boots. He frowned. “Twelve hours?”
The captain shrugged. “Seems you needed the rest. Plus, my sons and I didn’t need your help to get this far. But we’re about to exit Norwegian waters, and I need you awake in case we spot a coastal patrol heading toward us and”—he smiled—“we need you to jump overboard before they search the boat.”
Will stood gingerly, worried that his legs might buckle. But they were strong and steady. He had needed the sleep. He also knew the real reason why the captain needed him to be awake before they entered international waters.
The captain needed every person on the boat to be on hand to throw stuff into the sea if they saw a naval or customs vessel approaching them.
The captain was a smuggler—mostly precious metals, counterfeit money, stolen goods, though Will wasn’t blind to the fact that the man sometimes smuggled nastier stuff like drugs and weapons. Four years ago, he’d learned about his activities by reading files belonging to the MI6 division that targeted international organized crime. He’d had no interest in the ongoing efforts to monitor and one day thwart the activities of criminals, because that task was in the safe hands of other officers, but he was most certainly interested in the people in the files: criminals he could approach without MI6 knowing and whom he could help if one day they’d do the same for him. The trade was simple—I tip you off if I think the net’s closing in on you; you get me out of your country if I need you to do so. Over the years, he’d handpicked and recruited dozens of men like the Norwegian captain, spread out across the globe; people who could get him stuff, who traveled off the radar, who had overriding reasons not to tell a soul about their secret pact with Cochrane.
No doubt it was a morally ambiguous thing for Will to do, but Will had long ago given up attempting to grapple with the ambiguities of his line of work.
Right now, all that mattered was going west, and the captain’s smuggling route was going to do that for him. “Thank you.”
The captain waved a hand while puffing smoke from his cigar. “I don’t need gratitude.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Come on, make yourself useful on deck. Providing the weather holds, two days until we reach Greenland.”
EIGHT
E llie Hallowes pulled up the collar of her overcoat, thrust her hands into her pockets so that they were dry and one of them could grip the metal box, and hunched her shoulders, because rain was pouring out of the sky and it was cold and dark. Hunching her shoulders did nothing to stop the wet and chill, but it made Ellie feel at least a bit like the many people around her who’d been caught in the sudden downpour in Washington, D.C.’s small Chinatown.
All of them were tourists who should have been tucked up in bed in their hotel rooms. Adults and kids jostled for space to move onward while gawping at the primary-colored glow from the twenty restaurants and their window displays of Peking ducks on rotisseries and neon signs in Cantonese, and inhaling the rich aromas of soy and oyster and hoisin sauces, aniseed, Szechuan pepper, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, and cloves.
Ellie liked Chinese cuisine. But tonight, the pungent smells from the restaurants seemed out of place, because they reminded her of her safe places—the havens where she could shut her door at night, not fear the moment when she might inadvertently say something that compromised her undercover work, kick off her shoes and watch TV, and eat stir-fry noodles out of a cardboard carton.
Right now, she wasn’t in one of her safe places.
She wondered if she was doing the right thing by finally laying the tiny metal box to rest. Twenty-two years ago, her father had placed it gently in her hand while they were watching ballet at the Kennedy Center. She was thirteen, and was wearing a ball gown that her father had bought from a second-hand store and had arranged to be altered by a
The captain shrugged. “Seems you needed the rest. Plus, my sons and I didn’t need your help to get this far. But we’re about to exit Norwegian waters, and I need you awake in case we spot a coastal patrol heading toward us and”—he smiled—“we need you to jump overboard before they search the boat.”
Will stood gingerly, worried that his legs might buckle. But they were strong and steady. He had needed the sleep. He also knew the real reason why the captain needed him to be awake before they entered international waters.
The captain needed every person on the boat to be on hand to throw stuff into the sea if they saw a naval or customs vessel approaching them.
The captain was a smuggler—mostly precious metals, counterfeit money, stolen goods, though Will wasn’t blind to the fact that the man sometimes smuggled nastier stuff like drugs and weapons. Four years ago, he’d learned about his activities by reading files belonging to the MI6 division that targeted international organized crime. He’d had no interest in the ongoing efforts to monitor and one day thwart the activities of criminals, because that task was in the safe hands of other officers, but he was most certainly interested in the people in the files: criminals he could approach without MI6 knowing and whom he could help if one day they’d do the same for him. The trade was simple—I tip you off if I think the net’s closing in on you; you get me out of your country if I need you to do so. Over the years, he’d handpicked and recruited dozens of men like the Norwegian captain, spread out across the globe; people who could get him stuff, who traveled off the radar, who had overriding reasons not to tell a soul about their secret pact with Cochrane.
No doubt it was a morally ambiguous thing for Will to do, but Will had long ago given up attempting to grapple with the ambiguities of his line of work.
Right now, all that mattered was going west, and the captain’s smuggling route was going to do that for him. “Thank you.”
The captain waved a hand while puffing smoke from his cigar. “I don’t need gratitude.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Come on, make yourself useful on deck. Providing the weather holds, two days until we reach Greenland.”
EIGHT
E llie Hallowes pulled up the collar of her overcoat, thrust her hands into her pockets so that they were dry and one of them could grip the metal box, and hunched her shoulders, because rain was pouring out of the sky and it was cold and dark. Hunching her shoulders did nothing to stop the wet and chill, but it made Ellie feel at least a bit like the many people around her who’d been caught in the sudden downpour in Washington, D.C.’s small Chinatown.
All of them were tourists who should have been tucked up in bed in their hotel rooms. Adults and kids jostled for space to move onward while gawping at the primary-colored glow from the twenty restaurants and their window displays of Peking ducks on rotisseries and neon signs in Cantonese, and inhaling the rich aromas of soy and oyster and hoisin sauces, aniseed, Szechuan pepper, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, and cloves.
Ellie liked Chinese cuisine. But tonight, the pungent smells from the restaurants seemed out of place, because they reminded her of her safe places—the havens where she could shut her door at night, not fear the moment when she might inadvertently say something that compromised her undercover work, kick off her shoes and watch TV, and eat stir-fry noodles out of a cardboard carton.
Right now, she wasn’t in one of her safe places.
She wondered if she was doing the right thing by finally laying the tiny metal box to rest. Twenty-two years ago, her father had placed it gently in her hand while they were watching ballet at the Kennedy Center. She was thirteen, and was wearing a ball gown that her father had bought from a second-hand store and had arranged to be altered by a
Similar Books
