Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(21)

There was no way, she thought, that she was going to try to leave the country. The moment she tried to board a flight or cross the border she would have to offer up her passport, and that, she assumed, would be that. Ditto for booking into a hotel. She wondered whether there were any hostels which had a less-than-rigorous policy about registering foreigners. As just another face in the crowd, she thought she might be safe from surveillance cameras. Unless there were cameras at the pension, all the authorities had was her name, and facial recognition software only worked if you had an image to feed into it. Had there been a camera in the lobby? Had there been one in the taxi she’d taken into town? The concierge and the taxi driver would be working with the authorities to produce a likeness of her, but that was notoriously unreliable, just a guide, too vague for facial recognition.

She’d used her phone earlier to withdraw a thousand euros – Luxembourg was almost the only European nation to use them, these days – at a Bureau de Change, so at least she wasn’t leaving an electronic trail when she paid for things, but that wasn’t going to go very far. There were some places where a thousand euros would have let her live like a queen for a week or so, but Luxembourg was not one of them. Would it be possible, she wondered, to hike across the border into France or Greater Germany or Wallonia? Luxembourg was a small country but surely it wasn’t possible to fence the whole thing off?

Her food arrived. Pork again, this time served with beans and potatoes. She wolfed it down.

While she was eating, someone came into the café and stood looking casually around. He was of medium height, and he was walking with a cane. Gwen watched with mounting horror as he smiled gently and began to walk over to her table.

Thoughts of fleeing, of fighting her way out, passed through Gwen’s mind and were dismissed. There was nowhere to go. She sat, frozen, as the man with the cane limped up to the table, pulled out the other chair, and sat down opposite her.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Smith.” His English was excellent, and almost – but not quite – accentless. He had a young face, but his brown hair was touched with grey and his eyes looked tired. “You seem to be in some trouble. May I help?”

Gwen sat where she was, speechless, fork in hand.

The waitress came over. Smith said to her, “I’ll have what this lady is having – is it Judd mat Gaardebounen? Good. It looks excellent. And do you have any Polish beers? Tyskie, if you have it.”

When the waitress had departed, Smith leaned his cane against the arm of his chair and said to Gwen, “I’ve been following you all day.”

Gwen said nothing.

“I’m not the authorities,” Smith said. “I don’t even live here. I was due to meet somebody at the museum in the park earlier today.”

Gwen stared at him.

“I’m making the assumption that you, too, were due to meet with this person. He’d scheduled his meeting with me after yours, but I got there early to scope the place out and I saw him being arrested and I saw you making a run for it.” He smiled again. “Was that your hotel you went to? The one with the police cars outside?”

Gwen nodded.

“Then you need my help, I think,” said Smith. “I’m renting a flat on the other side of the city; you can stay there tonight and tomorrow morning you can tell me your tale of woe. And no, that is not a pickup line.”

“Why should I trust you?” They were the first words Gwen had said since she’d ordered her food, and her voice sounded scratchy and very, very tired.

Smith thought about it. “No reason at all,” he said finally. “And in your place I would be asking the same question.” He clasped his hands on the table in front of him. Gwen saw that his fingers and the backs of his hands were covered in scars from old burns and cuts. “I’ll be honest; I have a selfish motive. Your interests and mine have intersected, and that intrigues me. I’d like to find out more, and in return I’m willing to help you leave Luxembourg. I might even be able to get you back into England without causing any unpleasantness, although you might give some serious thought to never going back.”

“I have to go back,” Gwen said. “I have a job.”

“What do you do, if I may ask?”

Gwen told him, and Smith looked sad.

“Well,” he said, “if you worked on a building site I’d say there was a better than even chance of your job being waiting for you when you got back. But government?” He shook his head. “It’ll only take another day at most for word of this business to reach your Minister, and as far as he’s concerned you’re perfectly expendable.”

“She.”

“My apologies.”

Gwen looked at her meal and suddenly felt sick.

Smith’s food arrived and he tried a forkful. “This is terrific,” he said, half to himself.

“Suppose I do go with you,” Gwen said. “What happens then?”

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You need to get a good night’s sleep, and then we need to talk. Now, finish your meal and let me eat this in peace. Then I have to have a quick word with the chef before we go.”





SMITH’S FLAT WAS half an hour’s drive across the city. About halfway there they drove into a hailstorm fierce enough to make it sound as if an entire armoured division was machinegunning the taxi. Two minutes later they had driven out the other side, and it was as if they were in another city altogether. The officescrapers and historic buildings were gone, and instead they were in a district of shabby apartment blocks with brightly-lit convenience stores at pavement level, their windows lined with anti-riot mesh.