John stopped the waitress from coming to the table with a discreet shake of his head. The conversation wasn’t one appropriate for outsiders and she couldn’t be allowed to see him slipping his service weapon into the shoulder holster concealed beneath his jacket.
“Why don’t you trust me?” Trevor said, without lowering his gaze.
“Would you, in my shoes?”
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “Paranoia is a real bitch if you let it get to you.”
John knew his friend was speaking from experience. A year earlier, both had been working for the FBI and had infiltrated a Nigerian drug cartel in Baltimore. Every single day had been a struggle against the fear of discovery. Nevertheless, Trevor had managed to play his role with such success that he had become the leader’s right-hand man. It was indicative of his unique capacity to dissemble and win trust.
“Are you on your own?” said John.
“Of course I am. What exactly are you thinking? That Ganiru sent me?”
That was his name. Ganiru Okeke. The leader of the drug cartel, who had been sentenced to seven years in jail thanks to witness testimony from John and Trevor at his trial last fall.
“It’s not completely impossible, is it?” said John. “That he might use you to find me.”
His friend sighed in resignation.
“Is it okay if I order something to drink, or do you think the waitress is going to stick a corkscrew in my neck?”
“Sure, go for it,” said John, fully aware that Trevor’s response was exactly what he would have deployed were he in the same position. He would have dispelled any worries by ridiculing them. He would have shone a light on the imaginary specter and called Ganiru’s hitmen monsters under the bed.
Trevor waved the young woman over. He said they would wait to decide whether they were eating, but that he wanted a beer. When she had moved on to the next party, he leaned across the table.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s take this from the beginning so that I can keep up. Before we parted ways after the trial, I set up two encrypted email accounts. Why do you think I did that?”
“So we could stay in touch even after we had moved and been given new identities.”
“So no suspicions on that count?”
John shook his head.
Trevor shifted the candle to one side so that the flame didn’t burn him.
“I didn’t think you’d write me,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
John remembered the warnings issued by the handler at the bureau. Anyone entering witness protection had to be willing to break off every connection with their former life. Any contact was a potential security risk.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“For the same reason that you created our accounts in the first place.”
Trevor nodded and looked at him gravely. For a moment, John felt a strong bond between them. The kind that came from having seen Ganiru’s reign of terror at close quarters and knowing which violent assets the drug dealer had at his disposal. Anyone being pursued by a man like that needed a friend who understood what it felt like to be unable to sleep through a whole night.
The waitress returned with the beer and set down the foaming glass.
“I can’t be bothered with this guessing game any longer,” Trevor said once she had left. “Exactly when do you think I betrayed you?”
John studied his friend’s blank expression. “You didn’t do it of your own volition,” he said. “I think the hunters forced you.”
“The hunters?”
“Yes—the hitmen that Ganiru is paying to find us. I don’t know how they found you—all I know is that they did.”
Trevor looked like he was about to choke on his beer.
“Jesus, no . . .”
“Wait,” John interrupted him. “They went through your computer and found the emails we sent each other. Since we never disclosed where we were, they took over and wrote me pretending to be you.”
“So you think that this . . .”
Trevor put a hand on his stomach.
“. . . is just a bluff. That my large intestine isn’t full of tumors.”
John reminded himself what a talented actor the man across the table was. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I think.”
“But then I don’t get it . . . why did you let me come here?”
“Because I’m a naïve idiot who took the bait hook, line, and sinker about my friend with cancer wanting to meet up for a teary-eyed farewell. It wasn’t until last night that I realized something was up. I read your old emails and spotted some small deviations in the language, changes that just happened to start at the same time you began having problems with your stomach.”
“And that’s your evidence?” said Trevor. “My bad grammar and sloppy spelling?”
“It’s not you who wrote the most recent emails—that much I’m sure of,” said John, without any great sense of conviction.
“Stop with the crazy and use your common sense instead. If what you say is true, why aren’t I at the bottom of a lake? The hunters surely have no further use for me, right?”
John had no reasonable answer to that question. He had assumed the same thing—that Trevor was dead—and had come to the restaurant because he was unable to help himself. As long as there was a theoretical possibility that Trevor might still be alive, it was his duty. However, his former colleague’s appearance wasn’t enough to dispel his suspicions, and that made him feel like a paranoid traitor.
“For Christ’s sake, John. I don’t know what to say to make you believe me.”
Trevor raised his beer glass and examined the flame of the candle through the amber liquid. The wall of silence between them was impenetrable. Once again, John allowed his gaze to slide from patron to patron. The men he had defined as potential threats were still in their seats, apparently enjoying their food and drinks.
“Do you want me to leave?” Trevor said.
When John didn’t reply, his friend got up and pulled his wallet from his back pocket.
“I hope this covers it,” he said, dropping a one-hundred-kronor bill on the table. “I don’t know what a beer costs in Sweden.”
Trevor strode quickly toward the exit. The small bell above it tinkled as he left the restaurant and a gust of winter cold blew in. Out on the sidewalk, he put his coat back on and pulled his hat over his bare head.
Without John really being sure how it happened, he pushed his own chair out, squeezed past the couple at the window, and tapped on the glass. Trevor stopped mid-movement and looked at him. For a couple of seconds, they stood there like that, staring at each other. Then John waved to his friend to come back into the warmth.
Once they had sat back down again, the waitress appeared with a puzzled frown.
“Do you still want the table? Otherwise, I’ve got guests waiting in the bar.”
“Thanks, but we’ll eat—right?” said John.
Trevor reached for the bill and returned it to his pocket.
“Absolutely.”
They ordered a large plate of tapas to share. John stuck to mineral water while Trevor ordered another beer.
“The doctor wants me to cut out meat and anything else that is hard to digest. But there must be something I can eat.”
“You pick first and I’ll eat whatever’s left,” John said.
It was difficult to accept the cancer as a truth, but right now there was no other option. If he showed any more mistrust, the conversation would be over.
“Does Minette know you’re sick?” he said, picturing Trevor’s ex-wife in his mind’s eye.
John had never met her, but back in Baltimore his friend had shown him photos of a woman in her thirties with dreads and lively eyes.
“No, we’re not in contact. I’ve asked my handler at the bureau to let her know when . . . well, when this is over.”
The sorrow was unmistakable. It was leaking from every pore of his large body. His wife had given birth to their first child during the cartel op. Trevor had been set on all three of them starting a new life together, but Minette had other ideas. She’d asked for a divorce and disappeared with their daughter into her own witness protection scheme.
“Is there really nothing to be done about the tumors?” said John.
“No, they’ve already spread. Both to my liver and lymph. I’m screwed.”
“What’s the doctor say? How long have you got left?”
“Six to eight months. If I keep up the chemo, that is.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Much less.”
“So you’re going to keep up the treatment?”
Trevor shook his head slowly.
“And don’t try to change my mind,” he said. “That shit leaves me bedridden and vomiting for days. I’d rather live a shorter life but be on my own two feet.”
John wanted to ask about his daughter. Did Trevor hear anything about her from his handler? But instead, he steered the conversation in a different direction. Away from the cancerous tumors and shattered family.
“Where have you been holed up for the last few months?” he said.
Trevor tried to smile.
“Bali.”
“Of course. I might have known. Beaches and drinks with umbrellas.”
“Yes, and chicks in bikinis. I could have used you there. We would have made an incredible team. You taking care of the hot girls and me as the consolation prize for the second string.”
John couldn’t help but laugh at the tasteless joke made by his colleague, who was more than ten years his senior. In Baltimore, Trevor had called him “son” even though he was thirty-four years old, and made fun of his vanity. In many ways, they were the very opposite of each other, at least in superficial terms. John took meticulous care of his body and always wore custom suits, while his friend was somewhat overweight and happiest wearing bargains from Target.
“How about you?” Trevor asked. “Why did you move to this backwater?”
John stifled the impulse to tell the truth—that he’d spent his first twelve years living in Karlstad and still spoke passable Swedish. That story would have to wait until he was absolutely sure that his friend could be trusted.
“I’ve always liked Sweden,” he said instead. “It seemed a safe place. A good country to live in.”
“What about the darkness, though? It’s dusk practically before the sun has come up.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t quite prepared for that. But people here say it’s the other way around in summer. It’s light until eleven in the evening.”
The waitress returned with their drinks and shortly after she set down the tapas platter between them on the table. Trevor helped himself, but most of the food got no farther than his plate. The beer was better received. His glass was empty and replaced by another before John had made it even halfway through his mineral water.
“How long are you staying?” he said, regretting his question the moment it had crossed his lips.
Trevor looked troubled and poked his rustic Spanish omelet with his fork.
“You don’t have a return ticket, do you?” John asked.
Without waiting for an answer, he put his hand on his friend’s arm. Trevor hadn’t come to Sweden to say a final farewell before going home. He’d come here so he didn’t have to die alone.
“Sorry, but I need to hit the head.”
Trevor cleared his throat and pushed his chair out. When he stood up, he swayed and had to support himself on the table to avoid losing his balance.
“You feeling okay?”
“It’s my painkillers. I forgot about them. They’re bloody strong and you’re not meant to mix them with booze.”
John glanced toward the steep spiral stairs down to the restrooms in the basement.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “I need to go too.”
He went ahead of Trevor—close enough to be on hand if he was needed, but without offering his arm for support. Once they were downstairs, both had to duck to avoid hitting their heads on the low concrete ceiling.
“Ladies first,” John said, waving Trevor into the restroom.
They stood side by side and emptied their bladders into the stainless-steel urinal. His friend glanced toward the door and then unbuttoned his top shirt button. John was about to ask what he was up to when Trevor put a finger to his lips. He undid another button and pulled the material apart.
There—in the middle of his mighty chest—was a microphone taped to his bare skin.