The magic eight ball spit out a name and a place. The name: journalist Elena Ilić, flagged already by 004, known for her critical reporting on Sir Bertram, someone Zofia might trust. The place: Lake Bled, Slovenia.
Elena camped there as a child, summers spent pleading for ice cream at the castle restaurant on the hill above the lake; rowing across the brilliant surface to the island at the center, where they’d ring the church bell and make a wish; and sometimes simply floating in her swimming costume, turning in a gentle circle in the wake of boats, battlements bobbing in the periphery of her vision, then thick forest, dry road, sun glittering inside the beads of water on her face. It was the place that made her feel safest on earth, so she told Zofia Nowak to meet her on Bled Island. But Elena’s family had never visited in winter, and the trees surrounding Lake Bled were spectral strangers. This defamiliarization left her uneasy. As a child, the future had seemed certain. Now she waited on the shore of the island and watched the lakeside through binoculars, where a pletna oarsman waited for Zofia in the traditional boat.
Harwood and Leiter were on the road from Šobec Campground. Harwood had driven through the night, meeting Felix at Trieste Airport, but Zofia wasn’t there. Q told them about the campsite, the place where most of Elena’s childhood photos were tagged. The administrators, shocked to be woken by the sort-of-police, had no record of anyone matching Elena or Zofia pitching in the site. Harwood and Leiter stalked among the slumbering tents to the white water river, where Harwood splashed her face, pressing a glacial hand to the back of her neck, thinking of Bashir waiting for word in the hospital. The radio was in her pocket, but it had fallen silent. Mora had realized he was compromised. Aren’t we all, thought Harwood now as she whipped around the edge of Lake Bled. Leiter was watching the thermal satellite on the display screen. “We’ve got movement on the island, and one person at the boats.”
Harwood looked across to the island, and had to shield her eyes against the silver glare of binoculars. “Your nine o’clock, Felix. I’d bet that’s Elena, worrying about Zofia.”
Leiter reached for a rubber-insulated scope Velcroed behind the seat. Elena was practically standing in the water. Zofia must be late. “That’s her, watching through binoculars. The man in the boat looks to be waiting to row Zofia to safety.”
“Let’s hope so.”
The screen pulsed. A taxi was dropping someone off at the shore of the lake. Leiter raised the scope again. He watched Zofia Nowak get out and look around with her shoulders hunched. She was clutching a rucksack to her chest. He resisted the surge of hope. She wasn’t safe yet. Zofia saw the oarsman, who raised his arm in the boat. She swung the rucksack onto her back, carefully negotiating the icy path to the jetty.
Straight road appeared ahead. Harwood told Felix to hold on to something and the Alpine sprinted with a cavernous echo. It was hard to tell at this speed, but it struck her that, while Zofia looked up, startled, the oarsman did not provide the double take warranted by the appearance of a sports car on an empty road at dawn. She scanned the hilltops. “Does the thermal show any sign of a sniper?”
Leiter did not ask why, only moved the map on the Alpine’s screen with his fingertip. “Castle roof, we’ve got a faint signature at the restaurant. Bit early for setting up.”
“How faint?”
The boat wobbled under Zofia, triggering the map to find the disturbance. “Damn it,” said Leiter, watching the oarsman manage the boat with confident strokes into the body of the lake.
The sudden stop of the Alpine at the foot of the castle churned up grit and stones. Harwood climbed out and ran down to the jetty. Her gun waited in the shoulder holster beneath her coat and she almost drew it then and there, but something about the way the oarsman now lowered his head to Zofia’s to share a whispered conference made her pause. Zofia stiffened. She gripped the side of the boat, then stilled. The boat seesawed gently in the water.
The radio in Harwood’s pocket spat to life. “Hold very still now, Johanna.” It was Mora. Harwood’s flesh pimpled. “Or I will shoot Dr. Nowak. Open your coat.”
Harwood heard the crunch of snow as Leiter halted on the path behind her. She raised her hands, then slowly did as Mora said.
“Throw that weapon into the lake.”
Harwood bit her lip to keep from swearing. The gun made only a small splash.
“Tell Agent Leiter to discard his weapon, also into the lake. He has one good throwing arm left, I understand.”
Harwood looked over her shoulder at Felix. He was six feet from the car. He flushed red, then chucked his sidearm in a wide arc.
“Take the radio from your pocket. Then remove your coat. And your sweater. Your socks and shoes, too, I think.”
This time Harwood did swear, then peeled off her layers, tossing them onto the silvered grass. When she pulled her socks off, ice clamped her bare feet. She was left in her jeans and T-shirt. It felt like a sudden fever. She opened the line on the radio, trying to keep her teeth from chattering as she said, “You went to a lot of trouble to get to her. You wouldn’t shoot her.”
“Trouble? I only listened to the birds. So good at picking up breadcrumbs. But I would like to keep this civilized, so stop dancing on your tiptoes like a puppet, sweet Johanna, or I’ll shoot Dr. Nowak in the stomach.”
Harwood lowered the soles of her feet into the snow. She breathed. “Go ahead and shoot. I’m a surgeon. I’ll take my odds.”
“Like you saved Sid? I am told he died from sudden heart failure forty minutes ago.”
Harwood almost dropped the radio. She swiveled to Felix. He shook his head.
“I told you not to move.”
A bullet slammed into the Alpine’s front left tire. She froze, half-turned from the lake now. The shot had come from the battlements. The sniper who had declined to shoot her in Frankfurt. She could hear the creak and slap of the oars as Mora made his way to the far side of the lake. The cold spreading up her legs was white hot. Light was dancing over Leiter’s face. Not the red beam of a sniper in the battlements. The reflection from Elena Ilić’s binoculars. Harwood saw Felix smile and relief expanded in her chest, a wave against the pain, the same relief she’d felt on missions with Bond when fun would show in his eyes just as it all went wrong. Leiter’s arms were spread, too, but he pointed Elena with one finger to the castle.
For the briefest of seconds, the reflection from Elena’s binoculars followed his gesture and found a metal surface in the battlements, forging a momentary star that blinded the sniper—who fired. Harwood and Leiter had already both dived, Leiter behind the car, Harwood into a rowboat, hunkering beneath its rim as the whole fleet clunked together.
Leiter popped the rear boot. It was small, but with space enough for his sniper case. How quickly can you assemble a sniper rifle with only one hand? That had been a game once, in training. The answer—damn quick.
Mora’s voice snapped through the cold air: “I will shoot her.”
Harwood reached for the oars, trying to keep her head down. A round missed her by a hair’s breadth, rollicking the water. She said into the radio, “I’ve called, Mora. You can either show me your hand or leave the table.”
“Or raise.”
The next bullet pierced the boat. Water rushed in. She had to jump into another one. She couldn’t see whether Leiter had assembled the rifle he’d slung in the back. She wished they’d had it prepared, despite the border they’d crossed. Measures of grace. Measures of faith. She scrambled for it. The noise of Felix firing round after round into the battlements was pure music. But it wasn’t just the gun. Harwood struck out into the lake as the monastery bell clamored. She smiled. Elena Ilić, doing whatever she could, even if all she could do was make some noise. Like a good journalist should.
“Have you got the shooter?” called Harwood.
“He’s a squirrelly son of a bitch!” called Leiter.
Harwood was gaining on Mora and Zofia, even as her arms seized in the bitter wind and ice floes knocked on the hull. Mora was rowing with two hands. That meant he’d trusted the sniper to keep the gun moving between Zofia and the agents. He would be armed. But he’d have to stop rowing to pull his weapon.
A shot fired and the bell stopped, its peal a dying echo. Harwood lost the rhythm of the oars for a moment.
So the order had been to take care of the journalist, too. Or else the sniper was simply irritated by the bell.
Leiter moved his scope over the island. Elena lay in a still and bloody heap at the base of the bell. A clean headshot from the sniper on the roof of the castle. Leiter breathed through his nostrils and retrained his sights on the tower. The sniper had found a nest that offered no angle, using an old archer’s window. Leiter put two rounds through the slit, shots that would have earned him a merit badge, but it was no good; the shooter must be lying crooked. Leiter had always been a good shot with any armament you cared to name. When he lost his shooting hand, they told him the days of heroics were over. He begged to differ.
Leiter scanned the courtyard restaurant. Outdoor burners stood like sentries over each table, all blanketed in snow, probably not used much this deep into December. He hoped they kept the propane stocked. Leiter loosed three bullets, one after the other, into the heaters. Boom, boom, boom. He smiled. He’d always wanted to lay siege to a castle.
Harwood instinctively ducked. A fireball erupted from the battlements. She saw Mora check just as she had, and then redouble his strokes, but Zofia—perhaps realizing there was no longer a gun directly at her head, perhaps simply no longer caring—was now struggling. Harwood could see the bead of Felix’s sniper rifle dance over the fighting forms.
Harwood shouted, “Zofia, get down!” The wind stole her words. But it didn’t matter. She was almost there.
Then the red bead of Leiter’s gun disappeared. Harwood looked over her shoulder. The last shot hadn’t been from his rifle. The sniper had survived the blast. Leiter lay motionless by the rear wheels of the Alpine. The white grass beneath him was rusting.
Harwood felt the disturbance of the bullet as she threw herself flat beneath the bench seats of the rowboat. Something very cold touched her, and for a moment she thought it was actually something hot, that it was her own blood. But it wasn’t. It was ice water. The bullet had pierced the boat. She was sinking. Mora was disappearing from reach. Harwood controlled her breathing to avoid hyperventilation, filled her lungs with air, and dropped over the side into Lake Bled as another shot shattered the boat.
Shock grabbed her by the throat. Harwood forced her arms to drive deeper. Another bullet stirred the murk. She knew it was working because she was losing light. She couldn’t feel her body, only the cold around it. She had been trained to hold her breath for up to four minutes under water. Harwood twisted, treading water slowly, closing her eyes. Her feet were blocks dragging her down. Lake grasses hugged her neck, wrapped around her like limbs. Her T-shirt ballooned, delivering a punch to her ribs, her chest. Her jeans dragged at her. In training, a buddy waited by the side of the pool with their eyes on the clock. Harwood tried to count the seconds herself now. How far would Mora get in four minutes? Would Felix survive four minutes of blood loss? And did the sniper—who seemed to know her combat training in the Frankfurt shoot-out—know just how long she could hold her breath? Would they wait for the fifth minute? She was reaching it now. Her scalp was freezing over, her lungs were burning, her mind was screaming. Swim up. Harwood waited. A delicious ease spread through her limbs. That’s it. Relax. And breathe.
Harwood jolted in the water. Don’t breathe. You’ll drown.
Minute six.
Harwood broke the surface, gasping, dizzy, sick. She was rocked and pushed by the swell. She couldn’t move her arms. Weeds clung to her face.
No bullet came.
The fragments of the boat drifted nearby. Harwood’s teeth were the fall of hammers. It seemed to take hours to get her arms to move, to get to the shell, to cling on, to float.
Lake Bled was empty. Mora was gone. He must have had a car waiting on the opposite shore. How fast was his head start? She could swim to the western shore, repair her tire, pursue. Minutes of grace. She turned around, finding Felix Leiter prone on the eastern shore. Minutes of faith.
Harwood set off swimming, more slowly than she ever had before, all of those minutes bleeding away. When she reached the shore, it took three attempts to pull her body out. She crawled across the jetty. Made it to her feet on the bank. She was shaking violently. She couldn’t think.
“Harwood?” Felix’s eyes were open. He was scanning the sky. “Mora, he’s got Zofia . . .”
Harwood scrambled up the bank, crying out as her feet seemed to break in two. She hauled the front boot open. Wrapped herself in a thermal blanket. Grabbed the first aid kit, then dropped it. Retrieved the box from beneath the car, opening it with shaking hands as she rushed around to the rear. Felix was the color of ash. He watched her with a removed curiosity.
Harwood sloshed pure alcohol over her palms. It burned. “You’re going to be OK. Stay with me. You’re going to be OK.” I’m a surgeon. I’ll take my odds. Had she meant it?
“Zofia,” said Felix. His gaze darted between clouds. His breath puffed into wisps. “You’ve gotta get Zofia. Go. Now. This is fine. I’m fine with it.”
Harwood looked up at the open road and then said, “I’m not fine with it.”
She knelt by his body, opening his coat, then his shirt. Blood spilled over her arms. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. She wanted to kiss him. But the massive round had half-penetrated, lodging in his chest. The sniper had been going for the heart.
Harwood’s hands were trembling. She took a shot of the alcohol, shook herself fiercely, and laid out her tools.