the room. Once inside, she ignored the flowery curtains and stale cabbage smell of the place and sat on the end of the bed.
“Where will we fly to?” she asked.
“Not we,” Lennon said. “Just you.”
“Where will
“I don’t know,” he said, pacing in front of her. “The earliest flight I can get you. As close to your home as I can get you.”
“Why? Because that man in the car?”
“Yes,” Lennon said. “Strazdas has someone on the inside. It’s the only way anyone could have known to come after us when we drove to the station. And I’ve a good idea who it is.”
“Who?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to tell her it was DCI Dan Hewitt of C3 Intelligence Branch, but realized the knowledge could bring her greater danger than she already faced.
“Just someone,” he said.
“A bad man?”
“Yes,” Lennon said. “He used to be a friend of mine. He’s dirty.”
“Dirty?”
“He takes bribes, money, from bad people.”
“Will you arrest him?” she asked. “Put him in prison?”
Lennon laughed in spite of himself. “It’s not as easy as that. And he has a grudge against me.”
“You mean he doesn’t like you?” She smirked. “I think you don’t like him.”
“No, I don’t,” Lennon said. “But if I’m right, then no police station is safe for you. It means you have to get out of here. Go home.”
She nodded. “Home. I want to go home and see my brother. But you will be in trouble.”
“Maybe,” Lennon said. “Probably. But I’m getting you on a plane anyway.”
THE LANDLADY SHOWED Lennon to the computer in the guesthouse lounge. It was an old machine, and the Internet connection crawled, but within a few minutes he had established that the only flight that could do Galya any good was a seven a.m. plane to Krakow. He knew nothing about public transport in Eastern Europe, but he had to hope she could get a train from there to Kiev, and from there to whatever village she came from.
But the price. He had a moment of panic as he tried to remember how much credit he had left on his MasterCard. Not much, but maybe enough. He wouldn’t know until he tried, and the website would either accept or reject his payment.
Relief came as he entered the card number and he was presented with the confirmation page, and a link for online check in. It seemed to take an age for the ancient printer to spit out a fuzzy bar code on an A4 page.
The landlady watched from the doorway as he worked. “All done?” she asked when he stood up.
“Yes, thank you,” he said. “Sorry to have disturbed your Christmas.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She brushed his arm as he passed. “She seems like a nice girl. I hope you can sort out whatever trouble you’re in.”
Lennon almost argued, almost said there was no trouble other than the ill mother he’d told her about when they arrived. Instead, he said, “So do I.”
HE CLIMBED THE two flights of stairs to the room and paused outside the door. Susan would be waiting for him. He’d promised he would join her on the sofa when he returned, drink some wine with her while their respective little girls slept. With a sigh, he took his phone from his pocket. She answered on the first ring.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
“Doesn’t it always?” she asked, and disconnected.
“Fuck,” he said to himself.
Galya lay sound asleep when he entered the room. He took a seat by the window, facing the door. He placed his Glock on the table next to him and set the alarm on his phone for six.
Five and a half hours of sleep, if he were lucky. But he had never been lucky.
85
AFTER AN HOUR of phone calls, and another hour of self-punishment, Arturas Strazdas began to pull himself together. He had been through the process before, reassembling himself from the pieces that had scattered over the previous hours and days.
He always began with a period of silence and contemplation. Sitting quite still, recounting every wound he had inflicted on himself, remembering that he was a sane man, and sane men did not harm themselves like this. Sane men channeled their rage, used it to fuel their lives, not destroy them.
The contact had said the girl’s elimination was now a matter of when, not if. Strazdas had no reason to stay in this city a minute longer than necessary. He should be in the taxi provided for him, the contact said, and on his way to the airport by ten in the morning. If not, a police car would come for him instead. And that would take him to a station for questioning.
One or the other, the contact said, simple as that.
So Strazdas took him at his word and set about his own reconstruction.
Once he felt sufficiently balanced in his mind, he shaved and showered before dressing himself in a fresh shirt and his good travel suit. His stomach gargled, and he checked the bedside clock.
Almost five in the morning.
Would they provide room service at this time? Some toast, perhaps, and a boiled egg?
He would try. A sane man has to eat. And Arturas Strazdas was, most definitely, a sane man.
86
FOG STILL LAY heavy on the courtyard when Lennon helped Galya to the car, dawn two hours away. Ten minutes to the airport, he said, then she had half an hour to get through security and onto the plane. He pressed the documents into her hand. She had to go into the terminal herself, he said, and walk straight to security. All she had to do was show them the printed boarding pass and her passport.
Simple, he said.
Galya did not believe him.
She remained silent as Lennon drove. The car’s headlights barely penetrated the fog, and the hot water he’d poured on the windows to defrost them had frozen, making the darkened world appear to ripple and distort.
The vague form of the airport emerged ahead, revealed only by the glowing haze of its lights. Lennon steered into a car park facing the terminal. Galya could barely make out the shape of the building, and could see no one walking to or from it, but she knew they were there, hidden by the gray.
Lennon shut off the engine. He reached into his pocket and handed her a paper bundle. When she felt the coarseness and weight of it, she knew it was money.
“Three hundred and fifty,” he said. “It’s all I had. You should be able to change it in Krakow and get a train to Kiev. Once you get home, take your brother and leave. Don’t stay there. Strazdas will find you if you do.”
“Mama’s farm,” she said. “It’s our home. Where will we live?”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “You’ll figure it out. You’re smart and you’re strong. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
Galya thought about it and realized that, yes, she would. Back home, the man whom Mama owed so much money to, he could take the farm. Galya and her brother would be free of him and his debt. She could live with that. She looked at Lennon’s lined face, saw the scars beneath his skin.
“Your friend Susan,” she said.
Lennon paused, then asked, “What about her?”
