“Gare du Nord,” she told the driver, before showing him the paperwork she would need to cross the river. “As quick as you can, please.”
The driver grumbled something about not being a miracle worker, but before very long they had crossed the river and were haring through the narrow backstreets of the Marais, dodging the thickening flows of Saturday traffic. Auger felt an absolute exhaustion looming over her like a crumbling precipice, ready to fall and crush her at any moment. She leaned her cheek against the rattling window of the taxi and through blurred eyes she watched the lights of shops, neon signs and cars slide by in hyphens of red, white, frigid blue and gold. The city looked as untouchable and unreal as a hologram; as fragile as the glass she was resting against. She was very tempted to think of it that way. None of it mattered, she told herself: nothing that happened here could have any consequence for her life, back in Tanglewood. There was no need to continue with the investigation Susan White had started, for nothing that came out of that investigation could possibly affect Auger’s existence back home. Even if something terrible did happen here (and she could not quite shake the feeling that something terrible was indeed going to occur), then it would be no more tragic than the burning of a book or, in the worst case, a library of books. E2 might be lost, but a month ago she had not even known of its existence. Everything and everyone she really knew would continue unaffected, and within a few months the ordinary grind of her life, with its ebb and flow of routine pressures and crises, would have reduced these memories to a thin, dreamlike paste. And it was not as if everything from E2 would be lost for ever if something bad happened, for much had undoubtedly already been learned from the documents that had been smuggled back to Antiquities. And though she would feel some sympathy for the people trapped in E2, the trick was to remember that they were not really people at all, but the discarded shadows of lives that had already been lived 300 years ago. Feeling sorry for them would be like feeling sorry for the images in a burning photograph.
Auger felt her resolve collapsing by the minute. She did not want to get on the overnight train to Berlin, not when there was the much simpler option of staying in Paris and waiting for the ship to return. She had been sent here to do a job, and she had done it to the best of her ability. No one could possibly blame her if she stopped now, and thought only of her own preservation.
The taxi slowed and pulled up in the station forecourt, its engine still running while the driver waited for payment. For a moment, Auger could not move, frozen in a lull of indecision. She thought about asking the driver to turn around and take her to another hotel somewhere else in the city, where Floyd and the others would not think to look for her. Or she could follow through with her plan, go into the station and catch the train to Berlin, thereby heading deeper into Europe and deeper into E2. Just the thought of taking the train made a lump rise in her throat, as if she was being asked to step close to the edge of something high up that made her dizzy. She had not been trained for such a mission. Caliskan had primed her—barely—to recover the paperwork, but not to go deeper into E2. Surely there were other people who were bound to be better qualified for it than her…
The thought that this might be true stung her like a lash.
“You can do this,” she said to herself, repeating it like a prayer.
The driver turned around in his seat to face her, the hairs on his neck bristling against the collar of his shirt. He didn’t care how long she took. The meter was still running.
“Here,” Auger said, thrusting some notes at him. “Keep the change.”
A minute later she was inside the iron and glass vault of the station, looking for the ticket office. The platform swarmed with travellers, jostling and orbiting each other like a mass of grey bees, each knowing their mission and utterly oblivious to anyone else. Beyond, the trains waited with snorting impatience, pushing quills of white steam up towards the roof. Even as she watched, a sleeper drew out, headed for Munich or Vienna or some other city even further into the European night. Its red tail light spilled blood on to the polished surfaces of the rails.
First things first. Auger found the ticket office and was relieved to see that the line for international connections was much shorter than the others. She had already vowed that if there was no accommodation left on the night train, then she would simply board it and argue her case later. Bribery was always an option, as was theft. But there were still couchettes available on the seven o’clock service—later than she would have liked, but better than nothing.
She handed over the money, the ticket clerk barely batting an eyelid at her blackened hands and dirt-encrusted fingernails. She imagined that the clerks had learned not to bat their eyelids at many things.
“What platform?” she asked. The clerk told her, also warning her that the train would not be ready for boarding until thirty minutes before departure.
That gave her nearly an hour before she could get on the train. She used the first twenty minutes of that period finding a ladies’ washroom and attending as best she could to the dirt and damage she had sustained in the tunnel. By the time she was done, she had turned the bar of carbolic soap black and the basin looked as if it had been used by a party of miners after a shift down the pit. But she looked and felt human again, and by the time she had changed into more of Greta’s clothes, stuffing her own soiled and ripped garments back into the bag, she had also begun to feel that she was less likely to be recognised. With over an hour remaining before the train was due to depart, Auger was tempted to leave the station entirely to seek the comparative anonymity of a local bistro or brasserie. She had not eaten since breakfast, and her hunger was beginning to catch up with her. But she knew that if she left Gare du Nord, she might not have the courage to return, no matter how much money she had spent on the couchette. Instead, she settled on a restaurant inside the station, and within its mirrored labyrinth of an interior she found a secluded booth where she could watch whoever came and went without being the object of attention herself. She ordered a sandwich and a glass of wine, and willed the hands on the restaurant clock to whirl around to half-past six.
Through the glass doors of the restaurant, far across the concourse, she saw a man in a grey raincoat and hat pause at a newspaper concession. As he fiddled in a pocket for change, he looked around, like a tourist taking in the station for the first time. After making his purchase, he turned from the concession stand, pushing owlish glasses back up his nose. He flicked open the paper and started reading. It wasn’t Floyd.
Auger’s food arrived. She sniffed the wine, drank half the glass down in short order and for the first time since waking that day permitted a temporary calm to flow through her. In a little while she would be on the overnight train, safe in her berth. It was no more dangerous than staying in Paris—less so, perhaps, since she would be putting increasing distance between herself and the war babies. Once in Berlin, she would follow up on the address for the Berlin manufacturing firm and see where that led. At no point would she put herself in harm’s way, or do anything that she felt might expose her true identity. Even if all she came back with was a description of the firm’s premises, she would have achieved something useful. Caliskan would undoubtedly rebuke her for exceeding the terms of her mission, while expressing private gratitude for what she had done. And even as she followed up Susan White’s aborted line of enquiry, Auger would be observing more of this world than she ever could if she stayed locked up in a Paris hotel room, cowering from every shadow.