“Why are you after me?” Anika asked.
The woman fell silent.
Anika applied more pressure on the wound and the woman cried out.
“Jane!” Brad protested. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me.” Anika pointed the gun at the woman’s temple.
“What do you think?”
Anika remembered what she had said to Gianni about life on the outside. A life of running and hiding. From U.N.I.T. From its enemies.
“Did U.N.I.T. send you?”
“Why would your own organization send me?”
“What’s she talking about?” Brad asked. “What’s the unit?”
Anika placed the male attacker’s gun into Brad’s hand and curled his stiff fingers around it. “Go watch him.” She angled her head toward the man’s inert body.
“We have to get the police.”
“In a minute. But right now, I need you to do what I say. Please.” She reached out her hand to squeeze his arm, but kept her eyes on the woman. “Start talking.”
Sweat covered the woman’s face and her eyes blazed with pain and fury.
“Why did you tell your partner not to shoot me? Who wants me alive?”
“We do.” The words wheezed out of the woman. “We were told … you were the one … ruined the Mendelson mission in Ohio.”
“You mean the planned attack on Senator Mendelson’s supporters?”
“Zionist sympathizers.”
Anika knew it wouldn’t do any good to tell the woman that she was the one who had almost helped the mission succeed. Because of her refusal to take out the bomber bodyguard at the museum. Was this U.N.I.T.’s latest attempt to kill her? By providing false intel about her to its enemies?
“Who told you?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.” When Anika pressed against the woman’s wounded leg, she cried out, “An informant. I don’t know who he is. I was only told where to find you. And to bring you back.”
“Who told you where to find me?”
“Jane? I think he’s waking up.” Brad held the gun all wrong. The space between his thumb and index finger was too high on the grip and his arm was bent instead of straight.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement. She tried to grab the First Aryan. Too late. The woman rammed her head against the street, knocking herself out and ending the interrogation.
Now Anika wouldn’t be able to learn whether the First Aryans had discovered her location on their own, or been given that intel, courtesy of U.N.I.T. Either way, she couldn’t stay here and wait around for another attempt.
“What about the police?” Brad’s voice shook.
“Get my knapsack.”
“What?”
“My knapsack. I need it.”
She removed an ampoule of Pink and snapped it open.
“What’s that for?” Brad asked.
“Buying time.” She tilted the woman’s head back and poured two drops into her nostril.
“Time for what?”
“They’ve been following me. I need to get away before they report back to … ” Her voice trailed off.
She stood and walked over to the man. He groaned when she rolled him onto his back, but didn’t try to fight her off. She poured the remaining liquid into his nose and watched his body go completely slack.
“Why have they been following you?” Brad asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry.” She gestured at the area around them. “About all this.”
“Don’t apologize. You saved my life.”
“They weren’t after you. They were after me.”
“Still,” he said, then stopped. “Where will you go?”
She wanted to stay in Havana. For Gianni. If the message about waiting three more days had come from Gianni. She wasn’t so sure now.
“We can go to the cottage,” Brad said, interrupting her thoughts. “In Guardalavaca. We’ll be safe there. No gadgets, remember? And the Estradas will help us.”
“You can’t come with me.” She was relieved to see some color had returned to his face.
“I know you think I’m just some geeked-up professor. Someone who passes out when it gets a little rough.” Brad paused and looked down at the remnants of spewed dinner still sticking to his shirt. His lips twisted. “I guess I can’t really blame you.”
“It’s not that. Believe it or not, I’ve used the vomit technique myself.” Brad’s head shot up to meet her eyes. “Quite recently.” She smiled at him.
“I know Cuba. I have friends here. I can help.”
She shook her head.
“I do a good fake. You said so yourself.”
“You weren’t faking.”
“I will be. Next time. Let me help.”
“If you want to help, contact the police. Tell them you were attacked. You fought back and the woman got shot.” Anika wiped the First Aryan’s gun clean of her prints, emptied the magazine, and handed the weapon to Brad. “Keep your story simple. Don’t use the exact words every time. Say you can’t remember some things. You’ll sound more believable.”
“Why won’t you let me help? You can trust me, you know.”
“I do. But I’m waiting for someone. And when he gets here … ” She spread out her hands to finish the sentence.
“Oh.” Brad’s eyes widened. “Lucky guy,” he whispered.
No, not really. Not at all.
“Go to the cottage anyway. The train to Holguin leaves in the morning. Just after seven. With no delays, you’ll be there by tomorrow night. I’ll let the Estradas know you’re coming.”
She could contact Gianni from there. Let him know she had been forced to leave Havana, but that she was still waiting for him.
“We need to get them out of the street.” She nodded at the two bodies lying on the ground.
“I’ll take care of it. Here.” Brad tucked the gun into his waistband, bent to pick up the knapsack, and handed it to her. “And when you meet Maggie Estrada, let her know about your leg. Like I said, she’s a medical magician.”
“Make it a good fake. With the
policía
.” Anika clasped his hand between both of hers. “Now I owe you.”
“Tell me who you are.”
She raised one hand to his face and gently rubbed away the blood. “I’m Jane.”
“I’ll always remember you, Jane.” His fingers tightened on hers.
“Don’t.” She squeezed his hand to soften her words. “Don’t remember.”
Anika slipped off her sunshades and walked down the aisle of the train to the last row of bench seats. The boy saving her place looked at her, his round brown eyes two giant question marks. She nodded and smiled. He had found a seat matching her exact specifications — in a corner, by a window, near an exit.
He jumped up and almost spilled the two boxes of cellophane-wrapped gum in his lap.
“¿Cuánto?”
she asked.
“Diez,”
the boy answered, pride swelling his thin chest.
“Muy bien.”
Anika concluded their deal by buying twenty packets of gum, twice what the boy had sold to the policeman who had been strolling the train station when she first arrived that morning. Clearly, the boy had followed her instructions to be persistent with the official in trying to make a sale. When she had risked a glance from her hiding place in the bathroom during the final departure call for Holguin, the policeman was nowhere in sight.
With a final “
gracias
,” the boy scampered up the aisle, his coltish legs poking out from oversized shorts.
She took the corner seat and winced from the contact with the too-thinly padded cushions. The aspirin capsules from the bathroom vending machine were no substitute for the pain blockers left behind at the Santa Isabel along with the numbing gel, contact lenses, facial tape, and other supplies.
They were all probably being catalogued and analyzed by whoever had been in her room when she had returned to the hotel after the attack in the alley. From the shadows of the Plaza de Armas, she had studied the rim of light edging the balcony doors of her room and wondered who was inside.
The police? MININT? More First Aryans? She hadn’t stayed to find out, but relocated to a rundown hotel near the train station where the desk clerk cared more about pocketing an extra currency note than checking her papers.
She tugged on the ball cap borrowed from a man asleep in the doorway of last night’s grungy accommodations. The cap smelled of grease and diesel but it provided some protection from curious eyes.
She had made good use of the in-between time inside the bathroom. The gun wrap was snugged around the outside of her skirt and the Glock hidden at the bottom of the knapsack. She had rolled some of the skirt under the stretchy material to hide the worst of the damage from the fight. And she had traded the sparkly impractical sandals for a sturdy pair worn by a teenager who had been complaining about her mother’s complete disregard for fashion. At least now, Anika didn’t have to worry about blisters on top of her other aches.
The train chugged out of the station, wheels rumbling and windows rattling. She was grateful to be leaving Havana with its
policía, Ministerio del Interior
, and enemies of U.N.I.T. Her stomach unknotted and her fingers relaxed their hold on the knapsack. Ten slow breaths later, her eyes started to close.
The first time the train lurched to an unexpected stop in the middle of the countryside, she bolted upright.
Was the stop because of her? Had they found out she was on board?
She swiveled her head and checked the windows on both sides of the aisle. Fields of a bluish-green crop stretched into the distance. No vehicles sped up to the tracks, no armed hostiles charged aboard.
The other passengers carried on as before, dozing in their seats, playing card games, fiddling with clunky antiquated handhelds, chatting with their neighbors.
“¿Que pasa?”
The white-haired woman next to Anika spoke through a spray of saliva that shot out from the spaces between her teeth.
“¿Por qué paró el tren?”
The woman raised her shoulders in an unconcerned shrug. Then, as if offering a consolation prize, she held out a piece of gum. The plastic-wrapped pink square, flecked with sugar, looked just like one of the pieces Anika had bought from the boy. Probably harmless.
The trusting civilian in her wanted to accept the small gift, but the trained agent warned against taking an unconfirmed substance from an unknown source. In the end, the agent won.
“No, gracias.”
The train started up again and Anika sank back against the seat. Her heart slowed to normal. By the third unexpected stop, her pulse didn’t even skip a beat. Two hundred fifty slow breaths later, when the train still hadn’t budged, she stared longingly at the motorists whizzing along the throughway that paralleled the tracks.
The cars, like the models of electronic goods in the dollar shops, were an eclectic mix of styles. As in Havana, all the drivers kept their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Manual navigation. No autopiloting. She wondered if any of them were going all the way to Holguin and, if they were, how much sooner they would arrive than this stop-and-go transport.
Five hours later, the train pulled into Ciego de Avila, the halfway point on the map. God only knew whether it was halfway in terms of time. She remembered the Havana travel shops advertising the beach town’s first-class resorts: sky-high geometric constructions of cement and glass marching in a row along the sandy shore.
She shifted position and the back of her top pulled away from the sticky seat cover. Her muscles quivered at the promise of a climate-controlled room, a hot shower and a soft bed. There was still the problem of her not being registered. But given how erratically everything else worked in this country, she was willing to bet the computer systems in Havana weren’t networked throughout the country. She rehearsed what she could say to a hotel clerk.
Change course, zigzag your trail. That’s what her trainers had taught.
She stood up, then bit down on her lip as her muscles protested the movement. She limped off the train. From the hubbub inside the station, Ciego de Avila seemed to be a popular stop. A cacophony of excited voices, shuffling feet, metal luggage carts and high-pitched whistles vibrated off the walls of the small building.
A slight bump nudged her knee from behind. Thank goodness it was her good leg.
A little girl with dancing eyes and dark curls giggled up at her. Before Anika could say anything, the girl spun around and ran to the woman who had called out to her.
Anika counted four children of varying ages, the little girl and three boys. A fifth child slept in the woman’s arms. The youngsters all clustered around her, grabbing onto her skirt, jostling for attention.
A man appeared at the woman’s side, holding the hand of yet another girl.
Good Lord. Six kids?
A pair of men, with official-looking patches on their short-sleeved shirts, separated the crowd of people into two lines. One of the men waved locals toward the left side of the room. The other directed Anika to the right, where an uneven row of poles carried promotional signs for the different resorts in town.
On tiptoe, wincing as her thigh protested, she strained to see the front of the line. What was going on? Was this some kind of hustle to get the foreigners into the pricier hotels?
A shout rocketed through the air. The people ahead of her shifted and her view cleared.
Two men in dark gray uniforms pulled a traveler from the line. Tall and silvering at the temples, the man shook them off. His face flushed underneath his tan. He reached for something in his jacket pocket and one of the officials drew his gun. The man quieted and the three of them disappeared behind a curtain.
A warning buzzed up Anika’s spine.
A bigger gap in the line opened and revealed a sign above a small table at the very front.
All non-residents register here. Please. Ministerio del Interior.
A woman, in the same gray uniform as the men, sat at the table and scrutinized the papers of waiting travelers.
The mood in the line changed from boredom to anxiety. Eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed, shoulders hunched.
When changing course doesn’t work, retreat.
Before Anika could take a step, one of the officials re-emerged from behind the curtain. His gaze locked on her and narrowed.