At the outset of the second of these Hong Kong excursions, I noticed an Arab standing in the lobby of the Macau Mandarin Oriental as we moved through it. He was new, not one of Belghazi’s bodyguards. I noted his presence and position, but of course gave no sign that he had even registered in my consciousness. He, however, was not similarly discreet. In the instant in which my gaze moved over his face, I saw that he was looking at me intently, almost in concentration. The way a guy might look, in a more innocent setting, at someone he thought but wasn’t entirely sure was a celebrity, so as not to appear foolish asking the wrong person for an autograph. In my world, this look is more commonly seen on the face of the “pedestrian” who peers through the windshield of a car driving through a known checkpoint, his brow furrowed, his eyes hard, his head now nodding slightly in unconscious reflection of the pleasure of recognition, who then radios his compatriots fifty meters beyond that it’s time to move in for the kidnapping, or to open up with their AKs, or to detonate the bomb they’ve placed along the road.

General security for Belghazi, maybe. Watching hotel comings and goings, looking for something out of place, someone suspicious.

But my gut wouldn’t buy that. And I don’t trust anything more than I trust that feeling in my gut.

Delilah, I thought. I felt hot anger surging up from my stomach. I don’t get suckered often, but she had suckered me. Lulled me into thinking that our interests could be aligned.

But they were aligned, that was the thing. What she had told me made sense. Moving against me, rather than trusting me to wait as I had told her I would, was unnecessarily risky. And even if she had decided to take the risk, she would know not to be so obvious. A non-Asian, standing in the lobby of the hotel, getting all squinty-eyed and flushed with excitement at my appearance? Not on her team. She was good, and she knew I was good. She wouldn’t have used such a soft target approach.

But I might have been missing something. I couldn’t be sure.

Drop it. Work the problem at hand.

Okay. Keiko and I kept moving, smiling and talking, just a couple of happy tourists, wandering around in a daze. I might have turned around and taken us out through the back entrance. But that would have interfered with the spotter’s sense that I was clueless, and that sense might offer some small advantage later. Besides, I didn’t think they’d move against me in a public place, if a move was what this was about. Macau is a peninsula, after all, and they’d want a venue that would enable them to slip away. So I stayed with the front entrance, where we caught a taxi for the brief ride to the Macau Ferry Terminal.

We arrived and got out of the cab. I didn’t see anything in front of the building that set off my radar. The lobby of the first floor, likewise. But the place to pick someone up here would be the second floor, where passengers boarded. If you wanted to know whether someone was traveling to Hong Kong, the departure lounge would be the only real choke point in the complex.

And that’s exactly where I saw the second guy, another Arab, this one a bearded giant with a linebacker’s physique. He was wearing an expensive-looking jacket and shades and standing off to the side of one of the ATMs in the lobby, the machine offering both cover for action and a clear view of the departure area. Again, I offered no sign that I had noticed anything out of the ordinary.

The Arabs stuck out sufficiently to make me wonder for a moment whether they might have been deliberate distractions-decoys to mask the other, in this case Asian, players. Possible, I decided, but not likely. No one else was setting off my radar. And flying all these guys in from wherever would have been an expensive and time-consuming way to gain the marginal advantage of distraction they might offer. No, I sensed instead that the momentary problem I faced was probably no deeper than what was immediately apparent. Sure, these guys knew they stuck out. They just didn’t give me enough credit to understand that I would find their sticking out highly relevant, and to act appropriately. They didn’t grasp the critical fact of how I would interpret their relative conspicuousness. Shame on them.

The ferry ride to Hong Kong lasted an hour. There were no Middle Eastern types on board, or anyone else who rubbed me the wrong way.

We presented our passports to the customs authorities at the Shun Tak terminal in Hong Kong, then moved into the main lobby outside the arrivals gate.

I spotted the third one immediately. Another Arab, long hair, mustache, navy suit, white shirt open at the collar, stylish-looking pair of shades. Unlike the majority of the people waiting here to greet passengers from Macau, who were standing right in front of the arrivals exit, he was leaning casually against the railing at the back of the open-air center of the lobby. Apparently, my new friend was afraid to get too close, afraid he’d get spotted. In trying to find a less conspicuous position, though, he’d only made himself stand out more.

We took the down escalator at the front of the lobby. On the floor below, we had to walk around to the opposite side, then turn one hundred eighty degrees to catch the next escalator down. As we made the turn, I saw our pursuer, who I now thought of as Sunglasses, riding the escalator we had just used.

I paused to take a look in the window of a cigar store before catching the second escalator down. I moved so that Keiko was facing me, her back to the window.

“Keiko,” I said in Japanese, “do me a favor. Take a look behind us. Just glance around, okay? Don’t let your eyes linger on any one person. Tell me what you see.”

She looked past me and shrugged. “I don’t know, lots of people. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“Do you see a foreigner? Arabic-looking guy? Don’t stare, just take a quick peek, then look at other people, look at the stores. You’re just bored waiting for me to finish window-shopping and you’re looking around, okay?”

“What’s going on?” she asked, and I heard some concern in her voice.

I shook my head and smiled. “Nothing to worry about.” I stepped into her field of vision to make her stop scoping the lobby, then placed my hand on her lower back and started moving her along with the pressure of my palm. “Okay, don’t look back. Just tell me what you saw.”

“There was an Arab man in a suit.”

“What was he doing?”

“Talking on a cell phone. I think he was watching us, but he looked away when he saw me looking around. Do you know him?”

“Sort of. It’s a little hard to explain.”

What did Ian Fleming say? Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. And I don’t believe in waiting for even that much evidence. It was past time to act.

We caught a cab on the ground floor. I held the door as Keiko got in. Out of my peripheral vision I saw our friend loitering in front of a 7-Eleven a few meters from the taxi stand. I knew that, as soon as I was in and the door had closed behind me, he would be getting a cab of his own.

I used my dental mirror as we pulled away and saw that I had been right. Keiko watched me but didn’t say anything. I wondered what she was thinking. The driver didn’t seem to notice. He was absorbed in the variety show he had on the radio, the announcer’s voice frantic with artificial hilarity.

I had the driver take us to the Citibank next to the Central MTR subway station. One of my alter egos keeps a savings account with Citi. I carry his ATM card whenever I go out.

We went inside the bank, and Keiko waited while I withdrew fifty thousand Hong Kong dollars-about seven thousand U.S. The amount was over the ATM limit and I had to take care of it at the teller window. The clerk put the money in an envelope. I thanked him and walked over to Keiko.