77
MILA’S RESOURCES INCLUDED A DOCTOR; I woke up in the bed in the apartment above the Rode Prins with an old man poking at me. He was bald and frowning and his breath smelled like hard-boiled eggs.
“You’re a wreck, young man,” he said to me.
“Yes.” In more ways than one, I thought, but I’d sooner die than admit that.
“I stitched and bandaged your head. And cleaned out your shoulder. The muscle will be sore, you should rest it. The back injury required several stitches, like a furrow it was. So drink fluids. Rest. I leave you some pain pills. Do not abuse them.” He turned to Mila and said, “I know you are no Nightingale, woman. Make sure he rests.” He extended a finger but did not wag it.
Mila nodded. The doctor packed a bag and scooted an array of medical equipment back into the storage room. I watched him. Rather I stared off into space and thought about what I was going to do now.
“Are you hungry?” Mila asked. “Henrik made potato soup, it’s very good.”
“I’m mostly thirsty.”
She brought me cold water, and I drank it greedily. I felt like a bus had hit me then backed over my body several times just to ensure a high level of misery. I drank more water and then yes, I was hungry, and I ate a huge bowl of the potato soup, dotted with Gruyère cheese and with bits of ham.
Mila watched me eat and said nothing. But she was Mila, and she waited until my spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. “I am sorry, Sam.” She said it like the words tasted funny in her mouth.
“I know you are.”
“Can you tell me all that happened?”
I explained. Mila listened in silence. When I was done she said, “So your Lucy is a traitor.”
“She is,” I said. The canal outside was very quiet. I listened to my own stupid heart still beating. Okay. She was a traitor. To me, to her country. Okay. I had to deal. I’d heard the words for months, from Howell and even from August, and I hadn’t believed them. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. No fool like a fool in love.
I don’t mind calling myself a fool. We’ve all been fools at some curve in our lives. But I had been so sure that I knew her.
Why didn’t she kill you?
I thought, even weak in bed, that I could go downstairs and rip the beer taps from the bar, smash every window, knock down the brown walls. My rage felt like strength enough. Even with the pain in my body and my head.
Why didn’t she kill you?
That was the question that defied both brain and heart. She could have put a bullet in my head. And why hadn’t she let me die in the bombing in London? No way that she loved me. That entire life had been a cheap fiction, sold with great competence and warm smiles and teasing kisses and long, shuddering nights, joined at hip and heart.
“Why did she leave you alive?” Mila said, as though she could see my thoughts hovering about my head.
“There has to be a reason,” I said.
“Your child?”
“She has hidden him somewhere. If I keep quiet to the Company that she’s alive, she’ll call me and tell me where he is.” I kept my voice steady.
“Sam. My employers and I, we can help you… perhaps to find your child.”
“She’ll never call. My son is her shield. We’re not done. She and Edward took Yasmin. I am going to find her.”
“Where?”
“I am going to call the Company and alert them, and alert Customs. Maybe they’ll find Edward’s shipment; they have the resources. Howell didn’t believe me. Someone will. Maybe August Holdwine.”
“Try, if you like, but this Edward is no fool. He’ll disable the GPS trackers. There will be entirely new manifests for those cigarettes; there will be no way to trace them. Their crates will be labeled as an entirely different product now. Customs won’t shut down Rotterdam on what they’ll consider a prank call. And if the Company believes you to be a traitor, they’ll think your warning is simply a lie or a diversion. Your friend will be trumped.”
She was right. “Howell was a lot more interested in who’d helped me than my phantom shipment. He’s after a group called Novem Soles. I think he thinks you’re it.”
“Did you speak of me?”
“No. Never.”
She stood. “I didn’t think you would. I am glad I don’t have to kill you.”
“Well, I’m glad too, Mila.”
“Rest now like the doctor said.”
I closed my eyes. I kept thinking, in all the spin of information that I now had, that I was missing some vital element—a fact or an insight worming its way through my brain that could provide an answer. It all went back to London. The bombing to protect the man that Edward himself later murdered. Somehow, that was key. Work I’d done in London was worth all this grief to Edward and his people.
“I will. For a bit. But we’re going to London.”
“Why London?”
“I want to see Zaid. He put us on this job and ever since he’s been avoiding us, and he knows more than he’s ever been willing to share. He gave Edward weapons to smuggle. Now that the shipment has reached Edward, maybe Zaid is supposed to get Yasmin back. So we go to Zaid’s unannounced. Surprise him.”
“I will have to see.”
“Your bosses won’t approve? Is Zaid one of your bosses?”
She walked over to the table, set the glass on it. “No. But he is connected to them.”
“Who am I working for, Mila?”
“Me.”
“I think I’ve fought hard enough for you to deserve an answer. I could have given you to the Company. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“You might do anything to get your child back.” She raised a hand before I could interrupt her. “Sam. You work for me. Let’s leave it at that. If you wish to stop working for me, you may rest here, for however long you need, until you feel ready to leave. And we will not bother you if you do not bother us.”
“You have resources I need to find my child,” I said.
“That is an uncomfortable truth. For you.”
I looked out the window. “You dropped out of sight for a while, Mila.”
“I was busy.”
“How are the women?”
“They’re safe. We’ll get them back to their families, or find a place that’s safe for them.”
“I’m glad you helped them but you could have let the police handle them. I needed your help.”
“I could not let the police handle it,” she said. “I needed to. The police deport them, they just go back to Moldova where they could be targeted by the recruiters and the traffickers for revenge. Such has happened before. They need protection, them and their families. I had to arrange that.”
“I understand.” I closed my eyes. “I am going to find Bahjat Zaid. I am going to go to London in the morning. Either you can arrange the travel or I’ll risk using one of my forged passports and getting picked up at the airport or the ferry. Howell will be looking for me. Get me into England, if you’re so clever.”
“You won’t give up, will you?”
“I have a child to find. I cannot give up, Mila. My kid is to me what those women were to you. Innocents who cannot be abandoned. I can’t stop.”
She got up and closed the door. I sat in bed and I swallowed one of the pills the doctor had left, and then I fell into dreamless sleep.