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.