He took the elevator to the seventh floor and used his key on the door, and it was when he closed it behind himself that Hector Garza stepped briskly out of the bathroom, right arm extended, a Heckler & Koch USP pointed at Milo’s face. Milo saw the emotions working through the Tourist’s features. “On the bed,” said Garza.
Milo sat on it, slowly raising his hands, and said, “Left pocket.”
Garza reached into Milo’s pocket and took out the lady’s gun. His own pistol not wavering, he lifted the Browning to his nose and sniffed but smelled nothing other than gun oil. Then the door opened and Leticia strode in from the corridor, and the most worrying thing wasn’t Garza’s pistol but the expression on Leticia’s face. It was the look of a Tourist, of someone who has disconnected herself from the emotional impact of what she’s about to do. Only now did he realize how much he had been depending on her good moods to get him through all of this.
She took the Browning Garza offered her, then crossed to the television, turned it on—CNN was showing smoke and destruction from a bomb in a place called Kumarikata, in India—and raised the volume. She sat beside Milo on the bed and, without looking at him, said, “How long have you been working for him?”
So that was it. “This is the sixth day.”
“You know what we have to do now, don’t you?”
Milo didn’t speak. He tightened his pelvic muscles to keep from urinating on himself.
Leticia said, “This isn’t how it was supposed to end.”
She seemed to be waiting for a reply, so he said, “No. I didn’t think so either,” for that was true. If she’d found out an hour ago, he might have even welcomed it, for a quiet death seemed the only real solution to his problems. Now, his own death had become pointless.
“How did you know? Did I give it away?”
“Probably,” she said, “but I didn’t notice. I got a call.”
“Collingwood?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think this was the first she learned of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure what I mean. Did she tell you to kill me?”
Her silence was answer enough. Finally, she cocked her head, regarding him, and Garza shifted his weight to his other foot. She said, “How did he get to you?”
“How do you think? My family. It’s the same way he got Alan.”
She twitched, turning to face him fully. “Tell me about Alan.”
“Xin Zhu threatened his wife. Was running Alan since the end of May.”
“Penelope Drummond is missing.”
“Of course. Just like my wife and daughter, but now I know that Xin Zhu doesn’t have them. Nor does Dorothy Collingwood.”
“Who does?”
“They’re safe.”
She frowned, digesting this. “You couldn’t have just told me about Xin Zhu?” she asked.
“What would you have done with the information?”
“Well, maybe I would’ve helped you.”
“But not them. You wouldn’t have helped them.”
She lowered her brows until she was almost squinting. “So Alan says they’re safe?”
“Alan’s not in that hotel, Leticia. It’s Tran Hoang.”
Surprisingly, Hector Garza lowered his pistol. “He’s dead.”
Leticia rubbed her face, for she was putting things together quickly now. Her intelligence was another thing Milo was depending on. “No, Hector. We were told he was dead.”
“By whom?” Milo asked.
“Collingwood,” Garza answered, then looked at Leticia, who was frowning at him. “What does it matter?”
“Give me a moment to think,” she said. “It might matter.” Then she looked at Milo. “What does Tran Hoang say?”
Tran Hoang had said a lot of things, but Milo only shared what was urgent for them. “He says we should run. The Chinese will come for us at any moment.”
“Of course he says that.”
“He’s just a distraction. By now, Alan should be inside.”
“Inside where?”
“The mainland. Hoang is leaving, too.”
Leticia closed her eyes and let out a quiet curse, then opened them and said to Garza, “There was someone in our lobby.”
“I saw him, too,” said Milo.
“That’s good odds,” said Garza.
“Wait,” said Leticia. “What else did Tran Hoang tell you?”
“Not much else,” Milo said.
“You were in there for nearly a half hour,” Leticia pointed out.
“We were cleaning up,” said Milo.
Garza looked tempted to raise his pistol again. “Cleaning up?”
“Because I tried to kill him.”
Both Tourists stared at him.
“He admitted to murdering my father. I was angry.”
“Well,
damn,
” said Leticia. She looked up as Garza worked his pistol into the belt under his jacket.
“Well, we’re not going to kill him, are we?” he asked defensively. “And somebody needs to find out what’s going on downstairs.”
Leticia nodded. “So, we leave.”
“It’s the only play,” Garza said.
“I agree,” said Milo, but a look from Leticia told him his opinion wasn’t of interest.
She said to Garza, “Five minutes. Call if there’s opposition, and then cover us when we go down.”
The Tourist gave her a smile and a wink and was gone.
“You’re worried,” Milo told her.
“Damned right I’m worried. What? You really think I’m a machine?”
“You’re not an idiot, either, Leticia. Alan got Tran Hoang on his side, so to cover for it Collingwood told you he’d been killed. She’s told you a lot of things. Don’t imagine you have the slightest idea what any of this is about.”
Her frown had deepened considerably, and she said, “What did Tran really tell you?”
“He told me the only thing that matters.”
“That damned family.”
He was about to reply, but they heard the loud
thump-thump
of two shots, muffled by walls, then the
tittit
of automatic fire in reply. Leticia was heading toward the door, her Browning held out in front of her. She checked the spy hole, then opened the door and jerked her head out and back in. A piece of the door frame exploded. She slammed the door shut, but it bounced back open again, letting in the noise of two more pistol shots and shouts in Mandarin. She grabbed a desk chair and wedged it against the door handle to keep it closed.
Milo was already at the window, prying it open, but he could see that the seven-floor drop to the street was no good. “No, baby!” Leticia called over the noise of the television and the explosions from the corridor. “Duck!” She raised her pistol at him, and he dropped to the floor. Two shots, and the window shattered above his head. As he climbed to his feet, she was heading into the bathroom. He heard water running, then found her plugging a hair dryer into the socket beside the mirror as the tub was slowly filling with water. At the sound of two more shots, Milo turned to see two jagged holes in the door, just above the desk chair. “That’s good,” he heard Leticia say, shutting off the water, then she turned on the dryer and tossed it into the tub. A glow of hissing sparks. The lights snapped off, putting them in darkness. Briefly, with the television off and conversation in the corridor ceasing, there was silence. “See?” she whispered. “All you need—”
The lights flickered back on, the hotel’s backup system kicking in, and he could now see her standing beside the tub, the pistol in her hand, looking dejected. “Oh, man,” she said. “That was my only trick.”
He wanted to laugh.
“What’re you smiling at, Milo? We’re dead now.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Toss the gun, Leticia. Let’s go out there.”
“I’m not suicidal. Not for this I’m not.”
“Want me to go first?”
“If it pleases you,” she said.
He turned to go, then paused. “Can you at least tell them what I’m doing?”
She sighed loudly as another shot from the corridor ripped another hole in the door. She shouted, “Dĕngdài!” There was silence; then she launched into a short stream of Mandarin that, he hoped, would save his life. To Milo, she said, “See you on the other side,” and gave him a dry kiss on the lips.
Slowly, he approached the door and lifted the chair out of the way. Without the support, the door swung open on its own, revealing a slice of empty corridor. He placed his hands against the back of his neck. As he moved forward, his view widened, and he could see three Chinese men on the left, two on the right, all backed against the far wall so that if they fired at once they wouldn’t hit each other. Two of them were on one knee. All five men were aiming at him. Three pistols, two small machine pistols.
They made no sign to him, so he chose the men on the left, approaching with purposeful steps. When he’d almost reached them, he heard Leticia shouting something else, and one of the crouched men motioned Milo to move to the side, which he did. One of the others lowered his gun and grabbed Milo’s wrists, turning him around as he jerked his hands down behind his back and linked them with PlastiCuffs. Milo felt the pinch of a needle in his forearm but didn’t fight it.
Leticia came out, her hands against the small of her back, and it was when she had cleared the door that Milo, and the man behind him, noticed that in her right hand was the Browning. The man shouted something beside his ear, a burst of hot air and noise, and simultaneously Leticia whipped out the pistol, getting off one shot before three bullets entered her. She fell, her empty gun hand writhing, and shouted a stream of curses. Milo’s head flushed and burned as the drugs started to take over. Blood pumped from the bare shoulder of Leticia’s black dress across the beige carpeting; then she was gone beneath a pile of Xin Zhu’s men. Milo’s own blood seemed to thicken and swell. His ears weren’t working well—sounds smeared. They smear.
Stairs.
Lobby. Faces.
Street.
The back of a black BMW, crowded between two heavy men with bad breath.
The city.
Highway. Feet tingling. Outside, the sea.
Airport, but not Departures. An access road around the building, under catwalks, past vehicles with stairs leading nowhere, to a white twin-engine propeller plane idling far from anything.
Hands. Breath.
Cold wind across the tarmac. Two men talking, one in a pilot’s uniform, at the foot of stairs.
Up. Hands lifting because feet no longer work.
Through the hole. No smiling stewardess. No “May I see your boarding pass?” Just two lines of grimy, padded seats. Only one other passenger. A pasty-faced Chinese with thick glasses, reading his telephone.
Down, in the seat.
Straps.
Not too tight, please.
“Hello, Mr. Milo Weaver.”
It’s the pasty-faced one, putting away his phone. They’re beside each other, the walkway separating them.
Can’t raise hands, but not because of the straps.
“We will be there in three hours. About.”
Where?
It doesn’t come out.
But where else could he mean?
And does it matter?
The engine rumbles.
The man is close now, his breath minty and clean. “No, no,” he says, smiling. “Don’t worry, we have time for talking. Later.”
The man sits and buckles his seat belt.
They begin to move.
Yes, it matters.
6
The
People’s Daily
that Monday morning ran a short notice announcing Hua Yuan’s death “by stroke,” reminding readers that she had been the widow of the esteemed Bo Gaoli, who was tragically felled by a heart attack in April. Zhu remembered Hua Yuan’s suspicion of all officials who had reportedly died of heart attacks and wondered if this could be legitimately defined as irony.
She wasn’t the only fresh corpse. Xu Guanzhong, Wei Chi-tao, He Qiang, and in the Kowloon Hector Garza had died, but not before killing He Péng, whom he’d recalled just for this job. Shen An-ling had arrived last night with their meager prizes for so many bodies—Milo Weaver and Leticia Jones. Things were as they should be—two enemies in custody, another one soon to be dealt with—but there was too much blood. It was time to be done with that.
Zhu had hidden the events of Sunday morning from Shen An-ling, largely because he didn’t want him distracted. Also, he’d entered a new kind of relationship with Sun Bingjun that required sensitivity. By helping Zhu, Sun Bingjun was risking everything, and there was no need to let that information move any further than was absolutely necessary. Sun Bingjun had told him to come to the Great Hall of the People at nine to present the narrative he had spent much of the previous night sketching out in his home office. It had to be complete, even when the facts were not known, and so he filled in holes with educated speculation. At eight, he put on his jacket. Sung Hui gave him a kiss, which he hardly even felt.
After the weekend rains, it was pleasantly clear-skied when he reached the Great Hall, and its damp steps were empty of schoolchildren. There were more guards than usual perched at the top, lugging their rifles, and he wondered if he had missed some announcement or other. Then he wondered if they were waiting for him.
In the Beijing Hall, he found Zhang Guo sitting with Feng Yi, both smoking cigarettes. He stopped a few feet away. Zhang Guo said, “I suppose you’re announcing some breakthrough in the case, Xin Zhu?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe Sun Bingjun is,” Feng Yi suggested, raising his cigarette. “He called the meeting.”
As if on cue, Sun Bingjun strolled in, raising eyebrows at the three men and carrying a yellow folder. To Zhu, he said, “No notes?”
Zhu tapped his skull.
“Dangerous,” Sun Bingjun said, then took a seat.
Zhang Guo and Feng Yi gave them questioning looks.
Wu Liang arrived with Yang Qing-Nian again, but this time both men looked flustered. “I almost didn’t make it,” Wu Liang told them all. “Some of us don’t have the free time for last-minute assemblies.”
“Apologies,” said Sun Bingjun. “You needn’t have come if you didn’t want to.”
Wu Liang noticed the coolness in Sun Bingjun’s voice, and he shook his head. “I’m short on sleep. Excuse me.”
They took their places, Zhu again sitting opposite the others, and after setting his own digital recorder in the center of the room, Sun Bingjun returned to his seat and began very simply. “Thank you all for coming here. You will have heard by now of the tragic death of Hua Yuan, the wife of Bo Gaoli, this weekend, and this is the reason for our meeting this morning. What you may not know is that she was murdered brutally in her kitchen, and the assailant has yet to be identified.”