Of the money she'd taken off the dead men, two hundred and sixteen euros remained. She had no phone and no immediate access to one. She had no credit cards and no documentation. Of the cash she carried, she knew most of it would be required simply to bribe her way into Sochi.
In Sochi, she would find a phone. She would call Sargenti, and he would wire money, and she would find a place for her and Miata to hide.
Then she would call me.
And realizing there was nothing else she could do for the time being, she forced herself to fall asleep, one hand on the Walther she'd snuck on board in the crotch of her too short and too wide pants, the other on Miata's flank.
CHAPTER
Twenty Miata licked my hand, then, exhausted from the effort, dropped his muzzle back to the blanket he lay upon and shut his eyes once more. I stroked his neck, scratched behind his ears, then rose and crossed the expansive room back to where Alena sat on the bed, knees drawn to her chest, watching me. She'd purchased clothes that fit, Levi's and a black T-shirt, her feet bare. The bandage on her upper arm peeked out from beneath the sleeve, fresh white gauze that still smelled sterile.
"Did you speak to Iashvili?" she asked.
"Oh yeah." I moved to the window, parting the curtains enough to look out. It was after midnight, and the traffic on Primorksy Boulevard was light. Somewhere nearby, I had been informed, were the famous Potemkin Steps, but if they were visible from where I was standing, I didn't see them. I let the curtains fall back.
"Did he know who they were?"
"Business associates of the men who took Tiasa."
"The men you killed in Batumi."
"That would be them, yeah."
"He had no names?"
"He told me the names didn't matter." I moved to the bed, sat down beside her and began unlacing my boots. "He says they'll try again."
"That seems possible."
I pulled my boots free, set them together on the floor, then flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. The ceilings in the Londonskaya were high, easily fourteen feet, painted yellow-gold. The hotel was Old World, built in the late 1860s, one of the finest in all of Odessa. I was pretty sure the chandelier hanging in the center of the room was real crystal and not simply cut glass.
After a moment, Alena lay down, as well. "You haven't told me about Dubai."
"It wasn't good."
"I would like to hear it."
I told her, and she listened, and when I was done she didn't speak for a long time.
Then she asked, "Did you sleep with her? Kekela?"
I turned enough to look at her. She didn't move, her face in profile.
"You really have to ask?"
She closed her eyes, then shook her head once, slightly.
"But you asked anyway."
"I apologize," she said.
I sat up, angry, knowing I should let it go but not wanting to. "Why would you ask me that? Why the hell would you ask me that?"
Her eyes remained closed, and her mouth went tight. "I apologize."
"I don't want you to apologize, I want to know why you would even think that."
She didn't say anything.
I got up again, agitated. "You're the one lying to me, I'm not lying to you."
That brought her back, and she pushed herself up enough to rest on her elbows. "I haven't lied to you."
"I know you didn't go to Tbilisi to meet Nicholas," I said. "So, yeah, you did lie to me."
Her expression washed out, turning neutral. She moved slowly to sit fully upright, her feet on the floor, her hands at her side. She was watching Miata, once again asleep.
"Yes, I did." She moved her gaze to me. "I went to see a doctor."
I stared at her. "And you couldn't tell me that? If you wanted to look into another surgery on your leg, you could have told me that. We could go back to Switzerland, or Germany; there are better places for that than Tbilisi."
"It's not my leg. I'm at thirteen weeks."
"You're at thirteen weeks of what?" I asked.
She stared at me like I was an idiot. Since I honest to God had no idea what she was talking about, I stared right back at her, waiting for an explanation.
"I'm thirteen weeks pregnant, Atticus," she said.
I kept staring at her, still waiting for an explanation, because I was sure I hadn't heard that right. "What?"
"I'm pregnant."
The words rolled around my head for a few seconds.
"Say something."
"I…"
"You what?"
"… thirteen weeks?"
"Fourteen now, I think."
I went back to her side. The way I was feeling, oddly enough, reminded me of how I'd felt in the shower when I'd returned from Batumi after Vladek Karataev had died, but without the dry heaves. I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes. I put my glasses on again.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked her.
"Fears." She was looking at Miata again, not at me.
"More than one?"
She almost laughed. "Too many to count."
"I'm listening."
"We never even talked about it, not once. It was never something we'd even discussed, it had never seemed a possibility." Alena took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "I lived my life from the moment the Soviets took me out of the orphanage in Magadan until the moment I met you believing I would live a life alone. That was simply the way it was. Twenty-five years, I was alone, and that was fine, because they made me someone who was supposed to be that way. I was supposed to be alone, always, until I was dead."
She turned to meet my eyes, then, and she hadn't been lying at all. She was scared, and I could see it.
"Then I met you, and you loved me, and I will never, ever know why. And I am not alone with you, even when we are apart. I could not have allowed myself to imagine it, you see? More than I would have dreamed, if I had been allowed to dream. And to have a child with you, to be a mother?"
She laughed, not because it was funny, but because, I think, the irony was so strong it actually hurt her.
"Me? A mother?"
I thought about her with Tiasa, the care she'd shown her, the time she'd given her. The way they had talked when they thought I couldn't hear them. The way Alena had taught her, the tenderness she'd failed to hide behind not-quite-stern-enough rebukes. The way they had played.
"I think," I said, "that you could be a very good mother."
She blinked at me, her face smoothing. "I didn't think you would want it. I didn't think you would want me to have a baby."
"I don't want you to have a baby," I told her. "I want you to have our baby."
Then I put my arms around her, and I laid her down on the bed, and tried to show her just how much I meant it. She was still sleeping when I awoke the next morning, and I let her be. Miata was awake, and up, though he seemed unsteady on his feet, and I dressed and took him out of the hotel for a very short walk, just long enough for him to relieve himself. He was slower on the way back, and when we returned to the room he went straight to his blanket and curled up on it once again. I put some water in one of the bowls Alena had secured for him, and put some kibble in the other. He didn't seem to have much appetite, but he drank the water readily enough.
I got cleaned up and prepared for the day ahead, thinking that I didn't know what the day ahead would bring. I knew enough about human trafficking to know that Ukraine wasn't exactly the safest place for us to be hiding at the moment, but then again, fleeing to Canada didn't seem to be an immediate option, either.
I went to the desk, took out my laptop, and opened up the files I'd taken from Vladek's BlackBerry. He had contacts in Ukraine, it seemed, but whether or not any were in Odessa, I couldn't tell. Flipping through the address book on my screen, I saw Arzu Kaya's name again.