Amberlough(102)

On the drive they passed street cleaners hosing stains and litter from the pavement. The gutters ran with charred garbage and who knew what else. Ground-floor windows gaped glassless onto the street, and divots marred the trampled lawn of the capitol. When they pulled up out front of his building, he looked across the street at Loendler Park. Ugly graffiti marked the Sergia Vailescu Arch, and footprints flattened the flowerbeds around it.

The paper seller leaned against the granite, her back to the slogans. She had a sack of copies of the Clarion hanging at her hip and more stacked by her feet. She squalled out the headlines—Riots sweep city, hundreds in jail, as if anyone needed to be told.

“Let me get a paper before we go up,” said Cyril.

Massey looked at Moore, and Moore looked at Massey. A shrug passed between them. They followed him across the street, breathing heavily on the back of his neck. The paper seller looked about ready to bolt, but Cyril put on his brightest smile and knelt next to her.

“I’ve got correct change this morning,” he said. When he reached for his pocket, he saw Moore and Massey do the same.

“Why don’t you pay for my paper,” he told them, over his shoulder. “If you’re that nervous.”

Massey narrowed his eyes, but Moore put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s right.”

Good to see all those late-night card games had worked their magic. At least they trusted him this far. He handed the girl his money and she reached for the bag of newspapers under her arm. Shuffling quickly through them, she selected one seemingly at random from the center. But the way her hand had lingered, the stroke of her fingers along the folded newsprint … She’d been counting.

The weight of the paper still surprised him. There was something hidden in it, stiffer than the cheap gray pulp. When he glanced up, the girl’s face was a closed door, unrelenting in its indifference.

“Stroll off,” she told him. “I got sheets to sell.”

*

Cyril had to wait at the threshold with Massey while Moore swept his flat for guns, knives, and other sundries, but eventually they let him in.

“At last,” he said. “I’m dying for the toilet. Excuse me?”

Massey followed him but thankfully stationed himself outside the door. Cyril took his newspaper in, giving his guard a sheepish shrug.

“Leave the door unlocked,” said Massey. Cyril rolled his eyes but followed orders. He flipped the lid of the toilet back for an authentic clack of porcelain, then lowered it more quietly and sat with the paper on his knees.

There was indeed an impressive center spread of riot photos. Bleeding faces, broken windows and there, in the upper left corner, a shot of Aristide’s block of flats ablaze.

Set against the glossy black and white of the rotogravure was a thin packet, tied with string. He untied and unfolded it, hoping the crackle of paper sounded like turning pages.

Inside was a manila folder, and in the folder were several documents. The first was a handwritten letter. He read it through but left it sitting where it was, as if touching it would be some kind of contract. He scanned past the final lines and dropped to the complimentary close—more than complimentary. It was the hardest part of the letter to read. And Cyril wished, with a fervor that surprised him, Aristide had ever said the words out loud.

Only when he had read the letter a second time did he pick it up, skimming his fingertips along the edges of the paper. Behind it was the document Finn coveted so keenly: ID papers, and an exit visa under a false name—a name that wouldn’t send up flares at the train station. Paul Darling.

He wondered if he’d need to sign anything, if he should start practicing.

Without any conscious decision, he had started planning his escape. He made himself stop, put down the papers—Five feet seven inches, ten stone, blond hair, blue eyes, that was him—and think.

Something about it bothered him. Not about the packet from Aristide—the papers were perfect in every detail, and the letter, well.… But something Finn had said scratched at the back of his brain like a tabby cat, trying to get in.

I don’t know why he didn’t tell me. I know he can’t have left me here, not after—

Not after what? Their affair? He’d assumed that was what Finn meant. Assuming was bad technique. Still, even Culpepper would have conceded that Cyril had had a harrowing few days; he wasn’t in peak condition. Only now, with a modicum of hope restored to him, feeling halfway human again, did he realize his error.

Finn wasn’t talking about the affair. He was talking about something significantly more important. Something he’d done for Aristide, that ought to have earned him a place in Aristide’s escape plan.

Cross was passing most of her communiques through financial correspondence.

Preliminary investigations suggest they used a middle man.

It was elegant work, and it must have been Finn’s idea. Aristide wouldn’t have known the intricacies of the bursar well enough.

The secondary implications of this revelation seeped into Cyril’s clean astonishment like oil from a ruptured tanker.

Finn was a loose cannon. If he’d buttonholed Cyril at Central to reveal Aristide’s faked death and plead for false papers, he was blind and stupid with fear and infatuation. Clever codes and tradecraft didn’t mean he wouldn’t hang himself scrambling to get out of the city. He was already under surveillance; the Ospies would figure out something was askance. Queen’s sake, as soon as cross-talk started up between the departments, and it came out Finn had been jawing with Cyril, the foxes would scent blood.