BETA - Project Avatar, page 22
Dee opened her mouth to reply and found, to her dismay, that if she said so much as a word, she was going to break into tears again. She turned away and bit her tongue.
“Here, now!” he said in a much gentler tone. He fished around inside the lapel of his coat and drew out a handkerchief, clean and folded. “Take this,” he recommended, handing it to her through the window. “Steely adventurers like ourselves must always be prepared.”
She laughed a little despite herself. “Thank you.” Then she looked up at him and squinted with as much shrewdness as she could muster, which wasn’t much at the moment. “What are you doing here?”
John straightened up and cocked an eyebrow at her. He looked up and down the highway again, but it was still dark and silent in both directions. Rather than answer her, he said, “I should assume this car is stolen?”
“Of course it is,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to sound tough and world-weary.
He gave a curt, approving nod. “Most resourceful! Your latent talents for clandestine action have clearly been wasted in your previous occupation. Now, if I might suggest, please allow me to offer you a ride in a car that is not the subject of any police bulletins.”
“A ride to your safe house in Lyon, I suppose,” she said, putting a bit of sarcastic bite on the words. She didn’t want to sound as if she were born yesterday.
“Smashing!” he replied. “Lyon was precisely what I had in mind. And is that where were you headed?”
She wasn’t about to admit that the answer was yes. So she sat in the stolen car and grumbled for another few moments. But she was just stalling; she was going to have to go with him.
“So! What do you say?” he asked, smiling and bouncing on his toes to stay warm. He cast another pointed glance up and down the road.
“Okay, yes, all right,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
Feeling weak and tired, she climbed out of the car and asked if he thought she should wipe the fingerprints off the stolen Renault. He assured her in a pleasant tone that she shouldn’t bother, so she took up her shoulder bag and followed him back to the Lagonda. Although it was only a few yards, she was shivering by the time she sat down and he closed the door.
“I hope you like Brahms,” John said as he started the engine and pulled out onto the road.
From the moment Dee sat down, she knew it was the right choice. The inside of John’s car was so comfortable: all soft leather and old-fashioned brass and walnut trim, with soft music playing all around. It was warm here, and it felt like a place where nothing was likely to go wrong. To top it all off, there in the backseat was her carry-on bag, containing the wardrobe she had thought she’d never see again.
He reached over her knees and touched a brass fastener on the dashboard, causing a small cabinet to open before her. It contained an elegant little crystal decanter half filled with golden fluid, flanked by two tiny snifters.
He said, “As a licensed medic, it is my duty to prescribe a bracing draft of this cognac. Go on—it can’t possibly do any harm. It’s a Martell XO.”
She poured herself a generous dose and sat sipping it, watching the road skim past.
A short while later, John remarked: “There’s a jolly good start.”
She noted with some surprise that her glass was already empty. She glanced at her lap to see if she had spilled it.
“I believe, then, that I shall now prescribe another,” John said, with a pleasant smile. “Sorry I can’t join you. I suppose, all things considered, I should have enlisted a driver. Wretchedly shortsighted of me.”
As Dee sipped, more judiciously, at her second snifter of cognac, its warmth began to circulate a little courage through her blood. She tried to remind her exhausted brain that she had no particular reason to trust John. On the other hand, mistrusting him took an awful lot of effort.
She mustered what energy she could. “How did you know to wait for me, there by the road?”
“I was awfully worried when you didn’t turn up at the car rental station,” he said. “I even tried calling you a few times but couldn’t get through.”
“You tried to call me?” she asked.
“Yes, about an hour ago. I assumed you had left the country, or—well, let’s just say I’m please you turned up.”
Dee made some quick calculations. About an hour ago she was being chased through the streets of Geneva. If he really had tried to call her, was it possible that Beta was blocking inbound communications as it navigated her to safety?
“But you had no reason to think I was coming back. Even I didn’t think I was coming back.”
“Ah, but you did come back,” he said.
She sipped at her cognac and gave him a pointed stare.
“Besides, even if you hadn’t shown up, someone was likely to, eventually. I was thinking I might have a look at them.”
“You’ve been assigned to my case,” she accused him.
“Not at all! I’ve already told you, these days I’m nothing more than a private citizen like yourself. Really, Dee, you wound me. Don’t you hold my word at any value at all?”
“I’m still working on that one.”
“Dash it! May lightning strike me if I’m still working for MI-6.” John paused somberly, then added: “That is to say, in any official capacity.”
She scoffed and shook her head. “May lightning not strike you until I’m a little farther away.”
“If you’re so terribly worried about it, then you’ll be relieved to know that, to the best of my knowledge, MI-6 does not have a case file on you. Not yet. As for myself, I am primarily here in the capacity of a man who is cursed with excessive curiosity. And you, my good woman, are a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a whatchamacallit. Is it so unnatural that I should have developed an interest?”
Dee was coming to the bottom of her second cognac and was starting to fade again. “I just don’t understand how you keep turning up out of nowhere,” she muttered. She closed her eyes and rested her head in the deep cushion of the headrest.
“I suppose you’ve become rather a hobby of mine,” he said.
She only just managed a faint reply. “Uh-huh.”
Then there was a long black spell.
When Dee opened her eyes again, she found the car rolling through a disreputable warehouse district in a city she had never seen before. She sat up sharply, alarmed and disoriented.
“Where are we?”
John gave her a reassuring smile. “Lyon. You’ve been napping for a couple of hours.”
She sat back and tried to relax herself. Her heart was pounding. “What an ugly city,” she remarked.
“Oh, no, it’s quite famous for its beauty. We’re just visiting one of the ugly bits for a moment, so I can talk with this fine fellow over here.” He pointed through the windshield at a stocky little man half hidden in shadows at the next corner. “I hate to have to ask you to wait in the car.”
He pulled up to the curb and parked. The only sign of human life in any direction was the man in the shadows. The streets were fronted in flat expanses of brick and concrete, with big loading bays sealed shut with steel roll-up doors. A cat was yowling somewhere.
“Back in a moment,” he said pleasantly. Then he got out, leaving her alone.
The stocky man advanced cautiously out of the shadows. He had three days’ worth of stubble, and a nose that appeared to have been broken several times. He stared at the car with deep mistrust, clearly trying to make out who was in there. John walked up to him, and they began an animated conversation.
She began to feel panicky. She imagined John being shot or stabbed, leaving her alone here. Then what? He had even taken the keys.
“Beta.”
No response. She tapped her ear to make sure the Bluetooth insert was still in place. Then she opened her bag and glanced at her smartphone. Sure enough, its battery had run down. She groaned. She considered pulling out her laptop and booting it up.
But then John returned. “There, that’s taken care of,” he said. He started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “Say! You’re still looking a bit peaked. Another wee dram?”
“No, thanks. What was that all about?”
“Oh, that was Laurent. Good man to know, if you’re ever in Lyon. He’s a bit of rotter, truth be told, but it’s just amazing what he can acquire.”
Her mind was fuzzy. “What were you acquiring?”
“Various supplies for our journey: some warmer clothing for you, for one thing. I have you for a tall size six—I do hope that’s not too far off. I got a ripping deal on a gorgeous alpaca coat. He offered me some spectacular furs at a most satisfactory discount, but somehow I couldn’t see you in them. I gather they’ve become gauche in the current social climate. Isn’t that right?”
“Our journey where?” she asked.
He glanced at her evasively. “Well, now, you can’t very well stay in France. Surely that much is clear.”
She sighed, too exhausted to argue. “Where?” she repeated.
“I’ve made arrangements to fly to Iceland for a little while.”
She looked out the window, trying to think how she felt about that. “You could have asked me.”
“You were asleep. It’s a bit of a novelty to see you looking so peaceful, and I didn’t want to break the spell.”
They were out of the warehouse district now. They passed through wide vacant lots filled with weeds, then under a trestle bridge, and began working their way into the heart of a gorgeous French city: cobblestones, medieval architecture, sidewalk cafés. It was around midnight, and the street was nearly empty.
“Okay,” she said. “Iceland. Give me a day to rest, and I’ll go.”
John glanced at her without saying anything.
She was learning how to read his glances, and this one she didn’t like. “What is it?” she demanded.
“We’ll be leaving in three hours,” he told her. “But that’s for the best! Surely you see that.”
She groaned and slouched in her seat. “What kind of plane departs at three a.m.?”
“It’s a cargo flight. Not the most deluxe facilities, I confess, but ever so discreet. We’ll be strapped into jump seats in the back compartment.”
“John! Look at me. I have to get some sleep.”
“Oh, you can sleep in a jump seat.” He grinned at her cautiously. “I’ve done it. It’s not so bad. They really strap you in.”
They crossed a river and headed up into a hilly residential district overlooking the old quarter, across the water. He turned into a small alley behind a row of townhouses and into a garage. The automatic door closed behind them.
Dee trudged mindlessly behind him up narrow stairs into a big, comfortable living room. She had somehow imagined that they were heading to a place that would be full of weird electronics and spy paraphernalia. This was more reminiscent of a bed and breakfast. She made a beeline for the sofa, and sprawled out on it.
“I’m glad this didn’t turn out to be an interrogation center,” she mumbled. “I’ve had enough torment for one day.”
“Why don’t you take another little nap?” he suggested. “We have a couple of hours to kill. I’m just going to make a phone call, and I’ll be right back.”
She slept for a while. With the heater running, it was wonderfully comfortable. And then John was standing over her with two snifters of cognac.
“All arranged,” he said, handing her a snifter. “I thought that you might use a little bracer before we make our way to the airport.”
That sounded like just the thing, so she took it. She moved her feet, making room for him on the couch. He sat down, a little awkwardly.
“Laurent is sending a man over,” John said, sipping cognac and letting his eyes wander around the room, avoiding hers. “I suppose he’ll be here not long before we go. I’ve had an initial report on Operation Hydra, but I’m afraid there’s not much to go on. The action is to take place somewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, with expected completion within the next week. Seems it’s highly classified. But they’ve promised to keep working on it,” he added hopefully. “You’ll want to change into something warmer before we leave. How’s the cognac?”
The cognac was delightful. After two sips, Dee knew for a fact that it was the last glass of anything she was going to need tonight.
She narrowed her eyes at John. “What exactly did you put in this glass?”
He looked at her, alarmed. Then he must have realized she was joking. He smiled and said, “The substance is known in tradecraft as cognac, the active ingredient is ethanol. I suppose you’ve heard of it . . . but it’s too late for you now.”
She looked at him tenderly. He looked back, and his hand wandered up and shifted the knot on his tie nervously, but he didn’t drop his eyes. He gave her a tentative smile.
She sat up and shifted around on the couch, leaning her back against his shoulder. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward his chest. He smelled faintly of cologne and cognac, and perhaps a little like chocolate. I’m drunk, she thought pleasantly, and finished what was in her glass.
She closed her eyes, and another long, blank spell of sweet oblivion overtook her.
Chapter 23
Dee awoke with a cold draft on her face. It kept fluttering a lock of hair that was touching her nose, tickling her. She opened her eyes a crack, puckered her lips, and blew the hair away from her face.
She was lying between clean percale sheets in a room awash with low-angled sunlight. She glanced around blearily. It was a large loft, with lots of Scandinavian furniture built of blond, tight-grained wood, tastefully minimalist. One of the windows was open a crack, and cold air was wafting in.
She put her feet over the side of the bed and sat up. That’s when the headache hit her. She put both palms on her forehead, leaned forward, and gave an inarticulate groan. I didn’t drink that much, did I?
Spotting a kitchenette on one side of the room, she hobbled over and filled a glass of water at the tap. She drank it off without taking a breath, and then filled another. Spotting her shoulder bag leaning against the side of the bed, she shuffled over to it, found her ibuprofen, and took three. She sat on the bed for a few minutes, sipping water.
It was cold enough to see her breath. Mustering her resources, she got to her feet again and ambled over to the window. Huge picture windows filled one wall, looking down over an unfamiliar city. The sky was perfectly clear and blue, and the light outside seemed angled almost horizontally. With the big panels of glass, the sun would have been blinding if it were on this side of the building.
She paused to look out at the city view and was vaguely aware that this must be Reykjavik, though at the moment she couldn’t quite remember how she had ended up here. A quaint grid of pretty parti-colored houses rolled out below her, separated by big broadleaf trees. The streets rolled down the hill to a downtown district, where the tallest buildings appeared to be a few old church spires. Beyond that was the ocean, unbelievably blue. She hadn’t known the ocean could be that blue, except in paintings.
A number of Nordic-looking people were strolling along the sidewalk below her window. None were wearing coats, most weren’t even wearing jackets, and everyone under thirty was in a T-shirt. At a rough guess, she supposed it was about forty-five degrees out there.
“What is wrong with these people?” she wondered aloud, closing the double-paned window and sealed it with the big lever-style latch.
A door creaked behind her, and she turned to see John leaning in. He was dressed in a tasteful suit of heavy tweed, which struck her as perfectly sensible for the weather.
“Ah, Lazarus arises! Welcome to Reykjavik. How about some breakfast?”
She winced and raised a hand in vague warning. “Please, don’t talk to me about food.”
He advanced into the kitchenette. “Ah, I think I understand. But surely there’s no harm in brewing a pot of coffee.”
She grumbled a vague assent and let herself down gingerly into a big armchair. “What day is it?” she asked tentatively, wondering how long she had slept.
“Thursday.” He began opening the compartments of an improbably elaborate glass-and-chrome European coffeemaker.
Dee nodded to herself. She looked out the windows again, judging the light. “I guess it must be, what, about six in the evening?”
“Three,” John corrected her. “The sun is lower than one would imagine at this season and latitude. In fact, it just sort of hovers there until nine or ten, and then a long evening commences.”
She drank water, slouched, and closed her eyes. At least the ibuprofen was starting to kick in, and her headache was easing up.
It all started to come back to her. Staggering, half awake in the middle of the night, down the stairs to the garage of the Lyon safe house. Waking up briefly to walk a few yards from the car to a cargo-loading ramp leading up into the back of a huge brown jet on a lit taxiway. She also had a vague memory of half awakening later to find herself cradled like an oversize baby in John’s arms as he carried her amid the howling noise of an airfield, in bitterly cold night air, and deposited her on the backseat of a car she had never seen before. Then nothing.
Now that the sequence of events was fairly clear, she gave herself an inspection. “At least you didn’t undress me,” she said, trying to be playful and failing miserably.
He didn’t turn around from his operations at the coffee machine. “Just the shoes and wig,” he said. “It seemed a bit rummy to leave you in those. Wouldn’t want you to wake up in a bad mood or anything.”
She lay back and closed her eyes again. It was a terrific relief to wake up so far from Geneva. “I’m going to take a shower,” she resolved. “And change. Then I’m going to burn these clothes.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Not a bad notion,” he said. “Indeed, I was going to propose that you let me dispose of any of your clothes that you’ve worn in public. As soon as you feel ready, I must insist that you let me prepare you a new identity.”
