Chapter 33

London

6:44 pm GMT, 7:44 pm Local

Monica felt almost home now. When the train emerged from the Chunnel on British soil, she felt yet another layer of tension ease, and for the next fifty minutes she drifted in and out of a welcome slumber as the train sped toward London. Once again, the window served as a hard pillow, and she welcomed the escape—temporary as it was—following two days on the run.

A sudden blast jolted her awake. Trembling from the sudden punch of panic she glanced around, realized none of the other passengers in the car was even slightly alarmed or frightened. The abrupt burst had simply been the horn from the engine up front, signaling the train’s approach into St. Pancras Station.

Named for its location in St. Pancras parish and the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome, the gargantuan terminal is sited at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden. At the time of its construction in 1868, Londoners boasted the massive steel-and-glass structure held the largest unsupported arched roof in the world, one of the great wonders of Victorian architecture. All Monica was concerned with at the moment, however, was the presence of any police officers or plainclothes investigators from Interpol or MI6—anyone who might have an interest in detaining her as soon as she stepped down from the train.

But there was none of that. No cops, no spies, no assassins lying in wait. She stood on the platform, absorbing the signs and all the choices she had now that she was in London. She knew she could take her chances and figure out the best tube route to get her out to Heathrow. Or she could wait a minute to exhale, give her mind a chance to reboot and see if Fiona actually had managed to hoof it all the way from her office to meet her.

And there she was, a look of wonder and awe in her eyes. Monica started moving toward her and, when they met, they each slung their arms around the other, as if they were long-lost friends. Other passengers jostled them as they rushed by, but neither of them cared.

When they finally pulled apart, Monica said nothing for a long moment. It took Fiona to break the silence, as she shook her head in amazement and said, “Monica Cross…as I live and breathe. You actually made it to London.”

“You have no idea how wonderful it is to be here,” Monica sighed. She felt as if she might cry simply from the relief, if not the sheer exhaustion of the journey. “I hope I’m not intruding—”

“Intruding? My God—it’s just so awesome to see you. When you didn’t get on the plane… well, I thought the worst. You must tell me everything that’s happened to you—”

“It’s a long story,” Monica said. She glanced up at the station clock above her, then at her watch. “What time is it here, anyway?”

“Quarter of eight,” Fiona told her. “The night is young.”

“That’s funny. I set my watch to Greenwich Mean Time when I was in Brussels, and it says it’s six forty-five.”

“We’re on British Summer Time right now,” Fiona explained. “It makes no sense and there’s talk of rolling it back, but things work slowly this side of the pond.”

“Sounds no different than our side,” Monica replied.

Fiona studied her new friend again, then said, “I just can’t believe it’s you. What the dickens have you got yourself into?”

“One giant misunderstanding, but nothing I can’t get myself out of.” The last thing Monica wanted was to scare her newfound BFF with stories of mysterious strangers and hired killers. “Like I said on the phone, I need your help, one more time.”

“Of course, of course. Whatever you want.”

“And you swear you didn’t tell anyone I called?”

“What would I tell them?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Monica said with a shrug. “But I promise I’ll fill you in when we have a chance to talk.”

Fiona Cassidy glanced up and down the platform, then gently turned Monica around and gave her a gentle nudge toward the far end. “Come…let’s go and get you a drink.”

“I really could use a glass of wine right about now,” Monica admitted.

“Well, there’s a great little place I know around the corner. Better yet, let’s go back to my place. This may take most of the night, and I have a huge couch you can crash on.”

“I can’t begin to tell you what I’ve been through,” Monica told her fifteen minutes later, after they’d emerged from the Covent Garden tube station. They were walking on Cranbourn Street, past a Japanese Restaurant and a shop that sold pricey sunglasses. Despite the gloomy skies and the threat of rain, she felt calm and at peace with the world—or at least her little corner of it, right now in this moment.

“When you didn’t show up at the gate back in Islamabad, I was scared something bad had happened to you,” Fiona said. “There was nothing I could do, and then they loaded us back on the plane and we took off.”

“I freaked,” Monica replied. “I couldn’t just wait around, worried that some man with one eye was going to sneak up from behind and kill me. I did what I had to do, and bought another ticket.”

“I was hoping it was something like that.”

“There was a flight to Istanbul that was leaving in thirty minutes, and I got a seat on it. I apologize if I caused you any grief.”

Fiona nodded at that, seemed to accept it. “No worries,” she said. “I don’t know that I would have thought of that, but it got you out of there.”

“And brought me here,” Monica replied, leaving out the trouble in Frankfurt. “How ‘bout you? When did you get home?”

“Early this morning,” Fiona told her. “Barely got any sleep, and I wanted to take the day off. But my boss is a total wanker and said ‘no way.’”

Once again Monica’s mind went to her own boss at Earth Illustrated, and how she still hadn’t called him. It was the middle of the afternoon in New York; maybe she could catch him once she arrived at Fiona’s place. Then again, if his phone was tapped, they would know right where she was.

“Your boss sounds like a real prince,” she said.

“We already have enough of those around here,” Fiona replied with a chuckle. “When do I get to hear this great tale of yours?”

Fatigue was beginning to take hold, and all Monica really wanted was to slip into a deep sleep. But she had gone to Fiona for help, and she felt she owed her some sort of explanation.

“Wine first,” she said, delaying the inevitable.

Fiona’s place was a tidy one-bedroom flat on Tavistock Street, a second-story walk-up with no elevator. White walls, large windows, oddly contemporary, it retained many of the original features that gave it a period feel. Fireplace, crown molding, refinished hardwood floor, framed prints of modern art on the walls.

Monica was comforted to see the double locks at the front vestibule downstairs and three more upstairs on the apartment door. Once they were safely inside, Fiona went into the kitchen and proceeded to slice the metal casing off a bottle of sauvignon blanc with a Swiss Army knife.

“Old boyfriend gave it to me,” she explained. “The knife, not the wine.”

She pulled out the cork, then poured a healthy measure for both of them and carried the glasses out to the adjacent living room. Monica curled up in a corner of an old couch that looked as if it had been passed down through multiple generations. Fiona sat in a chair facing her, with her feet tucked up beneath her.

“So…what’s going on?” she asked. “Tell me everything.”

Monica took a sip of wine, the crisp taste of green apple and peach flowing over her tongue. “What’s going on is this,” she finally said, then launched into her tale of the last thirty-six hours. She skipped over the dead woman in Frankfurt, but managed to fill in enough grisly details so that, when she finally finished with stepping off the train thirty minutes ago, Fiona was staring at her with wide, incredulous eyes.

“This is just so...so unbelievable,” Fiona said when she’d finished.

“You don’t believe me—?”

“No, no…I mean yes. Please—don’t get me wrong. I just mean that…well, this sort of thing just doesn’t happen. Not to me, at least. Like, I live an everyday life. I catch the eight o-clock tube, and I get to the office at half-past. I book everybody’s fabulous holidays, Africa and India and the South Pacific. And I stay inside my own little world, my own shell of a life.”

“You went to Pakistan—”

“How romantic,” Fiona said, her mouth turning down in a frown. “You know what I mean. I want adventure.”

“I’d be happy to trade,” Monica replied as she finished her wine and set the glass down on the table.

“Can I talk you into a refill?” Fiona asked her.

What she really wanted now was sleep, about twenty hours of it. For the first time in days she felt relatively secure in the knowledge that no one had followed her here, no one could trace her to this apartment. She hadn’t used her bank card since Cologne, and she’d turned off her cell phone way back in Brussels. She didn’t know if it could be tracked if it were powered down but, short of tossing it in a rubbish bin, it was the best she could do.

“Just a little,” she said, holding her finger about an inch from the bottom of her glass. “And then maybe we can use your laptop, there, to book an early flight out of Heathrow.”

“Whatever I can do to help,” Fiona assured her as she wandered into the kitchen alcove with the glass.

Monica fought to keep her eyes open, a battle she knew she would lose within minutes. The rush of adrenaline finally was starting to subside, and when her body realized it was beyond recall, sleep would come. How wonderful it was to finally be off the hamster wheel and relax without worrying that death was lurking right around the corner.

She must have nodded off a second, because she barely heard Fiona say something to her out in the kitchen. She blinked her eyes open, saw her new friend standing there, gripping a gun in both hands, the barrel aimed directly at her chest.

“Don’t you bloody move,” Fiona said, her eyes as dark and menacing as any storm cloud Monica had ever seen. “Should’ve killed you when I fucking had the chance.”