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embassy stepped in, now that he was speaking;
     to be sure that he was all right, and that there was no issue of embarrassing the motherland with the police. It was frightening
     to Jack because he had no desire to be shipped off to Hong Kong and the fact that a bureaucrat was here so late at night made
     him nervous. But his false identity held. Yes, he said as Jin Ming, his parents and his grandparents were dead, he had no
     family back in China. He had been careful to craft an identity without family. The Chinese diplomat was concerned for his
     wellbeing and Jack reassured the man he was the innocent victim of a crime. He thanked the embassy visitor and when the man
     had left Jack stared at the window.
    He wondered if his mother was looking for him; he thought not. She didn’t want him. He had been lucky, too lucky, and it was
     time to place a surer hand on the reins of his own fate.
    He couldn’t sleep. He got up for a walk.
    Each day, the doctors had encouraged Jack to walk to stretch his leg muscles, even if it was just around the floor for five
     tottering orbits, ambling past rooms and equipment in the hallway. His mind full of Ricki and his rapidly unraveling situation,
     he was walking back to his room and as he turned the final cornerhe saw, from down the hallway, a man he didn’t know in an orderly’s uniform enter his room.
    His police guard was gone.
    Jack stopped. The man looked short, thickly built. He shut Jack’s door behind him. He knew the night-shift orderly; he had
     seen him on the opposite side of the floor, during his walk.
    If Ricki could steal a uniform …
    He can see I’m not in the bed, Jack thought. He must think I’m in the bathroom.
    He ducked back behind the corner, keeping one eye focused on the door.
    After thirty seconds, the man stepped into the hallway. Heavy eyebrows, pale skin, a soft mess of a mouth, a bottom lip long
     ago disfigured in a fight.
    You’re a loose end, Jack thought. And now either someone who knew Nic, or someone who knows Novem Soles has come looking for
     you. They know you’re alive. They’ve either waited for the guard to go to the bathroom or they’ve paid the guard off. They
     want to be sure you can’t talk.
    And if he was wrong, then no harm done. But if he was right …
    The man saw Jack. The twisted lip smiled. He raised the eyebrows as if in greeting. Like he was a friend, come by to talk
     to Jack.
    Jack ran.
    Or, rather, Jack stumbled in a loping run. He wasn’t entirely recovered from the bullet that had grazed arteries and windpipe.
     He wore a bathrobe and the hospital gown and flimsy slippers the nurses had given him. He saw a stairway and he hit the door,
     leaning out into the cool slightly stale air of the concrete staircase. His mind moved as fast as it did when he was crafting
     a softwareprogram. If the guy was here to silence Jack he would expect Jack to try and escape.
    Most immediate escape meant down, toward the ground floor.
    So Jack headed up. He wasn’t used to physical exertion and little black clouds dotted his vision. His breath sounded loud
     in the stairwell. He hit the next floor, opened the door, stepped out into the unit. More recovery rooms but this floor was
     less crowded. He was on the opposite side of the floor from the main nurses’ station.
    An old man in a brown bathrobe walked past him, ambling with an insomniac’s shuffle, carting an IV feed on a wheeled pole.
     Jack moved in the other direction. He had to hide. Get to a phone, get Ricki to come and pick him up at a nearby pub or café.
     He couldn’t stay out on the streets of Amsterdam dressed like a patient; even in the world’s most laid-back city around midnight,
     it would attract too much attention. He looked like someone who might have wandered away from the hospital and needed help.
    He opened the door of one room, saw an elderly woman sleeping inside. He eased it shut.
    Behind him he heard the stairwell door open with a steely crank. As it