Chen shook his head solemnly. “I do not know.”
Field offered his hand, but Chen waved it away to indicate that it was not the end. Field held his stare until he rounded the corner and was climbing the last few steps to her room.
Natasha was asleep on the bed, in her dressing gown, her head resting on her arm. She was curled up, her hair spilling across the white sheet.
She awoke and pushed herself upright, her eyes bleary. “Richard?”
He sat down beside her.
“You must leave.” Her voice was sleepy. “They will come for me now.”
“It will be all right, Natasha.”
“No, you must—”
“Natasha.” He took hold of her arms fiercely. “It will work. Trust me.”
She pushed herself onto her knees and stared at the empty bed between them. “Alexei is asleep in the next room. I . . .” She fell toward him, her arms around his neck.
When she released him, she took his face gently between her hands, her mouth close to his. “You have risked everything for me,” she said.
“I have reached an agreement,” he said. “I must leave today, now, but you and Alexei will follow in two weeks, and we will meet in Venice.” He lifted her chin. “Together in Venice, the two—three—of us.”
Hope flared briefly in her eyes, then she lowered her head.
“You’re free, Natasha. Both of you are free.”
“I cannot come to the wharf.”
“I understand.”
She looked at him, tears in her eyes. He moved toward her, but she raised her hand. “You must go.”
Field stood and she came to him, her arms around him, her tears wet on his face. “My love,” he said as he caressed the back of her head.
And then she released him again and turned away, so as not to look at his face. “Good-bye, Richard,” she said with a finality that suggested she was certain she would never see him again.
He waited for her to turn around.
“Please go, Richard.”
His throat was dry. “I cannot.”
“You must.”
Field felt the tears welling in his own eyes and he turned back down the stairs. Chen had gone and Katya was sitting at the kitchen table. He stopped in front of her. “It will be all right,” he said, but as he moved beyond her and stepped onto the path outside, he felt as if he were drowning.
When he calculated that he had gone far enough to be seen from her attic window, he stopped and turned around.
She was not there.
Fifty-seven
The quayside was busier than Field had seen it, streams of coolies running up and down the gangplanks, loaded with leather trunks, cranes above them swinging cargo onto a steamer moored astern of the
A coolie bent down to take a hold of his bag.
“No,” Field said, trying to prevent him, before realizing it was hopeless and showing the man his ticket with the cabin number listed above the second-class stamp.
Field followed the man up the gangplank.
Once on deck, they ducked through a door and down a steep companionway to the base of the ship.
Field was sharing a cabin above the engine room, which was all that had been available, and his companion had not yet come aboard. He watched the porter lift his bag onto the lower bunk—it would be cooler below—before turning expectantly. Field shoved a note into the man’s hand; he looked at it but did not move.
Field reached into his pocket and gave the man all the small change he had left, which was not much. After the porter had reluctantly withdrawn, Field shut the door and locked it, then took out and checked his revolver.
He sat down on the bunk and faced the door, then looked around the small cabin, trying to ignore the smell of diesel and oil and remembering how sick he had been in the tiny third-class cabin on the way out. It would, he thought, be simplest for Lu’s men to kill him now. His body wouldn’t be discovered until they were well out to sea.
He stood.
He took out his key, locked the door after him, and climbed quickly up the steps to the deck. He walked to the rail overlooking the quayside, where he was in full view of a hundred people or more.
Field scanned the crowd.
