“Nothing we didn’t expect,” the boy told him. “You?”
The young man shook his head while looking suspiciously at Paweł. “The map’s accurate; they were waiting for me at the dustoff. All we had to do was walk back.”
The boy nodded and Paweł thought he saw a huge weight lift off his shoulders. “All right, then. Take everyone inside and get them cleaned up. There’s a change of clothes for everybody. Excuse the mess.”
“Is this going to happen every time we do this?” asked the young man.
“No,” said the boy. “Sometimes it might be really dangerous.”
The young man snorted and went to chivvy the English, who were standing huddled nervously together, into the lodge. One of the big blond men said, “This is a lot of bloodshed for what was supposed to be a routine job.”
The boy shrugged. “I think we’ve flushed out another player.” He tossed the big man the bag containing the wallets and phones. “They’ll have transport somewhere nearby; search it and then get rid of it. Then see if you can find out who they were and who they were working for.”
The big man held up the plastic bag and squinted at the contents. “Shouldn’t be hard; if they were carrying ID they weren’t professionals.”
The boy nodded. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, I want to be out of here in half an hour. Send someone out to sweep for backup and I’ll meet you all back at the rendezvous point in two days.”
“Okay.” And the two men pulled up their hoods and disappeared again. For such large men, they moved almost soundlessly across the forest floor; Paweł could barely hear them leave.
When they’d gone, the boy said, “So, how long have you known about them?”
“The English?” said Paweł. He shrugged. “All my life.”
“Do you know where they’ve come from?”
Paweł shrugged again. “I’m a gamekeeper.”
“Apart from the Berlin Years.”
“I’m a gamekeeper,” he said again. “My father was a gamekeeper, and his father. We go where we want to in the forest. Sometimes we meet English gamekeepers.”
The boy looked into the woods. “Well, it’s forest on both sides of the border,” he said, half to himself. “I suppose sometimes it can be hard to know which side you’re on.” He looked at Paweł.
For quite a long time, they stood looking at each other. There seemed, Paweł thought, no point in denying it. “They say you can have these,” he said finally, nodding at the Lodge. “Try and take any more out, and you’ll be stopped.”
“And this message is from…?”
“Does it matter?”
“From the same people who sent the mafia boys?”
“No. That was someone else. I don’t know who and I don’t know why.” Paweł watched the boy thinking about this. “You seem to have many more enemies than friends.”
“That is hard to argue with,” the boy agreed. He looked at Paweł and said, “How old are you, by the way?”
Which was such an unusual question, considering the situation, that Paweł didn’t even think of lying. “I’m almost ninety,” he said.
“You’re ninety-eight,” said the boy. “And you don’t look a day over sixty. Life in the forest seems to agree with you.”
Paweł scowled.
“You know,” the boy went on, “about eighteen months ago I met a man who swore blind that time passes more slowly on the other side of the border. I thought that was bullshit. How can time pass more slowly in one place than in another? But maybe he was right. Maybe you’ve spent quite a lot of time over there. Hm?”
Paweł glared at him.
The boy nodded. “Thought so. Now that would be a secret worth killing to protect.” He rubbed his face. “Okay, Mr Pawluk. We’ll be leaving soon and you can go back to keeping an eye on the paths. The next time you see whoever it is you work for, tell them this isn’t over.”
“You will be stopped,” warned Paweł. “Come on; you got four out. That’s a victory in itself. Isn’t that enough?”
“Enough?” said the boy. “Mr Pawluk, in the past ten years I have been chased around Europe, kidnapped, beaten up, shot at and lied to by virtually everyone I’ve trusted.” He turned, picked up his shovel and started to carry it back towards the Lodge. Paweł thought he suddenly looked exhausted. “A lot of people have died,” he went on without looking round. “Including my brother. All because someone, somewhere, wants to stop these people going where they want.” He paused and gestured at the Lodge with the shovel. “Or because someone else wants to know how to get into the Community. Or because someone else wants to stop people finding out about the Community. I honestly don’t know any more and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being ridden around like an old pony.” He looked at the shovel for a moment as if only now realising it was in his hand, then he threw it into the undergrowth and went tiredly up the steps to the front door of the Lodge.
“Tell your friends I haven’t even started yet,” he said, and he went inside.
Other Books by Solaris
‘The Eidolon’ by Libby McGugan
When physicist Robert Strong – newly unemployed and single – is offered a hundred thousand pounds for a week’s work, he’s understandably sceptical. But Victor Amos, head of the mysterious Observation Research Board, has compelling proof that the next round of experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider poses a real threat to the whole world. And he needs Robert to sabotage it.
Robert’s life is falling apart. His work at the Dark Matter Research Laboratory in Middlesbrough was taken away from him; his girlfriend, struggling to cope with the loss of her sister, has left. He returns home to Scotland, seeking sanctuary and rest, and instead starts to question his own sanity as the dead begin appearing to him, in dreams and in waking. Accepting Amos’s offer, Robert flies to Geneva, but as he infiltrates CERN, everything he once understood about reality and science, about the boundary between life and death, changes forever.
Mixing science, philosophy and espionage, Libby McGugan’s stunning debut is a thriller like no other.
‘Dream London’ by Tony Ballantyne
Captain Jim Wedderburn has looks, style and courage. He’s adored by women, respected by men and feared by his enemies. He’s the man to find out who has twisted London into this strange new world.
But in Dream London the city changes a little every night and the people change a little every day. The towers are growing taller, the parks have hidden themselves away and the streets form themselves into strange new patterns.
There are people sailing in from new lands down the river, new criminals emerging in the East End and a path spiraling down to another world.
Everyone is changing, no one is who they seem to be.
‘A real feat of the imagination, this is a really exceptional book, unlike anything I’ve ever read before.’