phone.”
“He already took it from me.”
“Don’t be insulted if he doesn’t give it back-he’s not very trusting-but he’s going to have to leave you alone for a few days. Go out with him and do some shopping-cash only-and make sure you’re stocked up for a week. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“When he comes back, he’ll have Tina and Stephanie with him.”
“ What? ”
“Listen, okay? They’ll be scared, but let them know they don’t need to be. They’ll have to follow the same rules as you-no phones, no credit cards-but you’ll all be fine. This shouldn’t last long.”
“Christ, you’re mysterious.”
She was starting to sound like the girl he had married.
With everything set up and ready to go, this was an unforgivable risk, but Hoang had been insistent. “You have to come-unless you want me to kill them, too.”
“Don’t touch them, Hoang. I’ll be there,” he said, then noticed what the man had said. “Wait-what do you mean: kill them, too?”
“There was an old man. He’d figured out where I was holding them.”
“What old man?”
“A Russian. His accent, at least. He was in the Weaver apartment, but he came out and knocked on the apartment we were in. He said he knew they were in there.”
“Jesus.” Alan’s stomach dropped an inch.
“What?”
“You killed Milo’s father.”
Silence. Finally, Hoang said, “I had no choice.”
“Of course you did, you murderous shit.”
Again, silence.
Alan closed his eyes, and the next day, as he descended into Denver International, he realized that, eventually, whether or not his plan succeeded, Milo Weaver would hunt him down and kill him for this.
He used the name Edward Leary for the flights, then used the name George Miller to rent a car, and by the time he reached Grand Lake he had been traveling for a day without rest. He didn’t feel up for this, but there was no choice. Time was running out, and, given another day, he had no doubt that Tran Hoang would shoot everyone.
He parked beside Hoang’s rental and walked up the lane to the two-story cabin that overlooked the lake. A chilly breeze rattled the trees. Hoang stepped out onto the porch to meet him but didn’t offer a hand. “Don’t worry,” said the Tourist. “Everyone’s breathing.”
Alan pushed past him and found Penelope first. She gripped him in a desperate hug and began to cry. At first, he feared that Hoang had been lying and the tears were for two corpses upstairs, but when she began to kiss him frantically, he realized the tears were for him. She was full of questions, but he fended them off, saying, “Where are they?”
She led him upstairs, holding his hand, and in a bedroom he found Tina Weaver sitting in bed looking angrier even than when he’d first met her at New York Methodist, just after her husband had been shot. Again, Stephanie was leaning against her arm, half asleep, but then she blinked, waking, and said, “Hi, Alan.”
“Hi, Stef. Tina.”
Tina kissed her daughter’s head and said, “Wait here, Little Miss. I’ve got some things to get straight with Alan.”
Stephanie let her mother go, and once they were in the hallway, heading back to the stairs, Tina said, “I could fucking kill you.”
Penelope said, “He’s trying to save us, Tina,” which he knew wouldn’t help.
No one said anything else until they were downstairs. Hoang had stepped outside. Tina turned on him in the middle of the living room. “He told me you were crazy. He told me-but I didn’t believe him. You, ” she said, drilling a finger into his chest. “You’re the one who got him involved. You’re the reason we’re stuck in the goddamned woods.”
He wanted to tell her to shut up, but that was the wrong move here. Instead, he said, “Yes. It is my fault. All of this.” Once he said it, it occurred to him that she didn’t know about Yevgeny Primakov. Neither of them did. “Now,” he continued, “I’m trying to clean it up. Milo’s in trouble. The Chinese are threatening you and Stephanie in order to control Milo.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because they did the same thing to me,” he said, noticing a look of surprise cross Penelope’s face. “What I’ve done is remove all of you from harm. Now, I need to do the same thing for Milo.” That was a lie, but when you build a lie off a truth, the difference is hard to notice.
Proving, however, that she had an eye for such differences, Tina said, “I don’t believe you. I won’t believe it until I hear it from Milo.”
“Don’t call,” he said. “You call him and his life will be in danger. Then they’ll trace the call, and you and Stephanie will be next.”
“You people lie so well.”
What to say to that? Nothing, really, except “Of course we do. So do they. Everybody lies, Tina, so grow up. Don’t risk your daughter’s life by being rash.”
That cooled her off, but only a little. “Then what’s your glorious plan?”
“To get your husband back to you.” Another lie.
She breathed loudly through her nose, then waved an arm around. “So we get kidnapped, and that’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“Yes, Tina. That’s all I’m telling you.”
She crossed her arms over her stomach and walked away, shaking her head.
“You’re going to be left alone for a few days, so please just keep to yourselves. Either Milo or I will come back here, and by then it should be settled.”
It was a kind of explanation, a sort of plan for the future, though when Penelope walked outside with him, she said, “What does it mean if Milo comes back and not you?”
He knew what she was getting at. “It means I’m not done with my job.”
“Or that you’re dead.”
“Doubtful,” he said and kissed her small, upturned nose.
They left Hoang’s rental behind for emergencies, and on the road back to Denver, Alan said, “We’re going to Hong Kong.”
Hoang didn’t seem to care.
“I’m going to check into a hotel, but I’m not going to the room. You are.”
“How long until the Chinese come for me?”
“Not long, so prepare your escape.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be elsewhere. Just make sure they think I’m in that room.”
After another mile, Hoang said, “So you’ve got an arrangement with the Youth League?”
Alan nearly lost control of the car. He hadn’t mentioned a thing about them to Hoang, or to anyone. Their name had come up during the initial planning stage but had been cut because the group was too unpredictable. Alan considered bluffing his way out of it, but Hoang valued his words too much to waste them on idle speculation. “How did you know?”
“They were the only ones left, weren’t they? At least, the only ones who would be desperate enough to raise arms. You walk in, to one of their old paymasters, and tell them the time has come to rise against Beijing.” He paused, staring at leafy trees blur past. “It’s intoxicating for people like them, even when they know it’s doomed to failure.”
“History is the only thing that’s doomed.”
“Man, did you read that in a book? ” For the first time in Alan’s experience, Hoang sounded exasperated. “You
