away.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. The crowd in the restaurant had diminished; only a few diners remained, quiet groups, talking softly, intimately.
Ariana ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. She looked tired.
“Okay. Then tell me this,” she said, leaning forward on the table. “How the hell are we going to stay alive? Tell me how reality is going to make Schrade disappear.”
“Yeah.” Strand nodded. “We’ve got to talk about that.” But he was hesitant. “Look, it’s been about three days now since the videotape turned up in Rome. Obviously Schrade knew where I was three days ago. I did everything I could think of to lose his people. I think I’m okay now.” He paused. “What about you?”
She looked at him. “That’s blunt.”
“We’re both going to have to do some traveling,” he said. “We’re going to be carrying documents, documents I can’t afford to lose.” He paused again. “I just need to know how you feel about it. If you have any question in your own mind that you aren’t absolutely clean, I need to know. I can make other arrangements.”
“Here’s my thinking, Harry,” she said, her voice a little strained. “If Schrade knew where you were in Rome, and if he wanted you dead, why didn’t he kill you then? Apparently he chose not to kill you in Rome. So, it could be that he knows where you are now, too, and is still choosing not to kill you. Maybe your evasive capabilities aren’t as expert as you would like to believe.” She smoked. “Just a thought.” She smoked again.
“Now, as for myself,” she went on. “I have no reason to believe that Schrade would not kill me if he knew where I was. He didn’t let Clymer live. Nor, I believe, Claude. I have no reason to think he would have different plans for me. So, if I’m alive now, perhaps it’s because he doesn’t know where I am. That, I would think, would speak well enough for my evasive skills.”
By the time she had finished, Ariana’s tone had grown decidedly testy. Strand had to concede that she had a point. He was glad to see that her Greek ire was still alive, that it hadn’t been completely cowed, as he first had thought when he’d talked with her and Howard at the Cafe Central. He grinned at her.
“Touche,” he said.
“Yes.” She arched one eyebrow. “Indeed.”
“Okay, look, tomorrow I’m going to a bank here where I’ve been keeping documents that I set aside during the years I worked with Schrade. We’ll get together again, I’ll give you the documents you’ll need, and tell you then what I’ve got in mind.”
“Fine. Where do we meet?”
“Not a public place this time. Your hotel or mine. We’re going to need some time together, most of the day.”
Ariana picked up her purse and began looking inside. She took out a key and laid it on the table, shoving it over to Strand.
“My hotel room. The Metropole.”
“I’ll call you when I leave the bank,” he said, putting the key in his pocket. “Do you have an e-mail address?”
They exchanged addresses, repeating them for each other several times. They didn’t dare write them down. She didn’t even ask him where he was staying or where he would be when he left Geneva. She knew he wouldn’t tell her.
“I probably won’t get there until late in the afternoon,” he said. “I’ve got to copy these documents… and there are photographs… and tapes that’ll have to be duplicated. I’m sure I can get all of that done somewhere near the banking district, but it’ll take most of the day.” He paused. “If for some reason we get separated, if something happens and you aren’t there when I come, or if I don’t show up, leave Geneva. I’ll do the same. We’ll check in with each other on the Net.”
Nothing remained to be said. Finally Strand smiled and held up his glass in a silent toast. They drank the last of the wine, looking at each other.
“I was glad to see you, Harry,” Ariana said, putting down her glass. “When I saw your face looking at me across that room of unfamiliar faces, everything seemed possible again. Christ, it was bleak before that.”
“This’ll work out,” Strand said.
“It has to, doesn’t it?”
Strand nodded. “Yeah. It has to.”
They looked at each other for a moment longer, then Ariana reached for her purse and stood up. She put the strap over her shoulder, then leaned over and put her hand flat against the side of his face, holding it gently as she kissed him softly on the lips.
“Good-bye, Harry Strand,” she said.
When he returned to the Beau-Rivage, Strand had an e-mail message from Mara.
Up and running. Waiting. M.
CHAPTER 23
BANJA LUKA, BRITISH SECTOR, BOSNIA
The short, stocky Serb sat on an upturned gas tin under a thick poplar tree at a farmhouse on the southern edge of the city. A spring rain had soaked the countryside for the past week, and the Serb’s shoes were caked with dark, gummy mud. So were the boots of his two companions, one of whom sat on the rim of a huge, cracking tractor tire while the other, standing, had propped one foot on the edge of a wooden trough as he leaned forward, his forearms crossed on his raised knee. Gnats hovered around them in humid air that was rich with the odors of damp earth and weeds.
The Serb’s two companions were brothers in their late thirties, farmers who seemed to be making only a scrabbly living off their small acreage. Around them was a mud-spattered stucco farmhouse with tiles missing from its roof, a derelict barn that had not seen meaningful use in nearly five years, a rusted-out flatbed Soviet-era truck, a twenty-year-old Russian tractor that had not been able to run for seven years.
“It’s the same stuff we used on the general in Bihac,” the Serb said. “Almost the same. Treat it the same way. I want you to get it out of the British sector, into Croatia, to Split.”
“Just the explosives. Not the detonators?” the standing man asked.
“Just the explosives.”
“And how much of it?”
“It would fit in a lunch pail.”
“Can we take it apart?”
“I don’t care how you do it, so long as you deliver to the address in Split the exact amount that I give you here.”
Both men nodded.
The short man reached into his shirt pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to the brother sitting on the tractor tire.
“That’s the address in Split,” he said. “Go there between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. Any even- numbered day. But only that hour. The woman there will take your package. She will open it and verify the amount. If all is fine, she will tell you where to go to get your money.”
“That day? Then?”
“Yes, that very moment.”
The two brothers exchanged looks. They had fought with the short man in Bihac and Mostar in 1992 and 1993 and had learned to trust him in a soldierly way before they were shipped to another front of the war. After they had all left the army, he had looked them up. This was the fourth smuggling job he had brought to them. So far, it was the most simple. And the most lucrative. And the most risky.
The brother standing with his leg on the trough turned to the short man.
“All right. When do we get the explosive?”
“Right now. I have it in the car.” He stood up. “But I have to know when you think you can deliver it. The woman has to know within one or two days.”
