‘No, I don’t mind. So what now?’
‘I’ll make some phone calls, find out about Larsen Grohl. We’re getting close; it’s a big break Bruno’s given us.’ He could see she was unhappy. And he knew why: because they’d left Bruno happy and healthy on that sunny cafe terrace and she couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t understand why they were leaving him unpunished, why they weren’t repaying him for the death he’d so efficiently delivered into the Hatto family home. ‘What’s troubling you?’
She looked out the window at the river, then back to him, hesitating. ‘I know he’s helped us and I know what you said in London. But surely you understand how it makes me feel to sit and listen to him joking with you about business. Business! Killing people. How can I not hold him responsible?’
‘If someone dies in a plane crash you sue the airline, not the travel agent who sold the ticket.’
‘You do if the travel agent knew the plane would crash.’ Lucas was annoyed with himself for coming up with such a feeble analogy. Maybe she was right anyway; maybe revenge should be merciless and unyielding and he’d been in the business too long to keep sight of that.
He thought of Isabelle, a child he’d given too little thought to during her lifetime. And yet with only the recent locket memories he had of her—walking down the street, sitting in a cafe with friends—he knew that he’d want the same kind of revenge if anything happened to her.
Ella wanted Bruno dead because she’d loved her family and he’d arranged their deaths. Lucas wanted to deflect her from that course, though, for his own selfish reasons, because he didn’t want to get dragged back in any further than he had to go.
‘All I ask is this. Let’s find out who ordered the hit and deal with them first. Avenge your family through them, and after that, if you still feel people like Bruno Brodsky should die too, then so be it.’
She nodded and said, ‘Okay, but I want a gun to keep in my room tonight, like before.’
‘You don’t need a gun,’ he said, alarmed by the possibility that she was thinking of doing this on her own.
‘How do you know that? For all we know, the contract is still on my head. Brodsky knows I’m in Budapest; he could see it as a chance to clear up unfinished business.’
‘I doubt it, but if it makes you happy I’ll bring one to your room when we get back.’ Still suspicious, he added, ‘Did you want to do anything this evening? River cruise, opera, dinner?’
She smiled and said, ‘I think I’ll just have dinner in my room and have an early night. I’ve got a few hours before my flight in the morning—I might do some sightseeing then.’
‘Sure.’ She was lying badly, and it saddened him and left him suspicious that she’d been lying to him since she’d called for his help.
Anger had made her want to see Novakovic dead but he wondered if her urge to shoot him in the head afterwards had been for practice, a premeditated dry run for the acts of revenge she imagined performing.
‘Lucas?’ He turned to her. She looked defiantly like the innocent he’d first encountered. ‘If you’d been paid to kill me, would you have done it?’
‘Until four years ago, without even hesitating. Then I became picky, then I got out altogether. Helping your dad was a special favor. So is this.’
He thought she might acknowledge what he’d said, maybe thank him, but she said, ‘What happened four years ago?’
He smiled, knowing that it was too insignificant to speak of. He’d been in a department store in Zurich, crowded in the approach to Christmas, and suddenly he’d found a small hand in his. A little girl had reached up to take what she’d thought was her father’s hand. The father had seen it happen and had exchanged a little joke in German which Lucas hadn’t understood.
That’s all it had been, a stupid little incident, the kind of thing that people experienced every day without giving it a thought. But its effect on Lucas had been profound, for reasons transparent enough to be embarrassing. It didn’t matter, though, how weakly sentimental the catalyst had been, only that he’d been receptive to it.
‘Nothing happened. I just decided to change.’ He said no more, and yet he wanted to warn her that it wasn’t that easy—something he and Bruno Brodsky and her own father all would have testified to. Once in, there was always a route out; staying out was where the difficulty lay.
But he sensed that she was already too far gone. So instead of giving her advice when they got back to the hotel, he gave her a gun, and a little later still, he called Bruno to get the information he needed and to warn him that Ella was coming.