He set the phone down and lay back.
'First maximum bond as Mike Hawk,' he thought. 'In a city I've been in for almost two weeks."
"In an apartment above the woman, I just maxed out. While her husband sleeps downstairs, he believes everything is normal.'
He thought about Erik Voss. This was his first identity outside of his home country.
He had been twenty-two and considerably less careful, and Erik Voss had lasted four months before becoming a liability. He had learned a lot in those four months, most of it the hard way.
He thought about Jin Mao, which had been a better construction, lasting eleven months and ending not because of any mistake on his part but because of circumstances that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with someone else's bad decisions catching him in proximity.
He thought about the others, each one better than the last, each one a refinement of the lesson that identity was craft, and craft improved with practice.
