Cold Warriors (21 page)

Tomas folded his arms, but didn't sit back down. "I'm listening."

"A businessman called Gabriel is searching for the artefacts too. You know that already, I imagine. His agents contacted me a few months back. I told them I couldn't help, and they left contact details, in case I changed my mind. If you liked, I could set up a meet."

Tomas smiled for the first time since he'd entered the apartment. "Yes, Heinrich. That's exactly what I'd like."

Morgan was in a church. He could see the altar and the silver cross above it, hanging from a long wire. The walls were pure white, the ceiling as well. He thought about looking down and suddenly he was, though he didn't recall moving his head.

The floor was white too. It looked grainy, like sand. That couldn't be right. Churches were supposed to be made of grey stone, with stained-glass windows and rows of pews.

There were no windows here to break up the white monotony of the walls. Instead they were lined with statues, kings and queens in long white robes. Morgan studied the face of the nearest, a proud, thin-faced old man. But then his view shifted, turning to the other side of the statue - and he realised that it was horribly deformed. Its eye had melted down its cheek, which in turn drooped down towards the remnants of its chin. Half its nose was gone, leaving nothing but the cavity of its nostril.

Horrified, Morgan tried to take a step back. He didn't move. Feet he couldn't see remained rooted to the gleaming white floor.

And as sometimes happens in dreams, he suddenly recognised it for what it was. The realisation didn't cut through the illusion, but it deadened the terror a little. It wasn't real. It would soon be over.

Not yet, though. There was still something else he needed to see. His eyeless gaze was drawn away from the statue, back to the altar, and now there was something on it. There was no sensation of movement, but suddenly he was nearer, and he could see what it was. A person. A little girl.

There was another figure, bending over her. His face was hidden, the tall, angular body curving like a bracket around the altar. He cast a dark shadow across the little girl. Morgan knew this person, though he couldn't name him. The fear came back, a cloud of dread as formless as Morgan himself.

The little girl's voice echoed through the empty, vaulted church, at once familiar and strange. "The Polish priest," she said.

The man bending over her jerked and straightened. He turned, a slow, almost balletic pirouette, and Morgan felt a surge of terror. Finally he would see the man, know him for who he was. But when the figure had turned to him it was just another statue, white from head to toe. And as Morgan watched, the priest's stony face began to melt and drip.

Morgan jerked awake, gasping for breath. Something slithered from his lap to the floor, and he let out a little moan of fear. His eyes tried desperately to penetrate the darkness, to convince himself that the dream really was over.

After a few seconds he remembered that there was a lamp on his bedside table. His fingers scrabbled for it, knocking it on its side before he finally managed to find the switch.

It didn't make him feel much better. The lamp bathed the room in a flat, pale glow that made it seem as unreal as anything in his dream.

Morgan fought to get his breathing under control, then leant over the side of the bed to retrieve the diary and notebook which had fallen when he woke. He must have dropped off while he was working on the translation. He certainly didn't remember going to bed, and he was still wearing his jeans and yellow t-shirt.

Anya stirred in the bed to his right. "What the hell are you doing? It's -" her hand reached out to fumble at the bedside clock "- four in the morning."

"I had a dream," Morgan said. Though 'Dream' seemed an inadequate word to describe the experience he'd just been through.

Anya looked like she was about to say something cutting. Then she read his face and her own softened. "Bad one?"

"Not great," Morgan said. He was quiet a long time, trying to get his head in order. The dream had been bad, but it had been more than that. "It was important," he said. "I think. It was about the Polish priest."

He could see it took Anya a moment to realise he was talking about something from his father's diary. Then she shrugged. "No surprise if you're dreaming about it. You've been reading it all day."

"No," Morgan said. A vision from the dream flashed across his mind's eye, the tall figure at the altar, stooping over the little girl. And suddenly he knew why the figure had looked so familiar. "No, it's not that. Raphael said he knew my - that he knew Nicholson. I think
Raphael's
the Polish priest."

"Because of a dream?" Anya wasn't scoffing exactly, but she didn't sound convinced.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?"

She shrugged. "It could be true, I suppose. That's a long way from saying it definitely is."

And now Morgan was remembering the little girl, whose face he hadn't been able to see. The terror in her voice when she told him about the priest. "We have to go to Poland," he said.

He expected Anya to fight him. He was prepared to go on his own if he had to. But she just studied him without saying anything. As the silence stretched on, he had time to notice that a lock of hair was stuck to the corner of her mouth, and there were red seams in her cheek where it had pressed too hard against her pillow.

"What?" he said eventually.

Her eyes didn't drop from his face, disconcerting in their seriousness. "Why did the Hermetic Division choose you for this mission, Morgan? I know what Tomas is. What are you?"

"I don't know," Morgan said.

She nodded. "Then I guess we're going to Poland."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Morgan woke as the sun blazed its light through a narrow gap in the curtains and spread warmth across his face. He was amazed that he'd managed to get back to sleep, but as soon as he'd recognised Raphael, the anxiety of his dream had faded into nothing. He'd been left feeling almost peaceful. Purposeful, anyway.

He rolled out of bed, hitching up his boxers where they'd slipped down his hips and scraping the sleep out of his eyes.

Anya was still dozing, curled in on herself like a baby. Morgan shook her shoulder to wake her. Her hand sleepily tried to bat his away, but he kept on shaking till her body unwound, and he saw her eyes open. He ignored her muttered protests and headed into the bathroom.

The taps only yielded a trickle of cold water. Morgan splashed a handful on his face and hissed at the icy sting of it. He tried to remember the last time he'd washed and realised it was probably back in Budapest, when he'd sat in the thermal baths with Karamov. His fingers grated against his cheeks as he rubbed them. He must have a two-day growth of stubble. Lucky Anya had bought him a razor along with the clothes and toothbrush.

One final splash of water on his face, and he looked up to catch his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

A different face stared back at him.

Morgan shut his eyes, his mind desperately trying not to build snapshot impressions of features into a known face. The snub, little-girl nose. The black hair hanging in damp curls around the broad forehead. The feral smile. No, it wasn't real, it wasn't her. But he opened his eyes again and of course it was.

Morgan backed out of the bathroom, stumbling against the door frame. An awkward scramble and he was out, falling to his knees on the bedroom floor. He could hear his own breathing, rapid and harsh.

Anya was fully awake by then, sitting on the one small chair brushing her hair.

She jumped to her feet when she saw Morgan, letting out a startled yelp. "Shit! What's wrong?" The hairbrush fell out of her hand to bounce once against the carpet.

Morgan's eyes tracked it mindlessly, his brain still buzzing with panic.

"Morgan?"

"Nothing," he said, finally looking up at her.

"Don't lie to me," she said. "It's not conducive to a good working relationship."

He shuddered, and wrapped his arms around himself. "On the train," he told her. "There was a man, an American..." He swallowed hard. "He had some kind of power, I don't know. He used mirrors to call them up."

"To call what up?" Anya was darting nervous glances towards the bathroom now.

"Ghosts," Morgan said. "Spirits. It's okay, you can stop fucking looking, I don't think it's there any longer. They're only there when you can see them."

"But you think this 'spirit' followed you from the train? That it somehow came to
this
mirror to find you?"

"I think she's in
every
mirror I look in," Morgan said. He shivered again, because he hadn't realised the truth of that until he said it.

"And what -"

"It doesn't matter. It's dangerous, and that's as much as I know."

"Okay," Anya said. "Take it easy. Do you think it's safe for
me
to go in there?"

Morgan nodded. "She... it doesn't know you. The man, the American man, said he only opened the gate, that I was the one who called the spirit through. It's me who's being haunted, not you."

Anya looked dubious, but after a second she nodded too, and scooped up her toiletry bag from the floor. "So we're still going to Poland."

"Yes, we've got to." Morgan didn't know how to tell her that he thought the spirit of his dead sister wanted him to find the white church he'd seen in his dream. In fact, he was pretty sure he
shouldn't
tell her. "The answers are there," he said instead. "We just have to work out how to find them."

"It's your decision," Anya said reluctantly. "But perhaps you should buy an electric razor. And for god's sake use some deodorant. I'm going to be stuck in a car with you for hours."

Tomas had told Heinrich he'd be the only other person attending the meeting with Raphael's agent, but both men had known it was a lie. Just because Tomas was using Heinrich, didn't mean he trusted him.

Still, Belle wouldn't have been his first choice of back-up. But she and Tomas were wired for sound, button cameras in their lapels. Anya and the van with the audio-visual equipment were parked a few streets away. They should be safe enough. And it was true they didn't want to scare off Raphael's go-between - that a man walking with his young daughter looked a hell of a lot less suspicious than almost any other combination of personnel.

Heinrich had wanted to arrange the meet in a park. Anya had shuddered and refused and Tomas knew she was remembering what had happened to Karamov in that sunny, open green space in Budapest. So instead Tomas had told Heinrich to fix the rendezvous at the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Tomas had sensed the other man's grimace over the phone line and almost smiled.

Now he was regretting his choice. Here, at last, was a piece of the Wall that used to symbolise so much. Multi-coloured, scrawled with graffiti - and locked away behind glass. An exhibit. Tomas stood and stared at it, lost in memory, until Belle squeezed the hand she held clasped in hers.

Tomas looked down at the little girl. Her eyes were darting around the large exhibition room, too watchful for someone her age.

"Heinrich's here," she said.

She was right. He'd just come through the entry gates, feet cautious and stumbling. Tomas saw his eyes squint in anger when he caught sight of the fragment of the Wall, but he made no acknowledgement of Tomas or Belle. No doubt Raphael already had people in the room. They couldn't afford to betray the connection.

Tomas tugged on Belle's arm to draw her over to the other side of the museum and a large glass exhibit case holding photographs of those who'd tried to cross the Wall and failed. If Tomas stood behind it, he'd be able to keep an eye on Heinrich without being too obvious.

"Any sense of who Raphael's man might be?" Tomas asked, peering at Heinrich through the glass. It made the old Stasi agent seem insubstantial, a shadowy remnant of who he used to be.

"No one's leaping out at me." Belle was still scanning the room, a small frown on her forehead.

"You might want to be a bit less obvious about that," Tomas whispered to her.

"Little girls are supposed to be curious, Mr Len. It's in the manual."

A flicker of shifting colour through the glass told Tomas that Heinrich was moving. Not deeper into the museum, but back towards the exit. "Damn him!" he muttered. If that bastard betrayed them now...

"He's following someone," Belle said.

Tomas studied the crowd, but he couldn't see who she meant. Too many people, and Heinrich was looking down at the floor, not at any one of them.

"There," Belle said. "The lady in the red top. Kind of sad looking, with salt and pepper hair."

Tomas let himself drift closer to Heinrich. All the while his eyes catalogued the crowd, and after a minute he saw the woman Belle was talking about. She was behind Heinrich now, with her back to Tomas. No doubt she'd already told the old man where to go. If Raphael's people knew their business, the real talking wouldn't take place at the original meet. They'd be relocating soon, and Belle and Tomas needed to make sure they were close enough to follow.

Heinrich reached the exit, pushing through the small barrier on his way out. The woman lingered a little, obviously not wanting to look like she was with him. Her head turned slightly as her eyes scanned the room.

Tomas automatically dropped his, feigning fascination with a display recounting the history of the Wall's construction.

A second later, his mind processed his brief glimpse of the woman's face, and his head snapped back up again.

The woman had gone by then, but it didn't matter. The image was so clear, so familiar. The round cheeks, sunk a little with age. The chestnut hair, streaked with grey as Belle had said. The eyes, such a unique, deep blue, almost violet. Tomas dropped Belle's hand without thinking, pushing past people to get to the exit, careless now about being noticed. That didn't matter. Nothing did. The only thing he cared about was finding that woman.

Finding out if there was any way she really could be Kate.

The car was ancient and its motor turned with a choking sound, like a terminal cough. They were travelling so slowly down the windy, tree-shaded road that it would probably have been faster to get out and walk. Morgan knew it was his fault. He'd insisted Anya break off both wing mirrors as well as the rear-view mirror before he'd get in. She was driving pretty much blind, but then the roads were almost entirely empty. They'd passed two cars in the last three hours. There was nothing here but the endless gloomy forest, and the strip of clear blue sky above the trees.