“I didn’t say that. I really have no idea where she went.”
“No, I said it. I doubt she would have just planned to tour the rails for a month, and she mentioned in her note that she was with friends, which suggests she was going somewhere in particular. If it were somewhere close, she’d have bought a ticket to that place. Say she was going to Munich, she would have bought a ticket to Munich. The InterRail pass only makes sense financially if she had a long way to travel.”
Jonas stared at him for a moment, impressed at some level, but then, as if wanting to remind Finn of a crucial underlying fact, he said, “She left because she was scared of Gibson.”
“Maybe. But there are two separate issues here—why she left and where she went. Now, for the sake of her parents, the latter is the most crucial. I have to admit that, for my own purposes, the former is perhaps more interesting.”
“So you do think Gibson was spying on you!”
“I’m not sure—that’s why I want to find out what you put in your notebook.”
Jonas reached down into his jacket pocket, but looked doubtful as he said, “I didn’t make quite as many notes as I remembered, and I’m not sure how useful any of it will be.”
He produced the small Moleskine, opened it on a certain page and handed it across the table. Finn looked at the tiny scrawled notes and handed it back.
“You’ll have to read it to me—I can’t make out your writing.”
Jonas laughed, suggesting this was an accusation made quite often, and pored over the notes himself. “Okay, like I told you, Albigensian got mentioned once but then discounted. Sparrowhawk was mentioned six times, and on two of those occasions it was mentioned alongside someone called Karasek. He’s also mentioned separately in relation to Helsinki.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Jonas looked intrigued. “I’m certain—why is that strange?”
Finn wasn’t sure there was anything strange about it. He wondered if Karasek had relocated from Tallinn—it made sense in a way, just a short hop across the water, and things had been getting tougher for him in Estonia.
“It’s not strange. I knew a Karasek, that’s all, and I don’t connect him with Helsinki.”
Jonas took in that information, looked at his notes again, and said, “I’m curious. If Gibson works for an intelligence agency and they were spying on you, why were they talking so openly? Shouldn’t they have been using code names or something?”
“One would think so. Of course, all of these words could be code. Sparrowhawk is the most obvious, but even Helsinki could be code for something else.”
“So, Sparrowhawk doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“No. Does it mean anything to you?”
“It’s a bird of prey.” Jonas stared at Finn for a second, then back at his notebook. “There were lots of sequences of numbers, which could be code, I guess, and then this sentence: Imperative to identify Jerry de Borg. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Finn reached out and took the book again. Jerry de Borg—even in the kid’s crabby handwriting the name was quite visible. Finn kept looking at it, not because the scribbled words could tell him anything more, but because he didn’t know what to say, was struggling even to think what it meant to see that name there.
Only one other person had ever known about Jerry de Borg—and, joke that it was, it made no sense for either one of them to have ever spoken of it. Finn never had, which made it stranger still that the name should reappear, because the other person had been Harry Simons.
“What’s wrong?”
Finn shook his head, doubtful, and said, “I don’t know, and I couldn’t say if I did, but seeing that name makes me think someone I’ve long believed dead is actually still alive.”
“Wow.” Jonas took the notebook and sat in silence, apparently stunned by the realization that what everyone had said about Finn was true. Finally he said, “What kind of spy were you?”
Finn looked at him, guessing it was pointless to deny it now, and said, “Not a very good one.” Jonas laughed. “I’m serious. I wasn’t incompetent, but I was . . . corrupt, for want of a better word.”
Jonas still looked bemused. “No, I mean, who did you work for?”
“Oh. Well, I can’t answer that, even now, even after everything that’s happened.”
Jonas nodded and looked at his watch. “I’ll have to go quite soon.”
“Okay.” Finn’s mind leapt back to the other side of the equation they were dealing with, reminded again that as well as wanting to find Hailey Portman, he also needed to find her if he was to stand any chance of getting to the truth of why they were watching him. Thinking back to a question he’d asked Ethan and Debbie, he said, “Are you and Hailey on any of the social networking sites?”
“Officially, we think they’re lame. For older people, you know.”