Dark Zone

35

Dean trotted up the steps, glancing at his watch as if he were impatient — not exactly a difficult act, under the circumstances. He strode to the door of the charity office, feigning surprise when he found it locked.

“Ms. Yen?” he said, using Lia’s cover name. “Ms. Yen?”

He turned around in the hall.

“Where is she really?” he said under his breath to the runner.

“Down the stairs on the left, past the guards,” said Chafetz. “Charlie, Marie’s having a fit. You shouldn’t be in there. Really, Charlie. Lia’s on her way out.”

Dean carried two small Glocks as hideaway weapons. He reached for the one under his shirt, pulling it out and palming it against his stomach. He called again for Lia, using English and then a phrase supplied by a translator in the Art Room who he guessed was Norwegian, since according to his cover story that was his nationality.

Dean went down the steps and turned, sliding his hand and the small gun into his pocket. There was only one guard there, and though he looked at Dean suspiciously he did not challenge him. Dean went to the man and asked in English — he broke it up, trying to duplicate what he imagined a Norwegian would make it sound like — if the man had seen a young Chinese woman. The guard did not understand his English but began speaking French; as the Art Room scrambled to get the proper translator into the circuit Dean figured out that the man was saying she was downstairs. He played the grateful companion, pointing at his watch and complaining in English and very poor French about how late the girl was. He thought this might be a universal male complaint, but it failed to elicit any sympathy from the Moroccan. Dean thanked him and then started down the steps. As he did, the guard yelled at him.

“He’s telling you to stop,” said the translator, finally on the line.

“Faites attention!” yelled the man.

“He’s yelling at you to watch out, to stop!”

Behind him, Dean heard the soldier fumbling with his gun.

Lia felt as if her face had been shorn from her body, as if she were just the small bit of flesh and bone around her eyes and nose and mouth — no skull, no body, no stomach. She neither thought nor felt anything for a moment, and then an idea occurred to her:

This is what death feels like.

The lessons of her Chinese teacher when she was five came back to her. The sound, more primitive than the writing of the words: mmmm goi.

Excuse me. The first phrase she had learned.

“Excuse me. This is a ladies’ room,” she said in Chinese, and then she turned to English. “Why are you here?”

The translator started to tell her how to ask who he was in Arabic.

“Why are you here?” she said in English.

The man lowered his gun a few inches until it pointed toward her breast.

Lia’s left hand moved without her directing it to, jerking up to slam the top of the bugle-shaped rifle away. The rest of her body flew forward and the man landed against the floor, the gun clattering away and a strange sound shrieking from his lips.

To Lia, it seemed as if she were still standing back by the stall, watching it all unfold, watching her fist slam hard three times against the bridge of the man’s nose, shattering it with the first blow, watching her knee as it punctured his rib. She watched as her body jumped back, saw herself scan the bathroom — the old woman had fled.

Lia scooped up the assault rifle and started for the door.

Dean was just about to spin and fire at the guard when he heard the scream.

It was a woman’s scream, but it wasn’t Lia’s. He looked down the steps, then back toward the soldier. They both started in the direction of the shouts. An old woman in black dress appeared, yelling and cursing in a dialect so obscure even the Art Room translator couldn’t decipher a word. Dean ran past her, then tried to stop as the door to the women’s room opened and Lia appeared, a French assault rifle in her hand.

“You OK?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Charlie Dean,” she said, walking past him up the steps.