call.” Click. Unclick. “Che lavoro fa?”
“I have my own web design company.” She reached for her side pocket, where she’d slipped her freshly printed fake business cards—and froze. Not yet. Be accommodating but not too forthcoming. She’d loaded herself with layers of deception, to be revealed gradually and only as necessary.
Click. Unclick. Click. Unclick.
She’d even found a genuine wedding she could claim to be attending, harvesting the details from a bride’s blog. Everyday people put too much on the web—people who thought they had nothing to hide, who thought the world had only benign intentions. People who weren’t being hunted by one of the world’s most powerful people.
Not if I catch you first, Senator.
The officer pulled out a cell phone, held it where they could both see it and typed into the browser her fake name and “web design.” Her breath stalled.
“This one?” he asked, pointing to the top hit.
She nodded, not trusting her voice. The SEO had worked but any second he’d notice the search had netted suspiciously few results—because the site was less than twenty-four hours old.
He clicked the link and the site loaded. “It’s in English.”
“Awo.” She bit her lip. She’d used the Ethiopian word for yes. Old habits... “Pardon me,” she said, patting her upper chest, as if she’d hiccuped. “Si, that version is. Most of my clients are in English-speaking countries. I also have an Italian site.” She pointed to the green, white and red flag icon in a corner of the home page. She’d be almost disappointed if he didn’t open it, after the effort it’d taken to translate.
He studied her as if he could see right through to her Ethiopian DNA sequence. “How much do you charge for a simple e-commerce site?”
“Scusi, signore?” Damn. She had no idea of the going rates.
“My wife and I are thinking about setting up an online...” The other officer signaled him and he raised a pointer finger—one minute. The ambient noise crescendoed, as though it’d been silenced for their conversation and someone had just pressed the unmute button. “Never mind.” He handed back Samira’s documents. “When you return to Certaldo I suggest you update your passport. You’d be surprised how much ID fraud we’re seeing these days. Desperate people out there.” He swept a hand toward the thinning queue. “Hence the extra checks.”
He moved on to his next target, leaving Samira’s “Grazie” hanging—and her way clear to the exit. She zipped the documents into her bag and let her chest fill. It’d gone almost concave. She walked—not too fast—boots clicking on the floor, heartbeat thumping along in her ears in double time.
There was something to be said for paranoia. But her delay had given the blond man time to clear the checkpoint. Leaning on a white column ahead, bag at his feet, he swiped at his phone. He caught her eye and quickly looked away. Too quickly? Dear God. She skirted behind a tribe of tracksuit-clad teenagers—some lanky, overgrown sports team—and strode toward the border control exit. The border itself, technically. Once she left the station, once she found Tess, her nerves would settle. She took note of the area’s security cameras then angled herself away, bunching her hair around her face. She pulled a beanie from her bag and tugged it down to her eyebrows. Facial recognition software wasn’t as easily fooled as human eyes. She slipped on the Audrey Hepburn–style sunglasses she’d picked up in Paris.
Tension fell from her shoulders as she emerged into a soaring atrium—an arcade, with shimmering glass shopfronts over Victorian brick arches. A massive Christmas tree circled up to the dome, so laden with ornaments she could almost hear it groan. She adjusted her backpack. Her shoulders were beginning to ache under its weight, coupled with the champagne. She’d used precious euros to buy a dress, coat and heels at a Parisian outlet store, suitable for a fall wedding, and had gift wrapped some of her spare tech gear. It seemed absurd now to have spent all that money. Or maybe the knowledge that she had proof to back up her ruse had warded off the panic attack. Either way, what was done was done. Very soon, she and Tess would be toasting their breakthrough with the champagne.
She walked faster. Every step got her closer to Tess, Charlotte’s flat and the evidence. A sign ahead pointed to the overland trains. Wait—that wasn’t the right exit. She needed to find the pedestrian tunnel linking St Pancras to the square Tess was waiting in. This was the opposite direction. She stopped and looked around as if she were waiting for someone, picturing the station map she’d studied online. Discordant piano chords plinked out a toe-curling tune. Which way was she supposed to have turned out of border control? The blond guy emerged from the crowd, looked up at the signs and headed toward a taxi rank, without a glance her way.
She closed her eyes a second. She never used to be paranoid. She used to trust that the world was a good place, that nothing bad would happen to a thoroughly ordinary woman. She used to have complete faith in the digital age, in its promise to connect cultures and minds, blur borders between the developing and developed worlds, make information and education accessible for all. She clicked her tongue. At some point the limitless possibilities had become limitless threats. Emails, phone calls, databases, servers, web searches...nothing was private, nothing was truly secure, everything could be traced and hacked in an ever-accelerating spiral of cat and mouse between the security analysts and the hackers—in her case, sometimes one and the same person. Once, she’d been contracted to infiltrate a system she’d previously been hired to secure, and that remained the only one that’d eluded her. She still didn’t know whether to be proud of that or embarrassed.
She blew out a breath. One step at a time. First, find the tunnel. After hours enclosed in a capsule, the thought of fresh air and freedom tugged her toward daylight like a magnet was clamped to her chest. Freedom would come when this was done. Freedom from danger and—just maybe, just a little—freedom from grief and guilt?
A large man in a navy suit pushed past. She snapped out a hand to catch the champagne, and patted her bag’s zip pocket, checking for the outline of her wallet—the fictional Italian signorina’s wallet, rounded out by a fake driver’s license and fake credit card, and the remainder of Samira’s real euros. Getting pickpocketed would be a disaster.
Ignoring her clenching stomach muscles, she followed the signs toward the far end of the long station, white columns marching along beside her. The blond guy couldn’t be the one from the cottage. Her enemy couldn’t know she was here. Nothing would go wrong. She’d passed the biggest challenge—getting into Britain. Maybe the evidence would be damning enough that she wouldn’t need to testify. She could wait out the storm at a cozy flat in an English seaside village where she didn’t see a threat in every shaking leaf or heavy footfall. Then maybe she’d be able to breathe without forcing every inhalation. Since Latif’s death, her every breath had seemed like a conscious effort, as if it were her instinct to die, not live. She’d had the sense she was viewing the world from afar, hardly feeling the ground under her feet.
With the exception of that one day—and night—last fall...
Which she shouldn’t be thinking about.
And today was real. Stomach-curlingly real. Despite the fear, it was empowering to do something that wasn’t sitting around lurching between anger and sorrow and frustration and regret. She would finish the mission Latif died for. If she died, too, so be it, so long as she avenged his death and made his sacrifice worth something.
She passed a
