Nasira sat on one side of the bed. She held her hands in front of her, watching them shake. She tried to steady them but it was no use. How could her body go crazy like this? She had things to do. She didn’t have time for this.
Lucia entered the room from wherever in the cabin she had been.
‘You should rest,’ Lucia said.
Nasira let her hands drop to her knees.
Lucia handed her a mug of tea. Steam wafted from it so Nasira didn’t try to sip just yet. The smell of mint filled her nostrils.
‘Coca tea?’ Nasira said.
‘Muña tea,’ Lucia said. ‘My ancestors have used it for thousands of years. For stomach trouble, digestion, energy, circulation. It helps with the altitude.’
Nasira nodded. ‘I could’ve used that before I passed out.’
The only sounds now were the fire crackling and the blizzard whistling outside.
‘The fire should last the night,’ Lucia said. ‘If you need anything I’ll be just down the hall.’
Nasira flexed her hand. It was still shaking a little. ‘Thanks.’
Lucia nodded and left.
Nasira wanted to leave as well, but that wasn’t an option right now. She’d be fine in the morning, she hoped. And besides, it was the middle of the night. And the middle of a blizzard. She could wait until tomorrow. She had to.
Nasira undressed herself and climbed into the bed. There were three heavy woolen blankets but she only needed one with the fire burning. She left the other blankets at the end of the bed in case it cooled in the morning. She drifted to sleep wondering if she’d done the right thing coming here.
Chapter 8
The light from the fire flickered over Owen Freeman, the leader of the Akhana, etching deep into the lines on his face. He waved an unlit cigarette in the warm night air.
‘You’re our Phoenix, Sophia,’ he said. ‘You rose from your own ashes.’
‘I never asked what you meant by that,’ Sophia said.
The lines in Freeman’s face ran deeper. ‘You know what I mean.’
Sophia was shaking her head. ‘No. Tell me what it means,’ she said. ‘I need to know.’
Freeman’s face started to flake away before her, glowing like embers and turning to ash. Beneath the peeled face, a new one. Denton’s. His eyes burned into her.
‘You’re the lucky one,’ Denton said.
Sophia woke. Her body shuddered beneath the musty quilt. She gathered her breath and made for the bathroom. She intended to splash her face but ended up vomiting in the sink.
She showered, checked her ruck, and left.
The library opened at seven and she was there by five past. She found a computer and checked the address hidden in the webpage — it looked to be an apartment in Williamsburg, New York. The apartment seemed odd. And a bit fancy for Aviary. Usually they would meet publicly, either at a busy diner or an empty subway platform.
It was only a short walk from her motel to Penn Station in Baltimore. She booked a seat on the Amtrak to New York using some cash from her car fences. With her ruck on her back and her Glock and Gerber knives stowed inside, she boarded the train that would take her along the northeast corridor. To another Penn Station, this one in New York. She wasn’t happy about landing right in the heart of Manhattan. For someone in her position, it was the worst place she could wind up. But she kept breathing: she’d be on and off the island in no time.
Finding her seat against the window, she kept her ruck between her legs, wrapping a strap around her knee in case she dozed off. Which she never did. The ride would take two and a half hours so she settled in as the train prepared to leave the platform. The woman next to her pecked at a laptop on the fold-out tray. The tray rattled with each key press. Sophia tried to ignore it. Eventually she gave in and reached for Aviary’s iPod, choosing a playlist at random.
With her earphones in and the volume low enough so she could hear around her, she watched the train pick up speed and tear past the local stations. She wanted to go home. Except there was no home. In the last couple of months she’d travelled through more cities than she could recall, some for just a day, others for weeks, but none of them felt like home. She’d been doing it for so long she’d started to lose focus of what she wanted. America had been a country of changes for her.
Maybe she’d never feel like she’d belong anywhere. That’s OK, she thought. There was nothing wrong with that. It was just what it was.
Her thoughts drifted to Nasira, who was somewhere in Peru right now seeking out Lucia’s family. Nasira had become strangely fixated on finding everyone’s family. Well, not her own.
Damien and Jay, on the other hand, were busy doing babysitter work. Guarding moderately wealthy and powerful clients. Without an official military history it was of course difficult to prove their skills and experience, so the work came from other places. Organized crime, not-so-organized crime. Anyone who was paranoid enough to require outside protection, if they trusted that outside protection.
She thought of DC. Not for the first time either. He wasn’t on her side, but she treated him as though he was. And she wasn’t sure why. Not that it mattered — she hadn’t seen him since she put a round through him in Denver. She doubted he’d be pleased to see her again. Not that he ever has been, she thought, recalling his impromptu rescue in a Tokyo shipping yard. She hadn’t needed his help, but he had been there and it was nice having it.
It wasn’t long before the train got to the tunnel and then emerged in New York’s Penn Station. Sophia hit the street and headed east for a subway line that would take her closer to Aviary’s meeting point. The buildings around her seemed impossibly high and dense. It was fractionally cooler in New York than in Baltimore and she appreciated the warmth her jacket offered.
As she cut a path through the crowds, everything looked the same as it had during her last visit. She had to remind herself this country was in a state of seemingly permanent catastrophic emergency. The nation’s regular government had been discreetly replaced by an ‘enduring constitutional government’, which she supposed was just a more direct line for the Fifth Column. But as she walked the streets, no one seemed concerned by this. Or at least not aware.
Sophia didn’t stop until she reached Thirty-Fourth Street — Herald Square station. A flatscreen was perched above the subway entrance, advertising a crime TV series. She had trouble telling them apart so she assumed they were all the same show that her motel neighbors watched over dinner. She took the stairs and purchased a new MetroCard from one of the ticket machines. She didn’t know how long she’d need it, so she inserted a twenty-dollar note to be safe.
The train was packed and she stood near a man who made duck noises for most of the ride. After the train crossed the Williamsburg Bridge to make its first stop, he stood, looked at his hat, and said, ‘Really?’ And then he left.
The next stop was hers. The walk to Aviary’s meeting point was short. She’d arrived almost an hour early so she used the time to check the building. It was a new apartment building with eight levels. Maybe Aviary just moved in, she thought.
It had a car lot underground with one entrance at the front and one exit at the back. The lobby had three elevators and a door to the stairs that would connect with the car lot below and the levels above. She circled once, stopping to watch for surveillance — a simple matter of looking for anyone who was stationary for too long. Satisfied no one was, she moved for the lobby.
A woman not much older than her walked a few paces ahead. She swiped her fob and opened the glass lobby door. With half an hour to spare, Sophia decided to follow her in. There weren’t any cameras in the lobby or the elevator. She got out of the elevator on the same level as the woman but moved in the opposite direction. Once Sophia was sure the woman was inside her own apartment she doubled back for the stairs. Above the lobby, she didn’t need a fob for anything. She climbed two more levels until she reached the apartment Aviary had specified. She listened out the front for a few minutes but heard nothing except the muffled clang of kitchen utensils from next door. She reached under one arm, unzipped her ruck and found the grip of her Glock. With no cameras in the passageway, she moved the Glock to the front of her jeans.