Stolen Souls (32 page)

“Something’s come up,” he said.

“Doesn’t it always?” she asked, and disconnected.

“Fuck,” he said to himself.

Galya lay sound asleep when he entered the room. He took a seat by the window, facing the door. He placed his Glock on the table next to him and set the alarm on his phone for six.

Five and a half hours of sleep, if he were lucky. But he had never been lucky.

85

A
FTER AN HOUR
of phone calls, and another hour of self-punishment, Arturas Strazdas began to pull himself together. He had been through the process before, reassembling himself from the pieces that had scattered over the previous hours and days.

He always began with a period of silence and contemplation. Sitting quite still, recounting every wound he had inflicted on himself, remembering that he was a sane man, and sane men did not harm themselves like this. Sane men channeled their rage, used it to fuel their lives, not destroy them.

The contact had said the girl’s elimination was now a matter of when, not if. Strazdas had no reason to stay in this city a minute longer than necessary. He should be in the taxi provided for him, the contact said, and on his way to the airport by ten in the morning. If not, a police car would come for him instead. And that would take him to a station for questioning.

One or the other, the contact said, simple as that.

So Strazdas took him at his word and set about his own reconstruction.

Once he felt sufficiently balanced in his mind, he shaved and showered before dressing himself in a fresh shirt and his good travel suit. His stomach gargled, and he checked the bedside clock.

Almost five in the morning.

Would they provide room service at this time? Some toast, perhaps, and a boiled egg?

He would try. A sane man has to eat. And Arturas Strazdas was, most definitely, a sane man.

86

F
OG STILL LAY
heavy on the courtyard when Lennon helped Galya to the car, dawn two hours away. Ten minutes to the airport, he said, then she had half an hour to get through security and onto the plane. He pressed the documents into her hand. She had to go into the terminal herself, he said, and walk straight to security. All she had to do was show them the printed boarding pass and her passport.

Simple, he said.

Galya did not believe him.

She remained silent as Lennon drove. The car’s headlights barely penetrated the fog, and the hot water he’d poured on the windows to defrost them had frozen, making the darkened world appear to ripple and distort.

The vague form of the airport emerged ahead, revealed only by the glowing haze of its lights. Lennon steered into a car park facing the terminal. Galya could barely make out the shape of the building, and could see no one walking to or from it, but she knew they were there, hidden by the gray.

Lennon shut off the engine. He reached into his pocket and handed her a paper bundle. When she felt the coarseness and weight of it, she knew it was money.

“Three hundred and fifty,” he said. “It’s all I had. You should be able to change it in Kraków and get a train to Kiev. Once you get home, take your brother and leave. Don’t stay there. Strazdas will find you if you do.”

“Mama’s farm,” she said. “It’s our home. Where will we live?”

“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “You’ll figure it out. You’re smart and you’re strong. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”

Galya thought about it and realized that, yes, she would. Back home, the man whom Mama owed so much money to, he could take the farm. Galya and her brother would be free of him and his debt. She could live with that. She looked at Lennon’s lined face, saw the scars beneath his skin.

“Your friend Susan,” she said.

Lennon paused, then asked, “What about her?”

“You should make her happy,” Galya said. “Then she will make you happy.”

Lennon smiled. “Maybe,” he said.

“No maybe,” she said. “Only yes.”

“Let’s go,” Lennon said, reaching for the door handle. “You need to get on that plane.”

He climbed out and walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and helped her out.

“Remember,” he said as he closed the door. “Don’t talk to anyone if you don’t have to. Go straight to security. They should be boarding by the time you get through. Go straight to the gate and get on the plane. That’s all you have to do.”

“Thank you,” Galya said. She hesitated a moment, then wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders.

He resisted for a moment, then returned the hug.

“Make Susan happy,” she said.

“I’ll try,” he said.

A few feet away, his voice deadened by the cold, someone said, “Jack.”

87

L
ENNON LOOKED FOR
the source of the voice, moved between it and Galya, one hand already reaching for the holster attached to his belt.

The tall and slender shape of a man stood beyond the Audi. He limped forward, his left hand raised, a revolver gripped in it, his right arm held tight to his side as if it pained him. Dried blood drew deep red lines across his cheek, cuts and grazes crisscrossed his forehead and jawline, his hooded jacket torn.

“Connolly,” Lennon said.

He reached behind with one hand and shoved Galya away, his other freeing his Glock from its holster.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Connolly said.

The first shot hit Lennon’s left shoulder like a punch from a heavyweight, threw him against the Audi. He kept his legs under him as adrenalin hit his system ahead of the pain. By instinct, his right hand came up, his Glock squared on Connolly’s chest. Before he could get a round off, he felt a punch to his gut, then another, and his legs deserted him.

Lennon went down on his back, his right hand still raised. In the periphery of his vision, he saw Galya crouch over him, her mouth wide, but he heard no scream.

“Run,” he said.

Connolly entered his line of sight, his pistol aimed not at Lennon, but somewhere over his head.

“Run,” Lennon said. “Now.”

He fired at Connolly’s body, no idea if his aim was true or not. Connolly jerked and fell against the side of the van, his face twisted in pain.

Lennon took a breath, held it, steadied his right hand, the Glock’s sight lined on Connolly’s chest. Connolly brought his left hand up, the pistol looking back at Lennon. As a hard chill spread from Lennon’s gut, he squeezed the trigger, saw Connolly’s muzzle flash, saw him go down, saw a deep, cold blackness where the world had once been.

88

G
ALYA RAN AT
first, her mind closed to the pain, the money and documents clutched to her chest. She slowed to a walk as the building came into view and crossed the road that cut in front of the terminal entrance. Airport policemen ran into the fog, following the sound of the gunfire. They did not notice her.

The doors swished aside and a flood of warmth washed over her. More policemen hurried to the exit, static chatter on their radios, concern on their faces. Still, they did not notice her.

She followed a sign saying Departures. The arrows led her through shops and restaurants, people drinking coffee, eating toast, cases stacked on trolleys. They did not know the world they lived in, the dangers that hid beyond their vision.

Galya did.

But she kept that knowledge buried, forced it down inside, in case it might show on her face as she approached the security man who waited ahead.

“Boarding pass, please,” he said.

Galya handed it over.

He looked at her clothing, a glimmer of distaste on his features. Galya read his thoughts. Just another migrant, another miserable parasite leaving its host now the money had burnt away.

She smiled for him when he scanned the pass and handed it back.

“Better get a shake on,” he said. “It’s probably boarding by now.”

“Thank you,” Galya said.

She joined the short queue for the security search, obediently placed the shoes and coat Susan had given her in the trays provided, the bandages on her feet hidden by thick socks, and patiently waited until it was her turn to pass through the magnetic gate. On the other side, she did not complain when the female security guard patted her down.

A short walk took her to the departure gate where a flight attendant gave her documents only the briefest of glances. Another walk across the tarmac to the airplane, and then she boarded. She found row twelve and sat down.

When the lady in the seat next to her asked if she was all right, Galya said yes, thank you, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.

Everyone believes in God when they fly, she thought.

She said a prayer for Jack Lennon’s soul.

89

S
TRAZDAS SAT IN
the hotel foyer, his suitcase at his feet. Eight forty-five, the contact had said. He checked his watch. Eight forty-seven.

His phone rang.

“The taxi is on its way,” the contact said. “Get in it, get on the plane.”

“And the girl?”

“I suggest you give the driver a decent tip,” the contact said. “It’s Boxing Day, after all. He’s done me many favors in the past.”

“What about the girl?” Strazdas asked.

Silence for a moment, then, “She got away. It went wrong.”

Strazdas took his knuckle between his teeth and bit down hard, tasted salt. He breathed through his nose, a low groan resonating in his throat.

“It’s done, and that’s all there is to it. A good man died in the process. Just remember that. He didn’t have to but for your stupid bloody vendetta. Now let it go.”

Strazdas noticed the receptionist’s attention on him. He forced himself to release his knuckle form his teeth. Something hot dripped on his chin. He wiped it away and smiled at her. She turned her gaze back to her paperwork.

“You hear me, Arturas?” the contact asked. “It’s over. There’s nothing more can be done.”

“There is one thing,” Strazdas said. “I will send a letter to your superiors. I will name you as Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hewitt. I will enclose a record of all the payments you have received over the last eighteen months. Those payments will not be retraceable to me or any of my companies, but will cause your superiors to examine your bank accounts, your investments, your lifestyle.”

Strazdas saw the taxi pull up beyond the hotel’s doors.

“Be careful, Arturas,” the contact said. “Once these things are spoken, they can never be taken back.”

“Good-bye,” Strazdas said. “I have a flight to catch.”

90

I
T ALL CAME
at Lennon as flashes of light, images, tableaux, faces, smears of waking, all of it punctuated by the pain.

First the sky, lost in fog, but all the blacker for it. Then the policemen gathered around him, fingers in his mouth, his head moving through no will of his own. The need to cough, and the agony as it seemed to tear him in two.

Next, the inside of the ambulance, lights so bright they cut into his skull and burrowed into his brain. The paramedics busy around him, the oxygen mask that made him feel as if he were drowning.

Then the hospital, more lights, nurses and doctors, more probing, the urgent voices, the bloody swabs, a long needle that pierced his chest, whines and beeps, then a constant high tone, like a string made of cotton and noise that stretched on and on until it faded to black, and he thought of Ellen and how he wished he’d known her all her life, and Susan with her sad eyes and how he’d like to see them once more, but the darkness was so warm, like a bed on a cold morning and—

Then a lightning crack, and he was back with the pain and the bright, punishing lights, then another mask, and he was gone again.

91

T
HE DRIVER DID
not speak when he took Strazdas’s case, nor on the journey toward the airport. The vehicle looked like the cabs that worked the streets of London, but he had seen many of them in Belfast from the window of his hotel room. A Perspex window separated him from the squat man with the pimpled neck who gripped the steering wheel.

As they travelled, Strazdas pondered what he might say to his mother. The very thought made his scrotum shrivel within his trousers and his bladder ache. Most likely he would say nothing, yet. When he landed in Brussels, he would immediately seek out a flight to some other destination. From there, he would begin tracing records of the girl, who had supplied her to Aleksander, where she came from, her family, anything that might help him track her down.

If he was lucky, she would return home, and there she would be vulnerable. And once her stain was wiped from his mind, he could return to his mother, an honorable son.

Daylight seemed to struggle for a way through the fog, but Strazdas could feel rather than see that the taxi had settled onto a long straight when the driver looked up at his mirror.

“Fuck,” he said.

Strazdas turned in his seat to look out of the rear window. He saw the flashing blue lights first, then the silhouette of the car solidifying in the murk. A siren whooped.

The driver flicked an indicator on and applied his foot to the brake.

“What are you doing?” Strazdas asked.

“I’m pulling in,” the driver said. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

“No,” Strazdas said. “Keep going.”

“Your arse,” the driver said as the taxi mounted the hard shoulder and slowed to a halt.

The car eased up behind and its lights died. The driver’s door opened and a suited man climbed out. As he limped up alongside the taxi, the driver wound his window down. The suited man looked along the road in one direction, then the other.

The driver asked, “Jesus, Dan, what’s going on? You scared me there. I thought I was getting a ticket. I can’t afford any points on my—”

Hewitt pulled a pistol from his waistband, aimed at the driver’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

Strazdas moved before he heard the shot, grabbed the passenger-side door handle, and threw himself out of the taxi. He hit the ground shoulder-first, hauled himself up on his feet, and lurched up the grass embankment, his feet slipping on the snow.