Still, it paid to check. Triggering a device to the door would ordinarily leave some evidence in the jamb, where the bomb maker would have placed something that would close a circuit when the door was opened.

Delilah stopped, apparently satisfied, and put the key in the lock. She pushed open the door wide enough to move inside-no wider than someone who had, say, taped a mercury switch vertically to the floor behind the door would have opened it to leave. She paused for a moment, then opened it wider. We went in, looking for trip wires along the way.

The door closed behind us. I set the body down next to it and we each quickly examined the room. Mercury switches, pressure release switches, photocell switches… there are a lot of ways to rig a room. The main thing is to look for anything unusual, anything out of place. We checked the desk chair, the edges of every drawer, the closet doors, the minibar cabinet, the underside of the bed, the drapes, the television. Neither of us spoke. The sweep took about ten minutes.

I stopped a moment before she did. She was bending forward, her back to me, running her fingers along the edge of the bedstand drawer. The black skirt was pulled taut across her ass, the exposed back of her legs deliciously white by contrast.

She stood up and looked at me. Her brow was covered with a light sheen of perspiration. The silk of her blouse shimmered and clung in all the right places.

“That was too close,” she said, shaking her head. “This has to stop.”

I nodded, looking at her. I couldn’t tell if the thumping in my chest was from the exertion of killing, hoisting, and carrying Elevator Boy, or from something else. My awareness of her shape, of her skin, made me think maybe it was option #2. Horniness is a common reaction of the postcombat psyche, Eros reasserting over Thanatos. If I didn’t change my lifestyle soon, I might not live long. But I’d never have to worry about Viagra, either.

“No one saw us,” I said, pulling myself back from the direction my body and the reptile portions of my brain wanted to go in, focusing on the situation. “And there are no cameras in the elevators or hallways.”

“I know that,” she said.

“All right. Tell me what you know about this.”

“Nothing more than what I just told you.” She inclined her head toward the figure slumped on the floor by the door. “Saudi. I could tell by his accent.”

“You speak Arabic well enough to recognize regional accents?”

She shook her head at the question. “We can talk about that another time. The only thing we need to talk about now is getting you off Macau. I’ve had enough of you fucking up my operation.”

I felt some blood drain from my face. “I’m fucking up your operation?” I said, my voice low. “I could as easily-”

“I was almost just seen with you,” she said, her hands on her hips, her eyes hot and angry, “by someone who until I can be convinced otherwise I will assume is working for Belghazi. Do you understand what will happen to me if he comes to suspect me?”

“Look, I didn’t ask you to-”

“Yes, you’re right, I should have just let you walk into that man’s ambush. I should have, too. You would be gone, and that’s what I need.”

“Why, then?” I said, thinking that maybe I’d have more luck finishing my sentences if I kept them short.

She looked at me, saying nothing.

“Why did you warn me?”

Her nostrils flared and her face flushed. “It’s none of your business why I do or don’t do something. I made a mistake, all right? I should have just stood aside! If I could do it over and do it differently, I would!”

She stopped herself, probably realizing that she had been raising her voice. “I want you to leave Macau,” she said, more quietly.

I wondered for a moment whether her outburst had been born of frustration. Frustration that whatever she had just set up to get rid of me had failed to get the job done.

“I know how you feel,” I said. “Because I want the same thing from you.”

She shook her head once, quickly, and grimaced, as though what I had said was ridiculous. “We both understand the situation. We’ve already discussed it. Even if our positions were symmetrical before, they’re not any longer. He’s on to you. Even if I were to leave, and I won’t, you can’t finish what you came here to do.”

“I don’t know that.”

“My God, what more proof do you need?”

I stopped for a moment and thought. She was probably right, of course. But I still hadn’t heard back from Kanezaki. I might learn more from him. And maybe from her, too, if I could find a way to get her to tell me.

She wanted me to be gone. Wanted it so much that whatever had happened in the elevator might have been a bungled attempt to make it happen. Regardless, a minute ago the issue had caused her to lose some of her considerable cool.

Which created a bargaining chip. I decided to play it.

“Meet me later,” I said. “I’m going to check on a few things in the meantime, and then we’ll fill each other in. If I’m convinced at that point that I’ve got no chance of finishing this properly, I’ll walk away.”

“I’m not meeting you again. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not if we do it right.”

There was a pause, then she said, “Tell me what you have in mind.”

“Where’s Belghazi right now?”

“He’s off Macau.”

“Where?”

“He has meetings in the region. I’m not supposed to know where.”

Not being supposed to know and not knowing were quite different things. She was afraid that, if she told me, I might try to go after him. Not an unreasonable concern.

“When will he be back?” I asked.

“He wasn’t sure. A day, maybe two.”

“All right. Take a trip to Hong Kong. Tonight. There are lots of Caucasians there and it’s much bigger than this place. You’ll have an easier time blending in. If he asks, you tell him Macau started to feel small, you got bored, you wanted to do some shopping, take in the sights.”

There was a long pause. Then she said, “Where do I find you?”

“I haven’t decided that yet. Give me your cell phone number and I’ll call you from a pay phone. Ten o’clock tonight. I’ll tell you where then.”

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper from next to the telephone and wrote down the number she gave me, in code, as always, so that she wouldn’t be compromised if I were ever found with the paper.

She walked to the door. I watched her glance down at the body as she stepped over it. She checked through the peephole, opened the door a crack, looked through it, and moved out into the corridor. The door closed quietly behind her.

I had to be careful now. I knew there were only two possible reasons that she’d agreed to meet me. One, because she was afraid that, if she didn’t, I might go after Belghazi again and screw things up for her. In this sense, I was coercing her, and I was aware that coercion is an inherently dangerous way to gain someone’s cooperation.

Two, she wanted another shot at using a little coercion herself.

I realized that she hadn’t even asked what I was going to do about the dead guy. I decided to take that as a compliment: she knew I would handle it and hadn’t felt the need to inquire.

In the end, it took me the rest of the afternoon to make Elevator Boy disappear as he needed to. I could have simply left him in the room, but doing so would have undone all my efforts to disconnect myself from the other dead Arabs. Hmm, the police would be saying, three dead Saudis in Hong Kong, another two near the Macau Ferry Terminal, and now this one, in a hotel room? Dumping him in one of the Oriental’s stairwells would have been a marginal improvement, but it would still mean the police would focus on the hotel where I had been staying. I didn’t want that kind of attention. Sure, I’d checked in under an appropriate alias and could have just evaporated, counting on the alias to break the connection between the perpetrator and the crimes, but I decided that the risk of bringing that much heat down on the alias was greater than the risk of cleaning up the mess and avoiding the heat entirely.