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“First thing we’re doing is fixing up that wound,” his father said. “Before I look at that flash drive. What did you do? Tape it up without removing the bullet?”

Paul followed his father through the woods to a lean-to where he said he’d been living for the last month or more. It was a modest shelter made of branches and sticks with one tarp for the ceiling and another for the floor. It squeezed Paul’s heart to see his father living this way. That someone who lurked so big in his imagination—whatever he thought of him—could fit into a space so small. He was undone by the stooped, creaky gait and unwashed countenance of a man who had once seemed so powerful, so important.

The space inside the lean-to was just big enough for Stan to lie down, with room left over, just barely, for a few items. Stan picked up one of them. It was his old M3 medic kit from Vietnam, which he used to refill and update when Paul was a kid. A CB radio on a charger base. Paul wondered how it was charged.

“Are you in pain?” his father asked him.

“A hell of a lot, actually.”

“But you’re breathing and talking, which is a good sign. Rules out a lot.”

“Like?”

“You weren’t shot through the lung. And you weren’t hit in a major artery, obviously. You wouldn’t be here.”

He reached into a pocket and handed Paul a couple of capsules, which he said were ibuprofen. “Take these,” he said. They sat down on the tarp, the ground hard beneath them. Paul figured his father must have gotten used to it by now. He was startled to notice a pistol lying on the tarp. What was his father doing with this Vietnam War–era weapon?

Father and son hadn’t hugged each other, hadn’t even shaken hands. Nor did either of them mention their long separation. His father asked him to tell him what he’d been up to; his tone was matter-of-fact, even brusque. Paul gave his father a quick account of the last six years of his life, starting with meeting Tatyana, how he’d changed his identity and disappeared, and ending with Horgan, the fired CIA officer. His Deep Throat. Stan barely showed any reaction. “How do you know they haven’t followed you here?” he asked when Paul was finished.

“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?”