Greg Rucka - Walking dead

"I want the reunion to be private."

Captain Celik nodded sagely, drank some more of his beer, looking past me, at the clientele. "He couldn't be away for more than two or three hours."

"I think that'll be more than enough time for them to discuss what they need to," I said.

He checked the address on the paper I'd given him again, then folded it and tucked it into his breast pocket, beneath his badge. "Also it would need to be at the right time."

"Of course. Wouldn't be a surprise otherwise. I was thinking around two in the morning."

"Then he will be dropped off at two, and picked up no later than five." He looked at me impassively. "Half of the donation will be expected when he arrives. The rest of it when he is picked up."

"That'll be fine. There's one other thing."

He fixed me with his dead brown eyes, bored.

"I'm wondering if someone could provide me with some information about his family," I said. "My friend wanted me to speak to his wife, and I don't know where I can find her."

"I'm sure we have that information," Celik said. "In fact, I'm sure I could get that for you now. But I would have to see some sort of gesture on your part, that my charity will actually be rewarded."

"Would five hundred euros be enough?"

"No. A thousand." He finished his beer, then rose. "I will make a call, see if I can find out about his family for you."

He walked back into the clubhouse, and I took out my wallet. I'd restocked it since meeting Vasylyna, but was going to have to restock it again. I put ten one-hundred-euro bills in a stack, and then slipped the stack into a paper napkin. I moved the napkin over to where Celik had been seated.

After six minutes, he returned, sat, and put the napkin on his lap. He kept his head down for a few seconds, counting the money, then shifted in such a way I knew he was pocketing the bills. From the same pocket that he'd stowed my little piece of paper with the delivery address on it, he produced a new one, handing it to me.

Then, with no other word, he rose and left me with the address of Arzu Kaya's family. Two in the morning meant I had ten hours before I'd be seeing Arzu, and there was a fair amount I needed to do between now and then. First, I found a bank and withdrew the cash I was going to need. Next, I did some shopping. Finally, with the aid of a map, I found the address Celik had given me. That took the most time, and I was there for nearly three hours before I had what I needed and could depart.

It was already dark when I returned to the hotel I was staying at on Gencoglu Street, a place called the Otel Horon. One of the two women manning the front desk called out to me as I came through the lobby, saying that a package had arrived for Anthony Shephard. I thanked her and took the UPS pack back to my room, then dumped the new papers Nicholas Sargenti had sent out on the bed.

There were two sets of documents, a fresh set for me, in the name of Matthew Twigg, a citizen of the United States who lived in Tukwila, Washington, just south of Seattle. Along with the passport and the Washington State driver's license was an Amex and a Visa. The second set of documents were all Ukrainian, two passports-one for domestic travel, the other for international. I checked these carefully, using the lamp at the desk to verify the laser imprinting on the photographs, and was impressed that everything looked perfectly in order. Then I flipped through the two documents, noting the stamps.

Nicholas had outdone himself.

I moved my new set of papers to my bag, then took the Ukrainian ones with me down the hall, to the room where Vasylyna had spent much of the last two days. I knocked on the door twice, identifying myself, and after a few seconds she let me inside, cautiously backing away as I shut the door behind me. I showed her the documents, each of them in her full name, Vasylyna Pavlina Kozyar. She took them with wide eyes, opening each in turn, gazing at the photographs of herself. I'd taken the pictures of her with the camera on the BlackBerry, using the shower curtain in the bathroom as a backdrop. Then I'd emailed the pictures to Sargenti.

"The stamps say you came to Turkey two weeks ago," I told her. "This room is paid for until tomorrow morning. You could be in Kiev by tomorrow afternoon, if that's what you want."

She looked up from the documents in her hand, bewildered. Bathed, wearing garments that she had picked herself, clothes that fit, with two safe nights of sleep behind her, she looked better, but, sadly, younger.

"I didn't believe you," Vasylyna said.

"I know."

She was holding the passports as if afraid they might sprout wings and fly away from her. I headed to the door.

"Good luck," I told her.

At 10:43 that night I did a SIM shuffle on the BlackBerry and called Alena for the second time since leaving New York. We were back onto our convoluted schedule, and she was expecting me.

"Still in Trabzon?" she asked.

"All goes well I should be leaving early tomorrow."

"You received what you were waiting for?"

"Got it this afternoon. Had to make a large withdrawal, too."

"There's enough money. Don't worry about that."

"How are you?"

"Miata is doing better."

"Good," I said, aware that she hadn't answered my question. Then I heard Bridgett in the background, saying that she wanted to talk to me. "Put her on."

"I know what she's going to say to you," Alena said. "She wants you to agree with her."

"About what?"

"I'll let her explain."

There was a rustle over the speaker as the telephone changed hands on their end, and then Bridgett came on the line, saying, "She's being stubborn."

"I'm pretty sure that's not how she sees it. Stubborn about what?"

"About the fact that I want us to leave Odessa."

"That's always been the plan."

"Yes, I know that's the fucking plan. But she wants to stay in Eastern Europe and I don't."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Someplace I speak the fucking language. Ireland. All I am right now is a warm body to draw fire if things go to hell. At least there I've got some connection with the people, I know something about the country, and I speak the goddamn common tongue."

"I agree," I said.

"It's stupid to stay here and you what?"

"No, you're right, it makes sense. Let me talk to her about it."

The phone exchanged hands again. This time, Alena spoke in Georgian.

"I knew you would agree with her."

"Because she's right," I said, using English.

"It's too long a trip for Miata."

"Then take it slow. And do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Switch back to English. Speaking in Georgian just proves her right."

"Fuck her," Alena said, then switched to English, petulantly asking, "Better?"

"Much."

There was a pause, then she said, "We've been in Odessa too long already."

"I was thinking the same thing."

"We'll move tomorrow. Check the box, I'll leave the new contact there."

"I will."

There was another pause, and I knew what she wanted to say, and why she wasn't saying it.

"I know," I told her. The address I'd given Celik was for a truck depot near the Trabzon harbor, on the east side of town, close to the water. Like Batumi, Trabzon was another port city, built upon the trade that came over the Black Sea, trade that the residents traced back to Ancient Greece and beyond. I'd driven by the location the previous day, then returned to it this morning, parking and taking a walk around on foot. The depot was a warehouse farm, and it was busy with forklifts and lorries, but near the southwestern side was a section that clearly suffered from disuse. I pried the door open at the side of one of the warehouses, and within discovered a space that looked like it would give me the peace and quiet to do what I needed.