Page 161 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“I wouldn’t be here if they’d followed me,” he said.

“They want to kill you or arrest you?”

“Kill me, I think,” he said, remembering the Russian who shot at him in Virginia.

“Well, you ain’t dead yet,” Stan said with just a hint of a smile. “Let me take a look at those dressings.”

His father opened up the olive-drab cotton duck kit, unfolding it two ways. Meanwhile, Paul took off his shirt. Stanley shone a flashlight on the wound. The opening was fairly large, ragged, bloody. There was also a lump a few inches away. Paul’s skin was caked with dried blood.

With his finger, Stan pressed down on the top of Paul’s shoulder.

The pain was incredible. Paul gritted his teeth.

“I feel the bullet right there. Hold on.” Stan got up, left the lean-to. Paul heard rustling. In thirty seconds, his father returned with a small branch from an oak. “Bite on this stick. That’ll get you through. I’ve got a Z-Pak here,” he said, handing Paul some Zithromax.

His father had put on a pair of nitrile gloves and had taken various tools out of his medic kit: a scalpel; a straight hemostat, which looked like a roach clip; a gauze pad; surgical bandages; antibiotic cream; alcohol wipes; a curved needle; some fishing line.

“You’re right-handed, aren’t you?” he asked his son.

“Yes.”

“Good. Bullet’s lodged in the dome of the deltoid. Right on top of the AC joint.”

When he had cleaned the wound area with an alcohol wipe, he picked up the scalpel and sliced into the top of Paul’s shoulder.

It was painful, but Paul bit the stick and held still as his father removed the bullet—“Nine-millimeter, low-velocity projectile,” he explained clinically—with the forceps. “The bullet isn’t deformed, but there may still be fragments in there. A jacketed bullet would have gone through and through. This is messier.”

Stan threaded the surgical needle with the fishing line. Using the hemostat, he sutured closed the wound he’d cut. “Got to leave it slightly open. For drainage. Same with the entry wound. Loose approximation of the wound edges.”

“Okay,” Paul said. He was surprised, even touched, by the unexpected tenderness of his father’s care.

“By the way, I noticed you’re limping. Something wrong with your left foot?”

“Ankle thing I’m recovering from.”

“Shot there, too?”

“Nah. Just twisted it.”

“When you were running from the law, huh? Well, you made it, anyway.”

Stanley picked up the bullet, inspected its base. It had mushroomed a bit but was largely intact. “The flex tip and the crimped band; it’s distinctive. Looks like a Hornady round.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s what the FBI uses. Whoever shot you is probably with the FBI. Or was supplied with FBI ordnance.” He picked up the pistol from the floor of his lean-to and shoved it into the pocket of his long army-surplus camouflage fatigue coat. “What have you gotten yourself into?” Stanley said. “Do you have anything to defend yourself with?”

105

The two walked toward town. As darkness fell, Paul rented a motel room in town with cash. Two double beds. He invited his father to spend the night in his room and was surprised when he agreed. A night in a warm bed or a night in a cold lean-to in the forest? Not a tough choice.

The room smelled stuffy, as if it hadn’t been used for a while. The beds were covered in worn burgundy coverlets. An old TV set, a telephone, a Keurig coffee maker. The place wasn’t seedy, but it was tired. Paul plugged his laptop into an outlet above the counter that ran around the perimeter of half the room. He turned on the antique Comfort-Aire air conditioner/heater, switched it to Heat, and it rattled to life.

His father, who’d always objected to modern conveniences, went over and shut the thing off.

Paul looked over. He thought,Fuck you. I paid for this room; you don’t get to dictate the terms. But instead of flaring up, he said gently, “Hey, Pop, I know you don’t like these things, but I’m in physical distress, and I need the comfort right now, and I’m going to turn this back on.”

His father said, “You bet. Okay, let me see this thumb drive.”