Eye for an Eye (40 page)

Before he left the club, he’d grabbed the nine iron from his golf bag. As he ambled slowly toward the farm, he was swinging it at the yellow dandelion heads that sprouted in the grass strip that ran up the middle of the driveway, and at anything even remotely hittable in the low bushes alongside the driveway—flowers, pinecones, even the occasional rock.

Truth be told, he didn’t like golf very much, so he actually didn’t care about not playing the back nine, which was, at nine-hole Castine Golf Club, simply the front nine all over again. But the thought of scrubbing down the cantankerous old pig Homer made Sam walk as slowly as humanly possible without drawing the suspicion of his grandmother, who was apt to go looking for him if he took too long walking up the meandering drive to the farm.

Sam came to a small green apple that had fallen in the middle of the road. He considered eating it, but then changed his mind. He got into a golf stance, then swung, firing the apple in a hail of scattering parts into the bushes.

After admiring his shot for much longer than it actually deserved, he started walking again, practically smelling Homer as he drew closer. His momentum was suddenly interrupted by the dull red speckles of a raspberry bush.

They wouldn’t want you to starve,
he said to himself as he dropped the club and leaned over to pick a few raspberries and waste more time.

*   *   *

John Andreas stepped to the side of a large fenced-in pigpen. Three pigs were inside the pen, but there was little question as to whose pigpen it was. Homer lay on his side, covered in dried mud, sunbathing in the morning sunshine. He occupied the entire center of the pen, next to the feeding trough, guarding access to it and snoring.

“Hey, Homer,” called Andreas. “Sam’s giving you a bath. Don’t bite him, or I’ll cut another one of those legs off.”

If the pig understood anything that his sixty-six-year-old owner had just said, he didn’t act like it. Indeed, the sound of the big pig’s snoring hummed on through Andreas’s words, uninterrupted.

Andreas, trailed by an old sheepdog named Ginny, walked back across the lawn toward the farmhouse.

Inside the kitchen, he sat down at the table where his wife, Margaret, was already seated. Three plates with sandwiches on them, along with three glasses of lemonade, were on the table.

“Well, that was nice of you, Marge,” he said. “Who’s the third one for?”

“Sammy.”

“Hobey’s trying to teach him a lesson, hon.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with that kid. He’s a spitting image of his uncle. How did
he
turn out?”

“That’s not the point, Marge. It’s not our place to get in the middle of that.”

“We’ll tell him to keep it hush,” she said, patting his hand. “And before you have him clean that damn pig, I need his help in the garden. My arthritis is acting up. He can weed for a spell.”

*   *   *

Less than a half mile away, just past Hatch Cove, Dao took a right turn on Wadsworth Cove Road. She drove a few hundred feet, slowly, looking ahead and behind, making sure no one was around to see her. She turned into a grassy cutout lot to the left. She aimed the car across the thick field grass and parked between a pair of pine trees, out of sight of anyone driving or walking on Wadsworth Cove Road.

Outside the car, she took off her leather boots, then removed her white blouse and jeans, tossing them in the back of the Camaro. She pulled on tight green camouflage running pants, a matching running shirt, then a camo ski mask, which she pulled down over her head. She slammed a magazine in the Panther LR-308, then strapped the rifle across her back.

Dao began a fast run into the woods, due south, guided by the small compass on her watch. She’d never been to Castine before, but she knew precisely where she was going.

The stand of trees soon dissolved into thickets of overgrown shrubs, but it didn’t slow her down. She came to a thin stream, jumped across it, then kept moving south. Soon, she was cloaked in the shadows of the forest, the North Woods, as it was called in Castine.

When she hit the first of the tall trees, Dao turned, stopped, and faced due east. She walked off exactly four hundred paces. She then turned to face south and walked slowly straight ahead, being careful not to make any noise. After half a minute, the red of a barn suddenly appeared through the trees. Dao was at the farm.

She walked a slow, stalking, meticulously quiet path along the edge of the trees that encircled the large farm. When she finally stopped, she was south of the farm, looking up at a pretty, rambling white farmhouse.

In the yard, she saw a fluffy dog walking alongside a tall, silver-haired man and a much-shorter woman.

Chang continued to stalk around the perimeter of the farm, shielded by the shadows of the trees, looking up at the couple as they walked across the front lawn of the farm to a garden. The couple—John and Margaret Andreas—went inside the garden. Dao stared as they each pulled on yellow gardening gloves and went to work.

Dao glanced quickly around her, scanning for a place to set up. She quickly found it. An old stone wall was just a few feet away. She walked to it and found a place to set up the Panther for a nice, clean shot. When she found a stable, flat boulder, Dao removed the rifle from her back, set up the bipod on the rock, then lay down behind the stone wall.

*   *   *

Thirty feet up in the air, Sam sat on the branch of a massive maple tree. He stared down at the camouflaged figure on the ground.

Sam’s heart was beating so loudly, he feared the person might hear him.

He looked in front of him. Carved into the bark of the old maple tree were brown letters, carved many years ago, long before he was born:

Hobey

Then, just below it:

Dewey

Sam tried to focus on the letters, looking at them as if they might give him some sort of guidance.

When Sam had first heard the sound of someone walking on dried leaves below, he’d been halfway through the letter “A” of his own name, a few inches below Dewey’s. Sam was about to yell at the person—“Hey, who is that?”—when his eye caught the sight of the long black rifle strapped across the person’s back, and he caught his words.

Now Sam tried to keep from fainting, from screaming, from moving, as he watched the camouflaged figure set up the rifle on a rock below him.

Straight ahead, through the trees, Sam watched as his grandparents walked across the green front lawn. Ginny was between them.

“Oh, God,” Sam whispered, shutting his eyes as tears welled up and he fought against them. “Please help me.”

He finally opened his eyes as the figure set the weapon down on the stone wall and lay down on the ground behind it. It was aimed at his grandparents up in the garden.

He looked back at the tree.

Dewey

Sam took a deep breath, then put his left foot gently down on a branch below where he sat. His tears abruptly stopped, and he felt a warmth that he’d never experienced before, invading his body. Silently, he stepped down onto the branch as, with his other foot, he searched for another branch even lower, a branch he knew by heart, a branch one step closer to the mysterious figure.

77

PARIS

In a small apartment near Luxembourg Gardens, Koo finished toweling off, then went to the bedroom. His clothing was laid out on the bed. Next to his clothing, a nurse’s outfit was laid out.

Koo didn’t get dressed. Instead, he walked downstairs. Tammy was in the kitchen, reading the newspaper.

“Good morning,” he said.

Tammy smiled. “Why are you not dressed?”

“I don’t have to work until this afternoon,” he said.

She smiled and slowly put the paper down, then followed him back upstairs to the bedroom. There, they climbed into bed and made love.

Afterward, she watched from beneath the covers as he got dressed.

“I was thinking of inviting Sam and Kelly for dinner tonight,” she said. “I could make chicken and forty cloves, your favorite.”

Koo pulled the heavy white T-shirt over his head.

“That would be wonderful,” he said, without looking at her. “I’ll pick up a bottle of wine.”

“My shift ends at eight. I’ll invite them for eight thirty, all right?”

“Sounds perfect.”

By the time Koo finished getting dressed, Tammy had fallen asleep. He reached into the drawer and took the QSZ-92 from beneath a pair of pants, sticking it into his shoulder holster.

Koo walked to the side of the bed, then leaned down and kissed his wife on the forehead.

“I love you,” he said, then, in Mandarin, he whispered a Chinese proverb: “How lucky I am to have known someone who was so hard to say goodbye to.”

As he lifted his head, his wife’s eyes opened. She stared at him without moving.

“Must it be?” she whispered.

Koo stared at her for several moments. He said nothing. Finally, he averted his eyes from her, turned, and left.

*   *   *

In Beijing, General Qingchen was dressed in his green khaki uniform, a gold rope sash from right shoulder across his waist; a block of colors was over his left breast, gold stars atop both shoulders, and a beautiful red-and-gold neck ribbon, reserved for the highest-ranking military leader in the People’s Liberation Army. At seventy-four, General Qingchen was not the oldest man in the room, but he was the only one not dressed in a black or dark blue suit.

He was seated on a gold-colored damask couch, in a room called the Gold Sun Room on the grounds of Zhongnanhai, the palace that was the home of China’s paramount leader, Qishan Li, as well as headquarters for China’s Communist Party and its governing State Council, both of which Qingchen was a member.

Qingchen was one of twelve members of the State Council invited to the meeting, which had been called by Premier Li, who was seated on the sofa across from Qingchen. The others, Qingchen had realized as soon as he sat down, were Li’s closest allies.

For the preceding hour, Qingchen and the others had been listening to a detailed briefing by China’s foreign minister regarding Portugal and a series of violent killings in Lisbon that had occurred the day before, involving men that the president of Portugal believed were Chinese agents, four of whose corpses were being held in a Lisbon mortuary.

“This is the second incident in a week involving the Ministry of State Security,” said Li, looking around the room, making eye contact with every man in the room, Qingchen noted, but him. “First America’s national security advisor dies in some sort of botched operation, and now this thing in Lisbon. Bhang’s missteps are becoming a deep embarrassment to us all. I didn’t want to have to do this, but I must insist we consider Bhang’s removal. We all know he’s a capable and talented man, but he’s beginning to harm China’s reputation abroad.”

“What would you like from us?” asked one of the members of the council.

“You are my most trusted circle,” said Li, again glancing around the room, and again, either consciously or unconsciously, avoiding Qingchen. “I know already that I have your loyalty. I would like your support with the broader membership. It is time for action. Bhang must be removed.”

Li flashed Qingchen a look.

“He is a powerful self-advocate,” said another council member. “He has many allies.”

“He is not the paramount leader,” snapped Li. “He would be afforded the honors and awards becoming of a high-ranking official who has decided to retire. A stipend, a seat in the congress, medals, et cetera, and other such things.”

Qingchen felt a chill as Li looked his way.

“As for his allies,” said Li, “we will continue to expect and appreciate their service to the republic. Indeed, I like to consider myself one of Bhang’s strongest allies. This need not be contentious. But it must be.”

*   *   *

At noon, a silver GV touched down at Orly Airport on the outskirts of Paris.

But for the man aboard the jet, Lacey James, it was 3:00
A.M.

With James was his girlfriend, a svelte, beautiful twenty-eight-year-old Swarthmore grad named Didi, with ghost white skin, and a face that garnered ten thousand dollars an hour modeling, when she felt like it, which wasn’t often. She had on a pair of glasses and was reading a book, her third on the flight.

James was dressed in bright yellow leather pants, cowboy boots, a J.Crew flannel shirt, and a cowboy hat. As the plane taxied toward the black Mercedes sedan parked on the tarmac, outside the private terminal, he opened a can of Red Bull and guzzled it.

The jet came to a stop a few feet from the Mercedes. James looked out the window. An MI6 agent climbed from the car’s driver’s seat. He was tall, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved green Under Armour T-shirt.

“See you in a few hours,” he said.

Didi looked up.

“Are we here already?”

“Yes. They’re going to fly you to London. I’ll get there tonight.”

“Cool. See you then, L.J.”

James smiled at her nickname for him.

As far as Didi was concerned, he was getting off in Paris to meet with a French film director named Bruggé, who was interested in hiring him for an upcoming film about the French Revolution. She’d agreed to come when promised a long weekend in London, her favorite city, mainly because she loved its bookstores.

One of the pilots opened the cabin door and lowered the stairs. James lifted a large stainless-steel trunk from a back seat and walked toward the door.

“You need a hand, sir?”

“I got it.”

“London, then back to get you, correct, sir?”

“That’s right. See you later.”

The sound of footsteps on the stairs made him turn just as the agent from the tarmac stuck his head in the cabin. He scanned James from head to toe.

“You got any other clothing?” he asked.

“Yes, why? You don’t like what I’m wearing?”

“The pants are hideous, but that has nothing to do with it, sir,” said the agent. “We’re going to be passing through a residential neighborhood. You can’t stand out. Lose the pleather.”

James went to the back of the plane.