“Changed how?”
“How can I explain it to you? Like alcoholics, maybe like that. We started drinking together. And then I stopped. But Frank couldn’t. He couldn’t stop. One more. One more. You know what’s in the drink? Secrets. And he’s the only one who knows. That’s what he likes,” she said, facing him, her voice sour, a look between them. “It doesn’t matter what it is, the secret. As long as he knows it. And you don’t. So he can smile while he does it—betray you. Then one more.” She turned back. “He couldn’t stop. So I started drinking something else.”
“We can fix that. When we get home,” Simon said.
“Fix it. You never understand anything. The knight to the rescue. I don’t want to be rescued.” She looked at Frank. “When I saw you shoot Boris, it all went through my head. What we are now.”
Nancy had twisted in her seat to listen, her eyes wide and shiny, like mirrors, and suddenly, looking at her dismayed expression, Simon could see Frank and Jo in them, finally see because she saw it, what they had done to each other.
“And it’s my fault,” Jo said, skittish, her hands moving.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Frank said, calming her. Something they’d said before.
Simon found himself edging away from them on the seat, as if he needed more air. An inch, any distance.
“So there’s a story for you,” Jo said to Hal.
“We have to be careful with that,” Simon said. “There’s a big difference between knowing and doing. You’ve never been charged—”
“To the rescue again,” Jo said, lifting her hand, a mock call to arms. “They’re going to charge me? Where do they find me? That woman’s gone. A new name. Only the Agency knows where I am. You think they’d tell? Not as long as Frank is talking. All those secrets. After that, who knows?” Fluttering her hand, her voice drifting, eyes following, somewhere inside now.
Frank looked over, a reassuring glance. “Give her a minute.” Moving her hand down, a caretaker.
“She going to be all right? At the checkpoint?” Unpredictable, out of focus, guards peering at her.
She turned to him. “I was so happy when you came,” she said, her voice still vague. “I never thought— So you’re good at it too.”
In the front seat, Nancy had begun to shake, a kind of crying without tears.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Hal said.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Not you. Come on.”
“I keep seeing his head. Everything coming out—”
“Shh.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “That’s the same car for a while,” he said to the back. “What do you think?”
Everyone turned to look, tense.
“Let him pass you. Then you’ll know,” Simon said.
Hal waited for an open stretch, then slowed the car. Almost immediately, the car behind swung out and overtook them, leaving a stream of visible exhaust.
“They all look alike, that’s the trouble,” Hal said. “Not far now. We’re making good time.”
But in the car they seemed to be not moving at all, the flat landscape the same one they’d seen minutes ago. Frank had sat back, his mind somewhere else, but the others fidgeted, nervous. How long before the watchman checked the alleyway? But he’d call the police, not the men at the station, another delay. Unless they’d already started combing the streets for the Volvo and found Boris instead. Or nothing had happened, the winches clanging on the quay, the caretaker having a peaceful smoke.
“This is it,” Hal said. “Where the trucks are.”
Up ahead, a cluster of low buildings, with trucks parked at the edge of the road, waiting for inspection. As they got closer, they could see the barriers across the road, the tollbooth-like stations on either side, topped with red stars, customs sheds and huts for the guards in the winter, uniforms.
Simon reached into the raincoat pocket. “You’d better have these,” he said, handing over the passports and visas.
“Give them all to Hal,” Frank said. “Let him be group leader. How’s your Russian?”
“Good enough for this.”
“So that’s what I looked like,” Jo said, opening hers.
“You still do,” Simon said. “You all right?”
“You keep asking that. And if I said no?”
“I’m thinking about the others.” A nod to the front. “We have to do this right.”
“Remember,” Frank said. “They’re not used to American passports. Americans fly in and out. They don’t drive. So they’ll be curious. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Until it does,” Jo said.
A guard waved the car over to the side. Hal rolled down the window and handed him the passports and visas in a stack. Some Russian that Simon couldn’t follow.
“Honey, he needs the registration,” Hal said, pointing to the glove compartment. “We have to get out. They want to go over the car.”
Trunk. Under the hood. Seats, running their hands into the seams.
“What are they looking for?” Simon said to Frank.
“Nothing.”
He turned his head slightly, away from the guard with the passports, peering now at their faces. As Simon had guessed, once he had matched the face to the picture, he moved on to the visas, in more comfortable Cyrillic. Frank’s name apparently not recognized. Old news. A sharp question and an exchange in Russian with Hal.
“ ‘Where are we going?’ I told him shopping. In Helsinki. He wants to know why so many. People go to Helsinki, they want an empty car to bring the stuff back.”
“Tell him we’re picking up another car there,” Frank said. “A new one.” He glanced at the car. “A Saab.”
“You tell him.”
“No, be point man. The Russian speaker. Let him deal with you.”
“He says you’ll need papers to bring it in.”
Frank nodded. “We know. The dealer’s arranged it.”
“Why no luggage?”
“Just pick up and back. We didn’t want to take up room in the car. With all the stuff. He buying it?”
“I think so. It’s why any foreigner comes through here, so he’s not surprised. I can’t tell if we should offer to pick up something for him. They all want stuff, but maybe he’s—”
“No, keep it straight.”
Simon looked around the post. Guns everywhere, a fence on either side of the road. Beyond the barrier a pine forest. What did they do at night?
The guard went back to examining the passports, the indecipherable English, any bureaucrat, making a show of being thorough. The others had finished with the car. Simon felt his leg jiggle, anxious, glancing back down the road. Why not just wave them through, everything plausible. The guard was handing Hal the passports, but now looked at Simon.
“He wants to see your raincoat. If there’s anything—”
Simon looked up, alarmed. What if he wanted to pat him down? He felt the weight of the gun in his jacket pocket. A death warrant. But where else could he have put it? A body search at a border crossing? On an American passport? Led into one of the sheds, stripped. He handed over the raincoat, the guard jamming his hands into the pockets. Coming out with his notes.
“He wants to know what these are.”
Looking at the pages, scribbles in English.
“Notes to myself. A diary.”
“About Russia?”
“No, no. Personal.”
A frown on the guard’s forehead. Impossible to say the Service had already approved them. Impossible to say anything. Weeks of work.