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“You’ve turned the tables.” Lanzo’s eyes softened with hope. “Keep her safe for a few days. Then the two of you will be gone and none of it will matter.”
I think Lanzo may have fingered the roll of Euros he had in his pocket. He nodded and I said, “Good.” I gestured to Sophie. “We’ll be back.”
I clapped him on the shoulder before facing Sophie to bow at the waist and sweep my hands towards the path up the embankment. She smiled and laughed a bit at my antics, gesturing for me to lead the way.
I did, only stopping a few yards up the path as I heard another siren. I tried to remember if they had been this common the entire time and I have never noticed, or if this was new. I suspected it was new.
With the busy night behind us, the sun was beginning to paint the terracotta roofs of Old Town. It would still be awhile before the trams were operating, so we walked in a pleasant quiet for a time until I decided to lengthen the walk with Sophie by swinging by the cathedral to check the drop point. Atwell would probably be trying to lie low, but if he had anything to communicate it would be there. There wasn’t anything. I decided use the payphone to check the mobile’s voicemail.
I can’t tell you if I’m happy I did that or not. After the chirping of the system, I dialed in the code and a gravelly Russian voice came on. “Mitnick wishes to meet with you.” I was happy to ignore that until a more convenient time, but it concluded, “Do not worry. We will meet you at your cafe, say hello to Simon for you.”
The line went dead in my hand and I stood there, my neanderthal brain trying to process the new information. When it did, I hung up the receiver. “I have to go meet Mitnick.”
Sophie fluttered her eyes in the way that she did when I was being particularly stupid. “No. He may suspect.”
“He does. He’s waiting for me at the cafe.”
Sophie slipped an arm through mine and pulled gently. “Then let us not be there. To go home, to rest.”
I had told Sophie about Simon a few times, but I hadn’t mentioned that the old man had become important to me. Or maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t willing to let Simon get caught up in all of this. Either way, I answered, “They’ve got Simon. They’re waiting at the cafe.”
Unless upset by one of her bouts of obsession, there was always a harmony in Sophie, a happy poise. I realized how much I had come to rely on this as it disappeared. She produced a, “Oui.” The declaration sounded like the end of the world. Whatever was happening in Sophie internally didn’t bubble out as a refusal, but her green eyes flooded with a kind of resolute gloom, as if we were discussing something as immutable as bad weather. “I will go with you.”
“If you come with me they’ll know we’re together. It’ll only confirm Mitnick’s suspicions. He’ll kill us both.”
The truth of those words caused Sophie to stutter, which gave me a moment to take both of her hands in my own. I tried to reflect an ounce of the calm that she lent to me in our daily lives, and I found in her face a similar reel of my own feelings of impotence and anger.
In the shadow of the cathedral, she paused, only to to continue in a deathly quiet, “If they kill you, I will build a mountain of their corpses.”
It might have been the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. I squeezed her hands. “It won’t come to that.”
I hugged her tight until the sky began to lighten, the sun painting the tips of the cathedral’s onion domes. When I let her go I could tell she had shed some tears, but those were gone by the time she lifted her head. “How will I know?”
There were a lot of different dimensions to that question and I tried to consider all of them. When a lone birdsong started in the background I answered, “If things go well, I’ll be home as soon as I can.” I left the other alternatives unsaid.
She kissed me before she started walking us towards a tram station. We held hands the entire way, not something I’m sure we’ve ever done before. We arrived at a station, still with only the barest of early morning crowds. After another lingering hug, we each found the tramcar point to Les Moulins. Realizing how much I wanted Sophie to come with me, I said, “It would be stupid for both of us to go.”
She nodded, in the soft, sad way of a funeral director.
We kissed and I stepped onto the tram, the pneumatic doors softly closing behind me.
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