Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(91)
“Hi, Snowy,” said the auburn-haired man. “’Sup?”
Forsyth seemed to have been rendered utterly speechless, so the auburn-haired man walked over to Rudi and said, “Hi. Good to meet you. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I just want to take what belongs to me and then we’ll be gone. Okay?” He had an American accent.
Charpentier began to walk, like someone performing a particularly excruciating mime, towards the SUV.
“And you are...?” asked Rudi.
The auburn-haired man smiled. Behind him, Charpentier seemed to bend himself over and levitate awkwardly into the back of the car. The door closed itself.
“There,” said the American. “That didn’t hurt at all, did it.”
Forsyth suddenly regained the power of speech. “You cunt,” he said. “I thought you were dead.”
The American shook his head. “Nah, not me, Snowy,” he said. “Very hard to kill, that’s me.” He gave Rudi one last look, then he turned and walked back to the car. He and his bodyguards climbed in, the car reversed unhurriedly out of the courtyard, and they heard it drive away. The armed men seemed to shrug back into invisibility, and all of a sudden Rudi and Forsyth felt the unseen hands release them. Rudi thought he heard, very faintly, the sound of footsteps on the uneven paving stones of the courtyard. And then they were alone.
4.
SHE WAS SHOPPING in Freňstát when the call came through. It was probably the last free time she would have until the Spring; skiing season was beginning, up in the mountains, and with it the annual flood of tourists who came to try the pistes and the casinos and the spas and generally misbehave.
She took out her phone, saw the ID, and sighed. “Yes?”
“Had a flag go up, boss,” said Bruno. “Name of Laar. Estonian national.”
She looked around the shop. She’d had a vague notion of buying some new clothes, but to be honest this year’s fashions seemed ridiculously young to her. She said, “When?”
“Forty minutes ago. He came over the border with another man, Kenneth Paul March. The March passport’s an obvious fake; typical Coureur rush-job. The Laar documents seem authentic.”
Yes, well, of course they would. “Where are they?”
“The flag said detain at the border,” Bruno said. “They’re being held there.”
The thing was, this was in no way even a surprise. His sidekick, the Englishman she rather fancied, had crossed into the Zone four days ago with a young woman travelling on an Australian passport. Facial recognition had spotted him, although to be fair he wasn’t hard to pick out of the crowds of guests; for all its pretence at moneyed cosmopolitanism, the Zone was still largely the playground of wealthy white Eurotrash, not young English people of colour. She’d decided to let the couple be and see what happened, but so far all that had happened was numerous long walks in the late autumn hills, followed by lengthy and openly romantic meals at various restaurants. Didn’t matter. The sidekick was a harbinger, his way of letting her know he was coming. Just like the stupid business with the Laar identity. It was his idea of professional courtesy; she thought he might even think it was cute.
She was tempted to have him thrown into a cell and just leave him there for a couple of days, but she said, “Have them transferred to headquarters, put them in separate interview rooms. I’m on my way.”
THE BESKID ECONOMIC Zone was not, technically, a polity. It was more of a theme park, rented from the Czech government by a consortium of corporations and granted a limited form of statehood. A string of resort hotels, most of them of adventurous design, ran along the mountains, and the skiing and the gambling attracted many hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
Unfortunately, the Zone’s general anything-goes reputation also attracted intelligence services from all over Europe, and despite Zone Security’s best efforts it only grew worse every year. It was getting like postwar Vienna or Munich; some days it seemed as if she was knee-deep in spies. She had begun to consider early retirement, maybe find herself a little cottage in Wales. She liked Wales. She wondered what she would do there.
The Security building had been designed by a world-famous Chilean architect, who had come up with a structure resembling the lair of a Bond villain, clinging to the vertiginous side of a mountain gorge. The first time she’d seen it, on her first day as an intelligence officer, the view from some of its windows had made her dizzy. Now she hardly noticed.
Her staff had moved the visitors to interview rooms on the third floor. “Has he said anything?” she asked Bruno as they walked down the corridor. “Claimed asylum? Demanded the use of Zone resources to go to war against the Community? Anything like that?”
Bruno glanced at her. “He noticed we’d had the place redecorated.”
That made her smile a little as they stopped outside the door. “Okay,” she said. “Wait here; I’ll do this myself.”
“Okay, boss.” Bruno opened the door, let her step inside, and closed it behind her.
He was sitting at the table in the middle of the room, smoking a small cigar, his cane propped up against his chair. It had been quite some time since they had last seen each other, and in the way of former lovers they each spent a few moments logging the grey hairs, the new wrinkles, remembering times past, visiting old regrets.