Chapter 5

5

The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Singapore

Now

A flight attendant who is clearly smiling through exhaustion offers me two blank customs forms. I pass one to Astrid and click the overhead light, casting a yellow glow in the darkened cabin. Astrid places the form down on her seat tray and taps the red-lettered, bolded words: warning: death for drug traffickers under singapore law.

“Should we be worried?” she asks.

“We’re speaking again?”

“I’m serious,” she says, casting her eyes downward at the carrier under the seats, where P. Kitty has barely moved for the duration of the nineteen-hour flight.

Fun fact: pets can’t overdose on CBD. Though I did take the time to dump the treats out of the branded bag and into a Tupperware container, so as not to jam us up with TSA. I didn’t know what the rules were and didn’t care to look them up.

“I think we’ll be okay,” I tell Astrid, shifting around in the seat, trying to get my blood circulating. My body is stiff and sore, but at least the volume of the discomfort is turned down. In the concert hall of pain, I’ve moved from next to the speakers to the back of the venue.

Her tone isn’t exactly warm, but it’s the most we’ve spoken since we got our passports, and I consider that progress. The cab ride to the airport, then the two hours we spent waiting for the flight—mostly she just stared off into space. Since she wasn’t feeling chatty, I popped a handful of Vicodin before the flight took off. I made it through most of the trip asleep or in a haze.

I pass a few more treats through P. Kitty’s cage, and he doesn’t swipe at me, so he must be in some twilight space, too. Good for him.

“I didn’t think you were real,” Astrid says, digging a pen out of her purse.

“What do you mean?”

“I patch up bad people,” she says, filling out the form, careful to match everything to the information on her new passport, looking back and forth between the two. “People tell stories. Sometimes people tell stories about the Pale Horse. Like he was some kind of supernatural creature.”

Can’t help but feel a little rush at hearing that.

She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “You look like the kind of guy who takes off his wedding ring at the bar before he hits on me, and when he flames out, drives his minivan back to his family on Long Island. You don’t look like an assassin. Jason Statham looks like an assassin.”

“First off, thanks for all of that,” I tell her. “Second, Jason Statham is a movie star who happens to play a lot of assassins. He looks like he chews glass for breakfast. He walks in a room and you know someone’s about to get hurt. I don’t. That’s kind of the point.” I give her a little smile, afraid of how it might look, but it’s the best I have to offer. “Anyway, stories are stories. They grow in the telling. I’m just a guy who was good at his job.”

“Was,” she says. “What did you do, quit?”

Part of me wants to tell her everything. The program, a year sober, all of it. But as much as I trust her, which is a fair bit more than most people, I can’t really trust her. Not with this. I think back to the fight with the Russian. If I were at full capacity, he’d be dead and I wouldn’t be here. Instead I’m fighting with a hand tied behind my back. Invoking the name of the Pale Horse might keep me safe for a little while longer. It’s not exactly living in my truth, but my reputation is the best shield I have.

“I’ve been focusing on my golf swing,” I tell her.

She finishes the form and passes me the pen. I fill out mine, almost putting down Mark under name . I manage to fix it without making it look like I tried to. “What did you do while I was sleeping?”

“Watched a lot of movies,” she says. “Ordered dinner for both of us, then ate both of them.”

“Watch anything good?”

“Rewatched When Harry Met Sally . Love that movie so much.”

“That’s a top five all-timer, easy.”

She squints at me. “Would have figured you as more of an action movie guy.”

“I prefer classics, rom-coms,” I tell her. “My life has enough action.”

She rolls her eyes a little at that—totally fair—but then her expression goes flat. She leans toward me and lowers her voice. “So do you have, like, a code?”

“A code?”

“A code. Hit men always have codes.”

More movie bullshit, but that said, I guess we all do have a set of morals that act as our North Star. “I don’t think I’d kill anyone under eighteen, but also never had to test that. You just…you have to be in the game and the math has to work out. Balance the scales in some way. Sacrifice one life to save others.”

“Have you ever killed a woman?”

“A few.”

I let that hang in the air. After it settles she says, “I need to ask you a question. And I need you to be completely honest with me.”

I put the pen down on top of the half-finished form and turn my body toward her. Showing my belly. A little vulnerability.

“I’ve seen your face,” she says. “I know who you are. Do I make it to the end of this?”

Ah. That’s why she wants to know about codes. She’s had time to think and she’s wondering, when we get off the plane and closer to customs, when we’re surrounded by security, if she should run screaming for help.

“I promised you I would protect you, and I will.” She seems a little unsure. “If anything, as someone who saves lives, the math is in your favor.”

“But I’ve saved some pretty bad people.”

“Then you’re Switzerland. I have no interest in going to war with Switzerland.”

It’s truth by default. A year and a few days ago I would have considered the possibility. Remainders complicate equations. I hate myself for thinking that. Old programming. But the way her body relaxes, she seems to accept it as sincere.

She stares at the screen on the seat back in front of her, playing an advertisement for the airline. “So what’s the plan?”

“Once we land, I should have instructions on where to meet my old handler, which I will ignore, and then I’ll go find him,” I tell her. “We post you and the kitty up at a hotel. I’ll hit an ATM and get some cash. I’ll see what I can figure out. Then I come back to you and we decide on the next right action.”

I’ve got one more errand to run, but I don’t want to tell her about that one. I’m still trying to convince myself that now isn’t the right time. But I’m flying across the world—when else might I get the chance?

“Dump me in a hotel,” she says. “Like a glass figurine you don’t want to break.”

“Astrid, the people I’m dealing with are serious.”

“Here’s the thing about the people you deal with,” she says. “They all end up coming to me to fix them, because at the end of the day they’re just scared little boys who want their mommy.”

“The hotel is safer.”

She sits back and folds her arms. “The hotel better have a nice spa.”

“I’m gonna hit the head.”

She digs in her purse and passes me a small zipped case. “Clean it up, apply a fresh bandage. Simple enough, right? You don’t need help?”

I wave the case at her. “Thanks.”

As I move toward the front of the cabin my body cracks back to life. I pick an empty bathroom, which is spacious enough to move around in. One of the few perks of international flights. I splash some water on my face, try to wash away the fuzziness. I take a piss and wash my hands and pull my shirt up.

The stitches have held. It still looks pretty gnarly, but no redness or bruising. I give it a poke around the edges. Hurts, but normal parameters of pain. I open the case and clean the wound and put a fresh bandage over it, and when I’m done and everything is put away I turn to the mirror and stare at myself.

I’m still not sure if bringing Astrid along was the right call. Maybe I should have gotten my hands on some cash and sent her off to points unknown before I left for the airport. Now she wants to help? I don’t begrudge her the impulse, but the last thing I want to do is put her in the line of fire.

I scratch at the two days’ growth of stubble on my face and wonder what it’ll be like to see Ravi again. I never had much of a family. The Agency became something adjacent to that. Ravi being the dad who sometimes sent you to knock down a hornet’s nest with a stick while he drank beers in the living room.

By the end of my reign, just invoking the name Pale Horse was enough to make people drop their weapons and run. I walked on water. I was a god. Hell followed with me. Now the one thing I was good at, the one thing I was better at than nearly anyone, is something I can’t do anymore.

What if this is his game plan? Flush me out, drop the hammer.

The Agency could be behind this. There’s a reason their employment plan doesn’t come with a 401(k). You die, or you survive long enough to run and hide. Could be there’s something buried in my head that the Agency needs, or doesn’t want someone else to know.

But I still can’t shake the feeling that this is personal. The Russian took the notebook. The list of everyone I need to make amends to. He took it like he was looking for it.

I’ve got a lot of questions right now, and not a lot of answers, but that doesn’t bother me. The thing that bothers me—that downright scares me—is whether Ravi is going to see it in my eyes when we sit across from each other. That I’m no longer willing to kill. That I can no longer protect myself.

I’ve got to sit down with the lions and hope they’re not hungry.

Which is the problem with guys like Ravi.

They’re always hungry.

I need something to give an edge. Just a little bit of assurance. The idea comes to me quick, because it’s a bit cliché, but sometimes the clichés are that for a reason—they work. I exit the bathroom and head back toward my seat, get close to Astrid, and tell her, “Maybe there is a way you can help.”

She smiles and says, “I’m listening.”

—

I had hoped that, since it’s winter, it wouldn’t be as hot as the last time I was here. But no, as soon as we stepped outside the airport, the humidity hugged me like that weird uncle you try to avoid: way too tight and in all the wrong places.

It’s a little cooler inside the Maxwell Food Centre, free from the sun’s judgmental gaze, with an army of ceiling fans pushing the air around, swaying the garland and tinsel strung from the rafters that thinly acknowledge the holiday.

It’s near lunchtime, so the place is packed with people lined up at the various food stalls. The sound of pots banging and woks scraping, along with the smell of sizzling meat. Not many white faces, so again, I stand out.

Singapore used to be like Thailand—street food anywhere it could fit. In order to make conditions more sanitary and the streets safer for traffic, vendors were moved into food halls like this. Each stall serves only a handful of dishes. Each one has a specialty, whether by dish or region. A plate of something delicious costs a couple of sing, which translates to only a few bucks American. I remember the chicken rice at Tian Tian being pretty transcendent. My rule in these places is to find the longest line and get on the end, then just order whatever dish most people are walking away with. Hasn’t done me wrong yet.

But I’m not here to eat.

I weave around tables with orange and green plastic tops, each one surrounded by six low-slung yellow stools bolted into the ground. Some of the stools have packages of tissues on them, the local sign of “I’m waiting on a line; this seat is taken.” Some people leave behind purses or phones. Another testament to the country’s low level of crime.

Ravi is sitting toward the back of the center where it’s a little more quiet, a table to himself. White polo, shorts, sandals. I walk past a stall that has its cutlery laid out in the front and manage to swipe a fork and a knife without anyone noticing. Then I stand across from him until he notices me.

Before him is a geometric assortment of plastic cafeteria trays—red and orange and green, all laid out at precise right angles, the gaps between them uniform. Each tray has a different plate on it. I recognize the char kway teow, a stir-fried dish of wide rice noodles and Chinese sausage and prawns and blood cockles. Then there’s the chicken rice from Tian Tian—a plate of boiled chicken covered in a brown sauce, next to another plate with a dome of rice, along with three dipping sauces. Then a whole bunch of other stuff I can’t identify.

Ravi looks older, almost fully gray now. I can’t decide if I want to hug him or punch him. I don’t know which would hurt more.

Finally he looks up at me, his face twisting from surprise to fear to equanimity.

I sit on the stool across from him and stab my fork into a piece of chicken and pop it in my mouth. It’s room temperature, but soft and tender and juicy. How in the world they make lukewarm boiled chicken taste this good is beyond me.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“Déjà vu.”

I take a forkful of rice. He stabs his fork into a stir-fry I don’t know the name for and puts it in his mouth. The two of us chew as we watch each other, slowly, like there might be sharp things hidden in the food.

“If you’re waiting for your bodyguards, they’re both indisposed,” I tell him.

“Are they alive?” he asks.

“One is in a stall in the bathroom on the south wall. The other is in a storage closet on the east wall. I’m not here to burn bridges.”

He nods. “We weren’t supposed to meet until tonight.”

“And give you a chance to prepare?”

He smiles. The two of us falling into old patterns. Me trying to impress him, him being impressed but trying to hide it. He doesn’t ask how I found him. He doesn’t want to insult me like that. The truth is, I know he likes to eat and I know this food hall is his favorite. It was a sensible but lucky guess.

Still, just being here, sharing space with him, the psychic static of what we used to do together brings back the old programming. The food trays, his water glass, they’re all plastic. But the cutlery is metal. Not strong metal, but sturdy enough to pierce an eye or ram through a neck. There are thirty-seven people within a fifty-foot radius of me. Twenty men and seventeen women. Exits in every direction, but I’d choose the left, because the crowd is thickest and there’s a massive metal contraption along the path, laden with finished trays of food that could be tipped over to block the way behind me. Plus a mop in a bucket against the wall, which could be snapped off into a makeshift weapon.

Electricity crackles in my fingertips. For the first time in a long time, I feel like me. The me who dealt in life and death like they were playing cards. I take a bite of char kway teow and a sausage explodes in my mouth.

He puts down his fork and folds his hands in front of him. “We assumed you were dead. That’s how these stories end. Most assets either get killed or they run. I didn’t peg you as a runner.”

“I need a favor,” I tell him.

He smiles at this, his eyes going wide.

The audacity of this ask.

“We did have something planned for you at the meeting later,” he says.

“Was it cupcakes? Please say it was cupcakes.”

“It was not.”

“Too bad. So listen, I was attacked by a Russian. Tall, Mohawk.” I hold up my forearm. “Five dots, like a die.”

Ravi opens his mouth like he wants to say something, then stops and resets. “There’s always a Russian, isn’t there?”

“Do you know him?”

“That’s not much to go on. The tattoo is popular among Russian criminals. It’s supposed to mean they’ve spent time inside. The dot in the middle is him and the four dots surrounding it are guard towers.” He pauses, his eyes drifting around the crowd. Whether he’s looking for a person or the right words, I don’t know. Then he says: “Frankly, I’m surprised whatever went down between you two ended with him still on this side of the dirt.”

I consider my box breathing, but even that feels too vulnerable.

“I skipped breakfast that morning,” I tell him. “I’m still good enough to subdue two men in a crowded place without being noticed. Still good enough to find you in a country of five million people two hours after stepping off a plane. Has there been any chatter about anything related to me? Any reason someone might come for me?”

He sits backs, picks up his fork, and resumes eating. “Not that I’ve heard. Now, I’m sure as you can imagine, I told the Director that we made contact—”

“Snitch.”

He arches an eyebrow. I put my hand up for him to keep going. Ravi says, “He was surprised. That surprise gave way quickly to anger. This isn’t a job you just disappear from. He wanted me to mobilize Azrael.”

Ravi does love his biblical references. Although I never met Azrael, his reputation looms like a storm cloud. The Agency’s second-best hitter, and I’m sure once I was gone he stepped in to fill the void.

“Sending a squad of goons after me is one thing,” I tell him. “You want to send another pro? That’s like stopping a hurricane with an atom bomb.”

“I don’t want to start a war,” Ravi says. “The Director has calmed down a bit. He’s willing to make you an offer.”

“What’s that?”

“Come in from the cold, full debrief on the past year. The Director will want to extract some kind of price, to prove you’re still loyal. Knowing him, the pound of flesh could literally be a pound of flesh. But I’ll sweeten the pot. We’ll help you find and eliminate the Russian. Then you’re back to work the next day. You’re going to be on a short leash for a while.”

I consider it.

It’s not great that I consider it.

It would be so easy, like slipping on an old pair of shoes. It would mean safety and security, not just for me, but for Astrid, and P. Kitty, and my home group.

If this is even a real offer. This could be something to get me through the door so they can swing the ax. I grip the blunt butter knife a little tighter. That god-energy coursing through me.

Maybe this is who I am, and who I am can’t change.

Then I think about what Kenji would say: Let go and let god.

I loosen my grip on the knife and put it on the table.

“You ever heard of Kurt G?del?” I ask.

“He was a German mathematician,” Ravi says.

“Correct,” I tell him, picking up my fork and taking a bite of an egg dish. “He developed something called the incompleteness theorem. Math is supposed to be an absolute system of truth, because one plus one always equals two, right? I won’t get into it now because I probably won’t explain it right, but the incompleteness theorem states that any set of rules you could provide as a foundation of math will inevitably be incomplete. There will always be true facts about numbers that can’t be proven by these rules.”

“What is this supposed to mean?”

“Math is an imperfect system.” I toss down my fork and stand up from the table. “See you around, Ravi.”

“Why’d you quit, Mark? Was it a woman? Just like there’s always a Russian, there’s always a woman.”

“I took some time off.”

He’s smiling now. That smile snatches the breath out of my chest. “I knew there was something different about you.”

He sees it. I wonder what gave it away. Doesn’t matter. I reach up and scratch behind my ear. The sign Astrid and I agreed upon. A few seconds later a red glowing dot appears on his chest.

“You got something on your shirt there, bud,” I tell him.

He looks down and laughs. “I’ve seen this movie. Like you didn’t pass someone a few bucks and a laser pointer as, what, an intimidation tactic? Please.” He makes a show of brushing at the red dot with the back of his hand, like he’s wiping away a mote of dust.

I put my hands on the table and lean down close enough that he can smell what I just ate.

Channel that most savage part of me.

“You want to bet on that?” the Pale Horse asks.

His eyes go just the slightest bit wider. Spine gets a tiny bit straighter. Whatever he suspected a few moments ago has dissipated. He remembers what I’m capable of. He knows I could have a bullet pumped into his heart and be well away before anyone shows up to stop me or save him.

I turn and disappear into the crowd before he has a chance to overthink it.

Astrid peeks around a food stall, the laser pointer already in her pocket. I grab her hand and we make our way toward the blaring sunlight outside the food hall.

“That was fun,” she says, an edge of excitement to her voice.

There’s something about the reaction that doesn’t sit well with me, but I don’t want to waste time unpacking it.

—

Pink and blue neon signs light up the Geylang neighborhood. It’s just north of the central business district, but it could be an entirely different country. Gone are the skyscrapers and tourists, replaced by shophouses and sex workers. There are a lot of eyes on me. I’m the only white face I’ve seen since I got off the train, still standing out like a cat in a dog park.

I cut away from the crowds on Geylang Road, onto the lorongs—the side streets where the hustle recedes a bit. There’s the occasional brothel, where women sit on folding chairs or stand by the sidewalk in small clusters, wearing sheer, skimpy outfits, smoking cigarettes. When I catch their eye they give me a subtle wave, but when I keep walking they don’t call after me.

Singapore is in a strange sort of gray zone with sex work. Prostitution isn’t illegal, but public solicitation and running a brothel is. Mostly the authorities tolerate it. Plus in this neighborhood you can walk past a handful of brothels, turn a corner, and find a row of small Buddhist temples. So you have to navigate the area with caution, and in the face of silent spiritual judgment.

But if you want to find the little crime that exists in Singapore, this is where you do it. It’s tucked into the shadows, but I know where to look. Astrid protested, a little high on the success of her assignment with Ravi, but this thing I have to do on my own.

It’s insane that I’m even still here. The Agency will have mobilized a small army. But they’ll dump their resources into the airport, train stations, and bus terminals. They expect me to run, not wander. That buys me a little time.

Unless they’ve accessed the local surveillance network, which I’m sure they most likely have. Even here, there are bulbous CCTV cameras everywhere, hanging from streetlights and nestled into corners. I know to duck my head away from them so they can’t get a full scan of my face, but there are too many to account for.

Working for the Agency comes with perks. Fingerprints, facial recognition, family and employment history—all of that is wiped from existence. If someone goes looking for it, they might see a faint shimmer, but that’s it. That’s been great up to now, but the Agency flipped off the switch, which means they can turn it back on. They may have started when I first messaged Ravi, but no one was waiting for me at the airport, so that’s a good sign.

Ravi.

His offer to come in from the cold is tickling my ear.

That’s why what I’m doing right now is necessary. Take a step forward, get a little further from the fork in the road I came upon a year ago. Lucky for me, even though the Russian took my notebook, the information it held is still etched across the inside of my chest.

It suddenly sinks in, how alone I am right now. How I could very well be strolling down a quiet street to a death sentence. I pull out my phone and dial Kenji. He picks up on the first ring.

“You’re okay,” he says, almost surprised, which only hurts my feelings a little.

“How is everyone?”

“Safe. And you?”

“Found my old boss. He doesn’t know anything about the current acquisition. But he did offer me my old job back.”

“How did that make you feel?” Kenji asks.

I pause long enough that I don’t need to answer.

“It’s okay that you considered it,” he says. “This is not a perfect process. You’re not perfect. What do I keep saying? Let go…”

He gives me the space to finish. “…And let god.”

Not that we believe in god. Not after the things we’ve done. One of the core tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous is surrendering yourself to a higher power—whatever you determine that higher power to be. For us, though, we thought of ourselves as gods. Because we did what gods did. Dealt in death, decided who lived. To let go and let god is Assassins Anonymous–speak for: You are not a god, you are a human being, and what you did, you did to other human beings.

This is exactly the moment where I need to chew on that, even if it’s getting stuck in my teeth.

“In other news,” I tell Kenji, “I’m about to make my first amends.”

“Mark, you’re not ready to move into the ninth step,” he says. “First, we’re supposed to sit down and review the list, and you and I decide who’s best to make a direct amends to.”

“I traveled all this way,” I tell him. “And honestly, given a whole lot of factors, it feels a little like providence. I think I need to do it. Get the ball rolling. I told you about that one. My first on the job.”

He sighs. “It’s going to be uncomfortable. Be careful. Don’t linger.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you,” he says, enunciating slowly, making sure each word lands.

They do.

“I love you, too,” I tell him.

We click off the call as I’m approaching my destination: a boxy, dilapidated apartment building that stands out in a long row of three-story row houses.

The Fuji Majestic.

Also known—not to most, but to me—as a base of operations for the local Triads.

Inside, if the intel I gleaned from the Via Maris is correct, is one of their lieutenants: Xie Yang, who goes by the name Billy. His dad was Wen Yang, a Triad enforcer who, a very long time ago, stepped onto the balcony of a room at the Millennium Hotel for a cigarette and had his neck snapped by an American assassin.

The apple, it seems, landed right next to the tree.

Which is why I said this feels like providence.

One, because I don’t want to do this, which is always a good reason to do something related to recovery.

Two, because my first amends may as well be with the first guy I murdered as an Agency hitter.

There’s a man smoking by the front door. Mid-twenties, shaved head, neat goatee, neon-pink tank top. Not Yang. I suspect I’ll see a version of his dad when I lay eyes on him. I walk up to the guy at the door and get close. Not too close to disrespect him, but close enough to show I’m not afraid of him, either. I tell him: “I’m here to see Billy.”

The man takes a deep drag on his cigarette, flicks it into the street behind me, and folds his hands in front of him, all without taking his eyes off me.

“Tell him it’s about his father,” I say.

The man stares at me for a moment longer, then slips through the front door.

He probably understood me. English proficiency in Singapore is high, especially among younger people. I watch through the metal security gate as he walks down a poorly lit hallway and gets on an elevator.

I wait, walking in circles. Thinking about what I want to say. Nothing really comes up, so maybe I’ll just wing it, which I’m sure is a terrible idea, but hey, this is a learning process.

The man returns and opens the door, nodding for me to follow. He didn’t have a weapon on him before, but now he sports the telltale bulge of a gun at his waistband, clumsily tucked into the front of his pants. That’s so dumb. You’ll never get a clean draw. Why do people do that?

The answer is: movies. Always movies.

We ride the elevator in silence, then walk down a long hallway. Thumping music rattles one door. A baby cries behind another. I am having second thoughts. Maybe I should have run as soon as I left the food market.

The man leads me to a door, which he opens, letting me step inside first. I don’t like that he’s behind me now. I expect it to be an apartment, but the living room is like an office, decorated by a grown-up who enjoys the aesthetic of a teenager.

It’s lit by purple recessed lighting, with framed posters on the wall for classic kung fu and action movies. Drunken Master , Five Deadly Venoms , Iron Monkey , Master of the Flying Guillotine , The Killer , Infernal Affairs . A few I don’t recognize.

There’s a massive wooden desk against the back wall, so big it looks impossible to have gotten through the door. Behind the desk is a glass display case of Chinese weapons: hook swords and tai chi swords and a beautiful, gleaming pair of butterfly swords. Sitting at the desk, which is covered with rolling papers and sloppy piles of pot and a shiny silver Taurus 856 revolver, is a young Chinese man wearing white Nikes and a red tracksuit.

In my mind, I see his dad. They have the same boyish softness, though that barely works to offset the hatred in his eyes. This is a wound he did not expect to have opened tonight.

On the wall to his left is a poster for the movie Hard Boiled . I nod my head at it. “Classic. Chow Yun-fat. The Chinese Tom Cruise, am I right?”

“Who are you?” he asks. “And what do you know about my father?”

“Look,” I tell him, glancing at the guy behind me, who is slowly moving his hands toward his waistband, like the amateur he is. “I think it would be best if we could speak in private.”

I can hear the man behind me, the skin rasping against the metal of the gun as he wraps his hand around it. All that old programming—it’s not even like it’s coming back to me, it’s just immediately present. I don’t think this guy is really going to shoot me, so I let him pull the gun out and press it to the back of my head. Maybe it’ll make him feel better.

Billy smiles as he watches this unfold.

Problem is, the man with the gun, he did the dumb thing, which is: he got too close. The safest minimum distance to hold someone at gunpoint is twenty-one feet. Anything under that, all bets are off. Guns can misfire. Adrenaline screws with fine motor skills; not everyone has the close personal relationship with that hormone like I do. Aiming and getting a shot off is harder than people think. If he were a professional, he would have taken a few steps back, at least.

I stand still, unbothered, and make sure they can both see that.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I tell Billy. “Just something I think you ought to know. My goal is to have a respectful conversation, and it can’t really be respectful like this. So I’m going to ask once, and I’m going to ask nicely. Could you please tell your friend to put the gun away and give us five minutes?”

Billy was curious, to a point, but he’s grown bored with this. He looks around his pristine office, and I’m not surprised at all when he says, “Take him down to the basement or something. Just not in here.”

“Okay, then,” I say, and before the guy behind me can fully process the command, I dip my shoulder and step back, pushing his gun arm toward the ceiling in case he fires, which he doesn’t. I sweep to the side, pulling the gun from his hand, and disassemble it, dropping the pieces to the floor.

Billy puts his hand on the Taurus and I yell, “Hey.”

He freezes and looks up at me.

“I promise you I will take that one, too. Five minutes, then I’m gone.”

Billy stops. Sighs. Then he waves the other guy away.

Once we’re alone I cross the room and sit in the free chair in front of the desk. Twenty-two feet. He should have taken the shot. Billy leans back, slamming his Nikes on the desk and leaning back, trying to exude power.

Trying to hide the fact that he’s spooked.

“I barely knew my father,” he says. “He died when I was twelve. Even then I hadn’t seen him in years. What do you have to tell me that I would need to know?”

“I killed him,” I say.

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel an enormous amount of relief.

Like, that’s all it took? I can just say the thing? Easy as that?

But then Billy launches himself over the desk, knocking me to the ground, and drives his fist into my face.

In the tumble, he manages to avoid the wound in my stomach, and for that I’m grateful, but he sets himself on his knees so he has proper leverage and whales on me. Wordlessly swinging, over and over. Thank god the carpet is thick because the way my head is bouncing off it, it doesn’t feel good, but it could be worse.

I seek the serenity to accept a thing I cannot change: I killed this man’s dad and now he wants to kill me.

My nose breaks. Blood fills my vision. Before I came here I left the concierge at our hotel an envelope with my ATM card and my PIN, and said if I wasn’t back by morning to give it to the woman staying with me. Astrid will be fine. Even if I’m dead.

Billy grabs my collar, looping his hands in it, and pulls me toward him. He holds his fist up. It’s coated in blood, vibrating with power, and I feel like this might be the one to knock me out.

After that it’s down to the basement.

“Tell me your name,” he says. “So I know the name of the man who killed my father.”

I see an opportunity to be honest.

And maybe save my own life.

If I try really hard, maybe I can convince myself that’s all I’m doing.

“Mark,” I tell him. “But I was known as the Pale Horse.”

Billy’s grip goes slack and he drops me to the floor, my head bouncing off the carpet again. He scrambles off me, backing himself into a corner like a frightened animal, looking for an exit, but afraid to try to pass me to get to the door. I get to my knees and feel along the ridges of my broken nose, then bear down and push it back into place, crying out as bone scrapes cartilage.

“You…” he says. “You…”

“Yeah,” I tell him, breathing through the pain. “That’s me. So, anyway, can I finish saying what I have to say?”

Billy looks at me with complete and utter confusion. He moves to his chair and sits, holding his head in his hands.

He thinks he’s going to die.

God, the power this holds over people.

The power I hold.

No. Not anymore. Don’t think like that.

I sit on the chair across from him, my face aching, and say, “Your dad was part of a crew protecting a guy trying to sell dangerous intelligence to dangerous people. I broke his neck. I thought I was saving the world and used that as an excuse to end his life. I can’t sit here and say I wish I could do it differently. I’m not sure that I do. What I can tell you is that I’m sorry for whatever hurt that put on you. I can’t make it up to you. Killing me won’t bring him back and I promise, it won’t make you feel better. But you need to do what you need to do.”

“You…you’re the Pale Horse,” he says, still not looking at me.

“We established that, yes.”

“So…” He finally makes eye contact, and his face bursts into a broad smile. “I just kicked the shit out of the Pale Horse.”

That, I was not expecting. “Sure, if you want to call it that.”

He claps his hands and gets up, pumping his fists as he jumps around the desk. “And my dad was killed by the Pale Horse! Do you know what this is going to do for my reputation?”

It’s so absurd I want to laugh. He crosses the room to a mini fridge and pulls out two bottles of Tiger beer. He uncaps them and places one of them in front of me.

“And now I’m having a drink with the Pale Horse,” he says, shaking his head and taking a sip. “ The Pale Horse. You’re a legend.” He looks me up and down. “Thought you’d be taller. More built, though. Like Jason Statham.”

I suppress the sigh, pick up the bottle, and take a swig. The beer is ice-cold and takes a little edge off the pummeling I just took.

Billy takes a long pull and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Look, man, I didn’t really like my dad. He wasn’t good to my mom. He pretty much abandoned us. I guess in the moment…” He goes searching for what he wants to say, staring off into the distance, before snapping back. “I figured I should hurt you because that’s how it’s supposed to be, right? But I guess I’m just more amazed that you’re here.”

The god in me is the thing that saved me.

This is terrible for my recovery.

“Revenge never ends up feeling the way you think it will,” I tell him. “It sounds great until you have to sit with it. I know that just sounds like me arguing in favor of my life, but that’s what I’ve come to learn.”

He eyes me as he takes another long pull from the bottle.

“I don’t know that it’s worth killing you,” he says. “For the mess alone.”

He’s getting bold now. I have to give him a little credit for that.

“That’s very magnanimous of you,” I tell him.

“Magnanimous?”

“Kind.”

He nods. “So what now?”

“You have a story to tell. Enjoy it for whatever it’s worth. If you’re really not going to shoot me in the face, I guess my next step is figuring out how to get out of this country alive.”

He gives me a quizzical look and I shrug.

“My old employers want me dead. They know I’m here.”

He scratches the back of his neck slowly, then says, “I’ll make you a deal.”

I put my hand up, beckoning him to proceed.

“I can get you on a boat, no problem. We have a route between here and Jakarta.”

“What do you want in return?”

“I get to tell people that I messed you up. That you killed my dad…”

He pulls out the drawer on his desk and goes rooting around in it. The deal tastes sour on the back of my tongue. The Pale Horse doesn’t get slapped around. He doesn’t leave people alive. He wouldn’t let some kid one-up him and walk away.

But that’s not me anymore. That’s just a story I told myself, and I’ve been trying to change that story. What does it matter if the narrative spins in a different direction?

“And,” he says. “I want a souvenir.”

He places on the desk a Damascus steel dagger with a pearl handle.

“Nondominant hand is fine,” he says. “Even though my dad was an asshole, it seems like a pretty fair price, right?”

Four seconds in, hold for four, out for four, empty lungs for four.

He places his hands palm down on the desk and smiles, waiting for me.

I stand and take the knife. Feel the weight of it, get a good grip, then spin it in my hands and slam it down into the wood, between the ring and middle fingers of his left hand.

“Your souvenir is you get to live,” the Pale Horse says.

He blanches at that. I offer him my hand. He shakes it with a blank expression.

“It’s not just me that needs to get out of town,” I tell him. “I’m with someone. And we have a cat.”

He pulls out a piece of paper and scribbles on it, his hands shaking, then passes it to me. “Be at this address in two hours. Ask for Xiao.”

I drain the rest of my beer, put the bottle on the desk, and tell him, “Thanks.”

As I’m headed for the door he says, “Seriously, man, I feel like I need you to impart a little wisdom on me before you go. I’m twenty-six and I run the Singapore Triads. What would you tell yourself if you could talk to your twenty-six-year-old self?”

I think about it for a few moments and then tell him, “Go be an astronaut.”

I leave without seeing how he reacts to that.

—

Raindrops tap the windshield of the cab as it pulls to a stop in front of the hotel. I hand the driver some sing, get out, and watch him pull away, leaving me alone on a quiet, tree-lined street next to the highway.

I hope Astrid has calmed down a bit. She did not approve of the accommodations—it’s a two-star hotel, flung far from the city center. There is no spa. As much as she wanted to get a room in Marina Bay, the surveillance network is too tight.

But something broke our way: it’s a ten-minute stroll to Jurong Port, where we’re supposed to meet Xiao, if he exists and Billy isn’t planning to show up with an army of Triads. I doubt it, though. I think I succeeded in both impressing him and scaring the piss out of him.

I tilt my head back to the sky and let some raindrops fall onto my face.

What I did, dropping into my old persona, I did to survive.

I ignore the tingling in my fingertips. The floating feeling in my chest.

The fear in Billy’s eyes as I plunged his dagger an inch deep into that desk.

That god-fear.

I call Kenji. He doesn’t answer. It should be…noon there? He must be waiting for me to check in. I made my first amends. This is a big deal. Maybe he’s busy. He’ll call back in a few. He always does.

The lobby is empty, besides a pretty Indian man with a blue vest standing behind the desk, a pair of felt antlers on his head. He barely glances up when I walk in. I dig around in my pocket for the key card as I step onto the elevator. We’ve got an hour until we have to be at the port. Wish I had enough time for a shower, but just to be safe, after leaving Billy, I rode the train to the far west side of the country before taking a cab back. If I had a tail, I would have seen it, or lost them in the process.

I get to the door at the end of the hall and give it two knocks, then one, then two, so Astrid knows it’s me. After a moment she knocks back.

Three times.

It’s supposed to be twice.

Which leaves me with a fast decision to make. Someone’s in there, but the Agency can’t be here in full force. There would have been a Taser in my neck the moment I stepped out of the cab. I don’t want to abandon her, so I open the door to find her standing by the beds with a look on her face not dissimilar from the look on Billy’s after I drove the knife into the table.

There are two men at the far end of the room, dressed all in black. Both have scowls that look practiced, and the kind of bulk that comes through the tip of a needle. That’s the first thing that pegs them as B-team material. The guy on the left has a shaved head the same circumference of his neck; the guy on the right has a Viking beard and long brown hair tied into a ponytail.

They’re not like me, more like blunt instruments. Strong enough to do some damage but not always smart enough to get away with it, so ultimately expendable.

The guy with the shaved head—the Neck—is resting his hand on the gun holstered at his waist, finger on the trigger guard. “The rest of the team is on its way. Won’t be long now.”

“Are you hurt?” I ask Astrid.

She shakes her head. P. Kitty is nowhere to be seen. His carrier is in the corner and empty. He’s a smart cat. I mean, he’s not, he’s burned his tongue five separate times chewing through electrical wires. But he probably had the sense to seek refuge under the bed.

I close my right eye and tell Astrid, “Everything’s going to be all right.”

She lowers herself to one of the free chairs. This is a micro hotel, so the room is longer than it is wide. There’s a small table and two chairs to my right. To the left, a small kitchenette and TV. Beyond that is a raised platform with two beds almost directly next to each other, the heads pushed against the right wall. There’s barely a foot of clearance on the left side.

The two men are standing at the far end of the room with their backs to the window, against the fully drawn, light-blocking curtains.

I reach up and rub my closed right eye.

“Hey,” Ponytail says. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing what?”

“Your eye.”

“Got something in it. Some dust maybe.”

The Neck takes his gun out and holds it to his side. “Don’t you move, chief. Orders are to bring you in alive, but shit happens, you know? Being the one to cap the Pale Horse might mean a promotion.”

There’s a toiletry bag on the table that Astrid must have picked up. Not ideal, but I can work with it.

Ponytail clears his throat. “So you’re him ?” Just a touch of awe in his voice.

“In the flesh.”

“Don’t look so tough to me,” the Neck says.

Though his voice has a little rattle.

I keep gently rubbing my eye. “Stories get bigger in the telling. Truth is you two look pretty tough, so I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Ought to knock the living shit out of you for what you did,” the Neck says. “Though it looks like someone already did.”

It takes me a second, then I remember: Billy.

“You should see the other guy,” I tell him. “Not a scratch on him.”

“Don’t worry,” the Neck says. “Before this is through, I’m going to get my licks in. You deserve that much.”

“Probably in general, but sure, why specifically?”

“Because I woke up with my face in a squat toilet.”

Ah. They were Ravi’s goons at the food market. They went down so quick I barely registered what they looked like. Telling them that would probably not endear me to them.

“Yeah, man, I can see how that wouldn’t be pleasant,” I say. “It wasn’t personal. Honestly, I’m sorry about that.”

Astrid is twelve feet from me and out of the line of fire of the man with the gun. The man on the right hasn’t drawn yet. The two of them are nineteen feet from me. Not great for them.

I slump my shoulders forward, keeping my hand over my eye. “I don’t even care,” I tell them. “I’m just so tired. Tired of running. Tired of living like this. Tired of always being afraid. Like your life could end at any moment, right? People think being the Pale Horse is all fun and games, but it’s hard . Living up to that expectation.”

The Neck laughs. “You big baby.”

“Hey, Astrid?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s P. Kitty?”

“Under the bed.”

“Ah. Smart. Hey, you guys don’t know all that much about pirates, do you?”

Before they can answer I snap out my hand and hit the switch on the wall next to me. With the curtains drawn and no other illumination in the room, we’re plunged into darkness. But taking a few minutes to close my right eye gave it time to adjust. Not fully, but more than anyone else in the room.

I close my left eye and open the right, and I can make out the faint outlines of the men across the room. All they’re seeing is black. Astrid dives to the floor. I grab the toiletry kit and wing it at the Neck, since his gun is already out. It strikes him in the face. I make a running leap, vaulting myself off the first bed and crashing into him with my knees out, knocking him hard against the wall. Ponytail is searching the room for me but still can’t see. As soon as I land and brace myself, I swing my foot into the side of his knee.

I turn to the Neck, who’s slightly hunched over, and slam my knee into his head a few times, smashing it into the wall. He drops the gun. The drywall cracks and breaks. Then I throw another side kick at Ponytail’s shoulder, knocking him down, preventing him from getting his bearings and reaching his gun. I have to be careful not to knock either of them through the window—we’re eight floors up and that’s a death sentence.

The Neck slumps to the floor. I turn and hammer my fist into Ponytail’s stomach. It bounces off the plated ballistics vest under his shirt. Feels like punching an overfull heavy bag. It gives him a chance to throw himself forward and smother me with his body in the tight space. He gets me in a headlock, so I twist until I’ve got an opening and drive my elbow up and into his jaw.

He staggers back, about to fall against the window, but I manage to grab him by the collar and pull him forward. Then I snap a kick into his knee, and as he’s going down, I put my knee in the side of his head.

Hands wrap around my throat. The Neck breathes into my ear. “Gonna enjoy this.”

Before I can consider which way to break the hold, he cries out and falls backward onto the bed. He’s reaching for the back of his knee, screaming, as Astrid brings her foot up high, like she’s executing a ballet move, and brings it down hard on his forehead. She grunts with a surprising level of savagery as she does it. The Neck goes limp, and Ponytail isn’t ready for round two, either.

“Didn’t see that coming,” I tell Astrid. “Can you hit the lights?”

After a few seconds of scrambling and grunting, the room illuminates and the blast is harsh enough to make me squint. I blink it away and then check the two men to make sure they’re still alive; they’re both groaning in sloppy piles. The Neck has a bunch of heavy-duty zip ties on his belt, so I use them to bind their hands and ankles before patting them down and relieving them of their belongings. I fieldstrip the guns and bend the recoil springs so they won’t go back together right. Phones get stomped on, and cash goes in my pocket.

“Mark, what the hell is going on?” Astrid asks.

I hit the floor and find P. Kitty cowering in the corner under the bed. I really have to stretch to grab his leg and pull him toward me, and once I’ve got him close enough, I scruff him, which gets him to go limp. Then I cram him in the cat carrier.

“Sorry, bud,” I tell him. “No time to be polite. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“Mark, I—” Astrid starts.

“Grab your stuff, we’re going.”

As I’m giving the room a quick scan to make sure there’s nothing else I need, static crackles from one of the slumped figures. A male voice says, “Echo, check in. Do you have eyes on the target?”

I dig around in Ponytail’s vest and find the radio. “Not yet,” I say.

“We’ve cleared the Marina Bay. Sending you backup. Report in ASAP if he arrives.”

“Copy. Over and out.” I switch off the radio and smash it.

“What now?” Astrid has her belongings assembled into a small backpack we picked up in the airport, and she’s holding the cat carrier.

“We go for a little boat ride,” I tell her.

“Where to?” she asks.

“Jakarta.”

We opt for the stairs instead of the elevator. As we descend, all I can think is: I should go back and kill them. Leaving them alive is a mistake. They could get free and come after us. They could alert the Agency teams, who’ll get here quicker. They could have hurt Astrid and P. Kitty. It’s not just that the math isn’t in their favor. There’s a tug at the core of me, this feeling in my body like something is missing and watching the life leave their eyes will fill it.

Meanwhile, Astrid is looking at me like she can’t decide if she should thank me or drive her fist into my nuts for getting her tied up in this.

“Pirates?” she asks.

“It’s thought pirates wore eye patches so one eye was adjusted to the darkness. They could transition more easily between above and below deck.”

“And what the hell happened to your face?”

“My face?”

“You look like raw beef.”

“That was a completely separate situation with a different person who wanted to kill me. It’s been a day. Where’d you learn to fight?”

“Why would you assume I can’t?”

There was an efficiency to her movement that makes me wonder how much more there is to this story, but I don’t have time to dig. It’s comforting, at least, that my back is better protected than I previously thought.

The door opens and the lobby is empty. I don’t bother checking out; I don’t want anyone to clean the room and let the goon squad out with time to notify anyone. I feel a twinge on my stomach. There’s some blood seeping through my shirt. Great. Must have torn a stitch. Something else to worry about.

Before we hit the door, I hear “Mr. Joubert?” The desk man in the felt antlers is walking toward us, his hospitality smile shining. “Are you checking out?”

“Uh, no, just moving some stuff to the rental car. We’re headed back up to the room in a few.”

He eyes the carrier but shrugs, then holds out a folded piece of paper. “Someone dropped this off for you.” He hands it to me and goes back to the desk. Astrid peeks over my shoulder as I open it.

I CAN FIND YOU ANYWHERE YOU GO, KOTENOK.

I honestly do not know what’s worse. The fact that the Russian was in this hotel and seems to delight in screwing with me, or the fact that, when we get outside and I check my phone, Kenji hasn’t gotten back to me.