“No, he’s a tourist.”
“That’s what they call them. But he’s a spy.”
“How do you know this?”
“I know everything about this man. If you’d like, I can share that information with you.”
Andrei looked again at the photo in this stranger’s hand and felt as if he might vomit. Confusion was beginning to set in. He swallowed, wondering why all the spies he knew were obese. “Who are you?”
“Call me Rick. And know that I’m sickened by what this man did.”
“Where is he now?”
“Back in America.”
“Then it’s no good. I can’t go there.”
“I can help with that.”
It was too stuffy in the car, and Andrei got out to light a cigarette, but the rush of traffic kept blowing out his matches. He moved to the sidewalk and got it lit and took a deep drag. The Chinaman didn’t bother getting out, just rolled down the window and stared at him with his Asian eyes. Andrei walked away, puffing on his cigarette, then returned. Above the roar of traffic the man called Rick began talking, and he had to squat beside the window to hear. He, too, was a father. Or he had been until those same spies had killed his only son. “I felt like you, but I knew the only way to ever get back my life was to deal with it. You can stay here, Andrei. You can forget we ever talked. But it will never leave you-trust me. It will make you sick at night when everything is quiet and you remember her again.” Rick’s eyes were wet, as if this were how he had spent his own nights, but perhaps that was just the wind. “The only way to make some kind of peace is to know that you’ve done everything you can do.”
“Are you religious?” Andrei asked.
“I believe in the order of things.”
Andrei nodded at this, then tossed away his cigarette and got behind the wheel again. Rick rolled up his window. Andrei said, “You’re talking about revenge.”
Rick thought for a moment, then quoted: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
That had been six days ago. Now, as he switched trains in Brooklyn, examining the signs above his head to make sure he didn’t lose his way, he repeated that verse. It was busy here, and he was just another speck in the mass of many nations that poured through the New York transportation system every day.
Until Prospect Park, everything had been predicted, for he had sat down with Rick and gone over each moment in his journey westward. He’d made his illegible notes on the map Rick supplied, and circled the corner of Garfield and Seventh Avenue. First, though, he had to go to the park.
He’d taken an early flight, and with the change in time zones it was still only a little before three in the afternoon. The day was bright but chilly, and as he settled on a bench he saw couples and people with dogs, some on leads and others running loose. Dogs of a confusing variety of breeds. There were also businessmen on cell phones. It was, he realized, much like Germany, and he wondered why so many Moldovans he knew were desperate to come here. He thought of Vasile, another taxi driver, who would be sick with jealousy if he knew where Andrei was. But no one knew. Rick had been insistent about this. “Not even Rada.”
Poor Rada, who woke up that morning and couldn’t help but dress in black again, despite the end of the official mourning. This man, Milo Weaver, hadn’t just killed Adriana. He’d killed Rada. He’d killed Andrei, too.
So when he left that morning with his small bag he’d explained that he was taking over Vasile’s morning shift. As if she knew, she’d asked him to call someone else to take it over. She wanted him at home, with her-she had already called in sick again. She wasn’t sure she could bear the empty apartment alone today. He’d had to be firm-“Calling in sick like this, you’re going to lose your job. Someone has to earn money”-but he’d given her the kindest kiss he could manage.
“Andrei?” said a voice with an accent that skipped over the rolled r in his name.
He looked up to find another Chinese man. A skinny man, taller than he’d expected, wearing a trench coat. He carried a paper shopping bag with
BARNEYS
NEW YORK
written on it.
“Ja?” he said, then remembered where he was. “Yes. I am Andrei. You are Li?”
“About time,” the man said, then launched into a stream of English Andrei couldn’t understand at all and set the bag at his feet. He ended with “Okay?”
Andrei nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”
For a second the man stared at him, his face full of doubt, then turned and walked away.
Andrei waited, breathing through his mouth because his nose had become stopped up, and watched the dogs racing across the park, stumbling and jumping over one another and chewing on each other and pinning each other down. Tongues lashed against their faces as they ran, and their eyes were huge with pleasure.
15
She recalled Venice. After all, it was the three of them again-the three of them and a strange man. Angela Yates was the only missing actor, and she was dead. She’d been dead for eight months.
That was later. At the moment it occurred, she recalled nothing. It was a moment unto itself, with no past or future, and her instincts took over: She reached for Stephanie and pulled her close.
They had just left the apartment. It was nearly seven-they were running late for their reservation at Long Tan, and Little Miss was talking. “If you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway, then…” She didn’t finish her sentence. Not because of what happened, but because she couldn’t find the words to express how much the English language had let her down. A minute later, Tina would share her inarticulateness.
He didn’t stand out. In a city like New York few people stand out, but the small man in the soiled, waist-length jacket sitting on their stoop with a leather bag and a shopping bag from Barneys looked like any number of visitors in this city of visitors. Beyond him, a black couple pushed a baby carriage along the sidewalk, and across Garfield the Vietnamese florists were checking on the breathtaking variety of flowers arranged on the sidewalk outside their convenience store every day. The man, hearing them come out, turned to look. He had a round, flabby face and deep-set eyes, and besides the stubble that went nearly up to his eyelids he had plenty of hair. The hair on top of his head looked oily.
Tina turned to lock the door while Milo told Stephanie, “Language doesn’t always make sense. Take Russian, for example-”
He stopped because he, too, had noticed the man now staring at them. With a hand that moved as if it were a separate creature entirely, Milo grabbed Stephanie by the arm and pushed her behind him, placing his own body between this man and his girls.
“It is you,” the man said in heavily accented English.
With a voice harder than any she’d heard in her life, Milo said, “Go back inside, Tina.”
Tina had already locked up and pocketed the key. “What?”
“Inside. Take Stef.”
“Milo Weaver,” said the man on the steps.
“Inside, Tina.”
Her hands were shaking, but she got the door open and pulled Stephanie, who knew better than to ask questions right now, inside. They shut the door and watched through the window as Milo took a step down and began to speak softly to the man.
The window was thin, and they could catch phrases:… should go home… can’t solve anything… not at my house… Then they switched to German. The word “Stanescu” came to them, and Tina realized with an unsettling shift in her stomach that Stanescu was the name of the Europe an girl who’d been killed.
Then she recalled this man’s face (it looked so different in reality) from some video on CNN, with the weeping
