скачать книгу бесплатно
She nodded, not trusting her voice. The SEO had worked but any second he’d notice the search had netted suspiciously few results—because the site was less than twenty-four hours old.
He clicked the link and the site loaded. “It’s in English.”
“Awo.” She bit her lip. She’d used the Ethiopian word for yes. Old habits... “Pardon me,” she said, patting her upper chest, as if she’d hiccuped. “Si, that version is. Most of my clients are in English-speaking countries. I also have an Italian site.” She pointed to the green, white and red flag icon in a corner of the home page. She’d be almost disappointed if he didn’t open it, after the effort it’d taken to translate.
He studied her as if he could see right through to her Ethiopian DNA sequence. “How much do you charge for a simple e-commerce site?”
“Scusi, signore?” Damn. She had no idea of the going rates.
“My wife and I are thinking about setting up an online...” The other officer signaled him and he raised a pointer finger—one minute. The ambient noise crescendoed, as though it’d been silenced for their conversation and someone had just pressed the unmute button. “Never mind.” He handed back Samira’s documents. “When you return to Certaldo I suggest you update your passport. You’d be surprised how much ID fraud we’re seeing these days. Desperate people out there.” He swept a hand toward the thinning queue. “Hence the extra checks.”
He moved on to his next target, leaving Samira’s “Grazie” hanging—and her way clear to the exit. She zipped the documents into her bag and let her chest fill. It’d gone almost concave. She walked—not too fast—boots clicking on the floor, heartbeat thumping along in her ears in double time.
There was something to be said for paranoia. But her delay had given the blond man time to clear the checkpoint. Leaning on a white column ahead, bag at his feet, he swiped at his phone. He caught her eye and quickly looked away. Too quickly? Dear God. She skirted behind a tribe of tracksuit-clad teenagers—some lanky, overgrown sports team—and strode toward the border control exit. The border itself, technically. Once she left the station, once she found Tess, her nerves would settle. She took note of the area’s security cameras then angled herself away, bunching her hair around her face. She pulled a beanie from her bag and tugged it down to her eyebrows. Facial recognition software wasn’t as easily fooled as human eyes. She slipped on the Audrey Hepburn–style sunglasses she’d picked up in Paris.
Tension fell from her shoulders as she emerged into a soaring atrium—an arcade, with shimmering glass shopfronts over Victorian brick arches. A massive Christmas tree circled up to the dome, so laden with ornaments she could almost hear it groan. She adjusted her backpack. Her shoulders were beginning to ache under its weight, coupled with the champagne. She’d used precious euros to buy a dress, coat and heels at a Parisian outlet store, suitable for a fall wedding, and had gift wrapped some of her spare tech gear. It seemed absurd now to have spent all that money. Or maybe the knowledge that she had proof to back up her ruse had warded off the panic attack. Either way, what was done was done. Very soon, she and Tess would be toasting their breakthrough with the champagne.
She walked faster. Every step got her closer to Tess, Charlotte’s flat and the evidence. A sign ahead pointed to the overland trains. Wait—that wasn’t the right exit. She needed to find the pedestrian tunnel linking St Pancras to the square Tess was waiting in. This was the opposite direction. She stopped and looked around as if she were waiting for someone, picturing the station map she’d studied online. Discordant piano chords plinked out a toe-curling tune. Which way was she supposed to have turned out of border control? The blond guy emerged from the crowd, looked up at the signs and headed toward a taxi rank, without a glance her way.
She closed her eyes a second. She never used to be paranoid. She used to trust that the world was a good place, that nothing bad would happen to a thoroughly ordinary woman. She used to have complete faith in the digital age, in its promise to connect cultures and minds, blur borders between the developing and developed worlds, make information and education accessible for all. She clicked her tongue. At some point the limitless possibilities had become limitless threats. Emails, phone calls, databases, servers, web searches...nothing was private, nothing was truly secure, everything could be traced and hacked in an ever-accelerating spiral of cat and mouse between the security analysts and the hackers—in her case, sometimes one and the same person. Once, she’d been contracted to infiltrate a system she’d previously been hired to secure, and that remained the only one that’d eluded her. She still didn’t know whether to be proud of that or embarrassed.
She blew out a breath. One step at a time.First, find the tunnel. After hours enclosed in a capsule, the thought of fresh air and freedom tugged her toward daylight like a magnet was clamped to her chest. Freedom would come when this was done. Freedom from danger and—just maybe, just a little—freedom from grief and guilt?
A large man in a navy suit pushed past. She snapped out a hand to catch the champagne, and patted her bag’s zip pocket, checking for the outline of her wallet—the fictional Italian signorina’s wallet, rounded out by a fake driver’s license and fake credit card, and the remainder of Samira’s real euros. Getting pickpocketed would be a disaster.
Ignoring her clenching stomach muscles, she followed the signs toward the far end of the long station, white columns marching along beside her. The blond guy couldn’t be the one from the cottage. Her enemy couldn’t know she was here. Nothing would go wrong. She’d passed the biggest challenge—getting into Britain. Maybe the evidence would be damning enough that she wouldn’t need to testify. She could wait out the storm at a cozy flat in an English seaside village where she didn’t see a threat in every shaking leaf or heavy footfall. Then maybe she’d be able to breathe without forcing every inhalation. Since Latif’s death, her every breath had seemed like a conscious effort, as if it were her instinct to die, not live. She’d had the sense she was viewing the world from afar, hardly feeling the ground under her feet.
With the exception of that one day—and night—last fall...
Which she shouldn’t be thinking about.
And today was real. Stomach-curlingly real. Despite the fear, it was empowering to do something that wasn’t sitting around lurching between anger and sorrow and frustration and regret. She would finish the mission Latif died for. If she died, too, so be it, so long as she avenged his death and made his sacrifice worth something.
She passed a TV on the wall of a café, tuned to a news channel, just as it flicked to...something familiar. Someone. She backtracked. Tess. Tess was on the screen, walking between two black-uniformed cops. Handcuffed. Samira’s throat dried. Whistle-blowing reporter arrested, read the scroll at the bottom. Then, Sen. Tristan Hyland cleared.
Feet operating automatically, she stepped inside the café, hardly able to absorb the words. The special counsel had announced there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Hyland, and had instead charged Tess with obstruction of justice for her sworn testimony. She’d been hauled off a plane on the tarmac at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, “caught trying to flee the country,” according to the voice-over. The picture changed. Tess’s Legionnaire boyfriend, Flynn, surged through a churn of journalists, his face thunderous. “How the [bleep] do you think I feel?” he mumbled. “This is bullshit.”
Samira pulled her scarf away from her throat.
A family bustled into the café, speaking loud German, drowning out the news report. Suddenly another familiar face was staring out from the TV. Shit. Shit. Samira’s green-card photo—she looked so young. Warrant issued for arrest of Newell accomplice.
Samira yanked her beanie lower. The senator appeared on the screen, speaking to reporters in front of a plane. His daughter, Laura, rested a hand on his shoulder, almost protectively. As the German family retreated into the back of the café, his words became audible.
“...would like to thank the many loyal Americans who’ve supported us through these baseless and incredibly hurtful allegations. It’s been a long and tough road but we always had faith that the truth would prevail and the real villains would be exposed—those people in the media and my political opposition who would manufacture lies to destroy me, my family and my career, solely for ratings and profit and political point scoring.” He eyeballed the TV camera, as if he could see Samira standing there. “Today, the scales of justice rebalanced. For that I am grateful, if not surprised. God bless you, America.”
Applause.
Samira clenched her fists as the senator hushed the cheers and listened to a question. It was inaudible but a smile relaxed his face. Laura wiped away tears—real tears, going by the smudges in her heavy black makeup. The audio faded out and the network’s presenters began speaking over the footage, lamenting the millions “squandered on this witch hunt” and predicting Hyland would revive his presidential ambitions. The senator adjusted his tie and rolled his shoulders, drawing attention to his broad frame. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing tanned, muscular forearms and his Marines tattoo. He laughed, like he was sharing a joke with the reporters.
How the hell had Tess and Latif ever thought they could take him on and win? The darling of American politics, with his boyish grin and blue eyes and square face and thick salt-and-pepper hair and insane popularity—JFK and Reagan rolled into one physically and politically attractive package. When he wasn’t being declared the sitter for America’s next president, he was being hailed the country’s most eligible bachelor. The next silver fox–in-chief. Heck, Samira had once thought him hot. Latif had teased her about it but she wasn’t alone. A meme cult had grown out of his good looks. And the senator knew just what he was doing when he brought his chic environmental crusader of a daughter to press conferences and functions—a reminder that he was a grieving widower and devoted father, and there was an opening for a future First Lady.
Teflon Tristan. When Tess and Latif had uncovered evidence that the military contractor he’d founded had orchestrated the LA terror attack, Hyland had argued it’d gone bad long after he’d sold it—successfully, it now appeared. Somehow he’d swum clear of the maelstrom that’d dragged down his former pals. But Latif, who’d worked for the contractor, had sworn that Hyland had still been calling the shots at the time of the attack, desperate to save the foundering company from liquidation and legal scrutiny by securing more war contracts. Latif had died searching for evidence to skewer his former boss.
The screen switched to the presenters, who moved on to another story. Eyes on the white tiled floor, Samira walked out robotically, hollow from her stomach to her toes. She no longer had anyone to meet. At a newsstand she picked up the Guardian. Nothing yet about Tess—or Samira. But on page three, a story about Hyland announcing a UK visit. Shit, he was coming here? She scanned the story. The secretary of state had fallen ill overnight, so Hyland was on his way to Edinburgh for a NATO meeting, and to observe a joint military exercise in Scotland.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was he coming to supervise Samira’s capture and extradition? He always kept a private security team around him and Laura—was this an excuse to bring them to Britain? Had he known Samira was heading to London when she fled Tuscany? Did he know about Charlotte? What the hell did any of this mean?
Below the main story, another article zeroed in on controversy that Laura was traveling with him, having hurriedly arranged a book signing in Edinburgh for her memoir, which reportedly painted her father as a saint. A quote from the minority House leader: “This is yet another clear case of the Hylands profiting from the senator’s—”
“No free reads,” belted a voice from the stand.
Samira jumped, nearly ripping the paper. She shut it abruptly and tossed it back on the pile.
Tess wasn’t in London, wasn’t waiting in the square with Flynn. And Samira was officially a wanted woman. Thank God she’d turned down the special counsel’s offer of witness protection in the United States, or they’d have her now, too. Thank God she hadn’t used her own passport. Thank God she no longer looked like the naive, optimistic ingenue in her green-card photo. But the UK probably had a swift extradition agreement with the United States—if she survived long enough to fight a legal battle. What now?
Small steps. First, get out of the station. Fresh air. She needed fresh air. She slipped out of the atrium into a brick-walled space with a low industrial ceiling. Where was the damn tunnel to the square? Icy fingers from an invisible draft brushed her cheeks. Her camel coat was so thick it could stand up by itself, but the dry cold rushed into her lungs, chilling her from the inside.
Behind her, a man shouted. Indecipherable but panicked. She straightened, her spine prickling. Border guards, coming for her? More shouts. A clunk. Clattering. Hissing. Ahead, people began turning. People began running.
She swiveled, wheezing. Blue smoke gushed and fizzed from dozens of tin cans rolling along the floor. This was no arrest. It was an ambush. Urgent beeping bounced around the room. The smoke billowed, boiling across the low ceiling and pouring back down like a dozen waterfalls, lit by a strobing white emergency light. Screams, shouts. Shadowy figures darted through the thickening mist. Someone slammed into her arm, knocking her sideways. Her shoulder struck the floor first, then the side of her skull. The champagne bag swung out and smashed behind her. Coughing, she pushed to her feet. Bitter chemicals stung the back of her throat. Tear gas? She stumbled across the floor, her feet swallowed by a blue snowdrift. An alarm wailed. Dark smudges shunted her like a pin in a bowling alley.
“Attention, please.” A male voice, over a loudspeaker. “Due to a reported emergency, would all passengers leave the station immediately?”
Sure—if she could figure out where the exit was. She staggered like a zombie, one arm flailing in front of her. Wasn’t tear gas supposed to burn? Her hand scraped something rough. A brick wall. She swiveled and leaned back on it. She had to return to the atrium. If she just walked straight...or was it left...?
But if the smoke was cover for Hyland’s people to capture her, wouldn’t they be waiting for her to stumble out? Should she head for the Tube, try her luck in the maze of tunnels?
Yes. She pulled up her scarf, breathing into it as she inched along the wall, panic clamping her chest. Her arm fell through space. A doorway? Smoke cocooned her. Her head spun like she’d been spit from a carousel. A clonk, nearby, and a man’s head and shoulders loomed out of the fog, a green-and-yellow jacket zipped to his chin, his face hidden under a gas mask and beanie. She sidestepped but he caught her arms, kicked her legs out from under her and lifted.
She bucked but he was too strong, too solid. Her backpack was snatched away. Her spine hit something soft and flat—a gurney? A second man, in matching jacket and gas mask, leaned over the other side. A white patch was stamped on his chest pocket: AMBULANCE.
Her lungs pinched. She wrenched away but the first guy trapped her upper arms. Something yanked her stomach into the gurney. A strap. One by one her wrists and ankles were pinned, too. A creature from the deep catching her in its tentacles. The trolley began to roll. The first guy shoved a hat over her beanie and a mask over her face. They were sedating her? She lashed her head side to side but he pushed the mask’s straps on. A few tugs and her head was locked down like the rest of her, the arms of her sunglasses digging into her temples. She resisted inhaling until her chest rebelled and sucked in a desperate breath. It came out again as a Darth Vader wheeze. The world narrowed to the visor in front of her eyes—blue smoke, the men’s bent heads. The first guy laid a hand on her belly. A warning.
She didn’t flake out—it wasn’t a sedation mask; it was a gas mask like those the men wore. The blue haze dissolved into white light. Columns, brickwork and glinting glass sheets flashed by. Back in the atrium. The alarm sharpened, the dome swelling the panicked uproar. Anxious faces rushed past, people swerved out of the speeding gurney’s path.
Samira shouted for help but the mask muffled her. She was being kidnapped in front of hundreds of people and all she could do was squeak.
CHAPTER THREE (#u76e07c34-3c1c-50d7-9c0b-70101ad21c0b)
SAMIRA JAMMED HER fingernails into her palms—about the only body part she could move. Would they kill her straightaway or interrogate her first? She wouldn’t give up Charlotte or further incriminate Tess, if that was what they were after. She’d be as fearless as Latif was. You hear me, Samira? Fearless.
The gurney spun ninety degrees. The wheels on one side lifted, lurching her stomach into weightlessness. Shops and cafés rushed by. Her kidnappers kept their heads bowed as they plowed through the panicked foot traffic and rattled under an arch into a cloudy gray world. A redbrick facade rose up, curving in the visor’s distortion. They were taking her out a side entrance? A firefighter flashed past, in a yellow helmet. She cried out. He didn’t even slow. The gurney rattled and bumped over rougher ground, jolting her vision. Beside her, blue lights flashed against a red blur—a fire truck. Her breath hissed in fast pants, the mask heating. The sharp scent of warming rubber curled up her nose, itching the back of her throat. A siren screamed and waned, screamed and waned, louder and louder. Voices faded. The world took a dive.
The gurney slowed and the second paramedic—or whatever he really was—jogged out of her field of vision. She strained her head as far as the restraints and mask allowed. Where had he gone? Diagonal red and yellow stripes, flashing blue lights—the rear double doors of an ambulance, its number plate coated in mud, though the chassis gleamed.
This was well planned. Who would stop two paramedics loading a prone woman into an ambulance? She shouted but it came out a whimper. The double doors swung open. The men lifted the gurney and it clattered into the back of the vehicle, the first guy jumping in alongside. A bump, and the rear doors slammed, one by one. The driver’s door opened and shut, and beneath her the ambulance shuddered and rumbled. Her breath rasped like an asthmatic’s. Her arms tingled. Black spots dotted her vision.
No. Fight it off. Or let it go. Or whatever the hell she was supposed to do. The solution always seemed so logical when she wasn’t having an attack.
A siren bleeped and the ambulance moved. The guy guarding her fiddled with something beside her ear, his head angled to look out the rear window. Pressure lifted from her forehead, leaving a floating sensation.
“Bravo Victor Control, Bravo Victor Control, Bravo Victor niner-one, over.” The driver, speaking into a radio, in a northern English accent. Wait—was this a real ambulance? Tess had warned her that Hyland’s conspiracy had sucked people in from everywhere—but the London Ambulance Service?
As the ambulance rolled out, the guy guarding her drew away her mask, knocking her sunglasses off with it. She gasped cold air and went to scream. His hand clamped over her mouth, rough and dry.
On the radio, a reply crackled back. “Bravo Victor niner-one, Bravo Victor Control. Go ahead. Over.”
Her lungs caved. No need for torture—she was suffocating herself. She retched, her body shaking against the bonds like she was having a fit. Bravery? Who was she kidding? With his free hand, her assailant pulled his mask and beanie off and drew in a breath. Close-cropped brown hair glistened with sweat.
Jamie.
The blue strobe illuminated uneasy cobalt eyes as he bent over her, releasing her mouth and sweeping his hand down her arm to push up her coat sleeve.
Jamie.
He encircled her wrist with his fingers for a few moments, then deftly released her hands from the bonds. “Samira, you’re having a panic attack. We’ll get through it together, okay? Just like before.”
Before. Yes, last year, when they were escaping from Ethiopia.
“You want nitroglycerin?” the driver called. “I have tablets.”
“No need,” Jamie replied, his gaze pinning hers. He laid a hand on her upper chest, and another on her belly, over her coat. “Breathe out, Samira, every last puff of air.”
She widened her eyes. She didn’t have any air—that was the problem.
He patted her belly. “Okay, now let this fill, nice and slow.” He patted her upper chest. “Keep this still.”
Sure. Like breathing was that easy. She scraped in a breath, hyperaware of the slight pressure of his hands.
“Now, let it out, slowly—all of it, until there’s nothing left. I’ll breathe with you.”
She concentrated on his eyes—the flecks of brown in the blue, the creases in the corners, the way they angled down like teardrops—and focused on matching his breaths, calm and even, pushing his hand away with her belly, then letting it drop. Jamie? Here?
What did it matter how? Just—thank God. Pressure lifted from her chest. Her vision cleared. She sank back on the gurney, letting go of effort, crisp oxygen swirling in her mouth.
He touched the back of his hand to her cheek. “Okay now?”
“Yes and no.” Mostly, she felt like an idiot.
“They were onto you,” he said, quietly, his focus darting from window to window as he unstrapped her head. “I had to create a diversion, extract you before they could figure out what was happening. I’d forgotten about your panic attacks.”
Her stomach flipped in time with the rises and falls of his accent, taking her mind back to their last morning together, when she’d told him to leave—and he’d wasted no time or breath complying.
It hardly mattered now. “Was this Tess’s idea? She’s been arrested—I saw it on TV.”
“It was Flynn’s. We had to move quickly. Tess was tipped off that Hyland’s mercenaries were planning to have St Pancras surrounded. But then she got arrested, so we had no way of contacting you. I flew straight here from France. One of the other guys in my unit flew to Paris but he got held up and you’d already left—Texas, you remember him?”
“Awo—I mean, yes, the American... So, the smoke—that was you?”
“It was the best plan I could come up with at short notice. We use smoke grenades on exercises, for cover, so...”
“But won’t the police—?”
“As far as the authorities are concerned, the grenades will be dismissed as a prank by a couple of student protesters who escaped without detection behind a rather convenient smoke screen. A harmless gag, except for one poor tourist who had to be treated for...breathing problems.”
She patted her head, and pulled off the “hat” Jamie had forced on her—a brown wig. Hearing his voice again was unnerving after it’d been trapped in her head for so long. “I think that’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy. You couldn’t have warned me?”
“No time, and no channel. I couldn’t just walk in and lead you out, with them watching. We used the masks for disguises and parked the ambulance in a security camera black spot.” He unzipped his jacket and tossed it on the front passenger seat. Underneath he wore a short-sleeved green shirt with epaulets, a coat of arms on the chest pocket. A real paramedic uniform? A tendril of a tattoo curled out from under a sleeve. Her pulse seemed to glitch as her memory filled in the rest of the mark. “It’ll take Hyland’s goons a while to put all that together, no matter what resources they have.”
She swallowed. “They have access to all the resources, according to Tess. Has something gone wrong, I mean, apart from the arrest? Charlotte...?”
“Is that your London contact? I don’t know.” He moved to the straps on her feet and began releasing them. Deciphering his thick accent was taking concentration, though just the timbre of it rolled through her chest and eased her breathing. “All I know is that I was the only one who could get here this quickly, so I was it.” It sounded like an apology, like he assumed he was the last man she’d want to see again. How wrong he was. “Flynn was sparing on details and obviously we’re needing to keep this operation contained, so...”
“This operation?” she said. “You’re making it sound even more terrifying.”
“Oh no, this is commonplace. We’re just couriers, yeah? Here to collect and deliver. Operation UPS. Angelito and Holly are trying to get away from some unpronounceable town in Eastern Europe but that’ll take a while. And Texas is waiting for a seat to come free on the Eurostar.”
Angelito. Flynn and Jamie’s capitaine, who’d helped her escape Ethiopia. “Holly...?”
“Angelito’s girlfriend.”
“She can be trusted?”
“She could come in pretty handy.” His brow creased. “I’ve been wondering how you were, where you were. Tess and Flynn assured me you were safe but wouldn’t say more.”
She inwardly winced. Was that censure in his voice? He’d made her promise to keep in touch. She’d crossed her fingers behind her back.
Call if you need me, he’d said, scrawling down his number as he’d stepped onto his train in a French town she could no longer name, to return to his base on Corsica. If you want me. I’ll come straightaway.
So many times she’d nearly relented, even once picking up a pay phone and dialing all but the last digit.
“They didn’t know where I was—it was safer for everyone that way,” she said. “I moved around a lot. And Hyland still caught up with me.” More than a year of being careful and it had very nearly been for nothing. “At least I assume the ambush in Tuscany was his doing?”
“Yes. You did well to get away.”
She sat up, blinking rapidly. “Does Hyland know why I’m in London, where I’m headed?”
“We’re certainly hoping not. But then, until a few hours ago we hadn’t expected all this, either. You might need to fill me in on the details of what we’re going to be doing. We’re picking up something?”
She liked the sound of “we.” But if Hyland’s thugs had her in their sights, what about Charlotte? “Awo, from Putney. I mean, yes. You might as well know everything.” She gave him a breathless rundown. God, there was a lot to explain—Tuscany, Charlotte, the postcard...
“Wow,” Jamie said, when she’d finished. “I hope this ‘gift’ will exonerate Tess and bring down Hyland.”
“So do I, but I honestly don’t know. This could all be for nothing.”
“Flynn seems to think it’s the only chance we have.”
“Dear God, don’t say that.”
