Strangers: A Novel(87)

We don’t have time for this discussion now. I tear myself away from him and go over to the door, with a pointedly casual gait. As soon as I’ve opened it, I start to run. Out of the lounge, down the steps, taking two at once. Erik is right behind me, I can hear his breathing, as well as Gavin cursing, but that doesn’t matter now, because passport control, which we passed a few hours ago in the other direction, is just ahead.

Still, the two officers try to stop us. One of them manages to grab hold of Erik’s jacket, but he quickly pulls himself free again.

Gavin’s calls become louder. “Stop, Joanna, there’s no point to this!”

Another fifty feet to the exit, then twenty. How lucky that we’re in General Aviation and not the public terminal. Erik is beside me now; he grabs my arm and pulls me along with him. The doors open; darkness and a rush of cool air greet us; out of the corner of my eye I see the alarmed customs officers intercept Gavin and his colleagues; then we’re outside.

There are no taxis here, it’s no-man’s-land, but we just keep running, keeping to the left. Anywhere, just not toward the airport, because anyone acting the way we are would seem suspicious in the airport. Especially two days after a terror attack.

So we simply stay by the edge of the main road, slowing down bit by bit, then finally come to a halt. Car headlights wash over us from behind, and with every car that passes, I fear it might brake next to us and that someone will drag us inside.

Erik gestures to the right. “There’s a gas station over there.”

I nod, gasping. We walk the rest of the way at half speed, on the sparse patch of green by the side of the street. Again and again I feel Erik looking at me, but now is not the time for explanations. I ask myself if it would have been any different if I had come clean with Dad and told him about Gabor. About the boiler and about me attacking Erik with a knife. About the fact that he was inside the station at the time of the attack. About the fact the both of our lives are in immediate danger.

I try to imagine it.

That might just have yielded a flight ticket for Erik—to a completely different country. To Paraguay or Chile, maybe.

But if I’m completely honest with myself, I have to admit that it probably wouldn’t have changed anything. Deep down, George Arthur Berrigan would have been delighted that someone else was going to get rid of the problem of Erik for him.





40

What the hell was Joanna thinking? For a long time I had thought I knew this woman, who right now is trudging alongside me toward the gas station. The sudden change in her a few days ago had been hard to deal with, but I had still wanted to stay with her at all costs. Help her. Even though she could no longer remember me, she was still my Joanna.

But then the knife, the one that was meant to kill me, had cut such a deep rift between us that I almost gave up on her. After that, I’d thought her capable of anything, even being in cahoots with the people who are clearly trying to get me out of the way.

And now, even though she’s in mortal danger, she has rejected the chance to get herself to safety. She’s even running from her own people, just because the man she can’t remember isn’t allowed to come along. Suddenly, she’s once again the woman I thought she was all along. The woman who’s prepared to overcome any obstacle that might be in our way.

The woman who might even have remembered who I am?

“Where should we go now?” she asks, interrupting my train of thought. We’ve almost reached the gas station. I stop, glance back in the direction we came from. The illuminated GAT building is several hundred yards away. Hardly anything is visible in the darkness between us and the terminal. But it doesn’t look like anyone is chasing us.

I turn to face Joanna, who’s also turned around to look behind us.

“Why did you do that?”

She looks at me like I’ve asked a completely absurd question. “Because I didn’t want to leave without you.” Her breathing is still uneven from running.

I wouldn’t know where to begin describing the turmoil inside of me. “But why?” I want to get at least a tiny glimmer of clarity. “I don’t understand. You couldn’t remember me anymore, you even tried to … Has something changed? Have you remembered something from the time we spent together?”

“No. Unfortunately not.” She shakes her head and raises her hand in a dismissive gesture. “We don’t have time for discussions right now. Neither of us is going to leave Germany, by the looks of it, so we should really see to it that we get out of the immediate area right away. It won’t be long before Gavin shows up and finds the gas station. There’s not much else here, after all. I’m going to call us a cab, and you have to think about where it should take us.”

I’m surprised by the matter-of-fact way in which Joanna is dealing with the situation. And she’s right, too. Right now it’s important that we make ourselves scarce from the area surrounding the terminal. Gavin didn’t really give me the impression of being a man who gives up all that easily.

“All right, but let’s at least walk over to the gas station. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

We walk the remaining three hundred feet and stop at the rear of the building. While Joanna’s taking care of getting a cab, I think about what we should do next. There’s no way we can go back home. To get to Munich by cab will take us about half an hour. The city’s probably still in chaos, but still …