Girl from Nowhere

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Girl from Nowhere Page 29

by Tiffany Rosenhan


  Todd’s eyes close. He is done answering my questions.

  A crackling sound emanates from Todd’s ear. Aksel unclips the earpiece and shoves it into his own ear.

  “Exfil Danube-Green,” he relays to me, confusion etched across his brow. “St. Regis. You know what that means?”

  “No,” I respond, “but I know the hotel.”

  Sirens pulse the humid air. Shifting down into second gear, I turn toward Bosphorus Bridge. Ahead of us, cars drive in a steady line across the sparkling cerulean water. Sailboats skim in the distance. As we near the bridge, the sirens increase.

  The gates at the head of the bridge roll together. The congested road forces me to slow down. Both gates are closing inward, blocking our access. A policeman stands in front of the gates, stopping traffic—a checkpoint for every vehicle.

  I turn the car onto the single pedestrian lane, bypass the stopped cars, veer sharply left, and swerve within centimeters of the policeman’s back. I take a hard right and enter the bridge via the two-meter gap between the closing gates, clipping the Fiat’s side mirrors. I blare the horn, and people jump out of the way.

  Fifteen hundred meters ahead on the north side of the bridge, policemen are constructing a barricade—strips of plywood clumsily nailed together.

  I crash through it.

  Forty seconds is all it takes to reach Europe. In my rearview mirror, I see two police cars turning around to chase us.

  “Slow down, Sophia,” Aksel mutters under his breath. He is trying to tourniquet Todd’s arm with the other half of his shirt.

  Speeding up, I head south onto Çırağan Road, then right onto Kadirgalar. Ahead is a wooded hill with landscaped terraces and iron fences; I steer north onto the private lane, leading into the gardens of the St. Regis Hotel. Above us, the pitched hotel roof looms. The tires trample over the manicured flowers as we barrel toward the service entrance, bashing through the striped guard gate.

  We cross over the clay tennis courts and onto a grassy meadow beside the clubhouse. Two opulent hotel guests are retrieving their clubs from a golf cart when we drive up. They dive for cover behind a lemon tree topiary.

  I slam on the brakes and shut off the engine. Aksel and I gurney Todd out of the car and onto the soft grass.

  From this height, I can see the red tile roofs of the city, the spires of the Blue Mosque, the Byzantine spikes of Hagia Sophia jutting into the cobalt sky.

  We are only kilometers from the Slovak Consulate. Our position is too exposed; we are too close to the city center—

  From the west, a woosh-woosh-woosh of chopper blades torpedoes the air; a rush of wind swirls above us, and our burned clothes flap around our bodies.

  A Black Hawk descends.

  Behind us, breaking through the gates of the St. Regis, are three armored vans—either Abramovich’s men, every policeman in Istanbul, or both. They start shooting aggressively before they are even within range.

  A soldier inside the helicopter covers us, firing stun grenades from a shoulder-mounted mortar. The grenades land in bright violet blasts.

  A second airman hops out of the chopper and runs toward us. Strafing fire whistles above us, trying to hit the chopper. The airman reaches us, throws two smoke grenades over his shoulder, and yells, “Now!”

  Under cover of the smoke grenade, he leads us to the chopper.

  Aksel heaves Todd into the helicopter, and two soldiers pull him up onto a stretcher.

  When a medic reaches his hand down to pull me inside, I take it. Aksel leaps in behind me. In less than six seconds, we are in the air, above the smoke.

  Once we have cleared the airspace over Istanbul, a squadron of fighter jets appear on all four sides of the helicopter—an F-18 escort.

  An hour later, we land at a NATO base in Kosovo. We climb down from the helicopter. We don’t stop. Don’t talk to anyone. We follow our escort to an MN-2 transport.

  As we ascend the ramp into the plane, someone rushes up behind me and clutches my shoulders; I whirl around, collapsing against her.

  “Mom,” I cry.

  CHAPTER 63

  During takeoff, we sit quietly in a row on the bench seat. I hold my stomach, bracing myself against the queasy feeling that accompanies a rapid ascent. As we reach fifteen thousand feet, the pilot eases the MN-2 straight, tapering off the climb.

  Aksel drapes his arm over my shoulder, pulling me into him.

  I’ve forgotten how perfectly his jaw meets the bottom of his cheek, the smooth, light bronze color of his skin, his translucent green eyes, but most importantly, how, tucked into the crook of his shoulder, I feel safe. For the first time since I left Waterford.

  Aksel brushes my hair back from my cheek and stares at me. I must look ragged. My bandages need to be redressed; the lidocaine jelly applied to our burns will wear off soon. Aksel has a thick bandage on the side of his neck, and like mine, the tops of his hands and forearms are covered in gauze.

  “You okay?” His deep, quiet voice is so full of concern that I stop fighting it. As I curl into Aksel’s chest, tears pour out of me in a wave of visceral pain.

  When I wake hours later, the sky is a black vault of glittering stars. The airmen onboard are asleep. The MN-2 is a reconfigured Soviet cargo plane used by NATO to transport medical supplies. There is a bank of seats on either side and a running platform down the center.

  Aksel’s arm is taut around my lower back. My head is on his shoulder. He hands me a box of cranberry juice. “You need to drink,” he says kindly. “It’s all that’s on board.”

  I drink all the juice, so he hands me another box and I drink that too. Finished, he wraps a wool NATO blanket across my body, and I lay my head back onto his shoulder.

  The events of the last forty-eight hours whirl inside me; memories both vivid and blurry, both happening at a distance and convulsing inside my chest.

  Trying to concentrate on anything other than the overwhelming abyss of emptiness my father’s absence has created—I look at Aksel, biting my bottom lip. “Aksel, how are you here?”

  Aksel stares darkly down the interior of the plane before looking back at me. “After you left Waterford, I was so angry. I flew out to see my grandfather, to see if he knew anything. But, as I was leaving Dulles, walking through the terminal in a big crowd of people, someone pushed an earbud into my hand. I didn’t see who it was, but I clipped it in anyway and listened to the instructions. Fifteen minutes later, I was boarding a flight to Amsterdam.”

  I stare at him inquiringly.

  “I was sitting down in my seat, and a low voice in my ear grunted, ‘You can take that out now.’ I turned and”—Aksel smirks—“it was Todd.”

  Todd. Had my father ordered him? My mother?

  “How did he find me?”

  My mother approaches us. I must appear perplexed because she smiles—a soft smile I haven’t seen her wear since I played the Chopin. Close now, my mother says, “For eighteen months, it was feasible, unlikely but feasible, for Bekami and CNF to track us abroad, but Bekami’s awareness of our move to Waterford could only be a result of either a very sophisticated intelligence network, or an infiltrator.”

  “An informant,” I say, remembering the questions inside the Bubble.

  “Yes. Someone on the inside. David tracked us after we left the embassy, hoping to get his own lead on Bekami, but he lost us between Turkmenistan and Egypt. However, a few days afterward, something unexpected happened.” She pauses. “David got your signal.”

  My signal. By using his SOS protocol, my father managed to save my life even after he was gone. I bite down hard on my lip, but that doesn’t stop the tears from swelling.

  “As a backup measure”—my mother swallows, maintaining her composure—“your father routed your satellite transmitter to David in Berlin.”

  “David?” I ask, confused. “Why him?”

  “He was close to your father for a very long time.”

  “He interrogated me!”

  “He protected y
ou. David was trying to clear your name, Sophia, not incriminate you. He was our fail-safe should something ever happen to either of us.” She looks down, because something had happened.

  After a pause, Aksel nods at my mother. “We had just landed in Amsterdam when Todd got a message. We walked right back inside and boarded a flight to Istanbul.”

  Istanbul. I can pick up the pieces after that. My restless mother stands and resumes pacing the center aisle out of earshot.

  “It was my mother,” I say quietly to Aksel, watching her. “The woman you met in Berlin who told you about your parents, wasn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t your mother, Sophia.”

  “It had to be,” I persist.

  “It wasn’t,” he says firmly, looking down at me. “I told you it was a woman who didn’t tell me her name.”

  The jet rumbles side to side as we pass through turbulence. A few airmen wake and glance around the cabin, but seconds later the cabin settles and they reclose their eyes.

  My pulse drums beneath my burned skin. “Aksel, I wasn’t sure you’d ever want to see me again …” I keep my voice steady. I have to ask; I have to hear his answer even if it tears me open. “Your grandfather told you my parents shot down their plane, didn’t he?”

  With my fingers wound loosely through his, the side of my body tucked against his chest, and his arm draped across my back, I can feel every muscle in his body go tense.

  I have never wanted to be more wrong in my life.

  “Yes,” he answers quietly.

  “And do you believe him?”

  “No, Sophia,” he says.

  Hot tears form in the rims of my eyes. “But it could have been. I know what they’ve done.” I gesture around the old jet. “What this is, what happens to people.”

  “Sophia, stop.” He clasps my fingers securely between his. “Your parents didn’t kill my parents. Whoever did—”

  “But my mother convinced your dad to be her agent and so because of her—”

  “My dad knew the risk. If he agreed to give information, he did it because he believed in it. He wasn’t coerced.”

  I shake my head. “How can you be certain?”

  A faint smile appears on his lips. “I can’t be, I guess. But I have to believe that there are good people out there, like my parents, who try to do the right thing.”

  The plane jerks through a cloud, and I wait for the cabin to stop rocking before I make eye contact with Aksel.

  “Aksel, I swear I didn’t know you were being recruited or—” I start, but he cuts me off.

  “I didn’t either.” He shrugs. “Not really. I only knew I was asked to attend a secret pre–basic training camp by some Navy guy. While I was there, I was approached about entering a special, clandestine track at the Academy. I didn’t know it was …” Aksel motions around the plane. “This …”

  For a moment, our eyes linger. He lowers his voice, shrugging reticently. “But maybe that’s the point? If candidates like me knew before we agreed, would anyone ever join?”

  “So, you couldn’t tell me about the training camp?”

  “Simple rules. If you tell anyone, you’re out.”

  “How many of you are there?” I ask hesitantly.

  “A few dozen, I suppose. They don’t tell us.”

  My mother comes over and sits down again. She has obviously been listening, trying to give us privacy, despite the confined space.

  “It’s been that way for years, Sophia. We compartmentalize. Counterterrorist teams operate on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. It’s how you’ve learned much from us, but knew nothing about ON-YX, right? It’s how Farhad could get no information from you during your kidnapping. It’s why Aksel doesn’t know about others in his training camp, why he was told so little about his parents’ death, yet just enough.”

  Aksel shifts his body so we face each other. A streak of black soot runs along his jawline.

  “So, what now?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says reluctantly. “Training? Recruitment? Joining up? It all feels too far away to think about.”

  He doesn’t want to admit it, and neither of us wants to confront it, but the future is a thick cloud of rain, hovering.

  “And what about us? Now that you know …” I trail off. Now that he knows my parents are spies? Killers? Traitors? Liars? That my mother sent his parents to their deaths? That terrorists know my name—chased me across the world to ransom me? That because of me, Chechen terrorists now have a nuclear weapon?

  The plane rocks again, and we secure the buckles across our laps. There is so much I want to tell Aksel, so much I need to tell him, but none of it seems important. Not right now.

  Words can’t heal us. Only time. One breath at a time.

  Aksel stares down at me. “I realized something the night I first asked you out. None of this stuff matters. It didn’t then, it doesn’t now, and it won’t in the future. Sophia, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and nothing, nothing, can change that.”

  My fingers find the hem of his shirt, and I cling to it. “But I’m entangled in some very bad things.”

  “We both are, now,” he points out.

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “If accepting this means being with you?” He touches his bandaged hand to my cheek. “Then, yeah, I’m more than okay with it.”

  I stare up at Aksel, half smiling, and trying not to cry, and wondering how in the world this can ever work between us. “You’ve saved my life, like”—I tick off my fingers—“three times?”

  Aksel pushes aside a stray lock of my hair sticking to the gauze on the side of my neck. “Nah.” He grins. “You could have taken the grizzly. And you’ve saved me, so on my ledger we’re more than even.”

  But behind his smiling expression is a somber acceptance.

  I bite my lip, fighting back the emotion. I never wanted this life for myself, and I certainly don’t want it for Aksel.

  “I guess all I want to know right now is: What do you hope happens in your future? Beyond all this?” I wave my hand at the cargo net.

  To my surprise, Aksel looks at me emphatically. “Nothing’s changed.” He bends over me, his lips next to my ear. His voice is a low, coarse hum. “I want to be with you, Sophia.”

  I stare at the bandages down the side of his neck, worry seeping into my skin. I’ve been naive, while Aksel has been right. He shouldn’t have become involved with me. I felt it that first night in the avalanche, a gut feeling compounded by years of fear. Now, it has morphed into reality and I am as uncertain as ever. No matter what happens, our lives are irrevocably linked and we must confront this unknown territory.

  Aksel notices the concern on my face. “Hey,” he says soothingly. “All we have to worry about is going back to school and”—the corner of his lip tilts upward—“hanging out.”

  “Hanging out?” I murmur. It seems such a foreign, intangible concept from thirty thousand feet up in the cargo hold of a NATO jet.

  Aksel gazes across the plane. His eyes return to mine, and he runs his thumb down the center of my hand. “I suppose I kind of like you.”

  I look up at him from beneath my lashes. “Still only kind of?”

  Aksel’s emerald eyes pierce mine. “Sophia Hepworth, I’m in love with you.”

  CHAPTER 64

  The pilot steps out from the cockpit and walks over to us. He is tall, with high cheekbones and a square jaw. He introduced himself earlier, when we stopped at Northwood in England to refuel and take on more passengers.

  A small Latvian flag patch is sewn on his right sleeve, and he is wearing a sidearm in a shoulder holster. He eyes my mother a few seats away. Then Aksel. Then me.

  He is clearly unaccustomed to briefing two teenagers and an elegant woman wearing pearl earrings and a cardigan sweater.

  “If you look out the window here,” he says placidly, “you’ll see the lights of Narsaq Kujalleq, the southernmost town in Greenland. Since we’re flying at low a
ltitude with a bright moon, you might see some of the largest icebergs in the North Atlantic. Then it’s five hours of ocean until we reach base.”

  He pauses before continuing, “I’ll remind you, this is an old Soviet MN-2. It’s been retrofitted to drop food and aid, but it’s not typically used for cargo like yourselves.” He points to the ceiling of the jet, politely adding, “The Soviet cockpits monitored the cargo to prevent theft using visual and audio recording systems … and those, uh, systems remain.”

  He’s been listening to everything we’ve said? I blush, embarrassed. My mother nods a thank-you, and the pilot returns to the cockpit.

  “Whoops,” my mother says under her breath once he’s left.

  I am distracted, thinking about something she said earlier. I look at her now, trying to piece it together. “We took so many precautions, but Bekami always knew where we were. Where I was. He found me in Hütteldorf, Mom. Yet no one could have predicted I’d jump off that train. Not even me …”

  No one knows where we are going before we take off … That’s how we stay safe … We get in the air before they can track us … I only answer to one person …

  “Aksel—” I start, but something has caught his attention.

  “Her,” he murmurs. I follow his line of vision to a petite figure moving toward us. He tightens his grip protectively around my hand.

  “It was her,” he repeats quietly, under his breath.

  A woman sits down across from us. “You’ve had some rest, I hope?”

  I stiffen beside Aksel. I glance between him and the woman. Her?

  “Aksel, you performed exceptionally well—ON-YX excels because of recruits like you. It’s quite the opportunity you had, demonstrating your skills under pressure like that.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Aksel answers, except there is no gratitude in his voice.

  “And Sophia,” she says effusively, “you are a brave, resourceful young woman. I drove all the way from London and boarded at Northwood to finally meet you.”

  I recognize her—she was with Andrews when my father met him at the souk in Tunis; she was buying the silver ashtray.

  The petite woman has short-trimmed gray hair and is wearing a Burberry scarf knotted beneath her throat. My mother doesn’t seem surprised by the woman’s presence. In fact, she seems deferential.

 

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