The History Book

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The History Book Page 11

by Humphrey Hawksley


  “Max is off the case,” says Yulya. “That’s why he was so angry in the park. When he told me, I knew I had to do something, both for him and for you. I’m on my way to Moscow. The company plane’s at Heathrow. There’s a seat, if you want it. Tomorrow morning, I’ll give you our best investigators to find out who killed your sister and why.”

  Yulya reaches out, takes both Kat’s hands. Kat keeps her eyes lowered, arranging her thoughts.

  “It’s for me, too, Kat. Please. If your sister’s murder has anything at all to do with the CPS, all of us need to find out, and you can help us.”

  Kat tilts her gaze up toward Yulya, who’s backlit by a streetlight. She steps to one side so she can see Yulya’s face better.

  Then a number of things happen at once.

  In the top pocket of her shirt, Kat’s cell vibrates.

  “I’ll just check this,” she says, dropping one hand from Yulya. She takes out the cell. It’s Cage.

  The hold Yulya has on her left hand tightens a fraction more than necessary. Kat catches an expression on Yulya’s face, mouth half open, lips tight, eyes concentrating hard on something behind Kat.

  Kat turns.

  She sees four men walk toward them, two on each side of the road. One of each pair wears a light long coat, hands inside. The other is in an open-neck shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Farther back, where the road widens, two silver sedans are parked on the sidewalk, doors open, engines running, a driver waiting in each.

  For a second, she can’t place it. Just people on the road. Nothing unusual.

  Then, in that instant, Kat understands. The grainy photo, the blue hat, the heavy coat—none could hide the essential features of the person before her. It’s the way Yulya’s standing, the certainty on her face, the cast of her eyes.

  She’s looking at the same woman who shot a man in the head and left him to die in the snow.

  No one’s said anything. Nothing’s moved from normal. People are walking along a river path. Someone’s calling a cell phone. That’s all.

  “Not important,” says Kat, putting on a smile, dropping the cell back into her pocket. She tightens her own hold on Yulya’s hand, calculating their positions. “Thanks,” she says softly. “Thanks so much.”

  Then things move from normal.

  Two men draw out weapons from inside their long coats. The two others sprint toward Yulya and Kat. Kat sees them. Yulya hasn’t yet. She’s turned slightly away.

  Kat swallows, calms herself for what must come next. “What you say makes a lot of sense. So my answer is yes, please.”

  Yulya’s lips loosen into a small smile. But her eyes stay the same. There’s a flicker of uncertainty. She shifts slightly to check behind her, and as her concentration on Kat falters, Kat rips away her hand.

  Yulya lurches forward. Kat kicks her hard in the sciatic nerve in the upper right thigh and begins using the movement to take her over the river wall.

  But Yulya absorbs the kick. Her fingers become a vise, wrenching Kat back. Instead of resisting, Kat calculates the level of pull Yulya’s using against her and lets her body go slack. Yulya steps back to compensate. But her fine balance has gone, and she knows it.

  Yulya pulls Kat toward her and raises her hand to strike. With all her strength, Kat pulls back. Then, just as Yulya’s compensating again, Kat lurches forward, ducks Yulya’s blow, and head-butts her, first in the chest, then under the jaw.

  As Yulya stumbles back, Kat puts her hand on the river wall and swings herself over.

  The fading light has brought with it an evening breeze that runs across the surface of the water. Mud and debris knock against each other. The river surges back and forth against its banks. As she jumps, Kat sees the lights of high-rise apartments, undergrowth, darkness, and the flash of a pistol being fired at her.

  The cold bites straight through her as she hits the river.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Monday, 8:38 p.m., BST

  The water twists downward. Tidal currents drag her deep beneath the surface. She tries a breaststroke, swimming upward, opens her eyes to stinging, muddy water, and can’t reach the surface before being drawn down again.

  Mercedes Vendetta growls in her head.

  “You ever want to know what’s going on, you wait till you get so tired your eyes, your ears, your brain can’t take any more. That’s when you see what’s real.”

  Kat’s lungs are bursting. The water’s sucking her down.

  Another voice, her father talking to her as a little girl. “Your great granddad didn’t make it. He was murdered in a place called Auschwitz. Your granddad crossed the Elbe River to escape the Russians. Before that, he’d crossed a river in Poland running from the Nazis.”

  She can’t remember the river’s name. She wonders if she’ll ever get around to having kids and telling them how she escaped across her own river.

  Her mind’s getting weak. Her blood screams for oxygen.

  Her cell phone’s gone already. She tries to get rid of her shoes when, suddenly, the downward drag stops, and Kat begins turning slowly like a top. She kicks herself up, breaking the surface and gulping in air.

  She’s come up by the side of an anchored barge, exposed to the northern bank, where Yulya is. She ducks under again and swims around to the other side.

  She hooks her hand around a rusting painter ring on the hull and lets her body go slack. The current is strong, pushing her feet in front of her. The water’s cold, but she can stay in.

  She pulls weeds from her hair, runs her tongue around her teeth, and spits out grit. Driftwood bumps her leg.

  There’s only one way she can go, downstream, which means she has to go through Zone One. Zone One seems like the Green Zone they set up in Iraq or what they have around Capitol Hill. It’s quiet inside, but big on checkpoints to get in.

  She will have to float out through the other side, the river her cover, and make landfall in the zone beyond and across, on the southern bank. She needs to find Liz Luxton but doesn’t want to cross a bridge, where there may be a checkpoint.

  She rolls onto her back, legs out in front of her, and lets go of the painter ring. The river washes around her, and the outgoing tide takes her fast. Her lips are pursed, eyes squinting against water surges.

  If you work with it, a fast-flowing river is easier to handle than a slow one. Kat’s hands bat back and forth like fins to keep her direction while the current moves her quickly along.

  You don’t fire a gun in a residential area unless things are bad. Yulya must have known Kat had the file that implicated her. But how? She must have assumed that Kat recognized her before she actually did. Why else take such risks?

  Up ahead, Kat sees a cordon of four police boats strung across the river. At the jetties along the bank, there are more checkpoints for boats that dock. A helicopter circles.

  A minute from now, Kat will be bobbing right under a police searchlight.

  The cordon has created a bottleneck of river traffic, mostly tourist leisure boats. Searchlights penetrate enough to sweep underneath hulls. As she gets closer, she sees two police divers in the water.

  A voice shouts out from a loudspeaker, but a sweep of water washes over Kat’s head, and it fades like a radio tune.

  When she comes up, she sees a policeman on a launch step out of the wheelhouse. He balances himself by holding the edge of the doorway, puts binoculars to his eyes, and points them straight toward Kat.

  Kat goes down and tries to swim backward against the current. Her right knuckles scrape the hull of a passing speedboat. A roar sears through her ears, water pressure pushing up her nose. She’s pulled along in the speedboat’s wake and kicks against the hull to push herself clear.

  Waves from passing boats hit her face. Kat ducks under but knows now how she’s getting through.

  She has to get the timing and the boat exactly right. Too close, and she’ll get chewed up in the propeller. She chooses a slow-moving, midsize tour boat. The first deck has diners peering out
of a light-dimmed restaurant. From the top deck comes music.

  Like finding an air thermal, she maneuvers into its wake and grabs the bottom rim of a tire hanging on the waterline as a fender and hooks her arm inside.

  The boat slows for the checkpoint. Up ahead, another tour boat has been pulled over. Police are on board, checking passengers’ IDs. Searchlights play into the water. An orange inflatable raft bumps up against the side, and a diver on it jumps into the water.

  Fifty yards back from the search, Kat’s boat’s propeller spins into reverse, throwing a gush of white water toward her. Kat takes a mouthful. River weed gets caught in her eye.

  Music from the upper deck goes quiet. The propeller slows. Kat treads water. In all, two tour boats and a barge are being searched by police from the three launches in the cordon.

  If Kat’s boat is called in, she’ll be found for sure. She snatches a glance at each bank. To her left, she recognizes the Houses of Parliament and the Big Ben clock tower. No landfall there. To her right, the London Eye Ferris wheel and a promenade. She twists around. There’s no way she can swim back against the current.

  If they pick her up, it wouldn’t take long for the police to ID her. The first person they would call would be Max Grachev. If he’s anything like his sister, he’ll want her dead. If Kat asks for consular protection, Nate Sayer will turn up, and he wants her back in the States.

  Someone blows a whistle. The engine on Kat’s boat revs, and she’s pulled forward again. She tightens her hold on the tire.

  The music starts up. The boat gathers speed. Pitching and banging against the hull, the tire pulls her along, water gushing around her face, like she’s a hooked fish.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Monday, 10:06 p.m., BST

  Kat makes landfall when the tide is low enough for her to come ashore on a stinking beach of mud, rotting debris, and tiny stones. A night wind whips through her. She wipes water from her face, tries to pick weeds from her hair, but they’re knotted in.

  On the northern bank, London is alive with neon and moving cars. On this side, the area looks desolate. No movement. No voices. No city sounds.

  Fifty yards farther on, a darkened barge is moored to a jetty, with a small, dirty motor dinghy banging alongside.

  The beach stops at a 12-, maybe 20-foot wall; difficult to tell in this light. Metal chains hang down, but are too far apart to climb up. For about four feet from the base of the wall, there is an area of complete darkness, reached by neither the moon nor streetlights.

  Kat steps in there, undresses, leaves the sodden clothes in a heap, and peels off the SIM card taped to her back. The fresh clothes she packed are damp inside the bag but wearable. There’s underwear, jeans, a white tank top, a red cotton shirt, socks, but no shoes. She’ll have to stay with the sodden sneakers.

  She uses a leg of the jeans to dry herself a bit, but they’re too coarse to soak up much. Despite the chill, she stands naked, letting the wind dry her skin while she checks the waterproof pouch with the SIM and Suzy’s credit cards. They seem to have survived.

  Her software cards and Suzy’s hard drive made it through, too.

  The cell phone’s gone, and she remembers during the last seconds before she jumped into the river that Cage was calling.

  She dresses while working through the questions.

  Grachev’s behavior now makes more sense. He’s assigned to head up Suzy’s murder investigation, yet he does nothing. Suzy’s computer stays untouched in her apartment. Grachev stays in London, while the murder site is 100 miles away. The only thing he does is ask Kat to flush out Liz Luxton.

  Suzy may have had a dozen different people to meet over the next few days. What’s so special about Liz Luxton?

  Then he warns Kat away. He must have anticipated that Kat would go back to Suzy’s apartment, then tipped off Yulya, who waited outside either to abduct or kill Kat. Either way, Max and Yulya working together, along with a small team of gunmen, makes as much sense as anything else she can come up with.

  But how does such a bent homicide detective get himself assigned to the case? Does it mean that the assistant police commissioner, Stephen Cranley, is also involved?

  A more tenuous connection comes to mind: Suzy’s murder coincided with Kat’s breaking into the Kazakh embassy. They occurred on the same day. Was the break-in the catalyst? Or was Kat sent in there because Suzy had been murdered? Kat gasps at what this line of thought implies: could Bill Cage be part of this?

  Kat’s eyes sting around the rims. Wiping them doesn’t help. Her legs give way, and she balances against the river wall like a drunk, barely managing to put on the damp clothes. Exhaustion takes her by surprise.

  She squats by the wall, eyes closed, gathering her strength, focusing her thoughts on the single pinpoint of what she needs to do. She gets up and, carrying her previous outfit, walks to the jetty where the barge is.

  The jetty ramp to the barge has two strips of thin red carpet. They are dry. The tide’s going out, and it’ll be hours before it comes back in again. Kat lifts up the carpets and lays one on the beach, directly beneath the ramp. She covers her sodden clothes with the other as a pillow and lies down.

  Before sleep takes her, she sees an image of two Asian women, holding hands, leaving bloodstains on a wall as they slide, dying, to the floor.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tuesday, 6:32 a.m., BST

  Day’s first light reveals two tall tenement blocks on one side of the main street. Grass scrubland lies around them. On the other side, a derelict building has windows smashed and tiles missing from the sloping roof.

  Graffiti has been sprayed onto a wooden fence with the faded logo of a security firm. RAND FOR PEACE, it says, with a cartoon image of the young British prime minister.

  What Kat needs is people, crowds of them, distracted and pressing against each other. She sees no one.

  Half a mile ahead is an intersection with traffic lights, but no vehicles. Across the road from her, just beyond the tenements, are five huge trash cans for recycling. She puts her sodden clothes in one and walks toward the intersection.

  A white contractor’s truck passes her from behind, slows at the lights, and takes a right turn. A red double-decker bus crosses the intersection, heading west. Kat spots video cameras on four lampposts and two yellow traffic detectors.

  At the bus stop, she slows, but doesn’t stop walking. The bus pulls up. A half dozen people get on. Two use fingerprint ID on board with the driver. Two flap open their wallets to produce electronic ID cards. One buys a ticket with coins from a machine on the street. One has a ticket already.

  The driver has a bank of monitors in his cab. He wears headphones and an earpiece. One of the passengers pulls a hood over his head, covering his eyes to avoid iris scanners. TV screens, in pairs, surround the bus’s lower and upper decks. Kat sees a broadcast of a soccer team filing onto a plane.

  The bus is too empty to be of any use. What’s more, no one’s using a cell phone. She keeps walking.

  More people are around. They walk purposefully, their expressions contradictory, angry, yet defiant.

  Zone One is the area where people realize the benefits of state protection. In this zone, they feel victims of it. More cameras watch them. More screens influence them. The road is potholed, the buildings derelict, litter and graffiti abundant.

  And, still, no cell phones for the taking.

  A quarter mile farther along, outside a row of shops, she comes across two telephone booths that take credit cards, bills, and coins.

  The landlines from the telephone booth would be vulnerable if targeted, which in an area like this, they might be. Kat plans to make a single call to Cage, to the one number she knows is secure.

  Then, with a stolen cell phone, she will text him to call her. Because there might be triangulation detection on the stolen phone, Kat will need two, ideally three, to make it work.

  She goes into one of the phone booths. It’s broken, with prostitutes’ calling
cards taped to the glass. The next phone is working, and she feeds in a £50 note. A message comes up, PLEASE INSERT YOUR IDENTITY CARD OR CREDIT CARD NUMBER.

  She presses the cancel button. Another message. THIS MACHINE CANNOT REFUND YOUR MONEY. PLEASE INSERT YOUR IDENTITY CARD, AND A REFUND WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE CREDITED TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR CARD WITH YOU, PLEASE INSERT YOUR PERSONAL ID NUMBER.

  Then in big letters, like a cigarette pack warning, IT IS ILLEGAL TO BE WITHOUT YOUR ID CARD. MAXIMUM PENALTY—IMPRISONMENT.

  Wise up, says Kat to herself. Why would anyone put in a £50 note, unless they were calling overseas? Chances are, it sounded off an alert.

  A printed card comes out. On it is a photograph of Kat, a record of her fingerprint, and a note that she is owed £50 by British Telecom.

  The final line says USER’S IDENTITY UNKNOWN.

  She walks quickly along the main road toward Rotherhithe subway station. As she gets closer, she sees what she needs.

  A crush of people is gathered under screens outside the subway entrance. The sports screen is split. One side shows an interview with the England soccer captain. The other runs replay highlights of the match with China. On the second screen, which no one is watching, two bearded men are paraded at an army barracks. The caption says KASHMIRI TERROR COMMANDERS CAPTURED.

  Kat’s thefts take less than five seconds each. One cell phone is hidden only by a scarf in a woman’s bag. Kat identifies the second by its bulge in the side pocket of some overalls. The third has worked its way loose from a belt case whose covering flap is undone.

  Kat breaks away from the throng and heads south. She turns the phones off to lower the risk of triangulation. She walks for more than a mile. Then, at a newsstand, she buys chocolate, a Coke, a hairbrush, and an A–Z London map book. As she’s paying, she sees a stack of pocketknives and buys one, too. The newspaper headlines are of England’s soccer victory over China.

  Dr. Christopher North, author of the Project Peace pamphlet, is on the newsstand’s TV. The volume is turned up high, the sports channel muted.

 

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