The Doll (35 page)

They rode the line to Milan’s central station, where, as it was now nearing the end of the workday, the building bustled with early twinges of rush-hour traffic. They transferred up a level, and yet another, to the main lobby of the station, a high-domed hall, one long side of which led to the tracks for the distance and high-speed lines, and the other to the outside. Through this part of the station, travelers, national and international, fed in and out of the city by the hundreds of thousands each day.

Neeva twisted around, her face turned upward, eyes wide in wonder at what was said by some to be the most beautiful station in the world, and tripped. Munroe caught her. “Sightseeing is going to get you killed, okay? Focus.”

Outside the station, streets were trash-strewn, narrow, and congested with traffic, and Munroe searched out the storefronts for what she knew had to be nearby. Came at last to what she wanted:
a small shop sandwiched among a strip of mom-and-pop stores, glass windows entirely filled with colorful phone-card and travel advertisements that touted rates to mostly third-world destinations; a business that provided the means to make cheap international calls and Internet access by the minute.

Inside, Munroe set Neeva by the front, where she could watch the street from the cracks between the window posters, and handed her the backpack. “If you see someone familiar,” she said, “don’t try to be brave. It sounds stupid because I won’t be far from the door, but they can move fast. Scream
‘fuoco’
with everything you’ve got. Noise is your friend.”

Neeva mouthed the word and nodded.

“And don’t step into the open doorway. If he’s watching, he’ll just as easily take you with a tranquilizer and carry you off.”

Another nod.

Munroe turned to the nearby counter, where an elderly man, the business’s only apparent employee, took Munroe’s money while casting an occasional stare in Neeva’s direction.

The phone booths closest to Neeva were occupied, so Munroe took what was available, trying to keep an eye on the girl while she punched in a seemingly endless stream of numbers and codes to dial Bradford’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Milan,” she said.

“You okay?”

“Yes, but I’ve got to make this quick because I’ve not only got a tail, I’ve got Neeva with me, too.”

“You what?”

“I’ll explain it as soon as I’ve got more time.”

“I need your address,” he said, and she read the details off the receipt.

In an exchange of business, without any of the emotional undertone that had punctuated their previous conversations, Bradford ran through step-by-step directions that Munroe jotted down; an address she dare not put into the phone’s browser or plug into the GPS in case that, too, transmitted details back to Lumani.

“Your guy needs to know I have a tail,” Munroe said.

“Can you shake it?”

“They’re like a bedbug infestation.”

“I’ll warn him,” Bradford said, and Munroe heard the smile in his voice. “Be safe.”

“My very best,” she said.

Neeva still stared out the window when Munroe approached, and the old man still studied Neeva.

“Anything?” Munroe asked, and Neeva shook her head.

A clothing shop three doors down toward the train station displayed discount signs in the windows, and Munroe walked Neeva to it and stepped inside. Counted out most of what was left of Arben’s money, found an oversize long-sleeved shirt that could replace Arben’s jacket and a stylish hat Neeva could use to tuck her hair underneath.

Although the two pieces didn’t entirely erase the ridiculousness of Neeva’s getup, combined they helped to make her clothing more of a choice, and by implication far less attention-garnering.

“We’ll get you something else later,” Munroe said. “For now this is all I’ve got money for.”

“It works,” Neeva said.

They returned to the station and Munroe searched for storage lockers, found none, and so followed the signs for
Deposito bagagli
, the manned luggage depot where for a fee baggage could be screened and left behind. She stopped when she saw the line, five people deep. Turned a slow circle, scanning shops and people, searching faces for the curious and familiar. Shrugged off the backpack. Opened it long enough to pull out the tape, phone, and travel documents. Shoved everything, including the tape, bulky and uncomfortable, inside her jacket, then with a subtle re-check of surroundings, pushed the pack and the remainder of its contents into a garbage bag.

Neeva’s mouth opened and her lips formed a question, but she stopped before the words came out. Munroe took her elbow and pointed her toward the escalators. “Keep walking,” she said.

If she could have, Munroe would have left Neeva at the station and returned to collect her when business was finished. Partners in general added complications, inevitably had to be protected and typically got in the way. Neeva, in particular, and under these circumstances, with her lack of training and childlike trust, made for an exceptional burden.

But she couldn’t risk the separation.

Not even running decoy.

If Lumani was even half the predator and a fraction the strategist she assumed him to be, he would know this stop at the station and the sudden movement of another tracker was his prey, masking scent. To be certain, he’d be forced to check out all leads and it would cost him time, and that was all she’d done by abandoning the backpack and the equipment: purchased time.

Munroe looped from the upper level, wound through crowds, down again to the track they’d just used, returning in the direction from which they’d come. Reached the platform, and with Neeva sliding back against a tiled wall in order to catch her breath, Munroe scanned faces, waiting for the mechanical announcement and the hiss down the tracks. The approaching roar, the squeal of brakes meant another ride, another chance at freedom.

Waiting passengers approached the doors, and Munroe maneuvered Neeva into the thick of the crowd, stepping to the side to allow those within to exit. Near the stairs on the opposite platform, Munroe caught the first sign of familiar. Recognition came first in a flash of color and a glint, as if light had reflected off metal or an oversize briefcase.

Munroe stepped onto the train and, hand on Neeva’s shoulder, guided the girl behind standing passengers, but the move wouldn’t have made any difference. Lumani stared at Munroe through the glass and on his face was a gloating smile. The train began to move and he touched an index finger to his forehead and tipped it toward her.

“Was that him?” Neeva said. “Pretty Boy?”

Munroe nodded.

Pulled the pieces of Arben’s phone from her pockets. Put the battery in and powered the device on.

“Are you worried?”

“Not yet,” Munroe whispered, and Neeva, taking the cue, kept silent.

Another text waited when the phone finally booted. Another picture, of Alexis, this time naked, blindfolded, and spread-eagled against a concrete floor. Munroe clenched her teeth and deleted the image. To focus on anything other than the moment would mean mistakes, would mean death, and by default allow innumerable
other girls to fall into the same fate as Neeva and Alexis. She would stay the course.

Warm and uninvited, Neeva’s hand touched Munroe’s arm.

Munroe tensed.

Neeva withdrew. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”

Munroe nodded and forced a pained smile of acknowledgment, scrolled to the phone contacts, and, with paper and pen she’d taken from the phone shop, wrote down Lumani’s and the Doll Maker’s numbers. Then, with the phone still on, Munroe dropped it into the jacket pocket of the woman standing next to her.

They rode in silence to Cadorna and left the station for the streets and the plaza that led to the buses and trams, an open-air square, clean and colorful with bright sculptured art. To the left, touristic and inviting, rose the massive walls of the Sforzesco castle, and Munroe went in the opposite direction, navigating through pedestrian traffic with the directions Bradford had given, for several minutes along a street lined with trees still bright green with young leaves.

Munroe double-checked the address on her paper and stopped at a gelato store that stood contrastingly spare and modern against the grand colonial structure it inhabited. Inside, she found a seat for Neeva and, in an attempt at normalcy and in acknowledgment of the hunger that gnawed at her own insides, reached into her pocket for the last of the euros to buy Neeva something to eat. She caught the eye of the man behind the register.

He was deceptively young-looking, though Munroe placed him in midthirties, tiny and wiry, and not at all what stereotype might suggest one of Bradford’s connections would look like. But in his focused interest, his unwillingness to drop his gaze, there was no mistaking that he’d recognized Munroe, if not Neeva, when she’d first walked through the door.

Without breaking eye contact with her new admirer, Munroe
handed Neeva the cash. “If you’re hungry,” she said. “But don’t leave the shop. And if you see Pretty Boy, or anyone else who looks familiar, same instructions as last time.”

Neeva nodded and Munroe moved toward the register. The aproned man motioned one of the employees to take his place. He stepped away from the counter, not so obvious as to be noticeable to the random observer, and definitely not to Neeva, who, money in hand, was already headed to the cold glass cases, but enough that Munroe understood she’d been invited inward.

He exited the room through a swinging door not far from the register and Munroe followed. He turned only once to confirm her presence and led the way down a narrow hall that wrapped into an L, past a cold room and a small kitchen, to another door, which, contrary to everything else about the shop, had a keypad and a biometric scanner.

He placed his thumb against the pad and the door clicked open.

The room was walk-in-closet-size with bare walls and a bare desk. The door shut behind Munroe of its own accord, and the aproned man turned to face her. “I’m told you have a tail,” he said, and his English was spoken with an unmistakable hint of small-town Texas.

“Yes,” she replied, and out of habit scanned the walls and seams of the windowless room, taking measurements, calculating where she assumed the faux walls ended and the real room began. “I’m ahead by at least five minutes,” she said. “I’ll drop into a few other places for the sake of appearances.”

He reached beside the bare metal desk. Picked up a briefcase, laid it flat on the desktop, popped it open, and turned it toward her.

Munroe examined the contents. Two Israeli Jericho 9 mms. Two spare magazines. Eight 50-round boxes of 9 mm ammunition. An envelope. Six blocks of dollar and euro bills, bound and stacked. Cell phone. Charger. Pocketknife. Taser.

God, she loved Bradford. Only he could have, without any explanation on her part, anticipated her moves in advance. Munroe pulled the roll of tape and Lumani’s travel documents from her jacket and dumped them into the briefcase.

She looked up to find the aproned man studying her the way she’d studied the room. “Whoever you are,” he said, “Miles just pulled in a large favor for you—you’d better be worth it.”

“It’s well earned,” she said, and the nameless man dropped the briefcase lid, pushed it shut, then handed the case to her.

“Do you have another bag?” she said. “Something easier to carry, that won’t attract as much attention?”

“You’re on foot?”

Munroe nodded.

“In the staff room,” he said, tipping his head in the direction he’d intended. She followed him out again to the room next door, where he pulled a satchel from a cubbyhole and dumped its contents on the floor. “This’ll have to do,” he said. “Unless”—he glanced at her again from head to toe—“you want a purse.”

“This is fine,” she said.

He held the satchel open while she transferred the items from one bag to the other. “Miles referred to you as a ‘she,’ ” he said.

Munroe shoved the phone into her jacket pocket. Took one of the handguns back out. Released the magazine, pulled the slide, snapped the magazine back into place. As soon as she had a moment she’d strip the weapons down, reassemble, and reload, but for now this would have to do.

“I am a she,” she said.

She slipped the Jericho underneath her jacket at the small of her back.

The aproned man said, “I see,” and he motioned to the door. “Questions, but no time.” She followed him out.

“I need a clothing store,” she said. “Something away from the metro—doesn’t have to be big.”

They moved through the swinging door back into the shop.

“Take a right on your way out and just keep walking,” he said.

“Someone’s probably going to come looking for me,” she said. “I really do apologize.”

He smiled—the first spontaneous facial expression he’d offered. “I’m not worried about it, might even be a good thing.”

When Munroe returned to the main room, Neeva was sitting at a table eating chocolate gelato from a half-finished large cup. She paused when Munroe approached.

“Take the food,” Munroe said. “We’ve gotta go.”