His whole body was trembling. He didn’t know why it came as such a shock, since he knew very well that he had done it to himself, that he was the one who had severed his ties to her and not the other way around. Suddenly he missed her scent, her hands, the heat of her body, missed her so much he felt hollow inside. Even missed the frightening feeling of being carried along when she latched onto some preposterous cause, sinking her teeth into it and shaking it half to death. But how could he go back? Even if he found Tamás now, got the money one way or another, if he made it back to Budapest again … he still wouldn’t be going back to the same life.
He scrolled down through the list of messages in his inbox until he got to one from tamas49 at a Hotmail address. The e-mail was longer than the text messages and just as desperate.
Phrala, I don’t know if you will help me. Maybe, maybe not. But you will help Mom and the girls, won’t you? It’s for them, all of this. I would do it myself if I could, but I’m sicker than a dog. I can’t stand. Having trouble seeing. Don’t respond, just come. I’ll try to hide my phone once I’m done writing this message, but if they find it and you have responded, then they might see what you write. I don’t trust them. I only trust you. Write this down and delete the message. You’ll find out the rest when you get here.
There was an address and some columns of numbers. One column was dates, he was pretty sure, but he didn’t know what to make of the second. Phone numbers, maybe? They looked a little short, only eight digits. But they must be phone numbers after all because Tamás had added underneath: Only texts, no calls. Hurry.
Someone had courteously provided a little notepad and a pen with the ferry company’s logo next to the computer. Sándor wrote down both the address and the series of numbers. He checked to make sure he had it right and then obediently deleted the e-mail. I can’t stand. Having trouble seeing. Tamás, what the hell is wrong with you? And who are “they”? Who don’t you trust?
He sat for a while staring at the pale gray computer screen. He had to find Tamás now, as quickly as possible.
“The ferry will be docking in a few moments. We kindly ask passengers to return to the car deck.…”
Sándor stuck the slip of paper in his jacket pocket and stood up.
DOWNSTAIRS IN THE car deck, the driver was standing with one foot on the bottom step of the bus, forcing Sándor to edge past him to get back on again. While he still had one foot on the briny and slippery oil-spattered deck, the man suddenly shifted forward, trapping Sándor against the door.
“Your card,” he said.
It took Sándor a second to understand what he meant. It felt like several weeks since he had stood on the highway ramp outside Schwartzheide and stolen his own Visa card from another man’s pocket. But now apparently the driver had discovered his “theft.”
“But it’s my card.”
“Did you go to the duty free shop on the ferry?”
“No.…” Sándor said, confused.
The driver stuck his hands into Sándor’s pockets, both his jacket and his trousers, frisking him like a nosy customs agent. “What are you doing?” Sándor protested.
“What do you think? If even one of us smuggles so much as a carton of cigarettes, they’ll detain the whole bus. And believe me, they’re going to check us. Thoroughly, if you catch my drift. People like us, we always get checked.”
It hadn’t occurred to Sándor that the reason the driver had confiscated their credit cards was that he had to maintain this kind of discipline. Sándor stood passively as the man patted him down, running his hands inside his waistband and then sliding them down his thighs. He just hoped they were far enough inside the bus that this humiliation wasn’t providing a moment of entertainment for all the other ferry passengers. Finally the driver loaded everything he had found—a handkerchief, wallet, comb, the slip of paper with Tamás’s numbers on it, the Morgan Kane book he was currently rereading—back into Sándor’s arms.
“OK,” he said. “But when it’s time to go back, I’m going to need your card again. Are you coming?”
Sándor nodded, stuffing his possessions back into his various pockets. Just at that moment, the bow doors began to slide open, and the driver hurried to take his seat and get his ailing bus started.
“When will we be in Copenhagen?” Sándor asked.
“In an hour and a half, if I can get this rust bucket going. If not it might be faster to walk.”
“Is Valby close to Copenhagen?” That was the name of the town in the address Tamás had given him.
“It’s in Copenhagen, dimwit. That’s where we’re going. Go get in your seat, and shut the fuck up.”
Nina aimed a quick, precise blow at the vicious little gnat that had been hounding her for the past thirty seconds. First it had gone for the back of her neck, then it had changed tactics and tried her lips, eyes, and ears. Now it was smeared across her bare shoulder, a small disgusting streak of blood. She brushed the worst of it away and looked around at the crowd of happy people with the growing sense that she had landed on some alien planet. Class 2A’s first big overnight field trip. When Nina was a kid, that kind of thing was between the kids and the school. These days the parents were supposed to come along to “get to know each other.” And that was just one horror on a long list of social activities requiring creative costumes, fake smiles, and liters of mediocre coffee. Thank god the school year was drawing to an end; she was completely and utterly fed-up. But here they were, in one final binge of get-togetherness, in an old Boy Scout cabin near Solrød Beach, and everything was exactly the way she had pictured it. It was dark and dank and smelled of damp wood and sweaty feet. The kitchen was a grease pit, and a quick glance at the sleeping facilities revealed that, just as she had feared, everyone was supposed to sleep in one common bunkroom, which meant getting a whole lot better acquainted with the other parents than she was prepared to. The fact that she had had a pounding headache ever since she returned from Valby the previous evening did nothing to improve her mood. She had taken a cocktail of aspirin with codeine and Paracetamol that usually worked for most kinds of pain, but without much success so far. The low evening sun pierced her eyes, and invisible knives stabbed into her temples every time she turned her head toward the light.
But Anton was loving it.
He was standing over by the campfire with Benjamin poking the embers with a long stick. They had finished their twist bread long since, and Benjamin’s mother had chased them away from the flames several times. Nina had given up without even trying. Boys had been playing with campfires since before recorded history, and it was presumably part of their DNA. They poked at the coals, pushing twigs into the flickering, orangey yellow flames, sending little clouds of sparks and ash up into the blue sky at regular intervals.
Nina knew she ought to be doing something. Clearing the table, making coffee, or at least chatting with the other parents. But right now she didn’t have the strength for anything other than nursing her headache and holding it together. She missed Morten. He would have been so much in his element. Right now, he would have been laughing and talking with the other dads, and no doubt he would also have had the energy to bake a proper cake for the group instead of the hastily purchased store-bought version she had brought along. He would have loaded the car full of balls and bats and got a pickup game going on the lawn in front of the cabin. Morten was good at this kind of thing, and when he was along, he provided a peaceful refuge from all the socializing whenever she got tired of smiling.