He casts an eye down at the epaulet on his left shoulder.
“I was traveling in Europe. Everyone wears these. Very good for anonymity.”
“Yeah-uh?”
“If we’d stayed in the States I would have picked up something appropriate.”
“Affectation, Skinner. Pure affectation.”
Her hands go to his shoulders and smooth across them, down his arms, stopping at his elbows.
“But you do pull it off.”
She tugs on his elbows and, watchers or not, kisses him. Their lips coming apart, she keeps him close.
“Why will they come after you on the boat?”
“I disappeared before. Cross won’t want me to disappear again. So it has to be soon, while my options are limited. Before the planes start flying again. Once the sky is open I can be very gone. He doesn’t want me where he can’t see.”
“Cross is afraid of you.”
“Yes. He’s not a stupid man.”
She almost smiles, an appreciator of blackest humor.
“So what now?”
He puts some space between them, better to think.
“Now we choose the ground.”
In the duty-free Skinner buys a very expensive bottle of perfume. Outside the shop he takes it from the bag, slips the bottle from the box, and sprays a little on the back of her hand.
She sniffs.
“Vile.”
“Then you won’t mind breaking it.”
Down the corridor, restless people. Their journeys, already a kind of non-time between places they want to be, have become lengthy parentheticals to their lives. The ferry seemed like a romantic interlude for a moment, but now it’s just one more fucking thing to deal with before they have to cram back onto the train and figure out the next leg of their travels. Tense exhaustion, even for the beer drinkers and chocolate eaters. They are massing in small numbers near the roped-off hall that leads to the stairwell door, and when Jae changes her grip on the perfume bag, upends it, grabs for the falling bottle but succeeds only in slapping it higher into the air before it falls to the deck with a crash, the resulting splash envelops them all in a dense cloud of scent named after an American pop star who is massively successful in Scandinavia, if nowhere else. Her popularity aside, no one seems happy to have their shoes doused in her perfume. By the time they are realizing that they will be smelling this woman’s idea of glamour for the remainder of their trips, and by the time the purser who had been standing by the protective rope has found a crew member he can send for a mop and bucket, Skinner and Jae are inside the rope, opening the door, and stepping onto the top landing of the steep stairs.
Jae is shaking her head.
“Stuff like that works?”
Skinner pulls the door closed, takes her elbow, leads her down.
“Making people look another direction is easy enough. After that you need to move confidently. People are conditioned not to question confidence.”
“And if the door was locked?”
He shrugs.
“I’m confident I would have thought of something else.”
The man who steps out of the door from the auto deck surprises Skinner, as much for the Bulgarian Arcus 98 in his hand as for the fact that he isn’t one of Haven’s people. He opens his mouth to tell them what he wants them to do to keep him from shooting them, and Skinner’s right hand comes up, the red ruler slipping out of the cuff of his jacket into his hand. Skinner shoves it into the man’s open mouth, not breaking stride, pulling Jae with him. When the end of the ruler hits the back of the man’s throat he gags and gasps at the same time, tries to back up, raising his hands as if to push away from the discomfort, gun a forgotten prop. He is on the brink of puking when his heels reach the edge of the landing and he falls backward down the steps, head striking the steel edges of no less than three of them as he tumbles, before sliding to a limp halt.
The ruler is broken. Skinner doesn’t take time to mourn it, dropping the pieces into a pocket of the man’s quilted Eddie Bauer parka before dragging him back up the steps, wiping up most of the blood from his split scalp and broken nose in so doing. On the auto deck landing, Jae is holding teh door open, waiting. From the deck, car alarms sound in discord, triggered by the rolling Baltic Sea. Every time one cycles to a stop, another two start. Skinner pulls the man through the door, waves Jae in, closes the door. It reeks of exhaust and rubber and burnt oil and gasoline. Deep thrum of the ferry’s diesel engines and the wail and squawk of the alarms. Skinner is pleased.
In the second aisle of cars he finds a Skoda Superb unlocked. Pops the trunk, dumps the man inside. There’s quite a bit of blood. More coming out of the open head wounds. Heart still pumping. Skinner takes the Arcus from his trench coat pocket. Jae covers her ears and turns her head, but neither precaution is necessary. Before he pulls the trigger, Skinner closes the trunk lid until he can fit only the barrel of the gun inside. The sound of the shot is a slight pop in the din of the auto deck.
He latches the trunk, points aft, takes them between rows of cars, hunched, feeling inside wheel wells as he goes car to car, moving confidently, until he finds a magnetic key box under the right quarter panel of a midnineties Saab 900. He unlocks the passenger-side door, holds the door for Jae, closes it, walks to the other side and climbs in.
Marginally quieter.
Skinner scoots down in his seat and Jae imitates him, both half in the foot wells, heads below the level of the windows.
“I thought we were choosing the ground.”
Skinner is checking the Arcus’s clip. It was full before he shot the man in the Eddie Bauer parka. Eighteen rounds left now.
“They beat us to it.”
It’s a surprisingly good gun. Not least of all because it is Bulgarian. When one thinks of Balkan guns one generally thinks of misfires and jamming. Skinner wonders if the man who owned it might have actually been Bulgarian. What that could mean. Could Eastern European gangsters really be behind the West-Tebrum attack? Are he and Jae following a wild goose of Terrence’s devising?
“Skinner?”
“Sorry. Distracted by the implications of the gun.”
“Skinner.”
An urgent whisper. She’s sunk lower in her seat, pointing in the direction of the Saab’s left headlight where an unusually tall man, with a face that looks as if it has not enough skin to stretch over the massive bones underneath it, is creeping along in an awkward crouch that just allows him to peek over the rooflines of most of the cars on the deck. He has an Uzi with a sound suppressor. Venerable, reliable, very good for spraying a huge number of bullets at several clumped-up targets standing nearby. Israeli. Skinner’s mind skips a beat. Could the Israelis be involved? They had a hand in the Stuxnet worm’s creation. What would be their motive for attacking the US?
“Skinner.”
A more urgent whisper. Warranted. The man with the Israeli submachine gun is crouching just forward to the driver’s-side rearview mirror, an expression of more than slight confusion on his taut features as he tries to make sense of the fact that the two people he’s looking for have suddenly appeared in front of him in positions of helplessness. Then a flat sharkish smile threatens to rip the corners of his mouth as he raises the Uzi. The smile crimps with annoyance as Skinner leans on the horn, eliciting the slightest of flinches, and then disappears entirely when Skinner opens the heavy door of the Saab (reinforced for side impacts) and slams it into the tall man’s bent knees. Three shots from the Arcus, aimed through the V between the door’s window frame and pillar. Chest. Chest again. Neck. The tall man falls.
The right rear window of the Kia next to the Saab explodes. Automotive safety glass, it pebbles, most of it blown inward by the bullet. Skinner slips off the seat, spinning, squatting low in the space between the two cars, trying to see whoever it is that’s just come very close to killing him. To some extent he’d be happy to discover Haven’s backpacker or the black-clad arbitrage skydiver. At least then he’d know who he’s dealing with. On
the other hand, the Eddie Bauer man and the tall man weren’t very good at their jobs, and he’d be even more happy to cherry-pick someone else who hasn’t been trained especially well. The missed shot is a good sign.
He flattens himself, deck plates, wet, oily, rails at regular intervals running crosswise to the parked cars. Insurance to keep them from rolling too far should anyone forget to leave an emergency brake set. He’d like to see someone faced away from him, someone he could attack from behind and kill with his hands. Hiding more bodies so that they won’t be discovered until well after the ferry docks and he and Jae are under way is going to be difficult enough without more blood to mop up. To say nothing of bullet holes in the cars. Something shifts. Tone. The engines vibrate with a subtle difference. Change of course? Or are they approaching the ferry landing at Puttgarden? How long before drivers return to their cars? Feet. Boots. Military. Desert. Lightly used. Legs of expensive denim covering the laced shafts, slightly rolled at the bottom. Coming this way, other side of the Saab. There’s no good way to handle this kind of thing, parking lot scenarios. You’ve either been in one before or you haven’t. Skinner hasn’t. But he doesn’t think it likely that a mercenary who spent the bulk of his short career in places where one wears desert boots has handled the situation either. Common sense dictates that you can either go high or low. Unless you have a mirror on a stick you’re not going to be able to effectively look under the cars and then over them. The man in the desert boots has chosen high. In a game of roshambo with rock and scissors as the only options, he has chosen scissors. Skinner is fairly certain he has a rock. He squirms under the car, setting the safety on the Arcus, reversing his grip so that he holds the barrel, hammerlike. Under the car, booted feet close, the man will see Jae any moment now. Skinner doesn’t want that. Bit of a stretch from here, but he reaches, grabs for the man’s ankle, misses it and gets a handful of expensive denim, pulls. Big man, a great deal of mass, well balanced, he stumbles, falls against the next car over, but that’s as far as he goes. Leaning against a compact four-door Opel, Euro model not sold in the States, looking down at Skinner, head, arm, one shoulder sticking out from under the Saab. He’s got another Arcus. So maybe they are Bulgarian. Or maybe the two men shop at the same store. Or maybe the procurement officer for whichever contractor they might work for got a deal on a bunch of Arcuses and their master armorer has no choice but to put them into the field on every op so the procurement guy looks good. All Skinner can say about the gun right now is that it’s insanely hard to try to blindly juggle it around with one hand while you’re lying on your stomach under a car, so that you can use it in the manner it was designed for rather than as an improvised club.
“Be still.”
English. English from England. Urban. Working class. Not an officer and a gentleman. A soldier in her Majesty’s service. Formerly. Wherever he’s from, he’s not shooting for the moment. Skinner assumes it’s for the same reasons he was reluctant to open fire himself. Blood. Mess.
Skinner drops his gun. It makes very little noise, but the man with the desert boots appears to have very good hearing.
“What the fuck was that? What are you doing under there?”
Each question emphasized with a jab of his gun, but anything else he might ask is cut off when the Saab’s passenger door flies open and Jae flies out from behind it. Low, leading with her shoulder, targeting the elbow of the arm that ends in a hand holding a gun. Done properly, she’ll push the gun to the side, binding the arm against the man’s body, while planting her shoulder in his gut. Tripping over Skinner’s still-extended arm puts her a bit off target, sending her headlong rather than shoulder-first, but she does shove him sideways, gun pushed away from Skinner, throwing him off balance for a moment. Skinner is reaching with both hands. With his left he’s straining to get the grip on the man’s ankle that he wanted in the first place, with his right he’s reaching for the spot where he thinks his gun fell under the Saab. Doing two things at once, he gets a bit of both. Grabs the man’s jeans again, and picks up the Arcus by the barrel again.
He heaves, pulling the man’s leg toward him and hauling himself further from beneath the Saab. The Englishman’s good balance is compromised now, his foot and leg come toward Skinner, his body falling the other way; Jae’s shove has knocked him into the aisle between the cars, the Opel won’t be breaking his fall this time. But Jae is tipping as well, going down on top of the man, too close to use her fists, trying to bring a knee up into his groin, impossible when the floor is pulled out from underneath your feet. They’re down, the Englishman takes the brunt but keeps his head from whacking the deck plates, sensibilities intact, his left arm is looping around Jae, right is bringing his gun back into the thick of things. When he has it pointed at her head he’ll either tell everybody to stop moving or shoot her and move on to the next target. Decision making becomes simplified when you’re fighting for your life. Before the Englishman has to make that decision Skinner is hammering his genitals with the butt of his own Arcus, turning the Englishman’s mind into a blank white screen of pain that no thought can occupy. It stops the gun moving toward Jae, so Skinner does it again, which causes the gun to drop from the Englishman’s hand, so he does it again, which causes the Englishman to let go of Jae as he tries to curl into a fetal position, so Skinner hammers him again, which is about when Jae has gotten up to her knees to deliver an elbow blow to the hinge of the Englishman’s jaw and break it in two places.
“Fuck!”
She scrambles backward, between the cars, drops her bottom onto the deck plates, puts her head between her knees and hyperventilates.
“Fuckfuckfuck.”
Skinner crawls out from under the car, checks to see that there are no obvious wounds on Jae, backing off when she slaps at him. He returns to the Englishman, pulls the belt from his trench coat, and uses it to strangle him.
The Saab is a hatchback, but it does have a luggage cover. The Englishman fits under it. The tall man he has to drag to the roomy trunk of the Skoda Superb. Some rearrangement is necessary to accommodate two dead men. By the end, Skinner’s trench coat, grimed with oily water and mud from the deck, in no longer serviceable. He empties the pockets and leaves it with the corpses. The blood on the deck plates is blending with the slurry of oil and mud; the spatter from shooting the tall man flecked two cars that Skinner took a pass at with the trench coat before dumping it. The window that was shot out will be someone else’s problem, he hopes. Chalked up to theft or the vagaries of sea travel. He peeks inside the Kia to see if there is something of relative value he can snatch to bolster any suspicions of a thief, but short of yanking out the processor mounted under the driver’s seat he can’t see anything that will help the cause.
The ferry’s engines are most definitely slowing. Have been for some time. No one will be allowed below decks until they dock. The ferry gives a slight lurch.
“Can you get up?”
Jae stopped hyperventilating while he was cleaning up but hasn’t lifted her head until now.
“Yes.”
He offers his hand and she takes it, pulling herself to her feet.
“So that’s it?”
Skinner leads her to the first row of cars nearest the stairwell door, crouches behind a Volkswagen Jetta.
“Sort of.”
She crouches next to him.
“Elaborate.”
Skinner points toward the cars with the dead bodies in them.
“I think they were Hann-Aoki.”
She blinks.
“Why does H-A want to kill you?”
“They don’t. I don’t think they do.”
“Skinner!”
His name barked with exhaustion and diminishing patience. Skinner takes note and tries to be clear, mindful of his prosody and the order of his thoughts.
“They acted like Hann-Aoki. Not very good. And not planning to kill. Here for you. I’m still with you, protecting you. They assume value. Information about West-Tebrum and th
e anarchists. Trying to salvage something so Kestrel doesn’t control the new market.”
She rubs her elbow. She did a good job delivering that blow, but bone on bone is always bad. She’ll have a bruise, swelling. Skinner thinks about finding ice.
“Skinner. Haven’s people?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t know.”
The door opens and people start to file in. Skinner shows his palm to Jae, Wait. They wait, shift ground once or twice, moving to stay out of sight, the final round of alarms set off by the crossing are blipping off as drivers find their cars. Skinner thinks he hears a curse in German. The owner of the Kia seeing his broken window? Then it’s time, enough people, density feels correct, he waves Jae to her feet, both of them popping up, walking with confidence around a car or two, shuffling into the foot traffic, turning, going against the stream toward the stair door. Nods of embarrassment, smiles, a few words of clumsy American-accented German. So silly, wrong deck. We are on the train deck. Pardon. Pardon. So sorry. Pardon.
Joining the rail travelers, down to the bottom deck, their train awaits. Remarkably, there are no conflicts over who was sitting where. In these circumstances no one seems inclined to poach seats. Really, Europe, so civilized. The train moves, pulls slowly from the open bay of the ferry onto the rails of Fehmarn. Cross the small island, then a span of bridge, then the German mainland. Then Hamburg. Then Cologne.
Packed into the train, surrounded by people, there is time to sleep. A typical reaction after stress, extreme fatigue. Jae says something about trying to get online and book their next leg from Cologne to Paris but never unzips her pack for her laptop. Instead she leans against Skinner, head on his shoulder, closes her eyes, and falls into a sleep filled with lurching starts and stops as the train trundles along.
Skinner closes his own eyes. He is watched, he knows, but cannot separate the sweep of bored and curious people-watching eyes in the car from those that might be more focused. Nor does he care to. Anyone watching him with professional intent will have some idea of what he did on the boat train, and they will be calculating the costs involved in making a similar attempt of their own. And there is also the comfort inherent in the eyes, pressure of observation, that draws him back to his childhood and the box. So he sleeps too.