By the time they’d drifted into sleep, the tiniest touches of light had begun to creep beneath the curtains. Munroe woke a few hours later, and when she was dressed she woke Alina, who startled at her touch.
Seeing Munroe, Alina groaned and dropped back down onto the pillow.
Munroe sat on the bed to lace her boots. “We need to get to the consulate,” she said.
Alina rubbed sleep from her face, crawled out of the bed, dragged her purse off the desk, and shut the bathroom door behind her.
Water rushed through the pipes behind the wall.
Munroe leaned into the headboard and closed her eyes.
According to Alina, Jiro had government connections. Munroe assumed that meant within the police force as well, and if she were a possessive, violent man whose woman had walked out on him, she’d be vicious in trying to get her back, if only to kill her. If the woman didn’t have a passport, the consulate would be the first place she’d start looking.
In leaving for the consulate first thing this morning they might already be too late.
The Russian Federation embassy in Tokyo was an alternative.
She didn’t have the time to spare to make the trip north.
In the hotel garage Alina pulled the helmet over her head and her shaking fingers fumbled, unable to thread the strap through the buckle. Gently, so as to avoid putting Alina more on edge than she already was, Munroe moved her hand and secured the helmet, then gave her a slip of paper and fifty thousand yen.
“My phone number,” she said, “and money to pay the fees for the passport.”
The helmet nodded. Then Alina shoved the paper and money deep down into a pocket.
Munroe mounted the bike, turned on the ignition, and brought the horses to life. Alina climbed on behind her. Had circumstances been otherwise, Munroe would have dropped the woman off at the consulate with enough money for taxi, hotel, and airfare and that would have been the end of it. History wouldn’t allow her that, and she could only hope that today’s mission would be simple.
Good deeds had a tendency to get people killed.
The Russian Federation consulate was a two-story, pine-tree-fronted, modern-style, windowless white-and-orange block that stood on a clean and quiet street in a neighborhood of upscale block-shaped apartment buildings. Separating the consulate from street traffic—had there been any street traffic—was an array of plastic cones, a few police officers, and an official van parked on the sidewalk against the white concrete of the compound’s security wall.
The street dead-ended into a metal traffic barrier a block or so down.
Munroe passed the building once for orientation, then looped back and stopped on the sidewalk beside the front gate.
Alina slid off, clutching her bag with one hand and attempting to unbuckle the helmet with the other. The nearest police officer approached the bike, irritation written in his expression. Eyes on him, words to Alina, Munroe took the helmet and shoved it on her own head. “I need two hours,” she said. “Call me on the consulate’s phone if you think you’ll take longer.”
“Thank you,” Alina said, but her focus, too, was on the officer, as if he was a dangerous thing. She quickstepped for the gate.
Munroe rolled off the sidewalk before the policeman reached her and waited nearby while Alina talked her way past consulate security and beyond the front door, then returned to Bradford’s apartment while her mind spun through the fallout that would come if instead of helping Alina she’d just dumped the woman into a trap.
She parked blocks away and walked a circuitous route, as much a caution against having been followed as of stepping into a different kind of trap, and then opened the door to dusty hot air and the apartment exactly as she’d left it.
The calm and order was frustrating. Maddening. Wrong.
Japanese criminal investigators were known for being effectively thorough. Even if they had everything in place for an open-and-shut conviction, if they believed Bradford was guilty, they should have come as a way to cover all the angles and double-down on evidence and motive.
Munroe grabbed the second helmet and stuffed another backpack with several more days’ worth of Bradford’s work clothes. She checked the windows, the doors, and left them closed. The food in the fridge had started to mold, but she’d have to take care of that another day. She routed to the hotel first, to drop off the clothes, and by the time she put the battery back into her phone, more than two hours had passed and Alina had called twice.
Munroe stopped the bike in front of the consulate gate. The door opened and Alina came bounding for the street. The look on her face and the posture of her stride said that she didn’t have a passport.
The policemen watched her from the van.
Munroe pulled the second helmet from the backpack and shoved it onto Alina’s head. “We’ll fix it later,” Munroe said. “Don’t talk now, we need to go.”
Alina slid up behind Munroe and clenched hard when the bike started up.
Munroe headed away from the consulate, away from the hotel and the airport, and toward Kyoto, where, because of the sheer number of white-skinned tourists, those who searched for Alina would be less likely to find her.