Page 166 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Paul nodded. “Me, too, actually.”

They saw the exit to the footbridge connecting this building with an older one, which the professor had said was the college’s drama department, the Purnell Center. The bridge seemed to be suspended over a grassy area, some two hundred feet in length. Lit up blue. The side walls of the bridge were opaque but not tall enough to block a view from the ground. In case someone on the FBI team was watching—which was unlikely, he thought—the two men walked separately, Paul in front and his father twenty feet behind. They walked, didn’t run.

“They don’t want to shoot you,” Stanley said. “They want to arrest you, am I right?”

Paul didn’t reply for a long moment. Then he said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

108

They emerged from the drama school building into a wide-open area with a large stretch of lawn. It was a sunny but chilly day, so no students were sitting there, but a few people were walking around it and across it. The Gates Building was behind them, where the FBI agents were. If there were others, Paul didn’t see them.

He and his father resumed their walking pace: steady, unhurried, with one far ahead of the other, so it wouldn’t look like they were walking together. The FBI was probably looking for the two of them.

Paul took the lead, heading left to Forbes Avenue, where his rented Jeep was parked. Once they’d made it to the car, they would leave Pittsburgh right away.

“FBI! Freeze!” came a man’s voice.

Paul felt himself go cold, and prickles of sweat broke out on his forehead. But he continued walking. As if he didn’t know the man was talking to him.

“I saidfreeze!” the man shouted again, sounding closer still.

Paul turned around and saw, a few hundred feet away, a solitary guy around his age in a navy-blue FBI windbreaker, a weapon at his side.

Then he noticed that his father had stopped walking. He’d turned to face the FBI man, while at the same time hissing to Paul, “Run! Right now, go! Get out of here!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Paul said.

“Run, goddamn it!” Stan said again. “They’re not going to shoot us both.”

Stunned, unsure what to do next, Paul began running, hoping his father would come to his senses. But he heard his father shout, “I’ll surrender! I’m too old to run.”

“Tell your son to stop running,” the other man shouted. “You—put down that weapon! You’re giving me no choice!”

Paul glanced quickly back, saw the FBI agent and his father both standing still, facing each other. But Stan Brightman was leveling his Vietnam War–era pistol at the FBI man.

Paul kept running.

“Put down your weapon!” the FBI agent repeated.

Then Paul heard two gunshots, loud and nearly simultaneous.

As he ran, he turned back to look again. His father was down, crumpled onto the grass.

Paul kept going. His adrenaline was pumping wildly, his head was spinning. He couldn’t think about what had just happened.

Had his father just been killed? Had Stanley Brightman sacrificed himself for his son?

The building on the other side of the lawn was some sort of student union. He headed straight for it, saw students going in and coming out, could tell it was probably crowded inside. Perfect.

Paul didn’t dare look behind him. As he entered the building, he removed his sunglasses and his cap and slowed his pace. A crowd of students was heading upstairs, so he joined the flow, moving at their pace. The destination was a large student dining room.

He tried to keep a neutral facial expression, tried not to think about what he’d just seen. But he couldn’t help it: Was his father indeed dead? Or could he be saved with medical intervention? And would the FBI bother to intervene?

Inside the dining hall, long lines of students shoveled food onto plates on trays from steel pans along a steam table. He spotted the entrance to the kitchen and knew that was the best way out. He slowed his pace and entered the kitchen, felt the steamy heat of dishwashers running and water boiling. No one turned to look at him. He moved to the back of the kitchen, saw the exit to some service stairs, kept going.

A minute later, he was on Forbes Avenue, where he spotted the Jeep. Two FBI agents were standing next to it, waiting for him.

He turned, reversed direction down Forbes, kept going until he reached a cross street, Morewood Avenue. A loud vehicle was coming down the street toward him, a rust-covered turquoise car, 1970s vintage. The car pulled to the side of the road, parking sloppily, and a young guy who looked like a student got out, slamming the door and leaving the car unlocked with the confidence of someone who knows no one is going to steal his heap of junk.

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