Nine Days (16 page)

After a few more strings of curses, he got himself under control.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to call for help, and then I’m going to go look for her. You stay here. Do not move. Got that?” I nodded. “I’ll arrange for some police to get here and keep an eye on you. But it’s probably just her they were after, right? You should be okay. Here. In case you need me.”

He scribbled his cell phone number and was out the front door, punching in a call as he left.

As soon as he was out of sight, I swung my way to the back of the restaurant. By this time the owner was yelling with almost as much spirit as Brian. Probably about the bill, I supposed, but I didn’t stay to find out.

The kitchen was narrow and sweltering, and one crutch nearly slid out from under me on the slick floor. A crate of bok choy propped open the back door, which gave onto a narrow alley, dark, amazingly cool in contrast …

 … and empty. No sign of her, of course.

Left? Right? I chose left, for no reason, and followed the alley to the nearest main street, where the usual crowds were streaming by. There was no hope of tracking her, that was for sure. A five-minute head start in this city, when you had no clue where to start, was as good as five hours, whether she was on her own or she’d been kidnapped.

I didn’t believe she’d been kidnapped. I wasn’t going to tell Brian, but in my gut I
knew
she hadn’t been kidnapped. She’d come to some decision on the plane from Hanoi, or maybe in the car, when she was staring at the bay so unseeingly, and so unhappy.

How can I go back to my mother empty-handed?
she’d said. What did that mean? I couldn’t believe she would, well, do anything to harm herself. Surely she’d know that would make things a thousand times worse for her mother.

I also knew people could do crazy things when they worked themselves into a state like Ti-Anna had.

Of course it hurt that she had kept whatever she was planning secret not just from Brian but from me, too. But I wasn’t going to worry about that now. I was going to find her.

I found myself limping toward the bay as I tried to puzzle things out. Before I realized it, I was at the harbor, on the walkway we’d come to that first night. The lights were coming on, the ferries were zipping back and forth, couples were strolling and holding hands and talking on their phones. None of it looked beautiful or exciting anymore.

I took my phone out of my knapsack for the first time in days. I thought, if there’s anyone she might trust here, it would be Horace. He had sent us to Radio Man, but I didn’t think Horace had been in on any of this, and I knew Ti-Anna didn’t think so either.

Before I could try to track him down, I noticed that a call had been made from my phone at 4:38 a.m.

It made no sense to me.

At 4:38 we’d been fast asleep on Sydney’s floor. Could the girl with the doll have played with my phone while I slept? It didn’t seem likely.

Then I remembered: I’d set the phone to stay on Bethesda time. On Hong Kong time, the call would have gone out at 3:38 p.m., not 4:38 a.m. Around the time we had landed in Hong Kong.

Or rather, I realized, at exactly the time Ti-Anna had told Brian she needed to use the airport ladies’ room.

Concentrate, I instructed myself. She must have taken the phone while I was sleeping on the plane. Carried it off, made a call from the bathroom and then stuck it back in my bag during the ride from the airport, or in the coffin elevator, or somewhere else along the way.

Whom had she called?

The number was local. When I hit redial, a girl answered right away.

“Hello?” she said. “Ti-Anna?”

“This is Ethan,” I said slowly. And I then knew who was on the other end: Wei, who we’d met near this very spot. The bubbly one, who looked like Ti-Anna.

“Hi!” she said. “What a trip you had! Of course Mai and I saw you on TV, and we were so excited! And then Ti-Anna told me all about how brave you were!”

“I was?” I said. “I mean, she did?”

“Yes, of course!” Wei burbled. “But she’d probably be mad at me for telling you so!” She giggled.

“Oh, I don’t think she’d mind,” I said, stalling for time. What was going on?

There was a tiny pause.

“Is something wrong?” Wei asked. “Why are you calling? Did the reporters find you?”

The reporters? “Um, no,” I said. “I was just wondering if Ti-Anna was still with you.”

“No, I left her a few minutes ago! I thought you were going to meet at the Y.”

The Y? I wasn’t getting any less confused. Whatever Ti-Anna was up to, it wasn’t what Wei thought she was up to, and I didn’t want to make her suspicious.

“No,” I said. “I think I must have gotten the time wrong, or something, that’s why I was calling. What exactly did she say again?” I asked.

“Well, that you two were going to stay at the Y tonight, before flying home, but if she checked in with her real name, the reporters would track you down, so I lent her my ID,” Wei said, her voice bubbling again at the idea of playing a part in this adventure.

“You
what
?” I said, before I could stop myself. “I mean, did she say how she was going to get it back to you?”

“Yes, she said she’d leave it in an envelope at the desk of the Y,”
Wei said. “My parents would probably kill me, but I think she is so brave. Like you! I was happy to help!”

“That is so nice,” I said. “Did she take anything else?” Why would Ti-Anna want Wei’s Hong Kong ID?

“No,” Wei said. “Actually, I keep my Home Return Card in the same billfold, and I just gave her the whole thing.”

My heart sank. Her Home Return Card—I knew from the guidebook that that was what China gave Hong Kong residents who wanted to travel to the mainland. A China visa, in other words. Except since it was all one country, they couldn’t call it a visa.

“Why?” Wei asked. The note of doubt was back, a bit stronger this time. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no, I just … I just wondered if maybe I’m in the wrong place, or something. Are there two Y’s?”

I was babbling now, trying not to alarm Wei while my mind raced to imagine what Ti-Anna might be up to. One thing was for sure, she wasn’t planning to give Wei her document back in the morning. And she must be awfully desperate to involve this sweet girl.

“Not really,” Wei said. “At least, when anyone says the Y, they mean the main one. On the Kowloon side?”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “Well, I’m sure I screwed up somehow. There wouldn’t be anything unusual about that.”

I paused. “What else did you guys talk about? I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see you.”

“We didn’t have much time,” Wei said. “I promised my parents I’d be home before dark. She told me a little about what happened to you in Vietnam, like I said. I told her how we were going up to the beach on Hainan Island next week. She asked me what it’s like, and how we get there—she talked about how, even with her father and everything, she’d like to go back into China someday.”

“ ‘How you get there’?” I repeated. Hainan was a resort inside China proper. “What do you mean?”

“You know, do we fly, or take the train, or whatever,” she answered. “She asked about Lo Wu, where we cross into the mainland, and how that works, whether pedestrians can cross. But we take the train. We talked about school a little. And how neither one of us is looking forward to it! And she promised to come visit again. You better come too!”

“Definitely!” I said. “Or you to Washington.”

“I wish!” Wei said. “All right, I’d better go. Friend me as soon as you get home, all right?”

“Definitely,” I said again. “Thanks, Wei.”

My heart had sunk even lower. Ti-Anna didn’t intend to be in Bethesda two days from now, friending Wei or anyone else. I realized that she didn’t plan on being on a plane to Dulles tomorrow. I wasn’t going to get on that plane without her, though. I knew that now.

Ti-Anna was heading into China with Wei’s ID and Home Return Card. Somehow she thought she was going to rescue her father from prison in Kunming.

What she really was going to do was get herself locked up. For a long, long time.

My guidebook was in my pack—in the trunk of Brian’s car. I stumped as fast as I could to the nearest fancy hotel, the Regent, found its gift shop and pulled a guidebook from the rotating shelf.

Speed-scanning, I learned I could get to Lo Wu via the Kowloon–Canton Railway, which left from the Hung Hom station, which was just a few blocks away. I shoved the book back and swung my way there. The train accepted the same Octopus card as the subway and the ferry. I boarded as the doors were closing. Trains left every five or ten minutes, I saw, so Ti-Anna might have a pretty good lead on me. How good, I didn’t know.

It was a forty-minute ride through the darkness, which gave me time to think, but I wouldn’t say I was thinking clearly. Mostly I tried to imagine what Ti-Anna thought she was up to.

Somehow she might get to Kunming, I could believe that. She looked enough like Wei to travel on her ID, and her Chinese was good enough not to make anyone suspicious.

Somehow, though I had no idea how, she might even find the
prison where they were holding her dad—if he had in fact been taken to Kunming, and if he hadn’t been moved since.

Then what? She thought she could make
them
see reason? Or she’d smuggle him a file inside a moon cake?

Eventually Wei would report her card as lost or stolen. Would she tell who had stolen it? Maybe not. She might still feel loyal to Ti-Anna, even when her card wasn’t at the Y tomorrow morning. Or she might feel embarrassed to have been duped.

All in all, Ti-Anna might figure she’d have a few days inside China before
they
even knew she was there.

What I knew for sure was that she had a way into China and I didn’t, and so I had to stop her at the border.

As soon as I saw Lo Wu, I should have realized how impossible that would be.

Thousands of people go back and forth every day, so of course the border crossing was an enormous complex: barracks and buildings and fences and lines and intimidating signs everywhere.

There were a dozen lines in a glaringly bright terminal, and hundreds of people snaking back and forth, patiently waiting to present their documents. I raced from one line to the next: no Ti-Anna. I made myself do it again, slowly, face by face; maybe she’d disguised herself in some way.

Of course she wasn’t there.

I couldn’t wait inside the building. Either you were in line, or you had no reason to be there, and I didn’t exactly blend in.

I sat by a scraggly bush out in the shadows, from where I could see inside the waiting hall. Crushed juice boxes and empty beer cans were scattered around me, and diesel fumes mixed with a faint odor of urine. I’d been starving. Now I felt nauseous.

And so I waited, feeling foolish.

At some level I must have known it was hopeless, even as I tried to examine each arriving person, the businessmen with their
briefcases, the young moms with children and backpacks full of presents for the grandparents across the border.

Of course she wouldn’t have disguised herself: the whole point was how much she resembled Wei. Maybe she hadn’t come here at all. These days there were many ways to cross into China: trains, buses, even ferries that would take you to cities up and down the Pearl River Delta. For all I knew, she had asked Wei about this one to throw me off.

I couldn’t admit that I had failed to stop her. And I couldn’t think what else to do.

I didn’t realize that I’d dozed off until I woke up, befuddled. The immigration hall was dark. In fact it must have been the quiet that woke me.

I stood stiffly and remembered why I was there. The darkness was like a final verdict of failure. I made my way back to the station.

Midnight had passed, and I had missed the last return train. The next wouldn’t leave until five-something, I learned from a man still inside the ticket booth.

He was gray-haired, soft-spoken, and when I looked bereft (not to mention bedraggled, I’m sure) he seemed to take pity. He told me where I could still find a taxi to take me back to Kowloon.

It would cost a small fortune, but I was past caring. I was low on cash, though, so I asked the man where I could find an ATM, and he pointed me back across the station.

Standing before that ATM machine, in the nearly deserted Lo Wu railway station, was where I discovered that my Visa card was missing.

The empty slot in my wallet shocked me into finally thinking straight.

I sprint-crutched my way back across the deserted station. The man in the booth looked a little exasperated when I reappeared.

“This is going to sound crazy,” I said. He looked up at me, without expression. “I’m sure you want to get home. But could you possibly do me a giant favor? It’s an emergency.”

He waited patiently, if a bit warily.

“I need to know when was the last flight from Hong Kong to Kunming today, and when’s the first flight tomorrow.”

“Kunming? You mean in Yunnan province?”

I nodded. It’s possible my pronunciation wasn’t native quality.

He looked me over skeptically.

“And this is an emergency?”

I nodded.

He sighed, put on the bifocals that he kept hanging around his neck and turned to his computer. In a minute he came back to the microphone in the window.

“There are four flights a day,” he said. “The last one today was at three-fifty p.m. The first one out tomorrow is Dragon Air Flight 2435 at nine-fifty-five a.m.”

“Thank you!” I said, with so much feeling that the clerk looked alarmed for the first time.

She could not have flown out yet. I still had a chance.

“That’s all you need?” he asked.

I nodded and tried to calm myself.

“Thank you,” I said again. “You are very kind.”

It wasn’t all I needed, but there wasn’t much the man in the booth could do about the rest of my problems. I didn’t have enough money for a taxi back to Kowloon, let alone to the airport, and without my credit card obviously I couldn’t get more. But if I caught the first train back, and then the airport bus, I should still have time.