They drove down a street named Bishop and then up a road called Pali heading inland, the hills above town looming before them. Lett saw signs for grocers and drug stores, bars and churches, in Chinese and Japanese. Palm trees leaned his way as if to greet him, and they passed a cop wearing oversize white gloves directing traffic in the middle of the street from a booth topped with an umbrella. And yet, if Lett squinted, he could imagine his surroundings to be those of any small American city, something nearly foreign to him these days.

The cabbie was eyeing him through the rearview mirror. “You all right, Mac?”

“Sure I am. Sure.”

The cabbie drove him up a road that narrowed as it wound up into the hills, lined in stretches by black lava stones or overhanging ferns or both. Pacific Heights. It would have been expensive real estate in any mainland American city, but here many houses looked modest. After a couple bends the cabbie delivered Lett right to the address Lett had never uttered—that they never actually gave him. The cabbie passed slow, kept going, and dropped Lett off around the next bend up. He tipped his hat. “So long,” was all he said.

From the road, Lett had an expansive view of the city along the water far below, and beyond it a stretch of ocean beach named Waikiki and that giant volcanic rock of a hill—Diamond Head, it was called.

The target location was a modest stucco house with a flat roof. It sat atop an open carport that housed a nondescript Ford and was inundated with palms and long-leaf bushes as if the jungle were growing right over it, though Lett imagined it was intentional on a property like this. The lot was set into the hill and, sitting as it did on a turn, had no direct neighbors. Most blinds were shut, but the ones in the window next to the front door were cracked, just barely.

Lett walked up the steps and knocked. No one answered.

The target was supposed to be here. It was supposed to be a woman. She was supposed to be alone. Lansdale gave her the codename of Jade. She would answer to that.

Maybe she was sleeping? Lett knocked again, got nothing. He went around back, through a snug backyard that was secluded like a jungle ridge. He stood at the rear door to the kitchen. The blinds were shut.

The door opened. Lett recognized Jade from the photo Lansdale showed him. She looked Chinese, about forty, thick mop of black hair, wide shiny cheeks. She could’ve been anything from a schoolteacher to a simple, happy merchant. She wore blue pajamas.

“Jade,” Lett stated.

Her eyes drooped a split second. “Please, enter.”