Bhang knocked. A few moments later, a series of dead bolts could be heard, turning. The door finally opened.

“Hello, Fao,” said Bhang’s half brother, Bo Minh, a large smile on his face. “I didn’t know you would be coming. It’s Sunday. To what do I owe this honor?”

“Since when can a man not stop to pay a visit to his brother?”

With a calm smile, Bhang registered the disheveled visage of Minh. He was shirtless. His chest was so thin he could see his brother’s rib cage. His skin was approximately one shade brighter than a corpse’s. His hair was down to his shoulders, unbrushed, streaked with gray, shining with several days’ worth of grease. Minh’s thick glasses were smudged and made his eyeballs look three times their actual size.

Bhang stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his brother.

“I brought you some food,” said Bhang, hugging him.

The apartment was one large room, lit brightly, with little furniture except, along the walls, long tables atop which sat more than two dozen computer screens, all lit up with various photographs, charts, and data. The tables were chest high so that Minh could move easily between computers, remaining on his feet as he worked. At the ministry, where Minh was the chief technology officer, he worked up to twenty hours a day for months on end. At home, he didn’t stop either, as the flashing computer screens attested. Bhang still didn’t know when his brother slept.

The apartment had only two windows, at the far wall, and Bhang walked to the one on the right. He looked through the window. He could see the lovely flowers of the Beijing Botanical Garden in the distance, and Kunming Lake to the far right. As Bhang was the minister of State Security and Minh was the top technologist at the ministry, Minh could have lived anywhere he wanted. But this was where the lonely, brilliant man wanted to live. Near the flowers.

“Will you stay for tea?” asked Minh, an infectious smile on his face. “With honey and ginger, how Father made it?”

“Yes,” said Bhang.

At the mention of their father, at the sight of his frail, malnourished, wonderfully kind brother, a memory stirred.

*   *   *

He had never known his real father. That man had died while working at the tire factory when Bhang was only two. Bhang’s mother had remarried, to a man named Ni Minh, a kind man, who raised him like a son.

It was a warm, summer day in the alley behind the small house on the outskirts of Chengdu, where he grew up with his mother, stepfather, and little Bo.

The neighborhood boys were playing soccer, shouting and screaming, long after sunset.

Ni had asked Bhang to include Bo. Little Bo. Even at that age, he wore thick glasses and was thin and small. The other boys made fun of him. Even Bhang sometimes participated.

Bo was put in one of the nets as goaltender. It was a close game and Bo let in the winning goal. His own teammates yelled at him, pointing at him, taunting him. One of the boys picked up the ball and hurled it at Bo. It hit his head, and his glasses fell to the ground, shattering. Bhang had watched as Bo searched the ground for the glasses, feeling with his hands, tears streaming down his face. It was the moment Bhang remembered. It was the moment Bhang realized what love was and what loyalty was. It all coalesced at that moment, seeing Bo on the ground, so helpless, looking for glasses that no longer existed.

Bhang beat up the boy who hurled the ball at Bo, breaking his nose with a vicious punch. He knocked a tooth from the mouth of another boy and delivered a black eye to a third before they descended on him and thoroughly beat him, then left him on the gravel, his nose bloody, his lip too, his entire body like a large bruise. But Bhang had never felt better than at that moment.

It wasn’t long after that fight before Bo started to show his genius. He could take apart and put back together anything—radios, the air conditioner at the school, Ni Minh’s electric razor. Then he started to create machines on his own. Over the course of a winter, he’d built a small combustion engine for the house that could generate electricity. Bo had carved his own path in this world, with or without Bhang, and Bhang was proud.

Bhang found himself staring out at the gardens, lost in the childhood memory, when Minh returned to the room, two hot cups of tea in hand.

“Where shall we sit, Bo?” asked Bhang, smiling and taking one of the cups from his brother.

“Wherever you like,” said Minh, waving his gaunt arm through the air, as if the room were a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel instead of a furnitureless hovel that looked more like a computer closet than anything else.

Bhang laughed enthusiastically along with Minh as he sat down on the wooden floor, crossed his legs, and took the first sip from the cup.

18

CÓRDOBA

Behind the hill, out of view of the others, Raul went to work.

He found several pieces of wood bark, then set them up like targets in a line. He walked off five hundred feet, then set up the Dragunov.

He sited the first piece of bark in the rifle scope. He centered it, focused in, then fired. Nothing happened. He fired again, and still nothing. He made an adjustment to the placement of the scope on the side-rail mount. He fired again. This time, the top of the bark went flying away in a cloud of dust. It wasn’t the spot he was aiming for, but it was a start.

Hu-Shao had been right; the rifle was out of sync. Raul wouldn’t admit that to him, however. Raul loved the old Dragunov.

Raul made several more small adjustments, finding the small knob that enabled him to compensate and adjust for bullet drop over long distances.

He test-fired several more times, adjusting the knob in between shots, until he hit a piece of bark precisely where he was aiming.

Over the next hour, he went down the line of bark, at increasing distances, testing the rifle until he felt confident that the aiming mechanism was perfect.

Finally, he took his shirt off and draped it over a shrub. He walked off approximately one mile. He got down on his stomach, aimed, then fired. Leaving the rifle on its bipod, he jogged to his T-shirt. A few inches off dead center, a large tear was visible.

Raul put the shirt back on and walked back. He was ready.

*   *   *

Dewey and Jessica rode under the warm sun until midafternoon. They came to a bend in the river. A small promontory of meadow formed in the notch of the running water. A tree jutted out over the water. The water was dark blue and bulged at the bend, forming a deep pool. It was hot out but dry.

Dewey removed his shirt, boots, and jeans, then walked naked into the water. Jessica removed her clothing too, following him to the stream. The water was bitter cold.

“Ouch,” she said as she stepped in behind him. “That’s freezing!”

He took her hand in his. He was used to swimming in Maine. The stream was almost as cold as a Castine plunge in October, but not quite.

“Comes down from the mountains,” said Dewey. “Melting ice. It’s nothing compared to Maine, sweetie.”

“Well, I’m not swimming in this,” she said. “It’s too cold.”

“Trust me, it’s refreshing. My dad used to swim up until Thanksgiving. Now, that was cold. He called them polar bears.”

“Polar bears?”

“Yeah. Like, let’s go for a polar bear.”

“Oh,” said Jessica. “Well, I’m not some crazy Mainer, and this is too cold for me.”

“No worries,” said Dewey. He bent down, near Jessica’s legs.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Dewey wrapped his right arm around the back of Jessica’s thighs, then lifted her into the air.

She screamed.

“No!” she howled. “Put me down! Put me down right now!”

Dewey walked into the deeper water, as Jessica, dangling over his shoulder, slugged him in the back, hitting him as hard as she could.