Collin knocked on the hotel door.
He’d known from the moment he’d left the bar that he was probably doing the wrong thing. She would be angry with him for following her, but he didn’t care. He had to see her again. He couldn’t end it the way she had. He didn’t even have a phone number for her in the States. He was sure, too, that the husband—if he existed at all—was someone she didn’t love. He was sure of that.
He tapped on the door a second time, frightened by what she might think of him for coming here. A Latin man opened the door, surprising him.
Dolores was standing across the room. She looked at him, obviously frightened. It was written on her face. He noticed her suitcase on the bed, unopened.
“I’m terribly sorry. I’m here. . ..” Collin said.
The man slammed the door closed. Collin had caught a glimpse of another, much younger man, standing near the bathroom before the door was shut in his face.
For a few seconds he stood at the door, his heart racing. They could be police. They had to be watching the hotel. Nothing to fear if they were the police. And if they weren’t? He couldn’t just leave.
He raised his hand and knocked again. In a moment, the door opened. The older man looked at him angrily. He wore a cheap black leather jacket, and his hair was greasy and combed straight back. His face was pockmarked. He looked like a criminal.
“I’m sorry; I’m from the embassy. Doctor. I’m looking for a Ms. Dolores Rios. Is that her?” he said officiously.
“Policía,” the man at the door said. He began to shut the door in Collin’s face again. Collin stepped into the open door, putting his weight against it this time.
“I’m sorry . . . they said it was an emergency. Emergencia. . . . Are you all right?” Collin said, looking at Dolores, then at the younger man standing near her. The younger man was holding a gun. “My name’s Reeves. Dr. Reeves. May I come in? I was sent by the American Embassy. You can call Ms. Jones, if you would like to check . . . I have the embassy’s number.” He felt the door against his shoulder as the older one tried to close it on him again.
“I did call for a doctor,” Dolores said. She turned and looked at the younger man. He was very slight, in his twenties. Collin felt the pressure release on the door. He took the opportunity and walked by the older one.
“Probably just dysentery,” Collin said.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to come back,” the one by the door said in English. “She’s fine. Look at her.”
“I’ve been ill,” Dolores said. She looked at Collin but didn’t move. “Apparently, I’m under arrest and have to go with these men,” she said to him.
“I see. I’ll call the embassy, then . . . arrest? What’s the charge?” Collin said, looking at the younger one.
The younger one’s hair was cut short. He wore a gold crucifix around his neck, above a sweat shirt with a big Nike swish on the front.
“Drugs,” the young one said in Spanish. “She’ll have a chance to call the embassy as soon as she is down at the station.”
“May I see your IDs, please? I’d like to note them. I will have to make a complete report, of course. I was asked to come and see an American citizen with a medical problem, after all. I’m sure you understand,” Collin said. He forced a quick smile, the Spanish coming out without his having to think about it.
“Get out, amigo,” the one by the door said in English. He opened the door wider. Collin didn’t move.
“I see. Well, I will. . . .”
“Get out, unless you want to go with her,” the older one said. Nike moved towards him. He was whippet-thin. He raised his pistol and pointed it at him, which shocked him. No one had ever pointed a gun at him before. He was stunned.
“Fura pendejo!” Nike said. He came at him and pushed him physically out into the hallway, then threw him to the floor by his coat as if Collin were a child. Collin landed on his medical bag.
The young one stepped on his face with his shoe and looked down at him, holding the pistol against his forehead. He felt a terrible pain in his jaw as the man shifted his weight onto that foot.
“Go,” he said in English.
Collin couldn’t answer; the pain was horrible. It felt as if the man were standing on his face. He had to close his eyes. Then Nike stepped away. Collin thought he was finished, but he kicked him once, very hard, in the solar plexus. Collin tried to get up but Nike kicked him again, and he collapsed. Suddenly the man stopped kicking him, walked back into the room, and slammed the door closed without even bothering to turn and look back at him.
Collin lay on the floor, gripping his medical bag and coughing. He tried to get up but couldn’t, the pain from the kicks too intense and paralyzing.
As the pain receded, he managed to get to his knees. He opened his medical bag and took a scalpel out of its plastic case. The blade was only two millimeters long, but razor sharp. He stood up and went back to the door. He thought for a moment, then moved to the side and knocked.
He heard a gunshot. He pulled back further away from the doorway. The sound of another gunshot filled the hallway. The bullets fired at him had chinked the door and hallway wall across from him.
The door opened, and the thin one stepped out. Collin planted the short blade at the base of Nike’s throat, where he knew he’d hit the main artery, and dragged it quickly towards him. The throat muscles and artery cut open. There was an immediate and dramatic loss of blood pressure, and the man sagged to his knees like a doll before he could fire his gun.
Collin tore the pistol out of Nike’s jerking hand. The man’s dying face turned towards him, horrified, a rain of blood pouring from below his chin. His eyes were already half-dead. He tried to speak to his friend, but it was impossible; only his lips moved.
Collin turned and leaned into the open doorway. He could see Dolores. He fired at the older man, who was drawing his gun. He hit him in the right shoulder and saw him fall back. He stepped back out into the hall and leaned against the wall, well away from the door. He hadn’t killed him. He was sure of that.
“Ay, mierda!. . . Felix?” On the floor now, the older one called his partner from inside the room. “Felix? Que te pasa? . . . Puta.”
The older one was wounded. Collin could hear it in his voice. He crawled over to his bag and took out the alcohol he kept for sterilizing. He tossed it on Nike’s still-jerking body in the doorway, then struck the lighter he kept in his medical bag and tossed it onto Nike’s jacket. The man’s jacket burst into flames, then his hair.
“Felix? Puta! Madre!” Collin heard the older one fire, and saw the pockmarks chink the plaster in the hallway above him. The flames from Nike’s coat were crawling over his head and growing.
Collin hadn’t a clue what to do now. He heard someone scream and looked down the hallway. A mother and her young son were standing in the hall in their nightclothes. Collin motioned them inside with the pistol, and the mother grabbed her boy and pulled him back inside their room.
He took the bottle of alcohol and doused the body again. The flames leapt to the door jamb.
He looked at the pistol. The hammer was back, ready to fire. He’d been a terrible shot in training.
He rolled in front of the burning body. As he did, he saw the wounded man’s shoes under the bed. The older one had crawled to the bed and was propped up on it. Half-lying on the bed, he was facing the door, his upper torso protected by the bed, his feet behind him on the floor.
Collin fired at the man’s feet and ankles. He saw the bullets strike the man’s left foot and heard him scream. He rolled off the bed trying to get out of the line of fire.
Collin crawled over the burning body and heard gunfire. The older one was firing wildly, but hitting the bed, screaming in pain from the wound in his foot. Collin could hear the shots hitting the mattress, making a bizarre smacking-thud sound.
Dolores, pressed against the wall by the window, ran past him. She stumbled over Nike’s burning body, knocking it forward, and fell into the hallway.
Collin heard the policeman’s gun go empty. He knew how painful injuries to the foot were, and he was counting on that pain to stop the man from standing and reloading.
Dolores lay in the hall, sobbing. Still crouched on his knees, Collin backed out of the door, crawled to Dolores and pulled her out from in front of the doorway, rolling with her. He tried to keep his gun pointed at the room’s burning doorway, afraid the wounded man would somehow manage to come out and kill them.
Collin heard him calling again for his partner. He could tell he was in a lot of pain. He thought of all the nerves in the feet and how they’d been damaged, his doctor’s brain still working despite the adrenalin.
• • •
The staircase was cold. The plainclothes policeman waved him through the lobby. He’d been told that an important gringo was coming, and to let him pass.
Alex went up the stairs alone. He had no idea how he was going to do this without Butch, if he was seriously hurt. All the people he’d started out with in the Company were either dead or retired. He and Butch were the last ones working who’d graduated from The Farm together. It made him feel old.
He heard the sound of his shoes on the concrete. It was late. People were asleep, and it was quiet enough to hear his own footsteps. He heard a baby crying somewhere—in the next building, perhaps.
At the third floor the door was open in front of him, obviously forced. The lights in the apartment blazed, everything on. He walked in.
Butch was sitting on a couch in the living room. He looked pale, his suit coat bloody.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“There was a daughter, wasn’t there?” Alex said. He looked down the hallway, thinking he might see her. “Why didn’t you send her, too?”
“Those Russians almost got me killed. They don’t even know how to clear a room,” Butch said, ignoring his question. He was holding a brandy bottle, a small pint bottle. He offered Alex a sip, but Alex shook his head.
“What about the girl?” Alex said.
“She overpowered me. Very strong girl,” Butch said.
“Somehow I don’t think so,” Alex said.
“No. Very, very strong. I didn’t have a chance.”
“Look, amigo. It’s late. I’m very tired. I don’t want to play this game right now,” Alex said. “We have to figure out something we can tell them, whatever happened. Did you let her go?”
“I let her go,” Butch said. “Let her walk.” He took a drink. He’d bought a pint bottle of brandy, and it was half gone. “I always wanted a daughter. Like yours.. . . There are a lot of things of yours I’ve wanted.”
Butch was drunk. Alex recognized it, and was a little surprised. Butch had always been the sober one, the one who looked after him for all these years.
“You can go ahead and report it. I don’t really give a shit,” Butch said. “Maybe they’ll put me in jail. That would be funny, after everything I’ve done. I mean, for letting someone live. You know what those guys would have done to a young girl.”
“What’s wrong?” Alex said. He sat down across from him. He felt a hundred years old. He would have had a drink, but he’d promised Helen when he dropped her off at the airport—swore, in fact—that he wouldn’t touch anything.
“Everything and nothing. I’m sixty years old, for starters. That’s fucked up,” Butch said.
Alex looked around the room.
“I asked you what was wrong, Butch. Why did you do it?”
“I just felt like letting her go. She was my daughter for a moment. You know what I mean . . . I had the power to protect her, and I did. She didn’t know shit about it. The bomb. And if she did, she can’t do anything about it, because she wouldn’t know who to contact. Remember? That’s the cell system. Like ours. Ours is two-man. One of us dies, the other would be left with a lot of fucking secrets, right? Like Olepango airport. Or certain body bags in Laos.”
“You shouldn’t have done that—let her go.”
“Fuck, Alex, there’s a lot of things I shouldn’t have done. But I did them anyway,” Butch said.
“How’s the neck?”
“How’s it look? The little fucker nearly killed me.”
“Reeves has taken the girl somewhere.”
“Well, that’s fucked up,” Butch said.
“We lost them in traffic. They haven’t come back to his apart-ment. She was supposed to go back to the Gobi and wait. That was our deal,” Alex said. “Killed a Mexican policeman and seri-ously wounded another. They’d come to arrest her. Some kind of screw-up. I shouldn’t have gotten Hussein’s thugs involved, I suppose.”
“Well, shit happens, doesn’t it,” Butch said. “You were doing your best.”
“I’ve no idea about how to explain this girl you let go. She’s in the cable that went off.”
“You’ll figure it out. You always do, amigo. Do you ever worry about the future, Alex?”
“What do you mean? Give me that. I need a drink.” He stood up and took a pull from the brandy bottle. He was sorry he’d lied to his wife, but he needed a fucking drink.
“When this is over. When they don’t need you anymore,” Butch said.
“No, I don’t think about it,” Alex said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Take up something. A hobby, I suppose. Golf.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t know. I don’t have what you have. Money. A wife and family. I don’t got shit. How do you think that makes me feel?” Butch said.
“You know you don’t have to worry about money. I’ve told you that.”
“What’s it like to have so much, Alex? You’ve never told me. I’ve known you how long?”
“A long time,” Alex said.
“What’s it like?”
“It never mattered to me.”
“Is that why you drank?” Butch asked.
“Maybe. I felt like I’d been pushed into this. That my father pushed me into it, and it wasn’t what I should have done with my life,” Alex said. He took another drink and passed it back. “That’s why I drink. I wanted to do something else with my life, but I was too frightened of my father.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. More or less.”
“That’s fucked up. You could have quit. But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t,” Alex said.
“And now it’s too late,” Butch said.
“That’s right, and now it’s too late. You’re still bleeding.” Alex pointed to his neck. “Just a little.”
“What are we going to do about the doctor?” Butch said.
“Find him. . . . Come on.” He helped his friend up. “You’re getting fat,” Alex said.
“She’s left me . . . Kwana. The girl,” Butch said, looking at him. “I was counting on her not to do that, goddammit.” Alex helped him out of the apartment, not bothering to close the door.