He was gone a long time, and the girl took the boy outside, and when she returned he had still not come out. Then as she knelt on the ground, playing some game with the child, a man emerged from the back and she nearly collapsed from fear.
She ran to the wall, seized the rifle and would have shot. But a familiar voice stayed her.
"Put down the rifle, Elonna, or one of these times you really will shoot." The voice, she thought, came from the stranger, a square, Russian-looking man with dark eyes and a shaved head. He was clad in the blue and black of a Cantonese army officer, the emblem of the clenched white fist sewn to his breast, a small black cross in its center. His face wore the sharp look of command but his eyes, in that moment, seemed to contradict it.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what have you done with Lawrence?"
"I'm right here, Elonna." The officer opened his jacket and unfastened the garment beneath, pulling it open at the neck to reveal a dark collar and chest, with tight curls of hair like thorny bushes covering his breast.
"Lawrence!" One of her hands lost its grip on the rifle. "You scared me half to death."
"I'm sorry for that. I thought you had gone out."
At that moment she realized two things: that he was going into great danger, and that she cared for him very much.
"When must you go?"
"Very soon." He resealed the uniform.