“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know.”
She glanced at the stairs, then took one of his hands in her own. “Do you have to go?”
Grey put his other hand on her arm to comfort her, but she eased into his arms and looked up at him. He had an internal shudder and didn’t push her away. “I won’t go far. Lock this door behind me and don’t worry.”
She bit her lip and looked away. “There’s something I need to tell you. That night we had drinks, after I went home… I saw something outside my bedroom window. A person wrapped head to toe in white bandages, like a patient or a burn victim. Standing in the park behind my apartment, looking straight at me.”
“You called the police?”
“Sure, they arrived late and of course saw nothing. But who or what the hell was it?”
Grey considered the information. “Have you seen anything like that again?”
“No.”
“Then either it was a coincidence, or there’s nothing to do about it right now. We can discuss it tomorrow if you want. I need to hurry.”
She squeezed his hand a final time. “Be careful,” she whispered.
He slipped outside and waited until he heard her set the deadbolt. He found himself breathing a bit heavily, but it wasn’t from exertion. He would far rather chase down whoever had been following them than deal with Veronica’s lingering fingertips and Nya’s face staring back at him from that blank email.
He glanced both ways. The narrow street slumbered, without even a street light to relieve the darkness. He retraced their steps, and checked the front of the rooftops as he walked. Still nothing. He no longer felt watched.
If Grey chose the right direction, he might get a glimpse of whoever had been following them, returning from wherever they’d come. It was a long shot, but Grey thought he knew which direction to go.
Towards Stefan’s chateau.
Grey walked as quickly as he could while maintaining silence. He couldn’t risk running; the streets were in terrible condition. Potholes and bricks and loose gravel lurked underfoot.
It was the deepest part of the night, bottled entropy, the hour before celestial momentum shifts and light creeps into the sky. A canine howl broke the hush, far in the distance. Grey reached the bridge without incident. He rested an arm on the stone ledge and strained to see into the darkness. He didn’t like crossing the bridge without knowing who was on the other side, with no cover.
He felt sure Stefan wanted to find out what Grey was up to, perhaps to make sure his competitors hadn’t sent a spy. Tonight, Grey suspected Stefan had sent someone to watch for him after dark, but Grey had already headed to the castle hill. Someone must have picked up Veronica and him on their way back.
He stood, arms crossed, thinking. Both martial arts and military training made one more aware, and Grey believed the sixth sense can be honed just like the other ones. Was it foolproof? Of course not. The movement he saw earlier could have been teenagers, drunks, a homeless person, even a dog. But he’d learned to trust his instincts.
He wheeled and headed back to the pension. He didn’t like that bridge, and he didn’t like leaving Veronica alone any longer.
He reached the corner before the turn onto his street, and stilled. Footsteps pattered around the corner.
He crouched and waited. His anger at being followed had gotten the better of him. He never should have left Veronica.
The footsteps drew nearer. Two sets. He could live with those odds, especially with surprise on his side.
A foot rounded the corner, not turning, continuing down the street it was on. A worn brown boot. Grey flattened and waited for the second pair to pass. Grey would have their back.
The shoes of the second came into view. Grey shot forward, then stopped himself. The feet were tiny. The feet of a child.
The child cried out and dropped a ragged bundle of clothing. The one in front turned. It was an old woman, her overcoat in tatters. The crone grabbed the child with knotted hands and yanked him away from Grey. The child’s patchwork clothing fluttered in the darkness. The woman shuffled backward and jabbed a finger at Grey, then enclosed the child in her arms.
Grey backed away with outward facing palms, apologizing with words he knew they didn’t understand. He picked up their bag and handed it to the gypsy woman. The child buried his head in the old woman’s clothing.
She shuffled into the darkness, dragging the child behind her. Grey murmured another apology, more for himself than for them, and returned to the pension. He checked on Veronica and then fell into bed.
• • •
Grey woke at eight, and again took a coffee downstairs. He kept shifting back and forth in his seat and crossing his legs. Breaking into someone’s house or laboratory when he had no proof a crime had been committed wasn’t on the table for him.
Maybe Veronica could charm another scientist, but for that to happen he’d need to break client confidentiality. Despite whatever romantic tension was brewing between them, he was still worried he’d see the story on the front page of tomorrow’s New York Times.
He debated calling Viktor, and decided against it. Viktor had entrusted the case to him, and right now there was nothing to discuss. Progress was being made, and it was on Grey to figure out how to wrap it up.
He waited until it was morning in New York, then called Al-Miri to relay what he had seen. No one answered, with no option to leave a message. He shrugged and went for a long run.
He returned to find the owner of the pension smiling and waving him over. The owner had run into an old friend at the
mexana
, he told Grey. A friend named Stefan Dimitrov.
The owner handed Grey a note. Grey thanked him and unfolded the paper.
It was an invitation to dinner, two nights hence, and directions to Stefan’s chateau. The other American, Grey’s lovely female companion, was invited as well.
V
eronica sat at a table by herself in a pizza joint on Nezavissimost, the street bisecting the newer half of Veliko, to the west. The west side contained the commerce, a couple of pubs, a tiny casino, and a barn-sized movie theater showing Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The most important establishment on the west side, at least to Veronica: the one pizza restaurant in town with a menu in English.
The street in front of the pizza joint was lined with gypsy showmen, a few shy rural craftsmen, and a phalanx of local entrepreneurs in gaudy shops selling the wares of the craftsmen and the gypsies at twice the price. Just outside her window was a man in a bright orange Adidas shirt and worn overalls, leaning on a rake in one hand and talking on a cell phone in the other. He was standing behind a folding table littered with rusted Cold War relics, all bearing the familiar red star.
A BMW flew past the table, and then a horse pulling a long flat cart trotted by. The man on the horsecart stopped to pick up a bundle of trash on the side of the street with a pitchfork, and deposited it into the cart.
Veronica opened the menu. The first item was called “Pizza Number One.” The ingredients were listed as
savory, tomato juice, yellow cheese, and forced meat
. Veronica looked from the menu to the man on the horse, emitted a slightly hysterical giggle and turned to the wine list.
She ordered one of the less mysterious sounding pizzas and a nice glass of Melnik, and popped open her international cell phone. She dialed New York.
Monique answered on the third ring. “Where are you, darling?”
“Eating a savory pizza in the middle of the afternoon and staring at a garbage man straight out of the middle ages.”
“Let me just send this one email… there. Sorry, you’re where again? With a garbage man?”
Veronica took a long deep draught of wine.
“Vere? Are you there? How’s my story?”
Veronica lowered her voice, even though she was the only customer. “I’m onto something big. I’m talking rogue scientists, secret labs, intruders in the night, clandestine ops, all that jazz. Big, Monique. Earth-shattering.”
“What is it?”
“That’s the problem. I couldn’t give you a paragraph on the actual subject matter. I just know it concerns Somax and it’s big. I’m close, though. I know the main player and I think I know where the lab is.”
“The secret lab?”
“That’s right.”
“So it’s not a secret?”
Veronica held the phone away from her face and frowned at it. “I followed the guy I told you about, the ex-military detective. He’s good. He’s the type of guy who doesn’t hang around small stuff. He scoped out a location for a few hours, near where the lab’s rumored to be. It has to be it.”
“What about a synopsis? Something I can give to finance? I’d love to subsidize your travels and save the world, darling, but I have an organization to run.”
Veronica hesitated. “You said ten days, right? I’ll have a synopsis in three. Maybe not the whole story, but something. Promise.”
“There’s a protest next week at CDC headquarters, and a WHO fundraiser in London. We’ll need coverage.”
“Those two things are like a middle school biology symposium compared to what I’ve got over here.”
“Are they? I thought you said you didn’t have a paragraph.”
“Trust me. This is the one, Monique. I’ll make us both famous.”
“I don’t need fame, dear. I just need good wine. How
is
the wine there? I’ve heard it can be quite excellent.”
“Stick with the Melnik reds. Think Napa Valley Cab meets Malbec. I’ll have your synopsis in three days.”
“The CDC protest starts in three days,” she said mildly. Monique never pushed, she just offered a subtle and unflagging opinion of her view of things. “Atlanta has nice restaurants. Maybe I’ll go too. That could be nice. You and me at the Buckhead Intercontinental, a nice little expense account?”
“Three days. Then I’ll let you decide for yourself.”
“Sure darling.”
Veronica murmured her goodbyes as the waitress set her pizza down in front of her. Veronica had absolutely no idea what was on it.
• • •
Jax knew most criminals desire an audience. It was human nature. From the pickpocket to the carjacker to the serial killer, the compulsion to share in some manner, whether commiseration or bragging or confession, was a scientific fact.
A few truly dangerous ones didn’t have that need. The stone cold sociopaths born without a soul, without even the childhood traumas that tripped up most serial killers. They do their work, move on to the next random job, and are never heard from again. They’re a nightmare for police and a question for God.
Jax considered himself in neither category. He wanted an audience less than he wanted a venereal disease. He had no neuroses, no self-confidence issues, no inner urges to hurt anyone, no strange voices in his head.
Sure, if he was halfway across the globe having a beer with a friend, Jax might change some names and tell a few stories, for the sake of a good time. And if need be, he could shut down like an abandoned reactor.
Simply put: Jax loved his lifestyle, and he’d do anything to keep it. This business he was mixed up in was out of control. It was time to disappear. Time to find a nice shack in the Outback, hole up for a year and remain as anonymous as a mosquito in New Orleans.
Jax grinned as he drove down I-68. Running and hiding were two of Jax’s specialties, along with scouring the globe for the best places to have a
Cuba Libre
. He didn’t know anyone that was better at, well, any of those things.
Another man had been posted on the street outside his hotel in New York. When Jax burst through the door during his escape, the man had tried to stop him. A nice groin shot and an uppercut with the butt of the gun had dropped him. The man had some training, but he was no Nomti. Four more burst through the door, and Jax started running.
No one short of an Olympic sprinter with GPS was going to catch Jax on the streets of a large city. He’d ducked, weaved, hidden, ran, taxied, and subwayed his way across New York. The chase hadn’t lasted long; he hadn’t seen anyone suspicious since thirty minutes before he hit Grand Central. If you couldn’t lose someone in New York, you didn’t need to be running.
Jax took a taxi to a small rental agency in Brooklyn. He used a fake driver’s license to rent a tan Chevy sedan for a week. He left the boroughs and drove straight to West Virginia.
Why West Virginia? Why not. He’d opened the atlas and thought it looked good. Not too far, but far enough. Random. White. Homogenous. Scary.
He’d spend a few days there, then an easy drive to Chicago and a direct flight, probably to London. Lose the fake license, do a little disguise job at the airport, use a passport with a different fake name. Mission complete. Off the grid for a while, no more business in Egypt for a very long time, if ever.
Life was all about choices, he thought. The ones you make, the ones you don’t make, and the ones others make for you, which can sometimes trump the first two. Jax didn’t do revenge, not if it jeopardized his way of life. The people chasing him could waste their lives working for whatever twisted club they belonged to, and he’d continue down his charmed path.
Jax popped a Heineken, the only import he’d found in the grocery store. He was sitting in a lawn chair provided by a sleepy motel just off the interstate, near some pit stop of a town in West Virginia called Spencerville. It was one of those twenty room, peeling, L-shaped motels that litter the American roadside. He chose the room at the far end, next to the woods. Parked his car in the rear.
He packed his Camels on his palm and grinned. Chicago by noon tomorrow, London the next morning. Crickets in the adjoining forest echoed his cheer, and he enjoyed the evening.
Car lights swung into view and stopped at reception. It was late, after midnight, but not uncommonly late. Just to be safe Jax sidled inside the room.
He then watched in disbelief as four dark-skinned men in overcoats stepped out of a black sedan, fanned out and started walking towards his room.
Jax grabbed his bag and shoved open the window on the wall fronting the woods. He sprinted for his car, jumped inside, and sped away. In the rear-view mirror he saw the four men converge on his room. He punched the steering wheel repeatedly as he drove away, thinking to himself,
you’ve got to be fucking kidding me
.