REAMDE

First, though, he had to get them interested in visiting the United States. Seamus was enough of a naked chauvinist to assume that any non-American in his or her right mind would want to come to America. But he had not spent half of his adult life in strange parts of the world without picking up a few diplomatic skills. He strolled into the shade of a large tree in front of the chancery and convened the others in a little circle around him.

 

“I’m going to America,” he said, “as soon as I can get on a plane. I’m going there because I think that our friend Abdallah Jones is there and that Zula might be with him, as a hostage. Csongor is coming with me; he can get permission to enter the U.S. by filling out a web form, so it’s easy for him. You guys, Marlon and Yuxia, are free to do whatever you want. But I feel I should point out that you are in this country illegally. Chinese citizens need a visa to enter the Philippines, and I’m going to take a wild guess that you didn’t get visas before you stole that fishing boat from the terrorists and blew away the skipper. I don’t recommend that you just go back to China. You really need to get to some country that is not China and where you have some sort of paperwork so you can’t be arrested and deported back to China on sight—which is what would happen if you went out there”—he waved his arm vaguely at the traffic on Roxas Boulevard—“and got noticed.” He aimed this last comment at Yuxia, who had spent the last half hour doing everything she conceivably could to get herself noticed. She took the meaning and got a slightly pouty look about her, which was quite unlike Yuxia, and nearly killed Seamus.

 

Marlon and Yuxia were watching Seamus carefully now. They might, or might not, find the idea of a trip to the United States appealing on its own merits. But he’d gotten their attention by mentioning Jones and Zula, and then scared the hell out of them by elucidating their dilemma regarding paperwork.

 

“Now, I believe that I might be able to arrange something.”

 

Rapt silence.

 

“I’m going to assume that neither one of you has a Chinese passport.”

 

Marlon shook his head.

 

“We only get them when we are going to travel outside of China,” Yuxia said, “and I have never done so.”

 

“Actually you have,” Seamus pointed out, throwing his hands out to direct her attention to the fact that she was in Manila. She smiled. “Anyway, not having a passport will certainly throw a monkey wrench into the process of getting a visa to enter the United States.” He was trying to employ dry understatement here and wasn’t entirely certain that they were fully appreciative of his sense of humor. “But I know some people here in the embassy who can make it all right in no time.”

 

“ARE YOU OUT of your fucking mind?” the CIA station chief was asking him a few minutes later.

 

Marlon and Yuxia and Csongor were cooling their heels in a café in a relatively nonsecure part of the embassy. Seamus and the station chief, an American of Filipino ancestry named Ferdinand (“Call me Freddie”), were conversing in a part of the building that was very secure indeed. They had known each other for a while.

 

“Freddie, you know that this room is so secret, so well shielded, that I could strangle you here and no one would ever know.”

 

“No one except for the two marines with submachine guns right outside the door.”

 

“Drinking buddies of mine.”

 

“Seriously, Seamus, what are you asking me to do? Produce forged Chinese passports?”

 

“Real American ones would be a hell of a lot easier.”

 

Freddie actually considered this. “I suppose we could claim that they were American citizens, visiting Manila, whose passports were stolen by pickpockets. That farce would be uncovered the moment the State Department actually bothered to check the records.”

 

“Freddie. Work with me here. The global war on terror leads us into many strange situations. We do stuff all the time that’s not technically legal. Hell, my very presence in this country is a violation of Philippine sovereignty. As is yours.”

 

“So you want to play the GWOT card?”

 

“Yes. Come on, Freddie. That’s the whole point of this conversation.”

 

Freddie gave him an I’m waiting look. In retrospect, Seamus should have seen this as the trap that it was.

 

“I know where Jones is,” Seamus said. “I can narrow it down to maybe ten square miles. Or kilometers, for our Canadian friends.”

 

“Would this be related to the work you have been doing with”—and here Freddie picked up a folder marked as containing secret information—“that British girl? Olivia Halifax-Lin?”

 

“That brave, brilliant British girl who single-handedly tracked Jones down in Xiamen and collected priceless surveillance data on him and his cell for months? Yes, I believe we are talking about the same Olivia.”

 

“Maybe she should have taken a little more time off,” Freddie said. “Perhaps that sort of work didn’t suit her, lifestyle-wise.”

 

“Why are you saying that?”

 

“In the last day or so, she seems to have gone totally off the rails. She skipped out of a large and expensive FBI counterterror investigation. Just walked out of the room without explaining anything. Hightailed it up to Vancouver, leaving quite the electronic trail. Including communications with you. Crashed in a hotel room there and was bothering some poor Mountie about this same theory.”

 

“By ‘this same theory’ you mean the excellent theory that she and I have been developing.”

 

“Ah, so you have been working with her.”

 

“Go on.”

 

“Claimed she was headed to some place in B.C. called Prince George. Bought a ticket. Checked in for the flight. Never boarded it. Instead bought a ticket with cash, on short notice, and went back down to Seattle, still not bothering to explain to anyone what the hell she was doing. Did not give the FBI the courtesy of a call. Then, around the time that her plane was landing at Sea-Tac, there was a shootout in a house full of Russians, low-level criminal types, less than a mile away. An FBI surveillance operation was blown. No one knows where the hell she is. One of the guys who was under surveillance has disappeared. Russian security consultant, ex–special forces, apparently related to the whole Xiamen thing.”

 

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