the wall. I could see history from there, imagine Portuguese ships in the harbor, except it is impossible to see the harbor because of the hotel. I search in my pockets for matches to set off the cannons. On to the blue door of the triangular shed and the steps that lead to it, all in good order. It would take me only an hour or so to touch up that mortar. I’d mention it to Luis if I saw him again.
Each cannon gets a pat on its fat bottom as I pass. I smile at an old man who is leaning against cannon number thirteen, watching his perspiring wife exercise the hell out of a patch of grass. The ninth cannon, as promised, is numbered 25-1-9. It’s unlikely anyone would move these beasts around, but I stand back and do a recount anyway. It’s the ninth from the left, the third cannon from number six, which, as I think Luis said, was the first on the left along the front.
There is no danger of this operation being compromised; nothing this confusing could ever be compromised. Even if the whole thing was leaked, it would take hours to untangle the feet and the steps and the diamonds stamped with crosses. This does not have the feel of anything Kang would plan. He favored simplicity-one cannon and out. The humidity is climbing. I wonder if a person can drown standing on top of a hill on such a humid day. Why did I trust Luis again? He has a complicated existence. There is no reason he should tell me the truth about anything. I palm the leaf-and it is a reasonable imitation of a shiny leaf. The only problem, I see instantly, is that this one has been made to resemble a leaf in May and here we are in October. I walk over to the wall and glance at my hand. The number, ink already bleeding away, is 20.
Twenty? What is that? Is zero even or odd? The day is becoming too hot to worry. I go to the bench in the shade and sit, gazing at the Grand Lisboa. The shape of the building defies description. It is either a gigantic mutant flower feeding on laundered money, or a horrendous arrow from the bow of an angry god who came to earth for some fun and lost a pile playing five-card stud. My concentration is broken by someone who blocks the view. He looks like the man leaning on number thirteen, could even be his twin brother, but with shorter hair. This man has a newspaper under one arm, a small book in his left hand. He sits down and points at the tree next to us. “What do you suppose that is?”
“It’s a ficus,” I say. “An old one, maybe four hundred years. Some Portuguese missionary must have planted it.” Anyone could have planted it. It could have planted itself for all I know. It is very hot, and the Grand Lisboa appears to be dancing.
“There’s a plaque on the tree.”
“Yes, but it’s in Portuguese.”
“Oh, you aren’t from Macau? I could have sworn I’d seen you somewhere. At the Venetian, perhaps, taking in a show?”
I let my eyes roam around the fort. The only person not on one leg is leaning against number thirteen.
The man beside me is humming. He puts the book on the bench between us. “It doesn’t bother me at all,” he sings in a soft, high voice.
I take a sip of warm water from the bottle. What the deuce is that supposed to mean? “Yeah, me, neither,” I say.
He smiles and hums a few more bars. “Gaaz-ing at the sky.” He looks up through the leaves. “Going to be a pretty day. Puffy white clouds.”
That rings a bell. I nod. “Blue sky.” Wherever this is going, we are just about there.
“Too bad about your uncle.”
All at once, this isn’t the conversation I expected. I don’t have an uncle.
“Well,” he says finally. He walks away, holding the book. The newspaper is on the bench. I sit for a couple of minutes, wondering whether this is a trap. I don’t trust Luis, but he doesn’t seem to be the type to put me in a trap, I am pretty sure, almost sure. Still, that leaves a number of candidates. Pang didn’t really want me to be here, despite what he said. Zhao hadn’t tried to be devious; he had been absolutely explicit. The old man on thirteen has moved down to number eleven. He watches. It isn’t a trap, I decide, so I pick up the newspaper and skim the front page. Then I fold the paper under my arm and walk slowly down the stairs to the hill, and slowly down the hill to a bakery for a cup of coffee. This wasn’t the best handoff I’d ever seen, I think to myself, but apparently it was good enough for Macau.
5
When I got back to the Nam Lo, the clerk was hurrying down the stairs. He pressed himself against the wall. “Nobody touched your room; don’t worry,” he said. “I was cleaning up the one down the hall, the one your girlfriend uses.”
“Out of my way,” I said. “I lost a suitcase full of money at the casino and I don’t want to talk.”
This seemed to cheer him up, because he said something using only six tones.
The room looked untouched. I closed the door, put the ratty chair against it, and opened the newspaper on the bed. Taped on page 3 was an airline ticket for tomorrow to Prague, though not nonstop. That meant changing planes, risking delays. Why Prague? I got a funny feeling. I’d been there once before, long ago. There was a return ticket, but it was for Shanghai. That did me no good; there were no flights from Shanghai to Pyongyang. That meant I was going to have to change the routing at the airport in Prague, with a lot of unnecessary questions from the ticket agent about why I didn’t book it that way to begin with. There would also be careful study of my identification, which meant the visa stamps would get attention. The ticket wasn’t in my name. It wasn’t in the name that was on my South Korean passport, either, but that was all right because on page 5 of the newspaper was an envelope with a Dominican passport inside. It had a better picture of me than the one Kim’s people had used. My name was Ricardo, and I was fifty-four years old, which was fine. That knocked almost fifteen years off the wear and tear on my body. The age on a fake passport might not be an elixir of youth, but it helps.
I went downstairs and gave the room clerk a sad look. “My uncle died. I have to leave a day early.”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s a curse. Whenever people have to leave early, they kill off an uncle. Never an aunt.”
“I’ll be back.”
“You get charged for the full stay. It’s policy.” He pointed at a sign behind him on the wall.
“That’s an explanation of the fire exits, in Chinese.”
“Say, you’re one smart Korean, aren’t you?” He let loose a few long sentences in Hakka.
“OK, I get it,” I said. “I pay for the day I’m not here, and you pocket the money.”
“Any complaints, fill out the form in the desk in your room.”
“There isn’t a desk in my room.”
“Really? Well, you can use one of the forms over there.” He pointed at a few dirty pieces of paper on the counter.
“Where do I put it when I’m done?”
He grinned.
“I’ll tell you what I need. I need a train ticket for tomorrow.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Macau is practically an island. No trains.”
“Yeah, I figured that out. But you must have travel agents that can make arrangements. I’ve seen one or two luggage stores, and that means people travel; if people travel, they have tickets, and they must get them somewhere.”
“Depends. Where you going?” He gave me the canny look of a man calculating how much he could get for selling the same information to three buyers.
“Shanghai, to pay my respects to my uncle, who ran a noodle shop there. Then to Beijing to see my aged mother, who lives with her sister in one of those new villas near the Kempinski. You know it? Then
