rusted.
She was smiling when he reached her, holding a blanket that she wrapped around his shoulders as she guided him to the empty seats. As he settled down, she said, “You stink, Milo.”
“I wet my pants.”
“I think we have a change of clothes.”
She started to walk to the rear, but he grabbed her forearm. “What’s going on?”
“You’re heading home.”
“Please,” he said, tugging. “Tell me.”
She relented and settled into the chair opposite his. In the dim light, she looked even younger than thirty- two, so fresh and clean. She said, “We couldn’t do anything about Hong Kong. We were there, of course, and I knew that Alan Drummond wasn’t in that room, but once the Chinese started shooting I had to get out of there. I hope you understand.”
He frowned at her, not quite understanding. What was she apologizing for?
“Anyway,” she said, “Erika talked to a Chinese friend, but it didn’t help. He needed something from the Americans-a simple trade would do the trick-but America wasn’t ready to bargain. However, we’d learned enough by then to scare the pants off of that senator of yours. So I made some calls. You’d be surprised how much business you can get done by bluffing.”
“Leticia?”
She shrugged, then checked a small wristwatch. “We’ll see. We’ve got until three thirty to get out of here.”
“What time is it now?”
“Five till two.”
Milo turned to look out the bubble window but saw only blackness. “On the drive here,” he said, “someone asked me about Tom Grainger.”
She cocked her head. “Tom Grainger?”
“My old boss. A friend. He wanted to know if I’d killed Tom. I told him I hadn’t, and that the man who’d killed him was dead.”
“Good answer,” she said, but neither bothered to speculate further.
A light appeared in the distance, at the far end of the runway, then grew, separating into two headlights. It was another military flatbed, and by the time it stopped, they were standing at the open hatch. “Don’t go out,” Alexandra warned. “It’s part of the deal-we don’t exit the plane. There’s a sniper in the woods, just to make sure.”
Two soldiers leaped out of the back and helped Leticia down, then assisted her to the steps. She was still in her black dress, with the addition of a soldier’s heavy green coat covering her bandaged shoulder. Once they released her, she began to take it off, but the soldier shook his head and gave her a slight bow, saying something. Leticia gave an answer, flashed one of her notorious smiles, and kissed his cheek before beginning her ascent.
“Well, look at her,” said Alexandra.
It took three hours to reach Hong Kong, where they took rooms at the Regal Airport Hotel to wait for their 8:00 A. M. flight to Tokyo. Milo fell asleep immediately and was woken by Alexandra banging on his door. She gave him fresh clothes that were a size too big, then asked if he’d seen Leticia. “I’ve been asleep,” he said.
“Well, she’s not here.”
“Maybe she’ll meet us at the gate.”
She didn’t, though, and they left without her.
In Tokyo, Alexandra waited with Milo for his connecting flight to Seattle, and then to Denver. “You should come, too,” he told her.
She shook her head. “I’d rather pull a Leticia Jones.” Then, “They’ll be waiting for you, you know.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Alexandra smiled and took his arm in the crook of her elbow. “If there’s one thing our father taught me, it’s that we always have a choice.”
8
He couldn’t get Milo Weaver’s statement out of his head. As he sat in the office, trying to feel joy over his newfound security, as he drove home and took that epic elevator ride to the thirtieth floor, and even as he told Sung Hui that he was taking her out to whatever restaurant she wanted, he could not stop thinking that it was true. Alan Drummond would try to kill him and, failing that, kill Sung Hui. It was how the world was. Things change. Nothing remains. The things we do not deserve are taken from us.
Over exquisite plates of dim sum at Sampan, they discussed a friend’s impending wedding, and the groom’s desire for a nontraditional ceremony. “Her parents are about to explode!” she said, laughing, and Zhu thought that if he could laugh like that, laugh with that same unhindered pleasure, he might just make a claim to deserving her. He tried but failed.
When they got back to their building at eleven thirty, Zhu noticed an unmarked Ministry of Public Security Audi parked outside, and in the lobby found a pair of young men with ministry IDs who asked him to come with them. An angry look crossed Sung Hui’s face, the unspoken accusation that he’d known this interruption would come, but he professed his ignorance as he walked her to the elevator and kissed her again.
They were just couriers. They knew nothing of their job beyond its definition: bring a single man to the ministry headquarters on East Chang’an. Not to the front door-no. Around the rear to a quiet entrance, where only the guards would be watching. That was when the worry began to flow freely through Xin Zhu. The young men took him to a small door, knocked, and waited until it was opened from inside by two uniformed ministry soldiers. They then left Xin Zhu to his fate, not even signing a release form, which was perhaps the most terrifying detail. When a Chinese soldier ignores paperwork, you know there is going to be trouble.
After being relieved of his cell phone, he looked into the faces of the soldiers, one of whom looked very familiar. A big man with a face of clay. “Do I know you?” he asked, but the soldier said nothing, only took him down a corridor of empty offices to a stairwell that led deeper into the earth. They stopped briefly at a metal detector beside a glassed-in desk. A guard looked up from his paperwork and, after a moment’s examination, waved his hand for them to continue. They went through a steel door and down into the old stone basement of East Chang’an, where the cells lay.
Once he’d been locked inside one, he settled on the floor and, briefly, thought of 1969, when, as an eighteen-year-old mountain boy used to life in the Qinling range, he entered his first prison cell, corralled by boys and girls eager to teach him the errors of possessing a middle-school education. They’d come early, village kids he recognized, and pulled him out of bed, chanting Red Guard slogans. At first, he’d shared his cell with two others, but by the afternoon there were twenty. Tuan Gang, the asthmatic schoolteacher whose education had gotten Xin Zhu into this trouble, didn’t survive the night, which, perhaps, was a blessing for the old man, for he never would have survived the next five years of farming the hard, selfish earth of Inner Mongolia. Nor would he have been able, as Zhu had been, to learn new lessons. Such as how to speak appropriately in public while creating an elaborate internal architecture of deceit, of finding ways of holding on to your individuality while showing all the outward signs of becoming one with the group. He certainly would not have received, after five years of labor, a visit from recruiters of the Central Investigation Division with a promise of a new life. No, Tuan Gang would have fallen over in those barren fields within three months and would never have lived to see what his favorite pupil was to become.
They had let him keep his watch, and so when the door finally opened he knew that four hours had passed. It was nearly four thirty. He hadn’t panicked, for he knew what this was, and he knew that Yang Qing-Nian would stride in, barking threats. What would those threats consist of? Yang Qing-Nian was young and brash, but he was no idiot. If he was confident enough to pluck Xin Zhu from his home, he must have something powerful at hand. Zhu, however, couldn’t figure out what it could be.
So it was a surprise when Sun Bingjun opened the door and, as Zhu had done with Milo Weaver, brought a guard carrying two worn benches. Slowly, Zhu climbed to his feet. Sun Bingjun sat down, threading his fingers
