I thought for a minute. I had been planning to rent a car myself. If I managed to drop everyone cleanly inside the boat and Dox was in good shape, we could walk leisurely out to the parking lot when it was done. If he wasn’t in good shape, or if there was pursuit, having a car waiting with the engine running could make all the difference.

“All right,” I said. “You drive, and I go in.”

“Deal. How about the rest?”

“Hilger wants to do the call at sixteen hundred local time. That gives me the rest of the morning and early afternoon to pick up the other equipment I need, get a feel for the layout of the yacht club with Google Earth, reconnoiter the perimeter, and go in.”

“You sure he’ll make the call from the boat?”

I paused, seeing a disconnect between us that I’d missed until just now. “Yeah, I’m sure. The purpose of the call is proof of life. He’s got to be able to put Dox on, assuming Dox is even still alive, and there’s no way they’re going to move Dox off the boat. So the boat is where the call happens. But the call isn’t when I want to go in. I want Hilger off the boat, not on it.”

“I don’t get it. How…”

“Hilger is secondary. If I hit the boat early, maybe he won’t be there. It’s one less person shooting back at me, and Hilger is a damn good shot. If I wait until the call, their numbers likely go up, and my odds of getting Dox out go down.”

Not that I hadn’t been tempted to go for the “two birds with one stone” scenario. Certainly, the iceman wanted to do Hilger badly enough to wait until he was sure to be on the boat. But if Dox got killed because of my lust to kill Hilger, I wouldn’t be able to live with it. We could always pick him up later. One thing at a time.

Kanezaki almost said something, didn’t, then almost said it again.

“What?” I said.

“If you’re not going to do Hilger, help me with something else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you in the bulletin board message, this is bigger than just Hilger. The kind of thing I was hoping to prevent by taking him out, I think it’s already under way.”

I said nothing, and he went on. “Hilger used to be military, and after that, the Agency. You know what the difference is now?”

I shook my head.

“There’s no oversight now, and he’s running a for-profit outfit. Translation: He can do anything, for anybody. Look what he was mixed up with in Macau-radiological-tipped missiles with that arms merchant, Belghazi. Then in Hong Kong, nuclear matériel to the terrorist, Al-Jib. Do you see a pattern here?”

“I suppose so, but…”

“So what do you think it means that he’s found a way to put his own agent temporarily in charge of Rotterdam port security?”

“I don’t know.” I might have added that I didn’t care, but there was no advantage in provoking him.

“It means he can bring anything he wants into the port.”

“So…”

“Rotterdam is the largest container port in Europe, and every one of the world’s leading oil and chemical companies is active there. You’ve got four world-class oil refineries and more than forty chemical and petrochemical companies. We’re talking jet fuel, gasoline, everything. It’s a major terrorist target.”

“Because…”

“Because if something shuts down the refineries, the price of refined petrochemical products skyrockets. Driving, flying, heating oil, you name it. Shortages of everything, and the world economy drops to its knees.”

“You think that’s what Hilger’s up to?”

“I think that’s what he’s being paid to do, although I don’t know by whom. But here’s the way I see it. Accinelli’s company sells chemicals, right?”

“I know.”

“Including radioactive materials like cesium 137, which is used in oil drilling, atomic clocks, certain medical applications…and dirty bombs.”

I was quiet, waiting for him to go on.

“Hilger and Accinelli went way back, all the way to the first Gulf War. I think they were friends, as you suggested. I think Accinelli introduced Demeere and Boezeman at that security conference in New York, and I think Accinelli procured cesium, or something like it, for Hilger, maybe under false pretenses. I think the reason Hilger had Accinelli killed was because he knew too much, he’d be able to connect Rotterdam to Hilger if something happened there.”

“That’s a lot of speculation.”

“There’s more. Remember the British Petroleum Prudhoe Bay shutdown? Because the pipes were rusty? That was Hilger.”

“Hilger put rust in the pipes?”

“There was no rust. Hilger has information on everyone, he blackmailed the people who make those decisions at BP. All pipes have some rust, just not enough to matter. But who could contradict the company? It was the perfect excuse. I think Hilger wanted to see the global impact of an interruption. And I think he found it unsatisfactory. He wants something bigger-not just a pipeline, a whole refinery complex. Like the one at Rotterdam.”

I sighed. “Why can’t you deal with him through channels?”

He laughed. “I’ve got a friend in the Inspector General’s Office. I talked to him about Hilger once. He told me the man is untouchable. No one even wants to mention his name. The word is, he’s got leverage on a lot of people, and powerful friends, too. No one’s willing to go after him at the top, and if you try from down below you’ll run into obstructions, or worse. Do you get it now? The system’s broken.”

We were quiet for a moment. I said, “What are you asking me?”

“Boezeman lives in Amsterdam. Go there. Brace him. Find out what Hilger’s been up to and help me stop it.”

“Don’t you have real secret agents who are paid to do this kind of thing?”

“Yeah, we have lots of them. All I have to do is fill out the necessary paperwork explaining where my intel comes from-that means you, by the way. Except…oh, shit…no one knows about you. Since the first time you helped me with my treasonous boss in Tokyo, I haven’t reported our contacts, which is a felony, by the way. I’ve shredded files on you-oops, another felony. But I’m sure the bureaucrats who run the CIA and are beholden to Hilger will be happy to overlook all that and do whatever I ask of them in Amsterdam or anywhere else as long as I say please.”

He was quiet for a moment, breathing hard.

“Look,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t want to help. But we had a deal. You help me with Dox, I take out Hilger.”

“You’re breaking the deal. You’re letting Hilger walk away. I’m saying okay, just help me in Amsterdam, instead.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You killed two people. Both with families. Don’t you even want to try to prevent whatever all that was intended to foster?”

I wasn’t even aware of crossing the room. It was like I was gone for a second, and when I came back, I had him against the wall, my hand gripping his shirt, my forearm jammed against his throat.

“I did that for my friend,” I snarled. “Not to help Hilger, or anyone else. For my friend. Because I didn’t have a choice.”

“Does that mean you don’t care?” he rasped, his mouth a grimace.

I held him there a second longer, then let him go. He coughed and massaged his throat, but he didn’t take his accusing eyes off me.

“Tell me something,” I said. “The difference between you and Hilger.”

He cleared his throat and swallowed. “The ends, Rain. It’s all about the ends.”

I looked at him. “I bet he’d say the same thing.”

“He’d be right.”

We stood there for a moment in silence. Finally, I said, “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

“You sound like Tatsu. And you’re manipulating me the way he did, too, you bastard.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, he would have said that, too.”

I borrowed his shower, changed into fresh clothes, and got ready to head out. “I’ve got some things to do,” I said. “I’ll leave my bag here, if that’s okay. Why don’t you load the gear into your van and reconnoiter the yacht club. Don’t get too close. You don’t need to know the interior layout. That’s my job. You do need to know the streets, ingress, egress, everything.”