'Well, now I know what to ask for for Christmas,' Dox said, handing the knife back to her. She reached under her dress and returned it to its hiding place.
I pulled the commo gear out of a bag and handed her a transmitter and an earpiece. 'This is the same kind of equipment we used in Hong Kong,' I said. 'We ought to do a dry run tonight. But with your hair up…'
'I'll hold the earpiece,' she said, fixing the transmitter just below the neckline of the dress. 'When I get alone for a minute, I'll put it in place. We'll make sure it all works.'
I nodded. 'We could wire you up so Dox and I can hear what's going on around you, not just you talking into your dress.'
She shook her head. 'Not in this outfit. I wouldn't be able to hide the battery bulge. And I don't know what this club is like. People might be free with their hands.'
I nodded again. 'Yeah, you're right. Well, as long as we can hear you, we should be okay.'
She looked at her watch, then at Dox and me. She smiled, and I realized that some part of her enjoyed the rush of an op.
'Okay, boys,' she said. 'Time for me to get into character.'
32
Delilah did a surveillance detection route on foot to ensure she was alone, then caught a taxi to Minami Aoyama. She doubted the driver would ever have heard of Whispers, but he understood the words Aoyama-dori and Kotto- dori well enough, and from that main intersection she could walk. She was glad she'd taken the time to reconnoiter earlier that day. It would be good to have a few things that felt familiar. Certainly everything else about this city and these circumstances was disorienting.
She didn't want things to be so tense with Rain, but damn it, she was just so frustrated with him. None of this needed to be happening. He had rushed off to see his child, and then he'd screwed up, just as she had feared in Barcelona. And now she was getting sucked into the aftermath.
Ordinarily, she felt she had a lot of clarity in her life, especially given the shifting, ambiguous world she lived in, but this time her feelings were a mess. She was pissed at Rain for creating the situation that had caused her to do such an ugly thing as visit Midori in New York. And she was simultaneously appalled at what she had done, remorseful for it, and afraid that Rain was going to find out. She wanted to do something to make amends, and was furious with herself for putting herself in a position where she felt
She closed her eyes, exhaled deeply, and told herself to let it go. She could figure it all out later. Right now, she was on her way to a job interview. She reviewed all the particulars of the role she was playing, why she was here, the job she wanted, her hopes and fears. By the time the cab let her off at the corner of Aoyama-dori and Kotto- dori, she had submerged herself and was fully in character.
She walked south down Kotto-dori, cold in the capelet and skimpy dress, past an intriguing mix of restaurants, boutiques, office buildings, and residences. Cars and small trucks and motor scooters navigated up and down the street, their engines whining and revving at discordant pitches and resounding off the walls of buildings to either side. An occasional horn honked, but never aggressively. A few bicyclists maneuvered around her on the sidewalk. A number of older women were out walking squirrel-sized dogs, some of the animals in tiny wool sweaters. The women and their overly precious canines you saw everywhere in Paris. But here, she noted, looking down, the custom was to clean up after the pets.
She liked the city. Tokyo seemed to have little in the way of zoning ordinances, something that would have horrified the overseers of Paris. But the planning that worked there would have suffocated the eclectic charm that she sensed was what made Tokyo tick.
She turned left on one of the narrow, nameless side streets running east off Kotto-dori. Fifty meters ahead, she saw two men standing purposefully and sensed they worked for the club. When she had walked by earlier that day, there had been no one around, and, if she hadn't known at the time what she was looking for, she would have gone right past without even knowing. There was no sign or any other announcement, just a slate path leading away from the street, now flanked by these two.
They watched her as she approached. They were wearing identical dark suits, fully buttoned, and each had the same metrosexually refined eyebrows and carefully coiffed hair. They were way too soft-looking to be security, and she made them as the valets Rain had mentioned. That made sense — the place was more than upscale enough, and there seemed to be no parking nearby. They bowed as she approached and she nodded to them, catching sight of the wired earpiece each was wearing.
She turned onto the path, head swiveling as she walked, as though impressed by the design of the place. And it was impressive: to either side of the path were dark rectangular pools of water and lush ferns, all of it illuminated softly from below. A pair of clean-cut concrete walls rose out of the ground and increased in height as the path got closer to the building, eventually reaching about three meters and creating a sense of privacy that grew as she walked. There was a faint smell of incense, and the sound of water moving over stones. It was as though the club was gradually taking her in from the noisy, public city outside.
The effect increased as the path turned right. Suddenly everything was quiet: nothing but her footfalls and that calming sound of water trickling in the pools. She walked up a short riser of concrete steps and into a large vestibule discreetly lit with wall sconces. A small square of glass was embedded in the wall to the right of a pair of large wooden doors, surrounded by a metal plate.
She looked around again, just an out-of-town girl taking it all in, and noted no other surveillance equipment. She pulled on both doors, then pushed. They were indeed locked. Okay.
She looked at the button next to the camera as though noticing it for the first time, then pressed it. A moment later, she heard the distinct
