for it several times a day without going out of her way or otherwise behaving unusually, and would be so small and discreetly placed that anyone who didn’t know what to look for could be expected to take no notice. She would do the same if she needed to see me. The meeting place would be the Mandarin Oriental casino; the time, evening, when Belghazi liked to gamble at the Lisboa.

“I don’t see how Belghazi would hear that we left the casino together tonight,” she said. “But just in case, we’ll use the original story, that I told you I was going to the Lisboa and you asked if we could share a taxi. There are taxis lined up in front of the Oriental all evening, so even if he were inclined to do so, he would never be able to check the story.”

“There are cameras all over the Lisboa casino,” I said, wanting to see how many moves ahead she was thinking. “There won’t be a record of your having gone in tonight.”

“I know. But he has no access to those security tapes. Even if he did, I would tell him that I wanted to get rid of you because you seemed a little too interested, so I went shopping in the hotel arcade, instead. There are no cameras there.”

“What about me?” I asked, already knowing the answer but enjoying her thoroughness.

She shrugged. “You’re Asian, much harder to pick out of the crowd, so it would be harder to be certain that you weren’t there tonight. And even if they could be certain, how would I know why you had decided not to go in? Maybe you hadn’t wanted to go to the Lisboa tonight at all, you were only trying to pick me up. Maybe you were discouraged when I brushed you off, and left.”

I took a long swallow from my glass. “Which would also explain our failure to acknowledge each other if we happen to pass each other in, say, the Mandarin lobby. Ordinarily people who’ve shared some time at the baccarat table and a cab afterward wouldn’t act like strangers afterward.”

She smiled, apparently pleased that I was keeping up with her. “Maybe you were unhappy about the results of our meeting and are in a bit of a sulk?”

“Maybe. But you can’t count on any of this. Even when there’s a reasonable explanation for something, people can overlook it and go straight to assuming the worst.”

“Of course. But again, the overwhelming odds are that no one noticed us and no one cares. The rest is just backup.”

I nodded, impressed. I knew her explanations would go even deeper, positioning her for increasingly remote possibilities. Belghazi learns she was seen in this bar with me; she tells him she was bored because he was gone so much. When I invited her, she came along, then thought better of it. She had lied to him because she didn’t want him to be jealous or to think poorly of her. Confessing to some lesser offense to obscure the commission of the actual crime.

Yeah, she was good. The best I’d come across in a long time.

“I’ll leave first,” she said, getting up. She didn’t need to explain. We didn’t want to be seen together. She started to open her purse.

“Just go,” I told her. “I’ll take care of it.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Our first date?” She said it only with that attractively wry humor, not playing the coquette.

I smiled at her. “Maybe you better pay up after all. I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.”

She looked at me for a moment, as though considering whether to say something. But in the end she only smiled, then turned and left. I imagined her checking the street through the windows downstairs before moving through the door.

I finished my caipirinha. The couples on the couches continued in their embraces, their soft laughter just reaching me above the music from the ground floor.

I paid the bill and left. I wondered if Keiko would be waiting for me back at the room.

Strangely enough, I hoped the answer was no.

KEIKO AND I spent the next two days doing the things tourists do. We visited Coloane Village and Taipu. We went to the top of the Macau Tower. We toured Portuguese churches and national museums. We gambled in the Floating Casino. Keiko seemed to enjoy herself, although she was a pro and I couldn’t really know. For me, it all felt like waiting.

I found myself wishing I didn’t need the cover Keiko provided. She was a sweet girl, but much as I enjoyed her body I had tired of her company. More important, I didn’t like that Belghazi and Delilah both knew that I was staying at the Mandarin. The risk was manageable, of course: Belghazi had no way of knowing that I presented a threat, and Delilah had reason to refrain from moving against me, at least for the time being. The risk was also necessary: if Belghazi somehow learned that I had checked out of the hotel but saw me again in Macau, it would look strange to him, suspicious. I knew he was attuned to such discrepancies. So I had to stay put, and simply stay extra alert to my surroundings.

Twice we took the TurboJet ferry to Hong Kong. I gave Keiko money to indulge herself in the island’s many boutiques, a small salve for what I recognized as my recent remoteness. While she shopped, I wandered, observing, imitating, practicing the Hong Kong persona that helped me blend here and in Macau: the walk, the posture, the clothes, the expression. I bought a pair of nonprescription eyeglasses, a wireless, sleek-looking design that you see everywhere in Hong Kong and only rarely in Japan. I picked up one of the utilitarian briefcases that so many Hong Kong men seem to carry at all times, part of the local culture, I think, being comprised of a constant readiness to do business. I bought clothes in local stores. I was confident that, as long as I didn’t open my mouth, no one would make me as anything but part of the indigenous population.