“Not yet, but it’s filling up. No sign of our friends. I sure hope they show. If they don’t, I’ll start to worry something might have happened to them.”

“Yeah, that would be too bad.”

He zipped up and headed over to the sink, winking at my position en route. “Ooh, look at these fancy soaps. I like this place. Ordinarily I’m not terribly fastidious about washing my hands after urination, but tonight I believe I’ll make an exception.”

I checked through the other hole and watched Dox lathering his hands. “Damn,” he said, “I can’t get used to the way I look in these clothes and without my trusty goatee. You think Delilah meant it when she said I have good bones?”

“I’m sure she did,” I said, feeling a little impatient. “Look, you might want to hurry. If our friends show up, you don’t want to accidentally pass them in the hallway. Even without the goatee that was hiding your good bones.”

He dried his hands with a towel and tossed it in the basket. “Okay, partner, that’s a fair point. I’ll be in the bar, keeping your girlfriend company. Seriously, I’ll be right here, talking into your ear the whole time. If you need me, I’ll come running.”

Even in the midst of all the annoying palaver, it felt good to hear him say that. “Thanks,” I said. “I know you will.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER, I heard Delilah. “Hey, John. Just checking the gear.”

“I hear you.”

“Good. We’re in the bar. We’ve got a nice table in the far corner. You can talk to us anytime. We’ll monitor the transmitters and let you know what’s going on. Any problems, just let us know.”

“Okay,” I said.

Dox said, “We’ll switch off now so we don’t bore you with our pretend conversations about strategic partnership opportunities in Asia and how we’re getting traction with our paradigm shifts and inflection points. Unless you want to listen in, just to make sure I’m behaving myself with your girlfriend.”

“Please, shut it down,” I said.

He laughed. “Okay. Remember, we can still hear you, so if you need anything, just speak up.”

“Okay.”

He cut out.

I waited for nearly an hour in silence. Three times, someone came in to use the restroom. Each time, I checked to see if it was Manny or Hilger. It was possible that one or both of them might stop in on their way to the private dining room, in which case Delilah and Dox wouldn’t be able to warn me. But it was always someone else.

The closet was fairly roomy, and I was able to move around a bit, do a few squats and stretches. There was a time when I could go to top speed without a warm-up, but that sort of thing was getting harder lately, and I wanted to stay limber.

I was doing some isometric neck exercises when Dox came back on. “Okay, partner,” he said, “our guests have arrived. They’re being seated right now.”

“How many?”

“Two, it looks like. Hilger and Manny. Hang on, let me change frequencies and listen in for a minute.”

A moment later, he came back on. “Yeah, it’s just the two of them. Hilger asked the hostess to escort ‘Mr. Eljub’ when he arrives. So it looks like it’s going to be just the three of them. You were right, Hilger didn’t change the plans.”

“ ‘Eljub,’ ” Delilah said.

I asked, “What of it?”

“I’m… not sure. Just wondering who the mystery guest might be.”

“I’m more concerned about where he’s sitting. And about whether he gets up.”

“Of course.”

I said, “Dox, can you switch the audio so that I can listen in, too?”

“I can, but then you won’t be able to hear Delilah and me.”

“That’s okay. You can cut back in anytime you think you need to.”

“Gotcha. Okay, here you go.”

There was a hiss, and then I was listening to Manny and Hilger. Hilger’s voice I remembered from listening to him through a parabolic microphone in front of Kwai Chung. He had a memorably slow, confident, reassuring way of speaking. Manny’s voice was higher; his tone, higher-strung. It sounded as though he was complaining to Hilger about security, specifically about having to leave his bodyguard outside.

“He can do you more good monitoring the entrance than he could have in here,” Hilger told him.

I wondered if he believed that-there were pros and cons, as I saw it-or if he was just trying to placate Manny, who struck me as a bit of a whiner.

Manny said, “I don’t think so. Anyway, after what happened in Manila, I feel more comfortable with him close by.”

“I’ve told you, I’m known at this club and I don’t have a bodyguard. If we post a man outside the door, it’s only going to make the staff curious about who I’m entertaining. Curiosity is the last thing we need tonight.”

“He could have just eaten with us. The staff wouldn’t know his role.”

“That’s true, but then we wouldn’t be able to speak freely. Look, I told you, Rain is in Bangkok. We almost had him there yesterday. He’s on the run now, and my men are pursuing him. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

For a moment I wondered anew whether Hilger’s operation was in fact CIA. He certainly sounded like the government, describing an “almost had him” as a comforting sign of success. I sensed he would have been right at home spouting off about “catastrophic successes” and the other such doublespeak of the age.

Manny said, “I want to know when you get him.”

“Of course.”

Well, Hilger’s going to have a little explaining to do to Manny later tonight, I thought. On the other hand, if things went as planned, Hilger wouldn’t be any more able to explain than Manny would be to listen.

The audio cut out. There was a hiss, and Dox was back in my ear. “Saw Hilger pull some bug-detection gear from an attaché,” he said. “Glad we’re using video. I’m gonna go dark for ten minutes or they might pick up the signal.”

“Good,” I said. The transmitters broadcast on radio frequency, which is present in the background in any urban location, and we were using low signal strength, boosted outside the room by the repeaters I’d put in place. So the concern wasn’t the transmitters’ ambient presence, only their susceptibility to a deliberate sweep, which might follow the signal they emitted like a trail of electronic bread crumbs. Once the sweep was completed, we could safely come back online.

After ten minutes, I heard Dox again. “Okay, here we go. I’ll switch you over.”

Another hiss, and I was listening to Hilger and Manny again. Manny was saying, “He knows he’s important. It’s going to his head.”

Hilger chuckled.

“I mean it, that’s why he’s late. He’s just showing us that he can make us wait for him, and that he knows we’ll put up with it. Arabs. This is just like them.”

“Let’s remember that we’re all friends tonight, all right?” Hilger said. “No nationalities around this table. No stupid allegiances.”

I thought I heard the sound of glasses clinking.

They were quiet after that. Ten minutes passed, then I heard the sound of a knock on their door, of chairs being pushed back. Hilger said, “Hello, Mr. Eljub. Welcome.”

At last, I thought. Mr. VBM.

“Ali, hello,” Manny said. “Glad you could make it.”

“Please, call me Ali,” a new voice said, in accented English that I had trouble placing. Arab, maybe, with something European behind it. Whoever he was, he must have been talking to Hilger. Manny had already presumed. Or else they knew each other.

“Ali, welcome,” Hilger said again. “Please, have a seat.”

I heard chairs being moved around. Hilger said, “You had a good flight, I hope?”

“Uneventful. But slow. There’s so much airline security these days!”

This provoked a laugh. Hilger said, “And the hotel?”

“I don’t think I can complain about a suite at The Four Seasons. Thank you for taking care of it.”

“My pleasure.”

I heard another knock at their door. Hilger said, “Yes.”