Maria moved her arm to push away the next spoonful and started speaking unintelligible words.
“Come on, little lady. Just five more spoonfuls.” She tried to put the spoon into her mouth again, but Maria repeated the movement, her face became angry, and she banged a fist on the high chair. “I wish the Englishman were here. You’d eat from him, wouldn’t you?”
She placed the spoon into the jar and took a sip of the coffee. It was weak and acrid. Probably the waitress had deliberately made it that way. She didn’t care and took another sip, glad of its heat. She’d completed the last of the day’s university lectures. Today she’d asked her students to challenge Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s view that poetry was born from the torment of the soul with her own view that it was rather an encounter with truth.
Alina sighed. She still had other chores to do, including going to the jewelers to see if anyone had bought the necklaces she’d left with the shopkeeper a week ago. The deal was, she’d only get cash for them if they were sold, and even then it would only be 60 percent of the retail price. A mental image entered her head of Will Cochrane trimming pork cutlets in her tiny home while she prepared their promised meal of kotleta pokrestyansky. She wondered why.
Perhaps because increasingly she realized that her future was either being alone with Maria, or one day being with a man who could help her with broken baby carriages, could make Maria smile and eat her food, and wanted what she wanted: a break from loneliness.
As she stared out of the window at passersby struggling through the driving snowfall, she knew in her heart that whatever happened, Lenka was never coming back.
Thirty-Six
Peter Rhodes watched the fire begin to die and shivered as the icy Asian wind came through cracks in the mountain shack. Momentarily, he considered putting the remainder of the logs onto the embers before they were extinguished. He decided there was no point.
His oil lamp flickered, casting shadows over a roll-mat bed, a bench and chair, a horse saddle and luggage, and a portable single-ring gas cooker that was positioned on the soil and straw floor. He got off his bed, opened the front door, and was nearly knocked off his feet by a gust of snow-carrying wind. After steadying himself, he looked around in case there were men on horseback coming for him. The endless mountain range would look beautiful on a postcard, but in person it looked desolate, terrifying, and barren of life.
He’d arrived here last night. Tomorrow his intention was to head farther east along the mountains. He estimated he could be clear of the range in ten days, at which point he would move south toward warmer climes.
As arduous as the journey was, he believed it was essential that he travel this way, that he had to avoid easier modes of transport and routes in case he was challenged while using them. It was vital that he remain alone and go places where no one in their right mind would wish to try to track him.
But being here had made him realize that this type of life was not for him.
He kept his head low as he forced his body through the high-altitude wind to reach the shack’s adjacent stable. Opening the door, he moved to the pony he’d bought yesterday from a tribesman in a lowland village. Though the pony’s head was bowed and her demeanor miserable, he knew that she was considerably more used to the mountain elements than he was. She gave a welcoming snort as he brushed his hand against her neck. “Good girl. Good girl.”
He put a rope onto the pony and guided her out of the stable. Removing the leash, he clapped his hands and shouted, “Go on, now!”
She neighed, remained still.
Peter slapped her on her hind leg and repeated, “Go!”
The pony looked at him, then began walking down the mountain slope, carefully picking a trail between boulders. He didn’t know if she’d survive the thirty-mile route to the village, or if she’d even remember the way there, but he did know that she’d die if he left her here.
He returned to the shack, forced the door shut, and rubbed snow off his stubbly and grimy face. Sitting down at the table, he removed his cell phone from his luggage and saw that it had one bar of signal. He sighed with relief-one bar was all he needed. He rubbed his numb hands to aid circulation and get his fingers working. They throbbed with pain as he slowly typed an SMS.
Cochrane found nothing of interest at Lenka’s house. We’ve all been recalled to London. Operation deemed a failure and has been terminated. Cochrane deployed on other matters. Our secret is safe.
He pressed Send and smiled as he saw his phone flash red, meaning its battery was about to die. He had no way of charging it, but that didn’t matter, as this was the last time he’d use it. The message successfully transmitted, he tossed the phone to one side.
It was the only way he could think of to try to make amends for his treachery. One of the Flintlock operatives would receive the message and advise his colleagues that Will was no longer hunting Yevtushenko. They’d believe that their sacrifice of Yevtushenko, to get more of Rubner’s stream of intelligence, remained a secret.
But Will knew all about Flintlock and their role in trying to kill him. Peter wondered what he was going to do to them.
He thought about his fiancee, Helen. He didn’t think she’d be unduly worried that she’d not heard from him. Helen knew he was an MI6 officer and was used to the fact that he was frequently away on missions and sometimes not contactable. No doubt she was busying herself with further preparations for their marriage. He wondered what wedding dress she’d choose, and pictured the beautiful woman walking up the church aisle toward him. They hadn’t yet drawn up a list of people they wanted to invite to their wedding-most of them would be family and friends, a handful would be colleagues. Perhaps Alistair would be in the audience, maybe Will too.
The image faded.
As he looked around, he couldn’t imagine being farther away from that day.
His actions had ruined his career, his honor, and his love of a decent woman.
There was nothing else for him now.
He removed his hemp jacket. All he now had on was a cotton shirt, trousers, and boots. After stamping out the remains of the fire and turning off the oil lamp, he exited the shack and scrambled down two hundred yards of the mountain slope. That was far enough; within minutes he would not have the strength or will to climb back up. He sat down on snow-covered ground, facing the full blast of the subzero-temperature wind. Closing his eyes, he wondered how long it would take and whether he’d feel pain. He’d read that Napoleonic troops who’d suffered severe hypothermia while retreating through Russia had felt a moment of warmth just before it happened. He hoped that was true.
Within fifteen minutes, he was violently shivering, confused, and light-headed.
His body started to freeze.
Within thirty minutes, he was dead.
Thirty-Seven
Kronos walked into the smoky bar and sat at an empty plastic table. In the style of an American diner, the place had rows of tables and benches alongside windows that faced the edge of Rotterdam’s vast seaport. Aside from the female attendant who was standing behind the bar washing glasses with a bored expression on her face, the only other people in the establishment were a group of five males; they were all wearing blue overalls, looked like tough sailors or dockworkers, and were seated at the far end of the diner, laughing, singing, and drinking Flemish gin. Outside, heavy rain descended from the night sky, noticeable through the multitude of neon lights that lit up the security gates leading to the dock and the ships and freight containers beyond them. Kronos looked at the attendant. Clearly she had no intention of waiting tables. He ordered a coffee from the bar and took the drink back to his table.