It was possible, of course, that she was being paranoid.
And let’s not forget, it was possible that this wasn’t even de Greer.
Whoever it was, if she kept on in a straight line she’d reach a road sooner or later. Possibly even the road Lech was on. Without slowing, she squeezed her phone from her jeans pocket. He answered on the first ring.
“I’m not the only one following her,” she told him.
“。 . . Seriously?”
She didn’t have words for that.
He said, “Shit. No. Sorry. Who are they?”
“Pardon me while I stop them and ask. But there are two, male, and it looks like they’re watching her.”
“Security detail?”
Louisa didn’t think so. Who was de Greer, a political adviser? She might have high-level clearance, but not full-time bodywatchers. She wasn’t royalty.
And if Lech was right, and she was some kind of plant, her handler wouldn’t have a team watching her back. That would be tantamount to hoisting the Jolly Roger.
Lech said, “Maybe you’d better abort.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“Louisa, if they are tailing her, and they’re not a security detail, they’ll be from the Park. And if we fuck up a Park surveillance—”
“Yeah, or it’s two guys following a woman on a dark common.”
“Shit . . . Hang on.”
A padded thump, as if he’d dropped his phone on the passenger seat.
She couldn’t see de Greer, and the silvery eleven was no more than a ghostly squiggle in the dark.
Lech came back. “Are you on the same path you set off on?”
“No.”
“。 . . Any idea at all where you are?”
Yes, she thought. I’m in the fucking dark. Could you be any less helpful?
A sentiment echoed that moment by Roddy Ho, and directed at Shirley Dander, though the wording differed.
“I’m trying to drive!”
“I’m not stopping you!”
“You’re fiddling about! Stay out of my glove box!”
Shirley slammed it shut. It contained nothing interesting anyway: a pair of gloves was all.
She often succumbed to déjà vu when a passenger in someone else’s car. On the other hand, she often succumbed to Groundhog Day just turning up for work.
“Can you not drive faster?”
“Can you not shut up?”
She should never have let him get behind the wheel. There was a kind of purgatory in this; to feel herself rushing towards some waiting event, one crying out for her presence, while in reality she was travelling at the speed of a hobbled cow, with every traffic light in existence throwing a red glare in her direction, and every other car on the street laughing at her in its rearview mirror. The scowl she wore was like a swan’s wing: it could break a man’s arm if he got too close. And the way her blood was fizzing, she might burst before they reached their destination.
There was action somewhere, and she was being sidelined again. She could feel it in her bones, in the itch beneath her skin.
Shops and houses. Someone walking a dog. Streetlights and zebra crossings; the flat expressions on darkened panes of glass. London had different textures, a different grain, every postal district.
Roddy said, “How do you know what they’re up to, anyway?”
“I don’t,” she said. “That’s the point.”
“Then why—”
“They were talking about a KGB colonel.”
“In Bonn,” said Roddy. “In 1988.”
“。 . . You know who she is?”
“Colonel Alexa Chaikovskaya?”
“Yeah. Her. Who is she?”
“Dunno.”
“So how come you know her name?”
“It was a speed test.”
“Yeah?” Shirley looked through her side window, checking whether they were keeping up with pedestrians. “How’d that work out?”
Roddy’s phone lay on his lap, winking up at him: he seemed able to assimilate information by glancing at a screen, as if he were one step away from being plugged into a giant motherboard. She imagined his head full of digital splinters, his tongue a slippery coil of wires. All his thoughts lined up in binary rows.
On the other hand, he didn’t handle human communication well. Which reminded her:
“Those women. The ones who want to be Princess whatsername.”
“Leia.”
“Yeah. Was that a Tinder thing?”
“I told you. It wasn’t a sex party.”