But maybe there was a better way. Among the goodies we had brought along for the job was a miniature GPS tracking device. It was a slick unit, with an internal antenna and motion activation to preserve the battery when the car wasn"t running. If we could place it in the vehicle, we could track Manny"s movements remotely.
That day, I hired one of the cars for a trip out to Lake Taal. In a thick j.a.panese accent, I told the driver that I wanted to see the lake and the active volcano that had conceived it. On the fourth finger of my left hand I wore a gold wedding band, purchased for cash from a Manila street vendor. I gave the driver plenty of opportunities to see it.
The journey, my first beyond Metro Manila since arriving in the city, was strangely beautiful. We drove first past the area"s slums, shanty cities clinging precariously to the undersides of highways and train tracks, their rusted corrugated walls provisional, yet also, somehow, timeless; their inhabitants sitting, sometimes squatting, before their wretched domiciles and among chickens and foraging dogs, watching uncomplaining as the Mercedes crawled past them in the thickening morning traffic. Beyond EDSA, the highway that encircles Manila like a traffic-choked noose, the city gave way to rice fields and green hills in the distance, and I had the odd and not unpleasant sense that I was being driven back into Vietnam. We picked up speed. Goats and gaunt cows observed our pa.s.sage without evident interest. We pa.s.sed a thin boy riding a water buffalo alongside the highway. He ignored our pa.s.sage, but I noticed that he was smiling dreamily to himself as he swayed atop the animal, and I wondered for a moment what random thoughts might have provoked such gentle rapture. The lake itself, utterly placid, surrounded the cone of an active volcano that seemed to be merely sleeping, perhaps soon to stir. Because of the earliness of the hour no tourists had yet alighted, and I was gratified to have a moment to contemplate the water, the sky, the buzz of insects, and the calls of tropical birds before heading back to the density of Manila and the weight of the operation.
Back at the hotel, Dox and I took turns monitoring the feed from in front of the elevators for a sign of Manny"s return. It was boring work, as surveillance inevitably is. This time we were lucky: he showed up at a little after two in the afternoon, having kept us waiting only a few hours. As soon as we saw him and the bodyguard moving past the camera, I walked out to the carport.
In a heavy j.a.panese accent and broken English, I explained to the bell captain what had happened. One of the cars had taken me out to Lake Taal, I said, and somehow I had misplaced my wedding ring during the trip. The man seemed genuinely sympathetic: he must have understood how it would look to my wife when I tried to explain that I had lost my wedding ring in Manila, a city notorious for its pleasure quarters. He examined some paperwork, then gestured to one of the cars. "There, Mr. Yamada, the one on the far left, that"s the one you were in. Please, have a look."
I thanked him and made a show of feeling around in the gaps in the seats and looking under the floor mats. Strangely enough, my ring was nowhere to be found.
"Not there," I said, shaking my head in apparent agitation. "You are certain . . . that is correct car? All look same."
"Quite certain, sir."
I rubbed a hand across my mouth. "Okay if I check others? Please?"
He nodded and offered the sympathetic smile again. "Certainly, sir," he said.
I made sure to search license plate MPH 777 next, going through the back in the same thorough fashion I had used a moment earlier. But this time, I left behind the GPS unit, adhered to the underside of the driver-side seat. The driver was chatting with another of the hotel staff by the front door and seemed neither to notice nor to care about my brief intrusion.
My search of the third and fourth cars was similarly fruitless. I thanked the bell captain sheepishly and asked him to please call me right away if anyone found a gold wedding band. He a.s.sured me that of course he would.
If an opportunity presented itself when we were done with the op, I would retrieve the unit. If I didn"t, eventually someone would find it. But so what? The driver would be reluctant to report it lest he somehow cause trouble for himself. If he did report it, his supervisor would suffer from the same inhibitions. Even if the incident reached management, the hotel could be counted on to take the high road of not advertising that someone had been surrept.i.tiously tracking a guest through the hotel"s own fleet. And thus do greed and shame become progenitors of complicity.
Over the next few days, we used the GPS to track Manny"s movements. He seemed to travel widely within Metro Manila, but there was one commonality: a suburb called Greenhills. He would typically arrive there in the early evening, and, although he would sometimes go out again an hour or two later, he would always return for the night.
"Why do you suppose he"s going out to the suburbs every day and not even staying in the hotel?" Dox asked as we charted his movements.
I paused and thought about that for a moment. "I"m not sure. It could have to do with security, with the multiple locations creating a sh.e.l.l game dynamic. But two sh.e.l.ls isn"t much. And his timing is more regular than I would be comfortable with."
"I reckon he"s got a woman out there."
"He could get a woman a lot easier in Makati, near the hotel."
"Maybe this one is love."
I shrugged. "Only one way to find out."
Upon arriving in Manila three weeks earlier, I had rented an un.o.btrusive gray Honda Civic, which I had garaged at the Peninsula. In my mind, I was an advance man for a j.a.panese boss, scouting locations for his arrival in the city. The cover was simple, provided for a wide range of behavior, and would be difficult to disprove. The yakuza maintains a sizable presence in the Philippines, a country that supplies many of j.a.pan"s female "entertainers," and my story, including a reticence about details, would be adequate to survive any foreseeable inquiries.
I drove out to Greenhills late in the afternoon, before Manny"s usual arrival time. With the GPS information, we knew to within a meter where the car was stopping. It was always in front of 11 Eisenhower Boulevard, which turned out to be a brick-and-gla.s.s high-rise condominium that looked like new money. I sat and waited in the window of a Jollibee, the local McDonald"s equivalent, in a shopping mall across the street. I had noted that, with the sun overhead and continuing to move westward, the store gla.s.s was mirroring a lot of light, making it difficult to see inside from the street.
I"d spent time in Manila while with the army in Vietnam, but of course that had been long ago, and the city had changed. Enclaves like what was now called Greenhills had once been rice paddies. The city was denser now: more people, more cars, more frenzy. There was a new air of commercialism, too, with mega-malls visible from auto-choked highways and billboards advertising teeth-whitening toothpastes and modern high-rises emphasizing by contrast the eternal shantytowns and slums around them. For the three weeks before Manny arrived, I had taken in these changes while indulging myself with a Manila-and-environs refresher course. The itinerary varied, but there was certainly a theme. I might have been researching a unique guidebook, something like Trouble in Paradise: Ambush, Escape, and Evasion for the Independent Operator in Metro Manila. The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat, an army instructor once told me, and I"ve never forgotten the lesson. If I ever die during an op, it won"t be because I was too lazy to prepare properly.
Manny showed up at dinnertime. I saw the black S-cla.s.s round the corner on Eisenhower and pull up in front of the condo. The bodyguard got out first. He spent a moment scanning the street for trouble, but failed to spot it eating a cheeseburger behind the reflective plate gla.s.s of the Jollibee. When he was satisfied, he opened Manny"s door, his eyes still periodically roaming the street. Manny got out and the two of them walked inside. Two uniformed guards in front of the building nodded to Manny as he went past, and I realized he was well known to them. Getting to him inside, while offering certain advantages, would obviously pose a challenge. We would have to keep watching for a better opportunity.
I left the Jollibee and entered the shopping mall. I called Dox from a prepaid cell phone I had bought with cash. Dox was also using a prepaid. He had his own GSM unit, but I"d told him to keep it switched off while we were operational. There are ways of tracking a cell phone, and I didn"t know who might have had Dox"s number.
"He"s here," I told him. "The condominium in Greenhills."
"I know. I"m watching the little arrow moving around the computer. I saw the car pull up ten minutes ago. Anything interesting?"
"There"s a lot of security at the building. We"re going to need to watch him some more."
"Roger that."
"What"s the earliest he"s left the building so far?"
"Hang on a minute." I heard the sound of the keyboard. "Oh-seven-hundred. Seems like he"s typically on his way by oh-eight-hundred."
"All right. I"m leaving. I"ll come back in the morning. I"ve seen him arrive. Maybe I"ll learn something watching him go out."
I returned at just before seven the next morning. It was Sunday. I ate at the Jollibee again. The morning crew was new. Even if they"d been the same as the previous afternoon, I doubted that they would have noticed me. When I want to, I have a way of just being part of the scenery.
Manny came out forty-five minutes later. He was with a pretty Filipina and a boy of about seven or eight who looked to be of mixed heritage. Manny was wearing dark trousers and a cream-colored silk shirt; the woman, dark-skinned, pet.i.te, showed a nice figure in a yellow floral dress. The little boy was wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants. He was holding Manny"s hand, and in the instant my mind put all the pieces together in some sort of preconscious shorthand, I realized, He"s just happy to be with his daddy, and was surprised at the acuteness of the pang that accompanied the thought.
They got into the back of the Benz and I watched as it pulled away from the curb. My cell phone rang. It was Dox.
"He"s moving," he said.
"I know. I"m watching."
"What do you see?"
I paused, then said, "He"s not staying at the hotel because he"s got a family here in Greenhills. A woman and a son."
"How do you know?"
"I just saw them all together. From the way they"re dressed on a Sunday morning, I"d say they"re on their way to church. And it makes sense. The file says Manny has a family back in Johannesburg. My guess is that somewhere along the line, say seven, eight years ago from the apparent age of the boy, Manny knocked up a Filipina. That"s why he"s been coming out here so regularly and for so long. It"s not business, or at least it"s not just business. He keeps a room at the hotel so his Johannesburg wife doesn"t get wise, and he goes back there once or twice a day. Think about the times he shows up at the hotel-morning and afternoon in South Africa. Probably calls home from the room so she can see the caller ID readout."
"I thought old Manny was of the Israeli persuasion. When I was growing up, I didn"t go to church too often, but I don"t remember seeing a whole lot of Jews there at the time."
I thought for a moment, then said, "If I"m right about where they"re going, he"s probably doing it as an accommodation to the woman. Filipinas can be pretty serious about their Catholicism."
"All right, I"ll buy that. Any angle on how we reach out and touch him?"
"We"ve got a pretty good idea of where he"s actually staying. That"s a start. Keep me posted on where the car is heading, and I"ll follow them from a distance until they stop. Maybe I"ll learn more."
"Roger that."
As it turned out, they weren"t going far: a nearby gated community called East Greenhills. I had to show a guard my ID, which was fake in any event, but he let me in when I told him, following my hunch, that I was there to attend morning Ma.s.s. He could have tested me on the liturgy if he"d wanted. My American mother, who was Catholic, had taken me to church regularly enough for the experience to have made an impression.
The approach to the church was clogged with cars, and I had to park some distance away and walk. That was fine. I preferred to keep the car out of view, so as not to give the bodyguard too many opportunities for multiple sightings.
Inside it was crowded, nearly full. I recognized the subject of the sermon, which was being delivered in English-spoken almost universally, along with indigenous Tagalog, throughout Manila. The priest was discussing the prayer of St. Francis of a.s.sisi, who opined, among other things, that it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
My own experience has led me to contrary conclusions, but I didn"t see the point of arguing.
The priest"s voice echoed from the front of the long room, competing with a series of wall-mounted ceiling fans that swayed forward and back as though alternately entranced by and then distracted from the cadences of his speech. The room was open on three sides to the outside, and the air was heavy with tropical moisture.
I sat in back on one of the varnished wooden pews, feeling the weight of the edifice settle in around me. It had been a long time, a lifetime, since I"d been in a church, and that was fine with me.
I could see Manny and his family, to the left and six rows forward. The boy sat between Manny and the woman. I sensed I"d been right in suggesting to Dox that periodic church attendance was an accommodation Manny made to the desires of the woman. Probably he didn"t really give a s.h.i.t on a religious level. Or maybe the whole thing was uncomfortable for him. Either way, that he was willing to partic.i.p.ate was further evidence that he cared a lot about the woman, and, I a.s.sumed, about the boy, too.
I watched from where I sat, wondering what the boy made of the ritual to which he was being subjected. I didn"t know if his father"s partic.i.p.ation would make things better for him, or worse. My own visits to church had always been exclusively with my mother, over the silent protests of my j.a.panese father, who objected to such silliness, and, I realized later, to the Western infection it would impart.
Yes, I thought. Four-hundred-plus years ago, the Spanish infect the natives. And now the infection perpetuates, persists. The woman pa.s.ses it on to the boy.
My own father was killed when I was eight, in a Tokyo street riot. Since then there have been a number of what I suppose might be called "defining moments," but that first death was the original. I can still feel the terrible fear and shock as my mother broke the news to me, trying and then failing to hold back her own tears. If I choose to, and I usually don"t, I can vividly recall the years of strange dreams after, in which he would be back with us and alive but always insubstantial or mute or dying or in some other way less than whole. It had taken me a long time to recover from all that.
I realized that seeing Manny with his family was stirring up this s.h.i.t. And being in a church, that wasn"t exactly a plus, either.
I thought of the photos Boaz and Gil had shown me. If Manny were to die in an accident today, there was no question that many innocent lives would be saved. How could it be a sin, then, to facilitate his demise? On the contrary, wouldn"t the sin lie in forbearance? Wouldn"t such forbearance, in fact, be a form of complicity in those later deaths?
But I also knew that Manny"s death would leave this boy bereft, crucify him in grief and loneliness. I knew that very well.
All at once I hated being faced with this dilemma. I resented all the forces, past and present, that had conspired to impose it on me. I wanted to be one of the ignorant, the undeserving recipients of the fruits of awful choices like this one, who could sleep secure in their beds and dream innocent dreams and enjoy the profits of the sacrifice I was about to impose on this child, and the sacrifice I would make in the process, without b.l.o.o.d.ying their own hands in the process. They didn"t deserve the benefits any more than this boy deserved the burden, and G.o.dd.a.m.n if I was going be the one to present them with such a b.l.o.o.d.y gift.
And then I thought, Maybe this is the sacrifice that"s required of you. This is the sacrifice that you owe. All those lives you"ve taken . . . do lives saved count against them?
I shook my head, confused. I"ve been at this for more years than I care to acknowledge, and I"d never been troubled this way before. At least not in the middle of the proceedings. Sometimes you learn something afterward, or see something when it"s too late to turn back . . . it bothers you later. But not like this.
It"s the boy, I told myself. You never want to see that the target has a family. And the boy is reminding you of yourself. Perfectly normal reaction. It"ll pa.s.s, like it always does. Focus on the job, on doing the job. That"s all you can trust, that"s the thing that gets you through.
I took a deep breath and let it out. Right. The job.
Ma.s.s lasted another forty minutes. When it was over, I drifted behind Manny and his family, staying well back in the crowd. As we exited the church, the boy clambered onto Manny for a piggyback ride. I could hear his delighted laughter carrying across the tropical air. I watched the three of them load into the Mercedes, then walked back to my car.
I called Dox. "They were at church. My guess is that they"re on their way to a meal now. Let me know where they"re heading and I"ll stay with them. This might be our chance, too, so be ready to move."
"Already am."
With Dox apprising me of the direction they were taking, I was able to follow them without maintaining a visual. It turned out I was right about the meal. They stopped in the Ayala Center, a sparkling mega-mall almost across the street from the Peninsula. I got to the mall only a minute behind them, and took my best guess, based on where they had parked, on where they had gone inside. From there, it was mostly a matter of checking restaurants. It took me only a few minutes to find them, in the main food court on the third floor. They were sitting in front of a place called World Chicken, already working on a meal. The bodyguard was standing off to the side. I picked him up in my peripheral vision, but gave no sign that I was aware of him. I felt confident he hadn"t noticed me. The area was crowded with shoppers and diners and I had plenty of cover.
I called Dox. "I"m on him again. They"re at the Ayala Center, right across the street from you. Walk over and you"ll be here in less than ten minutes."
"I"m on my way."
"Switch to the commo gear when you get here."
"Roger that."
I bought a coffee from one of the vendors and sat down on the other side of the food court. After a few minutes, I heard Dox.
"I"m here," he said. "First-floor atrium. Where are you?"
"A place called Glorietta Food Choices, third-floor Glorietta. One floor under one of the cineplexes, right next to a video game arcade. I"m sitting near the windows, farthest from the escalators. Our friend is getting lunch ten feet in front of the escalator. Guard is staying with them. Come up and move to your left right away and he won"t see you. Then stay at the periphery until you ID the players. I don"t want him to recognize you from the hotel."
"Roger that."
A minute later, I saw Dox enter. He circled wide as I had suggested, keeping the crowd between himself and the princ.i.p.als. I saw his eyes move past me without stopping.
I realized that Manny hadn"t taken a restroom break since church. I was thinking that at some point, maybe after lunch, he was going to heed a call of nature. The bodyguard would be watching for anyone moving in after him. But it wouldn"t occur to him that some antisocial someone might be in there already.
I felt a small wave of adrenaline coming ash.o.r.e.
"Hey," I said.
"Yeah."
"There"s a men"s room on this floor. I"m going to wait inside it. I have a feeling our friend is going to go after he finishes his lunch. With luck, he"ll come alone."
"I"ll watch your back, partner."
"Good."
Restrooms are nice because they"re one of the last urban places where you can"t find a security camera. I would wait inside, come up behind him, break his neck, and be out the door before he hit the floor. There were no cameras in the vicinity of the restroom, so my entrance and exit would go unrecorded. No one would check on Manny for at least two minutes, and probably more like five, giving Dox and me plenty of time to slip away unnoticed. Not quite the level of naturalness that the Israelis were hoping for, or that I would have liked to be paid for, but I thought it would do. The police can be as lazy as anyone else, and for anyone disinclined to fill out a lot of paperwork, a broken neck would be easier to file under "slip and fall" or "accident" than would a bullet hole in the forehead. The main thing was that no one would be able to attribute it to my client.
I imagined Manny"s family, waiting for him to return. Two minutes becomes three, three becomes four. Someone makes a joke about how Daddy must have fallen in. The woman goes to the door and calls for him. There"s no answer. She feels confused, possibly a little concerned. She pokes her head inside and sees Manny on the floor, his head at an impossible angle. She screams. The boy comes running. He stops at his mother"s leg and looks through the door she"s holding open. The image carves itself into his brain and never, ever leaves him.
I heard Dox"s voice in the earpiece: "You all right, partner?"
I looked around the food court. "Yeah, fine. Why?"
"You looked a little spooked there, for a while. Thought maybe you saw something I didn"t."
"I"m all right."
"Well, you"ve got company, coming up from behind you. I was afraid you hadn"t noticed."
"What kind of company?"
"The kind that"s wearing a big bulge under the back of a suit jacket."
"Bodyguard?"
"That"s right."
I wondered how he had managed to get a gun inside. He must have been licensed. Manny had been coming to Manila for a long time and was probably well connected.
"Tell me if I need to turn, let him know I see him coming."
"I think you"re okay. His hands are empty. But he"s definitely coming to check you out."
I knew what had likely drawn the man"s attention. It wasn"t something I did. It was something I am.
No one can completely obscure the signs of a profound acquaintance with violence. The obvious ones are the hard cases. These are men who"ve lived through the s.h.i.t and have no ability, and certainly no inclination, to hide the predacious air such survival conveys. This type, which includes g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers, ex-cons, and a certain breed of former soldier, gives off the strongest, most distinctive vibe, and is the easiest to detect.