“Following you!” I called back. “What’s it look like?”
It couldn’t have looked like anything, because it was pitch-black except for the glow of Mirko’s cell, bouncing along ahead of me. What it smelled like was a dank cellar, the scent intensifying as I followed Mirko down wooden stairs. When we reached the bottom, a light popped on.
We were in a long and narrow passageway, low-ceilinged, brick-floored, and lined with storage shelves. The kind of place that makes you think bomb shelter except that it was stuffed with... stuff. Furniture, art, armaments, and god knows what else, bubble-wrapped, crated up, or just scattered about. Mirko pushed aside a Roman helmet and heaved his wheelie suitcase onto a high shelf, showing an impressive set of muscles. He gave me a quick look, then took off down the passageway.
“Keep up,” he called over his shoulder. “Unless you fancy being locked in.”
I jogged after him, clutching the dog, until some three hundred feet later the tunnel ended in a second staircase. The lights went off behind me and in darkness I followed Mirko up the stairs, bumping into him at the top. “‘S’cuse me,” I mumbled, unsettled by his proximity, and his aftershave. Bay rum. Which I liked.
“This is where we go our separate ways,” he said, working to unlock yet another door. A moment later we were out of the tunnel and in the back room of a supermarket.
It was a Tesco Metro, a British 7-Eleven. I followed Mirko through swinging doors onto the selling floor and the mundane world of Whiskas catfood and Wotsits Cheese Snacks.
Mirko marched through the Tesco with all the confidence of a store manager. I tried to match his gait and attitude, never mind that I was carrying an unattractive dog the size of a watermelon.
Once outside, he picked up the pace, his long legs at full stride, weaving his way through lunch-hour London, jammed with people. I caught up with him on the center island of some major intersection, waiting for the pedestrian signal. Before the light could turn green, Mirko stepped into the street, narrowly avoiding a speeding Volvo, and took off at a run. I said a prayer — a necessity, since the traffic was of course going the wrong way — and took off too, wincing at the horns honking at me. I followed him onto an escalator and down into London’s Underground.
It was luck that I had a metro card — no, Oyster card, as they whimsically call it. I raced after him, dog squirming in my arms, through the turnstiles, over to some tube line or other, onto a platform, into a subway car, and out again at Liverpool Street, where we made our way to the train station. He made a beeline for a self-serve ticket machine and I found one too, as close as I could get to his. We bought tickets, me juggling credit card, dog, and purse. He then race-walked to a platform, and I hurried after, boarding a train labeled NORWICH. I walked the length of several cars, ignoring the stares of the presumably dog-averse until I found Mirko, at a table for four. As I approached, the train gave a lurch and I lost my balance for a moment, grabbing Mirko’s shoulder to steady myself and ending up with a handful of shirt, at which point Gladstone scrambled out of my arms and into his lap.
Mirko accepted the dog but raised an eyebrow at me. “Took your time, didn’t you?”
I plopped into the seat across from him, still panting. “Okay, where’s Robbie? Also, who do you work for and what do you do, and also, what do I call you, because you’re obviously not Mirko, and while we’re at it, how do you know all those things about me, things not even Robbie knows? And don’t say you’re psychic, because you’re as clairvoyant as a bagel.”
He held my look. “One, that’s what I intend to learn, but lower your voice, please, because I’m following someone and while he is three cars ahead of us, I imagine the entire train can hear you. Two, a small agency within the British government. Three, call me Kingsley. Four, observation. You’re an American because of your accent. Someplace hot, because it’s winter, yet you have a tan line near your clavicle from a sports bra, and another at your ankle, from your trainers, so not a vacation tan but a resident’s. Your diction has no tinge of the American South, so not Florida, and the freckles on your left forearm suggest an inordinate amount of time spent on motorways with your arm resting on the window side, more likely in the ungodly traffic of California, than in Hawaii, and from the shade of your hair, Los Angeles. The lead on the dog is fashioned from a luggage strap and still bears the knot of elastic from an airline identification tag.” He picked up the slack leash and proceeded to unknot the elastic. “Your neck is stiff,” he continued, “suggesting someone who slept with her head against the window on the left side of an airplane. Front row, coach, standby, so last to board. With no seat in front of you to stow your bag, and by the time you boarded, there was no overhead space left, so the flight attendant checked your carry-on, which explains the tag.” He set the leash down and Gladstone looked up at him. “You dozed — fitfully — on a floor last night, as evidenced by the bits of shag carpet in your hair.”
“Is that supposed to impress me?” I asked.
“It does impress you,” he said. “Your turn. How did you know which ticket to buy? You couldn’t possibly see my touch screen.”
“No,” I said. “But I had a clear view of your forearm. I calculated the length of that, plus your fingers, factored in the fifty-five-degree angle your elbow was bent at, which told me where your fingers would land on the touch-screen keyboard, given the destination list from the drop-down menu.”
That shut him up.
The train conductor approached. “Tickets, please,” he said.
In unison, Kingsley pulled his out of his hoodie pocket and I pulled mine out of my jeans. We handed them over.
The conductor punched a hole in mine but frowned at Kingsley’s. “Stansted Mountfitchet Station? You’re on the wrong train, sir.”
Kingsley blinked.
I gave the conductor my most charming smile. “I’m so sorry. My cousin is legally blind but refuses to ask for help. May I pay the difference for him?”
With a shake of the head, the conductor accepted the twenty-pound note I offered him, made change, and issued Kingsley a new ticket. “An assistance dog, is it?” he asked, directing the question at me.
“Gladstone? Yes,” I said. “Years of training.”
Once the conductor was out of earshot, Mirko said, “You nicked my ticket. Nicely done.”
“I traded tickets,” I corrected him. “Which is harder. Robbie and I played pickpocket as children.”
“Not so good, though, at buying the proper ticket. You disappoint me.”
“Same. Where’d I go wrong?”
“You assumed I used my index finger on the touch screen. I type with my thumb. A three-inch difference. Classic schoolgirl error,” he said, but I could tell he was warming up to me. “When did you last talk to Robbie?”
“Five days ago,” I said. “He texted me, saying would I please fly to New York, pick up his cat, Touie, and get her to London because his subtenant was threatening to drown her and he was stuck in England on a job. So I did. It was hell. Whatever lies ahead, let me tell you I survived Live Animal Border Inspection at Heathrow, which can make grown men cry, so your Russian mafia doesn’t scare me.”
His long fingers, on Gladstone’s tall ears, stopped mid-pet. “Russian mafia?”
“The Streisand fan. At the shop. Some low-level operative, right? A smurf?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Oh, please,” I said. “You’re obviously laundering money, you’ve got a tunnel filled with black market goods, a wheelie suitcase full of rubles—”
“What makes you think rubles?”
“Your Russian friend, during a sappy pause in ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,’ said eight hundred million. If that was pounds or dollars, you’d need a U-Haul to transport them. Rubles, on the other hand, come in denominations of five thousand, and yeah, you could stuff fifteen thousand of them into a suitcase. Which is around a million pounds, a million three in dollars.” I wondered if, behind those gray eyes, he was checking my math. “Anyhow,” I said. “My brother was part of this adventure. Whatever it is, it’s got ‘Robbie’ written all over it, him being a Russian interpreter, as you of course know.”