23
WHATEVER BRIBES MILA TOSSED AMONG the ship worked: the crew left us alone. I was surprised, as I had nearly shot one of them.
I had decided Mila was part of some group within the government, unleashed to do dirty work without the boundaries of law, and, since I was damaged goods, I was a perfect recruit. They had limited access to Company information like my file, but the Company didn’t know about them.
I didn’t care who they were as long as they helped me get Lucy back.
So. I exercised in my room, lifting myself on a bar, running in place, thinking, clearing my head. I endured a self-imposed captivity for three days, then I couldn’t do it anymore; not after the long weeks in the Polish prison. So I went up to the deck and I ran among the containers in the bright open sunshine. The crew watched me. I waved. They didn’t wave back.
I thought about the best ways to try and find the scarred man. I had to assume he knew my face. This was going to be the most dangerous job I’d ever undertaken, and I was doing it with an unproven ally in Mila.
When I turned past one stack of containers Captain Switchblade was there, helping to clean the deck.
“Hello,” I said.
He stared at me in surprise.
“You okay?” I asked.
After a moment, he nodded.
“Good.” I wasn’t going to say sorry, since he’d pulled the knife on me, but I didn’t want more trouble with this guy. We were still days away from the Netherlands.
I went past him and kept jogging. I didn’t look behind me and no knife landed in my back. I wondered how much his forgiveness had cost Mila and why she’d bothered to pay it.
I was lying on the cot in my cabin when Mila knocked and came in.
“The Company has sent your face to every passport point of entry in Europe and Asia. They’re telling people your passport may have been taken and be in use by a fugitive.”
“If they’re looking for me, they might consider that I’d use an earlier legend.” Legends are cover identities used by field operatives. I’d played the part of a Canadian smuggler, a German money launderer, an American mercenary who wanted to make quick money guarding blood diamonds. The people who could have said He wasn’t really any of those guys were all dead or in prison. The legends could still be counted as clean. I had no documentation in those names—passports, or credit cards—but I could get that from Mila. Those names were known in the criminal underworld. But the risk of using one to infiltrate the scarred man’s ring posed serious consequences. The Company could have burned all my old names, told any contact or informant that I was not to be trusted. Worse, they could be listening, watching for me to try to step into my old shoes.
The only sure way to know if the legends were still good was to try and use them.
I gave Mila the background on my old names and we went into her cabin where she broke out a kit full of diplomatic paper, cameras, a small but powerful printer and a laptop. A forger’s paradise.
“So what’s the first step when we arrive?”
“We meet Yasmin’s father in Amsterdam.”
“Her father?”
“Mr. Zaid can tell you more about Yasmin and her kidnapping.”
Mr. Zaid? Was he Mila’s boss? “You tell me.”
“I’d rather you hear details from him.”
“What does he know about me?”
“Just that you can help him get his daughter back. That’s all he needs to know.”
“Where will we meet him?”
“At a bar.”
“You sure like bars,” I said.
“Yes,” Mila said. “I sure do. Now. I want to be sure you are not rusty. The rest of the day, we only speak Russian. And how is your Dutch?”
“Poor.”
“I will expect it to improve quickly.” She rolled her eyes. “I hope you won’t embarrass me with poor verb choices.”