In the last chapter Ohmie got a Ukraine passport. He and his father boarded a train bound for Vienna where Dad would take Ohmie to hear the philharmonic orchestra.

We never got to the philharmonic. Dad had to hit another bank, running low on cash. I guess the first one didn’t have enough of the right kind, or he just didn’t have that much stashed. He also traded passports. I was to call him Papa still, but his name was now Pierre. Oh, yeah. He spoke French, too.

“What other languages do you speak?” I asked, violating our rule. “Swahili, Inuit, Pig Latin?”

I got enough taste of his glare that I imagined him facing off against a killer enemy. It didn’t last long, but I saw it.

“I speak smart aleck fine.” His eyes squinted ever so slightly. “I can understand, and make myself understood pretty much all over western and eastern Europe and Russia. Now going up to Finland, I might just as well be in the Bronx.”

I chuckled because I knew he meant it to be a joke. I guess that’s the first Dad joke I ever heard. Probably my last. (I just couldn’t seem to help breaking my own rules.)

I said we didn’t make it to the philharmonic, not because we weren’t dressed for it, we were going to rent suits, but we were waylaid. My fault. I couldn’t keep up. Dad got his cash at the bank. He told me later that there were cameras outside and inside every bank and that bad actors had access to them, nothing the authorities ever tried could keep them from hacking. He didn’t say, but it was probably my image that triggered them, since Dad looked like everyone else and was wearing a hat. I was too, but how many wobbly thirteen-year-olds go into the Bank of Vienna. Also, I noticed at least one camera that shot pretty much face-on.

“Run!” Dad grabbed my arm to help me run with him. My legs were trying to pump, but it was like they were a day behind my commands. I’d say, “Left leg, now. Right leg, now.” And both of them would stop and say, huh? Which way? How far do you want me to extend? Dad sort of persuaded me into the next alley. He was going to keep running, I guess. “Go toward the river! I’ll find you.”

I don’t know what he saw that triggered his escape mechanism. He must’ve seen my confusion.

“East! Go east.”

We had been standing on the curb waiting for a cab. A car pulled to a stop just past us a little too rushed to Dad’s liking. That’s when he said to run, pushing me to the direction from where the car had come from.

After guiding me into the alley, Dad dodged cars running across the street. He ran into a restaurant, he later told me. He met up with me just two blocks further toward the Danube. I made it through the alley, then turned right toward the river at the end, and then in two blocks he was ahead, walking toward me. We went into the restaurant I had just passed. “Hungry?” he asked as if we’d just had a stroll through the park.

“That happen a lot?” I asked, breaking my rule.

“Mmm-hmmm. Their bacon quiche, or their stuffed tomatoes are good here,” Dad said as if he lived on the block. But first go into the bathroom and move your gun to the small of your back. Leave your shirt untucked. We’ll get you a sport coat that will cover it and get you into the theater.”

I finally opted for a bacon omelet. I ordered two of them, thinking that it would help me. Like cure cancer, I joked to myself. But I couldn’t even finish one. Dad ate the second one like it was nothing.

Dad finished eating, but just sat there. I’d already told him that I was done. I guess he was thinking.

“There’s a cheap hotel a few blocks from here that hookers do their business in. Trouble is, those sort of places will call the law if they think I’ve picked up a boy, just to get on the good side of the law. You know, to earn Brownie points. That makes those places no safer than fine hotels where there are cameras.”

After another pause Dad asked if I’d ever stayed in a Presidential suite, knowing that I hadn’t.

“We’ll cab up near the hotel. You’ll time it so that you can walk in beside an older lady, just pick one. I’ll be behind you a couple steps. Get to a couch and read your book, or something. Don’t try to hide your face, just look normal. I have to make a phone call.”

I was catching on to this stuff, so I didn’t look at Dad at all going in, or once inside. Just casually sauntered to a chair by the wall. No one seemed to notice me. I hadn’t read a page when Dad walked up and whispered “elevator to the top floor” as he walked past. I saw that he waited until I was in an elevator before he got behind a couple people to enter another one. He met me on the top floor where we walked the hallway looking to see if we were alone. We were.

There were only two doors that looked like hotel room entry doors. There were a few more, but there was no key apparatus and these doors were decorated to match the walls, not the grand entries as the other two. Dad knocked on one. I guess he was prepared with some kind of line had anyone answered. It was about ten minutes before his friend showed up. We waited in the stairwell. They spoke in very low tones, Dad’s hand over his mouth. I gathered, confirmed by Dad later, that the guy was a burglar. I saw him pull some sort of steel band like a large steel measuring tape from his pant leg. He slid it under the door, did a few wrist flips and had the door handle turned, obviously from the inside.

Dad gave the guy a bill. We went in. He went home, I guess.

Seeing my questioning look at him, Dad volunteered. Guess he figured it wouldn’t do any harm, after the fact. “I’ve used him before. He looks for jewels, I look for… other stuff. Or I plant stuff.”

“How many names and numbers do you have memorized … all over western and eastern Europe… and Russia?”

I saw that little lip twitch again. “I have a system. Of course, I can’t put any numbers in my phone, so … heard of The Memory Book? Well, a basketball player named Jerry Lucas wrote it, he and someone else. They assigned phonetics to numbers. You make words and phrases out of the sounds. For example, your phone number is cause my car to go quickly. 7-0-3-7-4-1-7-7-7-5. I see a caricature of you speeding in my car , and there it is.”

I made him explain the code to me. No telling how many ways that could help. I wrote it out.

“When that paper leaves your hands, you need to either cook it, eat it, or flush it. Flushing should be the last resort because it might not go all the way down. And if it’s a full sheet of paper, certain parties have been known to break plumbing in order to attempt retrieval.”

“Burn it, eat it, or flush it,” I repeated to his nod. After previewing it for a few minutes, not having a lighter, and not feeling a particular propensity toward paper cuisine, I shredded and flushed it. Dad nodded assent.

“What can you tell me?” I asked, feeling that to be a safe enough question and wanting to know what was what. This way I figured I was leaving all the options in his pocket.