Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(51)

Carey thought about it. She reached out, took the phone, slipped it into a pocket of her hoodie. “Thank you,” she said. She felt a little resentful that the Englishwoman wasn’t offering her sanctuary in her own home.

“The phone’s clean, so it won’t leave a trail, but you should take out a chunk of cash as soon as you can and pay for everything with paper.” Laura looked back through the archway at the street. “I have to go,” she said. “Try to keep moving, don’t attract attention. Get out of this part of town, if you can. And good luck.” And with that she was gone.

In spite of Laura’s warning, Carey stood where she was for a while after she’d gone, trying to regain her composure and fit everything together. Bits of it made sense, and bits didn’t, but that was life. She wished she’d had the wit to ask if anyone knew what had been in the Package.

She walked down the alley, stopped at the end, glanced right and left down the street, took a breath, and stepped out onto the pavement.





LAURA STOOD AT the window of a shoe shop and watched in the reflection as the American woman left the alleyway across the street and vanished into the crowds. She counted to fifty, then walked along to where a car was parked at the kerb. She got into the passenger seat and the young man at the wheel said, “That seemed to go all right.”

“This is horrible,” said Gwen. “She’s terrified.”

“She’s a pro, she’ll get her bearings soon,” Seth told her. “We just want her off-balance.”

“I think we managed that okay.”

“Are you all right?”

To be honest, her heart was pounding in her chest almost hard enough to make the car shake. “Yes, I’m fine.”

He grinned. “Your first Situation.”

“Is it always like that?”

“No,” he said, starting the engine and putting the car in gear. “No, sometimes it’s really crazy.”





2.





CAREY ONLY USED the phone once, and not to make an actual call.

She stopped at a currency kiosk a couple of miles from where she and Laura had parted. She took out half the phone’s balance in forints, then she found a public callbox and dialled a number, and when the call was answered she said, “Hi, is my shopping ready for collection?” She listened to the instructions she was given.

She walked for another mile or two – it was getting on for ten o’clock in the evening now and she kept an eye open for budget hotels – to another callbox and dialled another number. This time she said, “My Situation went tits-up; I need support.”

“Are you in immediate danger?” asked the vaguely computer-generated voice at the other end.

She looked out of the box. “No, but that could change at any moment.”

“Who’s involved?”

“State security, local mafia, Christ only knows who else. I’ve got no papers, no clothes, nothing.”

“Do you have the Package with you?”

“No; that’s really the whole problem.”

“Find somewhere to go to ground. Call this number from there.” The voice recited a long international phone number. “You’ll be contacted. Stay off public transport.”

She hung up and left the phone booth and walked back down the street to a fast food restaurant, where, suddenly a little startled by how hungry she was, she ate two burgers and a large portion of fries and drank a couple of Cokes, all the while keeping an eye on the big window onto the street. All of a sudden, it seemed, her feet hurt.

A few doors down from the burger place was a rundown tourist hotel. The man behind the desk barely bothered to look at her as she checked in. The room was three floors up and it was small and grubby, but it had a bed and a bathroom and an entertainment set. She went back down to the lobby and used one of the public phones to dial the number she had been given. The call was answered, but no one spoke at the other end, and she hung up and returned to her room and sat on the bed.





SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING on the door. Had probably been knocking on the door for a while. Carey opened her eyes slowly and became aware that, instead of going to bed last night, she had simply slumped over on her side fully-clothed at some point. Her eyes were gritty and there was a terrible taste in her mouth and she ached all over and there was a tight feeling on the skin of her cheek which probably meant that she had been drooling at some point during the night.

Never coming back here, she thought.

With a groan, she levered herself into a sitting position and discovered a painful crick in her neck. Never ever. She launched herself off the bed and limped over to the door and put her eye to the viewer, was treated to a fish-eye image of a small, dapper, well-dressed man holding a bunch of white roses.

Okay. Man with flowers. Carey looked around the room. The windows opened on short tethers so guests couldn’t hurl furniture or each other out into the street, and she was too high to jump anyway. She looked around the room again, looking for possible weapons. There was a rickety-looking chair by the desk in the corner, but it would probably fall to bits even before she hit anyone with it. She looked through the viewer. The little man knocked again. Not urgently, not in an official we-have-come-to-take-you-to-the-gulag kind of way, but in the manner of a gentleman visiting his lady friend with a nice bunch of roses.