said, “You want us to move around Marseilles for an hour and leave a wide scent to see if anyone follows?”
Gage thought for a moment. He didn’t like the feel of it. “I don’t want there to be two Benarouns in the ICU.”
Tabari reached up and squeezed Gage’s shoulder.
“Look on the bright side,” Tabari said, now smiling, “there could be a Gage and a Benaroun up there instead. You and my uncle could even share a room.”
Gage shook his head and smiled back. “No way. I learned when we worked together in Milan that he snores.”
“How about this,” Tabari said. “You need to get your stuff out of your hotel room anyway and-“
“And I need to go back to the bar and collect something.”
Tabari drew back. “What thing? “
“A gun that the shooter dropped. I hid it and in the rush to get your uncle to the hospital, forgot to retrieve it. Maybe you can trace it to someone or to some other crime and figure out who shot your uncle.”
Tabari narrowed his eyes at Gage. “Anything else? “
Gage changed the subject by removing Benaroun’s envelope from his pocket and handing it to Tabari.
“This may have been what they were after. I think they’re airplane registration numbers.”
Tabari’s jaw clenched and his face reddened as he looked at the numbers inside.
“I knew this would happen.” He turned and glared at Gage. “Did you-“
Gage held up his hands. “We hadn’t even talked about South Africa since we were at your uncle’s house the day before yesterday.” He lowered his arms. “I had no idea that one of his errands this morning before he picked me up had anything to do with this-and I still don’t know for certain.” He pointed at the envelope. “And he didn’t say anything about it until after he was shot.”
Tabari fell silent, then shook his head.
“Sorry,” Tabari said. “I think I’ve taken to seeing him as an irresponsible child, and that makes you the adult who failed to supervise him.”
“He’s come to understand that his useful days are counting down,” Gage said, “at least those that would allow him to do the work he’s always done. And I don’t see that he’s ready to remake himself.”
“If the doctors’ fears are realized, he’ll have no choice.” Tabari paused. His eyes moistened and he tried to blink away tears, then wiped them with the back of his sleeve. “He won’t be able to do the work he wants to do from a wheelchair.”
CHAPTER 50
Faith Gage awoke on her cot in the Meinhard storage room to the squeak of a hinge and the scrape of shoe leather. She squinted toward the doorway and made out a charcoal silhouette against the shadowed hallway. It was in the shape of a tall, thin man with the angular bulge of a semiautomatic on his hip. Four others stood semicircled behind him, two men and two women.
She felt her body tense and her heart jump in her chest. She gripped the bed frame and sat up. She wouldn’t let herself be shot lying down.
The man’s hand rose. His forefinger paused in front of his lips, and then he gestured for her to follow him by a quick turn of his head.
By the profile she recognized Old Cat.
Faith turned toward the sleeping Ayi Zhao as she stood.
“Bu yao,” Old Cat whispered. Don’t.
Faith pulled on her coat, then followed Old Cat down the hall and outside. The tents were dark and still except for faint snoring and a baby’s soft crying that sounded less like a child in discomfort than an adult’s grief- stricken sobs. The guards passed by and waited to the east of them. She could see a red-gray hint of dawn on the horizon.
“It’s time for you to leave,” Old Cat said. “There’s nothing more you can do. You need to go with the others when the van arrives.”
Faith looked up at Old Cat. “How did you know?”
“The army has been listening to your calls and those of your husband and now those of the man coming to get you.”
“But I hadn’t decided-”
“I’ve decided for you.” Old Cat pointed toward the four. “And they will carry out my orders.”
Old Cat looked away, then back at her. She could tell by the distance in his eyes that he was about to speak to her as a professional witness.
“This will all be over in a few days,” Old Cat said. “Soon the army will have learned what it wanted to learn from our efforts and will have no further use for us. And we can’t defeat them.” He spread his arms toward the tents. “I’m not willing to sacrifice these people in a lost cause. Our rebellion will not become a revolution.”
“But what about this?” Faith pulled out her cell phone and scanned through the images, and then turned the screen toward Old Cat. It was an image of part of the front page of the New York Times online edition. “My husband’s office sent me this.”
Old Cat took it in his hands and peered at the words, then shrugged. “I can’t read English.”
Speaking together in Mandarin all during these days had seemed so natural that she’d forgotten the language gap between them.
Faith felt her face flush. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I only wanted to show you proof that…”
Old Cat smiled. “It’s okay. What does it say?”
“That there’s a mass movement of transient laborers toward Beijing. Ten million of them.”
“They’ll fail, too,” he said, shaking his head. “The army is the one who got them moving and is prepared to stop them.”
Gage’s words came back to her: Uprisings in China take lives in the millions, not in the hundreds.
“You mean-“
“No, not with guns this time, but with rice from the military’s storehouses.”
“And you think that they can be bought off? ”
Old Cat’s voice hardened. “They’re betraying no one, least of all themselves. For them, from the beginning, for all of us from the beginning, this uprising has been about the basics of life, and for them that’s food.”
In the rising gray light Faith watched Old Cat’s breath condense in front of his face and float there for a moment and then dissipate.
“In the end, that’s all we’ve been able to offer them,” Old Cat said. “I have no ideas about how our lives could be different. I think it would’ve been better if I’d been born as a silkworm and could’ve secreted my world around me like a cocoon, instead of a man who had to create it with his mind.”
He looked down at Faith. “You’ve traveled the world. You know politics and economics. You’ve seen how different cultures have organized themselves. Tell me. Tell me how we can build a different society, one without oppression and exploitation. Show me the model. We’ll copy it.” Old Cat spread his arms. “That’s what we do here. Copy. No people are better at it. We…”
Old Cat’s voice trailed away, and in that silence Faith recognized that neither he nor she knew who that “we” was who would take charge and remake the world.
“What about you?” Faith asked. “What will happen to you?”
Old Cat shrugged. “The army has seen to that, too.”
Faith reached for his arm. “Then come with us.”
“And leave others to be sacrificed in my place?”
“If the army has planned this as well as you say, then they’ve already decided on their victims. What you do is irrelevant to them.”
Even as she said the words, she felt the bad faith of not believing what she was saying. The army would scour the countryside looking for him. She released her grip and lowered her hand.
“What I do is not irrelevant to them,” Old Cat said.
