This left Seamus speechless, an unusual state of affairs for him. “You got that too?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” said the boss. “You are not the only person in the world who knows what a diversion is.”
“But in that case…”
“It is of no practical relevance, at least for the next ninety-six hours—probably more like a week—because it worked, Seamus. Like it or not—whether it’s a diversion or not—the fact is that when a terrorist blows himself up at a border crossing and takes a hundred and fifteen U.S. and Canadian citizens with him, then that is what the FBI and the Mounties and everyone else in the chain of command are going to be focusing all their energies and personnel on for a while.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“You’ve got a car?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got money? Credit cards? Everyone’s healthy?”
“Everyone’s fucking great.”
“Then start driving east,” the Boss said. “Show the kids Mount Rushmore along the way, and by the time you make it here, maybe I’ll be able to devote some resources to debriefing your friends. And Little Bighorn, while you’re at it. Foreigners eat that shit up.”
“What about Olivia? What’s she up to?”
“Olivia!” the boss exclaimed. “She’s lucky that guy blew himself up.”
“Why does that make her lucky?”
“Because, (a) it proves she was right, and (b) it gives the FBI and the local cops something to focus their energies on besides complaining about what she did in Tukwila.”
“What is Tukwila, and what did she do there?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“I have no idea,” said the boss. “And believe me, that’s a good thing.”
THE CABELA’S SHOPPING spree went down pretty much as Seamus had envisioned it, except that they all ended up in camouflage. Because camouflage was what they sold at Cabela’s. If you wanted ski parkas in sleek designs and eye-catching colors, you had to go somewhere else.
Seamus inferred that hunting culture in China was not well developed. “Is this where the soldiers go to buy their uniforms?” Yuxia inquired, gazing at rack after rack, acre after acre of floor space devoted to all manner of clothing in several distinct state-of-the-art camo patterns. Her confusion was understandable; she’d just entered the country through a huge military base, and Seamus had not been very diligent about explaining where the boundary lay between it and the civilian world. He had to spend a few minutes explaining to her and Marlon that lots of people hunted here, and even more liked to cop a certain stance or attitude about it, using camouflage as a cultural signifier, and this was where those people came to buy clothes. Marlon, Csongor, and Yuxia could, in other words, buy anything they wanted in this store without laying themselves open to the accusation that they were improperly wearing the uniforms and insignia of the armed forces of the United States. Once she had pushed through an initial barrier of culture shock, Yuxia found this amusing.
The Fantastic Foreigners were also dumbfounded by the size and variety of the gun section, and in this way they lost another forty-five minutes to culture shock, pure and simple. Seamus could tell that Csongor was lusting after a 1911, but fortunately the paperwork would have made purchasing such a thing impossible, and so the relationship had to remain platonic for now. Because of the unusual way in which they had entered the country, Seamus had been able to carry his own sidearm—a Sig Sauer—the whole way, but he had ended up with only one clip, and so while the others were distracted with running in and out of dressing rooms, he purchased two additional empty clips and four boxes of rounds, as well as a holster that he could use to carry all of that crap around under his jacket. He did not really expect that he would have to use, or even draw, his weapon while driving these people across the country and showing them Mount Rushmore. But the fact was that he had the gun, and he needed a way to carry it around safely and securely and not too obviously. It wouldn’t do to have it rattling around loose in his backpack.
Having settled all of that, he rounded up Yuxia, who was mugging in front of a mirror in a ghillie suit that made her look like the Littlest Ent. She had gotten a little giddy, which he put down to a combination of jet lag, culture shock, and emotional trauma over having been ripped from the bosom of her family and homeland. On this side of the Pacific there were, of course, many persons of Chinese ancestry whose ancestors had come over to this country in the most fucked-up circumstances imaginable, and he supposed that if this adventure were better organized, maybe with some psychologists on its advisory board, he’d be getting Yuxia in touch with the relevant support groups. But as it was they were just going to have to get in the SUV and start driving, and she was going to have to suck it up for a while, and he was going to have to keep an eye on her.