Nate couldn’t stop a smile. Welcome to my world, he thought.
It was mid-morning and Pol waited outside the airport in the cold. He stood still, almost like one at attention. But his mind was not at attention. Most of it was shut down. He was functioning with the mindless automation of a mortally wounded soldier crawling away from the enemy’s bayonet. He hated this place, with its snow and trees and strange little villages. Even the people did not strike a chord. He did not recognize their language. He was more lost here than he’d ever been in Centalia.
That could overwhelm him if he allowed it to. Instead, he allowed himself a goaclass="underline" to find the familiar. He had to find Lt. Calder Farris.
Last night he’d followed the road signs toward Kraków because it was the largest name on those signs and must, therefore, be a city of good size. He’d gotten a ride, sitting in the front seat with a farmer who’d had a truck bed full of birds in cages. As they’d approached Kraków, Pol had seen a commercial jet plane in the air. He’d recognized it at once, understood it down to the basic principles of its aerodynamics—wingspan ratios and quantities of fuel—even though he knew very well that this particular type of aircraft did not exist in the world he’d just come from. He’d pushed aside all the ways that wanted to screw with his head. The plane could take him to Washington, D.C. He would ride the devil’s tail if it took him to Washington, D.C.
But he could not remember how one got onto the plane. So he’d sat inside the airport until past daybreak, observing the security guards, observing the buying of tickets, taking it in through a heavy filter, discarding everything that wasn’t need-to-know.
Need-to-know: He’d need identity papers and money to get on a plane.
Now he waited outside the airport. It was cold, almost as cold as Centalia. After a long time a man got out of a car. He was blond and of the right age and he was alone. Before the man could enter the terminal, Farris approached him.
“Can you tell me which is the road to Budapest?” Pol asked him in his old language.
The man tried to converse with him, pointing toward the city and speaking carefully in English. Pol wore a chilly smile. He grabbed the man’s arm and pushed the neck of a bottle in his pocket into the man’s side.
“Come with me,” Pol said.
The man looked around for help, but no one was paying any attention to them.
“What do you want? Please—”
Pol led the man away, quickly, before he could overcome his surprise. Around the terminal they went, to a place scoped out in advance, a small park.
In the trees, the man grew desperate. His face tightened as images of what Pol might want to do to him crossed his mind. Pol was operating swiftly and with deadly certainty, yet part of him was curious; part of him wished the man would fight back. But it was clear this creature was no warrior. His first instinct was not to fight but to offer money. He did so, pulling out a packet full of bills and the identity papers Pol needed. The man pleaded for his life in Polish and English.
It was time to act. Pol hesitated. He hesitated so long, the man sensed his weakness and tried to run. Before he had taken two steps, Pol brought the bottle from his pocket and down hard on the back of the man’s head. The man cried out in surprise and crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Pol took the man’s wallet, passport, and plane tickets. He put the things in his pockets. He stripped the man of his shirt and tie and put them on, taking the man’s heavy outer coat as well. He dumped out the contents of the man’s bag and put his old clothes in there. He did not think he would need them again, but he did not want them to be found here.
Kneeling down, he wrapped the scarf around the man’s throat, pulled it tight, prepared to pull it tighter. And knelt there.
He should kill this man. If the man was left alive, he would be able to describe his attacker. He would be able to give the name on Pol’s new identity papers, a name the authorities might otherwise take days to track down. Still, Pol hesitated.
He could not get the images out of his mind, images of the night he killed the Silver, Pol 137, how he had to hack and hack, how the blood had flowed like burgundy wine. Or of Gyde standing over the body of the Bronze rare book owner, putting out his cigarette in the blood.
Sweat dripped down Pol’s back inside his new shirt. His hands gripped both ends of the scarf tightly. They shook as if the scarf were alive with a current.
He couldn’t do it. He dropped the scarf.
There was a cracking branch behind him. He spun, a snarl on his lips, guilt and fury over his own weakness dogging him.
“Lieutenant Farris?”
The blond woman stepped closer. For a moment he was sure he was hallucinating completely now, his enfeebled senses finally giving in to delusion. But she looked nervous and she looked cold. A glisten of moisture on her red nose testified to her reality.
She looked at the man on the ground, then at him. Pol hated the approval in her eyes. She should be afraid of him. He would make her afraid.
She rubbed her arms to warm herself. “Did you get his passport?”
Pol took it out of his pocket and looked at it.
“Credit cards?”
He handed her the wallet and the tickets. He panicked as the things left his fingers. What the hell was he doing?
It was terrible not to be able to trust oneself, not to fathom the reasoning of one’s own limbs. He told himself he was testing her. He was giving her enough rope to hang herself. If she said, or did, one wrong thing, he would break her neck. This time he would lie on top of her, heavy and deadly, and would look in her eyes as he choked the life from her body.
“Paris,” she said, reading the tickets. “Where is it you want to go, Lieutenant?” If she was laughing at him, he couldn’t see it in her green eyes.
“Washington, D.C.,” he heard himself say. He stiffened in horror.
She nodded. “We can get a connection in Paris, but I’ll need tickets. It looks like there’s enough cash here.” She pulled some bills from the wallet. “And we’ll need to get me a passport.” She looked again at the man on the ground, her face softening. “I’d prefer to steal one without knocking someone out if possible. Maybe in the ladies’ rest room? I’m not too good at this kind of thing. You’ll have to advise me.”
His fists clenched at his thighs to keep them under control. Inside, he was churning like the eye of a storm. He did not understand what was happening. She seemed to be implying that she was going with him. It was a trick. She was milking him.
What was frightening was how horribly tempted he was by the ruse. The idea of help—the mere idea of it—filled him with desperate longing. It made him realize how heavy the burden was that he carried, how close he was to complete collapse. But at the same time, he felt enraged. He was a warrior. He would not be nursed, by the blood, and particularly not by her.
“Go fuck yourself,” he said, pleased to remember the words. His lip curled in a disdain broad enough to fill the seas.
She shied away from the look on his face, licked her lips nervously, but didn’t run. She gazed down at the passport again. “You, um, picked a good one. The passport’s four years old. The security guards will just assume you had a haircut. Otherwise you match him quite well.”
Go to the devil, I said!
“Lieutenant Farris?” she asked cautiously.
“Do what you want,” he snarled. He grabbed the papers from her and headed for the airport.
By eight o’clock that evening Mr. and Mrs. Goldman from New Jersey were installed in the small inn’s upstairs bedroom—right across from Mr. and Mrs. Dolman, the name Aharon had peeked at in the register as he signed in.
Hannah—that is, Ruth Goldman—had chatted with the innkeeper, a rosy-faced Polish matron, about wanting to be upstairs and wanting something that faced the lovely view in the back, and Mrs. Sochetzchi had given them the room next to the Dolmans. They were the only other guests in the inn.