“That might explain why the local gangsters want him dead,” Chapel said, nodding. “And why he always looks like somebody just ran over his childhood dog.”
Angel wasn’t done, though. “In 2011, he got in trouble again, this time some pretty deep doo-doo. He anonymously posted a document online that claimed the prime minister of Romania had plagiarized his doctoral thesis back in grad school. That doesn’t sound like much, but… I won’t go into the details of Romanian politics, but there was already a feud going between two rival political parties, and it looked like this document might take down the prime minister and his party, whether it was true or not. There were riots in the street, and some people got hurt. It didn’t help when further charges of corruption kept popping up. The whole mess still hasn’t been worked out.”
“Bogdan doesn’t mind stepping on powerful toes, huh?”
“He was arrested for fomenting political unrest. They were ready to throw the book at him. I mean, send him away to prison for life and never let him touch a computer again. But then — damn. Chapel, you’re going to sense a theme here.”
“You’re about to tell me he disappeared.”
“Yeah,” Angel replied. “Yeah. Just… fell off the map. The charges were never dropped, but they were also never prosecuted. There’s no record of the case anywhere in the legal databases after a certain date, and nothing whatsoever in Bogdan’s file. He just turned into a ghost. You know, the funny thing there is—”
“The funny thing is that was the same year Nadia got her medal,” Chapel said, guessing what she was about to say.
“Uh. Yeah,” Angel said. “How did you know that?” Sometimes he could still surprise her.
“She said that she’d worked with Bogdan before. Whatever secret thing she was doing that got her that medal, he must have been part of it. She got him out of trouble in exchange for his help.”
“There’s no evidence for any of that. Nothing you could ever prove. But as a working hypothesis, it makes sense.”
Chapel nodded to himself. “Okay. Thanks, Angel. It’s good to know who I’m working with, even if that means I’m not allowed to know who they are. Is there anything else you have for me?”
Angel was silent for a while before answering. “There are no new messages on your voice mail, if that’s what you mean.” No messages from Julia, in other words. “Chapel, if you want to talk about—”
“Not right now,” he said.
Chapel walked back to the sleeper compartments where Bogdan and Nadia were, passing by a series of windows that showed the countryside rushing past. They were in Bulgaria by now, he estimated, though it was hard to say from what he saw. The sun was an hour away from setting, and it hung like a golden ball over endless fields that stretched away in every direction. In the distance he could just see the Balkan mountains like a pale smudge on the horizon, but they could have been anything. He could have been looking at the American Midwest, or the wheat fields of the Ukraine, or any of a hundred other identical views from a hundred different countries.
It was hard to remember just how far he was from home, though in another way, he couldn’t get it off his mind. He was out of his depth here. Nadia knew the local customs and manners, knew how to work a covert operation in this part of the world. But Chapel was just along for the ride. He wasn’t even her hired muscle — it was clear she could take care of herself. He really was just here to witness her operation.
He hated feeling like a fifth wheel. Third wheel in this case — Nadia needed Bogdan badly enough to risk getting shot for him.
Chapel took one last look at the fields and sighed and pushed through the automatic door to the sleeper car.
They’d taken two compartments, one for Nadia and one for Bogdan and Chapel to share. He was not surprised to find the two of them in the shared compartment. Bogdan was sitting on the floor, rocking his head back and forth. Maybe to the music in his headphones, but it made him look like he was suffering from some kind of neurological condition. He didn’t even look up as Chapel came in. He was tapping the keys of his MP3 player over and over, as if it were a nervous tic.
Nadia was sprawled out on one of the bunks, leafing through a magazine with a lot of splashy color photographs. It looked like a gossip rag, but it was written in a language Chapel didn’t recognize, much less read. She looked up at him with a big smile when he came inside.
He took his bag down from the overhead rack and rummaged around inside until he found what he needed. Then he took off his jacket and studied the tear in the left sleeve. It had been ripped during their escape from the construction site and it looked like the damage was too severe to repair with just a simple sewing kit. “I liked this jacket,” he said, glancing up to meet Nadia’s eye.
“You dress up well,” she said, giving him a sympathetic mock frown. “We can get you another one in Istanbul. We have a long layover there.”
He nodded and stuck one finger through the hole. “Yeah. I doubt there are any international alerts out for a man with a torn jacket, but you never know.” He folded the ruined jacket up and put it on the empty bunk, then started unbuttoning his shirt. “So you’re a Siberian, huh?” he asked, mostly just for something to say. To draw attention away from what he was about to do.
She tilted her head to one side. “Ya Sibiryak, da,” she confirmed. “And proud of it.”
“You said back in the train station that you were Siberian. I’ll admit, you’re not what I expected a Russian agent to look like.”
Nadia laughed. “What, I am not blond and statuesque, with big breasts and sad eyes? I get that a lot. Many people think I’m not Russian. But they forget that only a little bit of Russia is west of the Urals, and European. The vast majority of the Fatherland is in Asia, and many, many Russians look like I do.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything like—”
She waved away his protest. “I’m not offended. I would imagine that to Americans, Siberia might as well be on the far side of the moon.”
Chapel couldn’t help but grin. “Growing up, we were always taught Siberia was where they sent you if they wanted to forget you ever existed. We even use it — and I’m sorry if this sounds mean — but we use ‘siberia’ as a term to refer to, say, the worst table in a restaurant where nobody wants to sit. The table closest to the toilets.”
Nadia shook her head in resignation. “A lot of Russians might use it the same way. Many Soviets were exiled there, and many more forced to move there for work. They consider it the end of the world. But others, those born there, love the place. I was born in Yakutia — what they call the Sakha Republic, now.”
“You get back there much?”
She sighed and put down her magazine. “Let me guess. Your bosses asked you to find out everything you can about me. So they can make a dossier.”
“Just making small talk,” he told her.
She laughed. “I take no offense, even if you lie to me. We’re in the same line of work; we know the routine. We keep our eyes open and our mouths shut.”
Chapel glanced over at Bogdan.