Lene Kaaberbol - Death of a Nightingale

He closed the door but remained outside for a moment, listening. She didn’t lock it, he was happy to note. He had no desire to deal with a child who had barricaded herself in his bathroom, either on purpose or accidentally—his six-year-old nephew had once gone into a panic when he couldn’t unlock the door.

She stayed in there for a while. He let her be and went back to the kitchen to offer Nina a cup of coffee.

“That’s unusual,” she said.

“That I offer coffee?”

“No, that Rina speaks to someone she doesn’t know.”

“Maybe it was because I spoke Russian.”

“Yes. Maybe. What did your boss say?”

“He’s going to call me back. But we’re trying to get you a safe house. Do you know what that entails?”

“Kind of … well, not really.”

“Milk?”

“No, thank you.”

“It can be more or less institutional, with more or less in the way of surveillance and guards, depending on how we evaluate the level of threat. The most important thing for Rina’s safety right now, in my opinion, is that we make her hard to find. That’s the best protection we can give her.”

Nina put both her hands around the mug of instant coffee that he handed her. She sniffed the scent as if it were perfume. “So she’s not going back to the camp?”

“No. Not if we can help it.”

“I knew you weren’t an idiot,” she said and flashed him something that was more of a relieved grimace than a real smile.

“A few ground rules,” he said. “If you haven’t done so already, you need to turn off your cell phone. You can’t use it. In fact, I’d prefer if you gave it to me.” Søren didn’t know what resources his adversary could draw on—if the adversary was Colonel Savchuk, with his rank and standing in the GPU, it was probably a considerable amount. Tracking a cell phone was not, these days, a PET monopoly, more was the pity.

“Okay.” She must have figured out why, because she didn’t ask any questions. She just fished her phone out of her pocket and handed it to him, meek as a lamb. Would wonders never cease?

“Does Rina have a telephone?”

“No.”

“Good. Where is your car?”

“I parked it a few streets away. It’s pretty recognizable.”

“Good thinking. Do you have any sense of whether you were seen when you left the camp?”

“It’s hard to say. Everything was still pretty chaotic. But if the deputy chief and her troops had seen me, I guess they would have stopped me.”

She cleared perceived the police as the enemy. Again, Søren experienced that odd, don’t-let-her-fly-away sensation mixed with a dose of wonder that she was sitting here. That she trusted him at least that far.

“Until we have the opportunity to move you to a more secure location, this is your safe house,” he said. “That means that neither you nor Rina may leave the house—not even to go outside to smoke or anything like that.”

“I don’t smoke.”

He considered the situation. The house was neither more nor less secure against break-ins than any other suburban house—or secure against escape, for that matter. It was easy for Torben to tell him not to let Nina wander off, but in reality there wasn’t a whole lot he could do if she really wanted to leave. Not without restraining her physically—and wouldn’t that be a fine thing for the fragile trust he hoped they were establishing?

“Would Rina understand if we tell her she has to stay here? That it’s dangerous to go out?”

Nina hesitated. “Rina has lived in the Coal-House Camp for a long time now,” she said. “She understands about rules. But …”

“But?”

“She really just wants to be with her mother. So if Natasha finds us, Rina is gone. You can bet on that.”

“Do you think that Natasha would recognize your car?”

“It’s not the same one that I had when she was in the camp. No, I don’t think so.”

At least Nina had been smart enough not to park it in the driveway, but his own professional paranoia would have preferred it to be even farther away.

He got up and went into the hall. Listened at the bathroom door.

The girl was talking to someone.

He stopped breathing for a moment to listen better.

“Are you coming soon, Tatko ?” Søren could just barely make out the soft, quiet child’s voice through the door. “We miss you. And Mom is … Mom is in the kitchen making poppy seed cakes. Guests are coming. Anna is coming. And Great-Grandmother. Oh, it would be so nice if you could come too. You are coming? Oh, that’s good. Three o’clock. Kiss, kiss. I love you!”

Tatko. He was fairly sure it meant “father,” even though it wasn’t something a Russian child would say.

He quietly opened the door. Rina was sitting on the toilet, but on the lid, holding a cell phone up to her ear.

“Who are you talking to?” he asked.

She stiffened. “No one,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

“May I see your phone?”

She held it tightly against her chest for a few seconds. “It’s mine.”

“Yes. I just need to have a look at it.”

Rina handed it over reluctantly. Her breathing abruptly became even worse, wheeze in, wheeze out, a labored and uneven rhythm.

The cell phone was turned off. Dead. It was an old model, at least five or six years old. The display had a thin black crack across the upper left-hand corner; the back cover was cracked too, and absolutely nothing happened when he tried to turn it on. Presumably it hadn’t worked for a long time.

He handed it to the girl. “Thank you for letting me see it.”

She quickly put it away in her backpack.

Dear God, he thought.

“Who gave it to you?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. Just stared at him, blankly and fearfully, gnawing at her lower lip as if she were trying to eat it.

“Your Tatko?”

She nodded. An almost invisible nod.

“I can see why you treasure it,” he said.

Nina scrutinized the young man who sat in Søren’s kitchen. He was tapping away with concentration on some kind of cell phone/computer hybrid. Not an iPad—she knew what they looked like, at least, because Ida wanted one. This was something more exotic. The man’s powerful jaw worked ceaselessly, giving a little irritating click with every chew, and a pack of nicotine gum peeked out of his breast pocket. Nina didn’t really think he looked like a PET-man. He certainly didn’t look like Søren. And he wasn’t Søren, a fact that irritated her even more than his constant cud chewing.

She had slept for a few hours in Søren’s guest room with Rina nestled against her. The sleep had been amazingly dream free. Even though she had been so tired her whole body buzzed with exhaustion, Nina hadn’t expected to fall asleep so quickly and so deeply. Søren had had to shake her shoulder lightly to wake her up.

“I didn’t want to just leave you,” he’d said. “This is Mikael Nielsen. He’ll be on watch for the next six or seven hours.”

Nina was taken aback. She hadn’t expected Søren would personally hold her hand twenty-four/seven; of course he would have other things to do too, and it was pretty generous of him just to provide his house. But the cud-chewing young man didn’t seem an especially committed or confidence-inspiring replacement, and all her defenses rose up anew. The few questions she had tried to ask him were answered monosyllabically without him raising his gaze from his electronic thing even once. It was hard to determine if he suffered from what the Coal-House psychologist called “communicative issues” or whether it was just professional distance. One thing was certain—Rina would not begin to chat cozily with him . Especially not after he had insisted on taking away her security blanket cell phone to be completely sure it didn’t work.