“Our lives are not our own,” Nadia said. “We don’t get to make long-term plans.”
Chapel grunted in frustration. “I know that better than anyone,” he told her. “And I thought we weren’t going to talk about this.”
“Forgive me,” Nadia said. “But I really need to. She left you, Jim. She set you free.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Of course it does.” Nadia moved toward him, as if she would grab his arm. He took a step in the opposite direction, and from the corner of his eye he saw her drop her hands in frustration. “You have no obligation to a woman who—”
“Nadia!” he said, loud enough to make Bogdan turn around and look. Much louder than he’d intended to. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “I think in some weird way you’re actually trying to help. That you think I need to hear this. But everything you say is just making it worse.”
He was pretty sure she stared at him then, stared at him with wide eyes. He wouldn’t know because he refused to look in her direction. He turned his face away until he couldn’t even see her shadow.
Eventually she gave up on him and hurried forward to catch up with Bogdan. The two of them carried on some light conversation in what sounded to Chapel like Romanian. He couldn’t have followed it if he wanted to.
The road they were on petered out after another half mile or so. The shops and houses gave way to larger structures — warehouses, factory farms, and light industrial workshops. No one was on the street out there, and judging by the boarded-up doors and the broken windows it looked like the district had seen better days. It wasn’t much farther to their destination, a nondescript shed of a building maybe a hundred yards long but only one story high. Like many of the buildings they’d passed it was surrounded by a high chain-link fence, but the gate of this one was ajar.
Nadia dropped back to point it out to Chapel. “Come on,” she said. “We still have a job to do, and we must do it together. Whether you like it or not.”
“Fine,” Chapel said. “We can be professionals, at least.”
Nadia shook her head and sighed. Then she strode forward, toward the open gate. Chapel and Bogdan followed close on her heels.
It was clear right away that the shed had not been used in a long time. Its walls were made of corrugated tin that had turned white in the sun and rotted away in some places, big holes in the structure that showed only darkness and swirling dust. The ground around the shed was strewn with old litter — plastic shopping bags that skittered across the concrete like insects, old tractor tires full of stagnant water, broken wooden pallets. Climbing over all the debris took some work, since Chapel didn’t want to accidentally step on a rusty nail and give himself tetanus. Nadia scampered over it like a mountain goat, of course, while Bogdan carefully and painstakingly navigated around the trash, moving each foot carefully before setting it down as if he would be contaminated just by touching anything.
The front of the shed ended in a tall doorway wide enough to drive a car through. It was locked up tight, with a massive rusted padlock hanging from a chain with links as thick as Nadia’s wrists. She rattled the chain for a second then let it drop back with a bang. “There must be a side entrance,” she said.
Chapel scanned the street behind them. This wasn’t the kind of place tourists should be investigating. Anyone who saw them now might remember the strange foreigners wandering around the abandoned battery farm — and if they remembered them, they could tell the SNB what they’d seen. Luckily the street was deserted.
Nadia made her way around the shed, climbing over a pile of blown-out old tires so high she could have climbed up onto the roof from its top. When she came down on the other side she was out of view, so Chapel hurried to follow as best he could. He heard her call out, and when he finally caught up with her, he saw she’d found a doorway that wasn’t locked.
He followed her inside, into the low, dim interior of the place. The far end of the shed was wide open and let in enough sunlight to dazzle him. He could only make out the rough outlines of what he saw. The walls were lined on both sides with hundreds of chicken coops, tiny cages made of thin wire. Narrow conveyor belts ran along beneath the coops, perhaps to catch the eggs the chickens had once laid. There didn’t seem to be anything alive inside the shed now except some ants that crawled over his hand when he touched the door frame. He shook them off and walked farther inside.
At the far end, near the open doors, he could make out the silhouette of the truck. It was bigger than he’d expected, a high square-cabined thing with a shovel-shaped nose that made it look more like a troop carrier than a commercial vehicle. It sat on eight massive fat tires, each with its own elaborate suspension. He supposed it needed all those tires to gain purchase on sand, but he could imagine less conspicuous vehicles to use on a covert mission.
“Hello?” Nadia called out, her voice echoing off the steel rafters of the shed.
There was no answer.
Chapel came up beside her, wondering why this felt wrong.
“Someone was supposed to be here to show us how the truck works,” Nadia said. “Varvara told me that someone would be here.”
Chapel nodded and walked ahead of her, toward the truck. He tried to keep his ears open to any sound, but his shoes crunched on the old dust and debris that covered the shed’s floor.
His eyes were slowly adjusting to the weird light in the shed. He thought he saw something inside the cab of the truck — maybe their contact had fallen asleep in there and hadn’t woken when Nadia called. Chapel hurried over to the driver’s-side door. It was five feet up off the ground, reached by a short folding ladder. He climbed up, holding on to the door’s handle, and tried to peer inside through the smudged glass of the window.
That was when he saw the bullet hole.
The glass of the truck’s windshield had been punctured by a small-caliber round — he guessed a rifle shot — leaving the familiar cobweb-shaped cracks in the glass. Their contact was inside but he wasn’t moving. Chapel pulled open the door and reached inside, barely catching the man as he slumped out of the cab and started falling toward the floor of the shed.
Chapel let the body fall the rest of the way, then jumped down to examine it.
“Someone beat us here,” he whispered, and gestured for Nadia to get down. If the shooter was still somewhere nearby, if the rifle was trained on anyone who approached the truck—
But the gunshot Chapel expected never came.
He ducked low and studied the body. The man had been about Bogdan’s age, just a kid. He had dark hair and a sad little excuse for a goatee, and the expression on his face was one of surprise. The shot had gone in through his left eye, probably killing him instantly. “Jesus,” Chapel breathed.
Nadia came up behind him, ducking low to use one of the truck’s tires for cover.
“Who did this?” Chapel asked her, keeping his voice down.
“How would I know that?”
“Those gangsters who were chasing Bogdan? Would they come this far? Or maybe Varvara has some enemies? Think, Nadia.”
She shook her head, but even in the half-light he could tell from her face that she knew something. He started to demand more answers, but he was interrupted as Bogdan shouted for them.
“I’ll get him,” Nadia said.
Chapel nodded. “There should be guns in the truck — I’ll look for them.” He climbed back up the side of the truck, feeling very exposed. If the sniper was still out there somewhere… but he got inside the cab without being shot. There were four seats inside, big bucket seats that looked like they belonged in an airplane instead of a land vehicle. The driver’s seat was covered in sticky blood that hadn’t had a chance to dry, even in the stuffy cab. Their contact must have been killed recently.