you learn about them? How do you know any of these details? Who helped you find this Edward who got you into Holland?”
It was the wrong question. Realization bolted into my bones. “Don’t you care about what his operation is?”
“I don’t believe a word you say until you tell me who has been helping you.”
“Where is your curiosity about Edward’s shipment?”
“First things first.” He pushed a photo at me. Me and Mila, at the train station in Rotterdam. Then another one, at the train station in Amsterdam. “Who is this woman?”
I pretended to frown at the photo. “Someone who rode on the train with me. I don’t know her.”
“You do. We questioned a conductor on the train. You traveled together. You sat together and talked.”
“Oh, her. Yes. Lovely face but horrible breath. I offered her an Altoid. That was the extent of our interaction.”
“Bull. Where have you been staying in Amsterdam?”
“In hostels. Cheap, paying cash. I’m young enough to look like a wandering grad student.”
“Which hostels?”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “I have just told you that the guy who bombed the London office is smuggling seriously dangerous goods into America, and you want to know what hostel I stayed at?”
“If he can smuggle this stuff in, it’s because you provided him with the camouflage,” Howell said. “What I’ve caught you doing is helping this guy.”
I heard a noise outside, like a man falling against the side of the van and sliding to the pavement. A yell.
Howell whipped out a pistol, aimed it at my head.
“I’m tied up,” I said. “I’m not the threat.”
He moved the gun away from me and I hammered my foot hard into his jaw. I hope I broke it because I was really tired of hearing him talk. Shutting up for a long while would do Howell a world of good. He slammed against the side of the van and I launched myself toward him, my hands useless and bound behind me but I didn’t care. I wasn’t rational. I just wanted him to shut up and listen to me. I wanted his silent belief.
I hit him hard with my head, pounded my skull upward to catch him under the jaw. He gurgled and a freshet of blood oozed from his mouth. I rocked my head into his and he went down. I lost my balance and collapsed on top of him.
The van door opened and I expected to see one of his puppies there.
Mila.
“Finally,” I said.
She sliced my plastic restraints off and I helped her put the two Company guys into the van; both were unconscious but not seriously injured. She slammed the van doors shut, locked them, tossed the keys into the field behind the brewery. We got into her car and she gunned it toward Amsterdam. The day was going to be a cloudy, gray one; it matched my mood.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are welcome.” She sounded weary.
“How did you find me?”
“Your friend Piet.”
“Piet is not my friend.”
“Piet came to the Rode Prins. He was panicked. He thought he could trade information for sanctuary, for whoever you worked for.”
“And Piet talked.”
“Piet talked.” Now her voice was cool iron.
“Is Piet still talking?”
“Piet is done talking.”
“What did you do to him?”
“Such concern for the rapist and the slaver.”
“My concern is not for him. My concern is for you.”
I put my hand on hers. She shrugged it off. “Don’t worry your bloodied and beaten head about me, Sam. I’m fine. Never felt better.”
“You killed him.”
“He needed killing.” She raised an eyebrow. “Did you find this Edward? Did you find Yasmin?”
“I found my wife.”
77
Mila’s resources included a doctor; I woke up in the bed in the apartment above the Rode Prins with an old man poking at me. He was bald and frowning and his breath smelled like hard-boiled eggs.
“You’re a wreck, young man,” he said to me.
“Yes.” In more ways than one, I thought, but I’d sooner die than admit that.
“I stitched and bandaged your head. And cleaned out your shoulder. The muscle will be sore, you should rest it. The back injury required several stitches, like a furrow it was. So drink fluids. Rest. I leave you some pain pills. Do not abuse them.” He turned to Mila and said, “I know you are no Nightingale, woman. Make sure he rests.” He extended a finger but did not wag it.
Mila nodded. The doctor packed a bag and scooted an array of medical equipment back into the storage room. I watched him. Rather I stared off into space and thought about what I was going to do now.
“Are you hungry?” Mila asked. “Henrik made potato soup, it’s very good.”
“I’m mostly thirsty.”
She brought me cold water, and I drank it greedily. I felt like a bus had hit me then backed over my body several times just to ensure a high level of misery. I drank more water and then yes, I was hungry, and I ate a huge bowl of the potato soup, dotted with Gruyere cheese and with bits of ham.
Mila watched me eat and said nothing. But she was Mila, and she waited until my spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. “I am sorry, Sam.” She said it like the words tasted funny in her mouth.
“I know you are.”
“Can you tell me all that happened?”
I explained. Mila listened in silence. When I was done she said, “So your Lucy is a traitor.”
“She is,” I said. The canal outside was very quiet. I listened to my own stupid heart still beating. Okay. She was a traitor. To me, to her country. Okay. I had to deal. I’d heard the words for months, from Howell and even from August, and I hadn’t believed them. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. No fool like a fool in love.
I don’t mind calling myself a fool. We’ve all been fools at some curve in our lives. But I had been so sure that I knew her.
Why didn’t she kill you?
I thought, even weak in bed, that I could go downstairs and rip the beer taps from the bar, smash every window, knock down the brown walls. My rage felt like strength enough. Even with the pain in my body and my head.
Why didn’t she kill you?
That was the question that defied both brain and heart. She could have put a bullet in my head. And why hadn’t she let me die in the bombing in London? No way that she loved me. That entire life had been a cheap fiction, sold with great competence and warm smiles and teasing kisses and long, shuddering nights, joined at hip and heart.
“Why did she leave you alive?” Mila said, as though she could see my thoughts hovering about my head.
“There has to be a reason,” I said.
“Your child?”
“She has hidden him somewhere. If I keep quiet to the Company that she’s alive, she’ll call me and tell me where he is.” I kept my voice steady.
