As their meeting with the ambassador drew to a close, Gillian Farris began to make the arrangements for their return to Washington. When the embassy car was ready to depart for Johannesburg International late that afternoon, her hand rested in Ryan’s for a very long time. Gillian was sorry to see him go.Naomi fell into a deep sleep on the short ride south, leaving Ryan alone with his troubled thoughts. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. As his mind struggled for answers, Naomi’s words came back to him, but with a taunting edge that had been absent in her spoken voice: “What do we really know now that we didn’t know before? His real name? It’s not like that’ll be the one he’s using…”The name was important to Kealey because it offered some small measure of relief from the feeling of impotence that had plagued him for years. Now that he had the truth, though, he wasn’t sure what to do with it.It had become clear to Ryan during the ambassador’s recitation that William Vanderveen blamed the West—or more specifically, the United States—for what had happened to his family.
