by Fred Hiatt
Once again, I thought wrong.
Chapter 37
We celebrated, if you can call it that, with one more pho dinner. Without even asking, Sydney ordered me an extra bowl.
When we’d finished eating, she turned stern.
“This has gone on long enough,” she said. “It’s morning in Washington, and it’s time for you both to call your parents. You two have done something heroic, but honestly you’re also way over the line.”
I couldn’t argue. As focused on their Geneva conference as I hoped they were, my parents weren’t likely to stay oblivious to our Hanoi press conference for long.
I wasn’t looking forward to the call. I hadn’t given my parents all that much thought over the past few days, terrible as that might sound. Everything had rushed at us so fast. And now there was so much to explain and apologize for—where would I even begin?
Sydney wasn’t asking, though, she was telling. We followed her into her clanking elevator and up to the fourth floor. She sent Ti-Anna and the little girl into one office and me into another.
“I’ll wait in my office,” she said, after explaining how to make an international call. “Take your time.”
While I was building up my courage, I signed on and found a series of emails—first from my brother, then my parents, my brother, my parents—each one more agitated than the one before.
“You know what?” I told myself. “This is going to be a lot easier to explain in person.” Which I’d be able to do, in only a day or two. I could reassure them by email that I was all right.
I wrote that I’d be home soon and assured them that I was safe. I’m really, really sorry to have made you worry I typed. I hit Send.
There, I thought. That wasn’t so hard. I hoped Sydney wouldn’t ask any questions.
Ti-Anna and the girl with the rag doll were on the couch in Sydney’s office when I walked in. Ti-Anna looked ashen, and not in a mood to discuss why.
“Did you make contact?” Sydney asked.
I nodded: one more technically true lie. She turned off the lights, locked up and led us to her apartment.
The three of us—Ti-Anna, the girl with the doll and I—spent the night on mattresses on Sydney’s living room floor. She wasn’t going to let us out of her sight again as long as we were in Vietnam, she said.
Day Eight: Sunday
Hanoi and Hong Kong
Chapter 38
In the morning we headed to the airport.
Amazingly, Sydney’s colleague in the capital of Laos, Vientiane, had found a relative of the girl with the doll—an aunt, I think—and the organization had paid for her to fly to Hanoi in time to meet us before we boarded. The aunt was a thin woman with a tight black bun who didn’t look all that much older than the girl. She crouched low and held open her arms when she saw her niece.
The girl looked at her without surprise or any other expression, dropped Ti-Anna’s hand and walked to her aunt. But as they turned to leave, the girl whispered something in her aunt’s ear and the aunt nodded. Then the girl walked back and held out her doll to Ti-Anna.
Ti-Anna looked questioningly at Sydney, who nodded too, so Ti-Anna took the doll and held the girl’s hand once more.
We thanked Sydney and hugged her and promised to be in touch as soon as we landed in Hong Kong, where someone from the U.S. consulate would be meeting us so that—as Sydney said—we absolutely could not get into any more trouble before our flight the next day to Washington.
We boarded. We took off. And Ti-Anna seemed to deflate before my eyes.
At first I didn’t notice. We were sitting in business class, courtesy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which I thought was pretty exciting, and I was studying the Vietnam Air menu for the short flight to Hong Kong.
But by the time we reached twenty-five thousand feet (or eight thousand meters, as the pilot said), I realized she’d barely spoken since we boarded.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
For the longest time she didn’t answer. She had the window seat, and she stared out at the layer of clouds beneath us. She was still clutching the little girl’s rag doll, which made her seem even more forlorn.
“You know those good-news, bad-news jokes?” she finally said, still staring out the window, and speaking so softly I could barely hear her over the engines. “That’s what it felt like last night when my mother answered the phone, so hopeful and pathetic. Good news: your husband is alive. Bad news: he’s back in a Chinese prison and may never come home.”
She turned and looked at me with empty eyes. “She didn’t get the joke.”
I hadn’t seen her like this since—well, since that day behind school when she had told me that her father was missing. Which felt like a million years ago.
“I think my mother had convinced herself that my father was going to walk back in the apartment at any moment,” she said. “And now, she’s getting just me. Empty-handed.”
She looked down at the rag doll in her lap, as if mystified at how it had gotten there.
“You’re not empty-handed,” I insisted. “First of all, you rescued a hundred Laotian peasant girls from slavery. Doesn’t that count for something?”
No response.
“And as for your father—if it weren’t for you, we’d have no idea whether he was alive or dead, and we might never have heard a word from the Chinese government. Ever. Now they’ll have to admit the truth—and then, before you know it, they’ll have to let him go.”
That last part sounded stupid even to me, and as soon as I said it I wished I had quit half a sentence sooner. Ti-Anna just looked at me, but without seeing me, and turned back to the window.
“I don’t know how I can go back to my mother empty-handed,” I barely heard her say. She wasn’t talking to me anymore, but to the clouds. Or to herself.
I didn’t know what else to say, and after a while I dozed off. When I awoke, the jet was descending. Ti-Anna still was staring out the window.
Chapter 39
It shouldn’t have surprised me that our Hanoi news conference would be big news in Hong Kong, but I wasn’t prepared for the crush of cameras and reporters waiting beyond customs.
We pushed through, saying nothing as the reporters yelled at us, mostly in Chinese. Ti-Anna, unsmiling, acted as if she didn’t even see them.
“Ethan? Ti-Anna?”
A booming voice separated itself from the clamor. A big guy was planted just beyond the cameras. Buzz cut, polo shirt, ID on a lanyard around his neck.
“Brian Bates, U.S. consulate.” He held out his hand. I shook it, but saw out of the corner of my eye that Ti-Anna was looking dubious.
Brian saw too.
He held his ID out for our inspection. “Sydney said I should promise you—” He stopped and dug a crumpled Post-it out of his pocket. “Pho bo? Does that sound right?”
Despite herself, Ti-Anna smiled fleetingly. We fell in with Brian. He had a friendly but commanding presence, and between that and Ti-Anna’s forbidding expression—and maybe the risk of getting too near one of my crutches—the reporters fell away.
“I have instructions to keep you safe for the next”—he looked at his watch—“nineteen hours.”
He gestured toward our day packs. “That’s all you’ve got?” We nodded. “Impressive. C’mon, then. I’ve got a car waiting.”
Just before the sliding doors, Ti-Anna excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Brian started to follow her, then checked himself but watched until she’d disappeared into the bathroom.
We stood silently for a moment or two. It was awkward.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said. “You must have a lot more important work you could be doing.”
“Are you kidding?” he answered. He didn’t look at me; his gaze was fixed on the ladies’ room door. His tone was amiable, though. “Ordinarily I have three jobs: handing out visas, refusing visas and taking complaints from people in the second category. Getting out of the office is a holiday for m
e.”
Outside there was another official black car with another official driver, who helped tuck in my leg, this time into the backseat, and dropped my crutches in the trunk. I could get used to this, I thought.
We started along the incredible bridges and causeways that connect the airport to the city. It didn’t make sense, I knew—after all, we were a lot closer to China now than we had been in Hanoi—but somehow I felt safer, almost as if this were a homecoming.
Which, in a funny way, made me think about the real homecoming that lay ahead. Where would be the first place I’d go when I got home? I wondered. The bagel store, probably. Order whatever kind was hottest. Poppy seed, with luck.
I turned to say something dumb about bagels to Ti-Anna, but the look on her face froze me. She was staring out her window, but not seeing the bay. If anything, she looked grimmer than she had on the plane.
Brian twisted toward us from the front seat. “Let’s discuss where you guys are going to stay,” he said.
Ti-Anna didn’t reply.
“We have a hotel room,” I told him.
I didn’t want to see that place, or its mountainous desk clerk, ever again. But I also didn’t want to go home without my brother’s backpack.
“Let’s go pick up your things, and then you can stay with me,” Brian said. “I’ve got a futon and a pullout couch, nice hot shower, satellite TV. Even the view’s not bad. How does that sound?”
Ti-Anna remained silent.
I said, “Are you sure? We hate to impose on you.” It sounded pretty nice. Not to mention free.
We drove up Nathan Road to the entrance to our hotel. Brian said a few words to the driver, and the three of us went in—along the same dingy shopping alley, squeezing into the same airless elevator.
The scary desk clerk eyed us without surprise and began demanding money. Brian cut him short, rattling along in impressive-sounding Chinese as he gestured toward the elevator, and down the corridor, and even behind the fat man’s desk. The man looked at Brian with loathing, but fell silent.
Brian waited outside Room 23 while I stuffed my belongings into my brother’s backpack and Ti-Anna picked up her duffel.
“What did he say to the guy?” I whispered.
“He was reciting all the building code violations he had noticed, and the fire code violations, and what the fine for each one is,” Ti-Anna whispered back, with a touch of admiration. “He seemed to know what he was talking about.”
“Okay,” Brian said as I happily left Room 23 for the last time.
“Let’s go.”
Unexpectedly, Ti-Anna broke in.
“How about one last Hong Kong meal?” she said. “We can show you an amazing noodle place not far from here.”
I looked at her, stunned. Had just reclaiming her bag lifted her out of her funk? Or was it realizing we’d never have to see the Rising Phoenix again? Brian looked dubious too—like he’d be a lot happier getting us safely into his condo and feeding us instant ramen.
But Ti-Anna said, “Our treat,” and gave him one of her trademark smiles.
Brian shrugged, as if to say, what harm can there be.
“I doubt there’s a noodle place in Kowloon that you can show me,” he said. “But go ahead, bring it on.”
Which I guess you could say she did.
Chapter 40
She waited until we’d been served to make her move.
As soon as she got up to use the bathroom, I should have known. I’d been traveling with her long enough to know that not only was I always hungry before her, but I always needed a bathroom first too—she was a camel.
I was so happy with the bowl in front of me that I didn’t give it a thought, which was undoubtedly what Ti-Anna—having traveled with me for a while—had counted on. Brian seemed pretty focused on his soup noodles with shredded pork and pickled vegetables. He watched Ti-Anna disappear into the back of the restaurant, but he didn’t stop slurping.
So she got a pretty good head start. I don’t know how many minutes passed before it occurred to me that too many minutes had passed. Three? Four? Maybe even five?
When I said something to Brian, he froze, chopsticks midway between bowl and mouth. Then the chopsticks fell into his soup with a little splash as he leapt to his feet.
“Don’t move,” he said to me. “Do not move.”
A few customers looked up, startled, as he ran to the back. I imagine he pushed into the ladies’ room, and when that was empty, tried the kitchen, and then the men’s room. He was back in seconds, cursing so vociferously that even in the middle of everything I was impressed.
“I am so screwed,” he said, when he was finally able to complete a sentence. Except he didn’t say “screwed.” I remember thinking, So Ti-Anna’s been kidnapped and what comes to mind is that you’re screwed?
After a few more strings of curses, he got himself under control.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to call for help, and then I’m going to go look for her. You stay here. Do not move. Got that?” I nodded. “I’ll arrange for some police to get here and keep an eye on you. But it’s probably just her they were after, right? You should be okay. Here. In case you need me.”
He scribbled his cell phone number and was out the front door, punching in a call as he left.
As soon as he was out of sight, I swung my way to the back of the restaurant. By this time the owner was yelling with almost as much spirit as Brian. Probably about the bill, I supposed, but I didn’t stay to find out.
The kitchen was narrow and sweltering, and one crutch nearly slid out from under me on the slick floor. A crate of bok choy propped open the back door, which gave onto a narrow alley, dark, amazingly cool in contrast …
… and empty. No sign of her, of course.
Left? Right? I chose left, for no reason, and followed the alley to the nearest main street, where the usual crowds were streaming by. There was no hope of tracking her, that was for sure. A five-minute head start in this city, when you had no clue where to start, was as good as five hours, whether she was on her own or she’d been kidnapped.
I didn’t believe she’d been kidnapped. I wasn’t going to tell Brian, but in my gut I knew she hadn’t been kidnapped. She’d come to some decision on the plane from Hanoi, or maybe in the car, when she was staring at the bay so unseeingly, and so unhappy.
How can I go back to my mother empty-handed? she’d said. What did that mean? I couldn’t believe she would, well, do anything to harm herself. Surely she’d know that would make things a thousand times worse for her mother.
I also knew people could do crazy things when they worked themselves into a state like Ti-Anna had.
Of course it hurt that she had kept whatever she was planning secret not just from Brian but from me, too. But I wasn’t going to worry about that now. I was going to find her.
I found myself limping toward the bay as I tried to puzzle things out. Before I realized it, I was at the harbor, on the walkway we’d come to that first night. The lights were coming on, the ferries were zipping back and forth, couples were strolling and holding hands and talking on their phones. None of it looked beautiful or exciting anymore.
I took my phone out of my knapsack for the first time in days. I thought, if there’s anyone she might trust here, it would be Horace. He had sent us to Radio Man, but I didn’t think Horace had been in on any of this, and I knew Ti-Anna didn’t think so either.
Before I could try to track him down, I noticed that a call had been made from my phone at 4:38 a.m.
Chapter 41
It made no sense to me.
At 4:38 we’d been fast asleep on Sydney’s floor. Could the girl with the doll have played with my phone while I slept? It didn’t seem likely.
Then I remembered: I’d set the phone to stay on Bethesda time. On Hong Kong time, the call would have gone out at 3:38 p.m., not 4:38 a.m. Around the time we had landed in Hong Kong.
Or rather, I realized, at exactly the time Ti-Anna had
told Brian she needed to use the airport ladies’ room.
Concentrate, I instructed myself. She must have taken the phone while I was sleeping on the plane. Carried it off, made a call from the bathroom and then stuck it back in my bag during the ride from the airport, or in the coffin elevator, or somewhere else along the way.
Whom had she called?
The number was local. When I hit redial, a girl answered right away.
“Hello?” she said. “Ti-Anna?”
“This is Ethan,” I said slowly. And I then knew who was on the other end: Wei, who we’d met near this very spot. The bubbly one, who looked like Ti-Anna.
“Hi!” she said. “What a trip you had! Of course Mai and I saw you on TV, and we were so excited! And then Ti-Anna told me all about how brave you were!”
“I was?” I said. “I mean, she did?”
“Yes, of course!” Wei burbled. “But she’d probably be mad at me for telling you so!” She giggled.
“Oh, I don’t think she’d mind,” I said, stalling for time. What was going on?
There was a tiny pause.
“Is something wrong?” Wei asked. “Why are you calling? Did the reporters find you?”
The reporters? “Um, no,” I said. “I was just wondering if Ti-Anna was still with you.”
“No, I left her a few minutes ago! I thought you were going to meet at the Y.”
The Y? I wasn’t getting any less confused. Whatever Ti-Anna was up to, it wasn’t what Wei thought she was up to, and I didn’t want to make her suspicious.
“No,” I said. “I think I must have gotten the time wrong, or something, that’s why I was calling. What exactly did she say again?” I asked.
“Well, that you two were going to stay at the Y tonight, before flying home, but if she checked in with her real name, the reporters would track you down, so I lent her my ID,” Wei said, her voice bubbling again at the idea of playing a part in this adventure.
