Vadim found a bottle of champagne and three micro pizzas, pepperoni, in the galley when he went to look for lunch. He seemed genuinely surprised that Alena and I would decline to share such a feast with him, returning to his seat and his iPod with a rolling of the eyes that did more to convince me of his nineteen years than anything else had thus far.
After a moment, Alena pulled herself to her feet and put on water for tea. I looked out the plane window and saw land beneath us, painted in white. Ice or snow. We were headed for Europe, I knew that, Eastern Europe almost certainly. I wasn't sure of the range of the Gulfstream V, but supposed we'd have to land to refuel at least once before reaching our final destination.
Alena made two trips back from the galley, traveling slowly and carefully so as to keep from spilling the hot drinks. She brought mine first, then returned with hers, and took her same seat once again.
"Black tea," she said, making a face. "No herbal, nothing without caffeine. I'm sorry."
"We'll survive," I told her, thinking about how, once upon a time, I'd thought caffeine was a major food group all its own. Now it was no longer a part of the diet, neither mine nor hers, at the top of the list of verboten stimulants, in fact. Aside from being addictive as, say, nicotine, caffeine drains the adrenal gland. Considering how much Alena and I relied on adrenaline to do its job, that was something neither of us wanted.
"How many days have I lost?" I asked.
"Three and a half. Dan wanted to move you sooner, but I wouldn't let him. You lost a lot of blood. You almost died."
"We could have made the trip sooner."
"It was not in my mind to risk it. You nearly died, Atticus."
I considered that, then said, "And you wanted to see how what happened in Cold Spring would play out. See what got reported in the media, maybe."
Alena brushed hair back from her cheek, and as she did, the Gulfstream banked slightly, and sunlight came flooding through the windows. Where it touched her head, the copper of her hair seemed to burn.
"So how bad is it?" I asked.
"No, that's not what they did."
"What do you mean?"
"It didn't make the media, Atticus. None of it. From the time we fled the safe house until just this morning, when we left Brighton Beach, there was never as much as a whisper that anyone had died in a gun battle in Cold Spring. There was never as much as a whisper that anything happened there at all."
"There must have been something. Some report."
"No. Nothing."
I removed my newly acquired glasses, rubbed my eyes with my other hand. The glasses had been waiting for me this morning, and while the prescription had been correct-or at least, close enough that my eyes had been able to compensate-their fit was bad, and they dug into the skin behind my ears. I folded them closed, set them on the shelf beside me.
"Natalie," I said. "There should have been at least something about Natalie."
"And I am saying to you that there wasn't, Atticus. There was nothing at all."
She stared at me, a little blurred in my sight, but her expression seemed almost entirely neutral, her sad brown eyes meeting my own. She was waiting for me to say it, to put the words to what she had already concluded, but I wasn't willing to, not quite yet. Not until I had at least made an effort at providing an alternate explanation.
My problem was, no alternate was offering itself for use.
"Dan did not need to sanitize the house," Alena said. "They would have done that for us."
"Whoever 'they' are."
"You know who 'they' are, Atticus, at least in the abstract, at least as much as I know it. There is only one possible explanation to satisfy every question, from who hired Oxford, to who tried to kill you, to who tried to kill me, to who did kill Natalie as a result."
"There could be others."
"With the ability to enforce media silence regarding what happened, to cover up the deaths of almost a dozen men? With the ability and the capital to assemble, finance, and deploy two coordinated strikes against both you and me with perhaps less than three, maybe even two hours of notice? There was no expectation that you would be arriving at the safe house, Atticus, remember that. The initial plan had been that you would deal with Oxford while I was taken to Cold Spring. You were never to join us there."
"Natalie called Dan from the road, told him that I was coming in with you two, that I'd need a car."
"The car that Illya acquired, yes. Which is probably when he informed his masters that you would be coming to the safe house. Masters who, in all likelihood, are responsible for Illya's disappearance. The team that ambushed you could have been an element of the larger team that assaulted the house; they could have been split off when it became apparent they needed a new contingency to deal with you, when they realized they needed to stage an ambush."
The tea bag in my cup was floating on the surface, on its side. I poked it back down with a finger.
"That's something that's been bothering me," I said. "Why didn't they just hit all of us at the house? Why did they think it was necessary to hit me separately?"
"They identified you as the greatest threat."
"Greater than you? I find that hard to believe."
"They knew I was wounded. They wanted to isolate you. That's why they forced you into an ambush, away from the safe house."
"Stupid on their part."
"Perhaps. They were having to adapt very quickly, remember. And their assessment of you was correct; you broke their ambush, and you killed all three of them without dying yourself. There are not many who could have survived that."
"If they'd kept the whole team together, hit us as soon as we'd arrived at the safe house-"
Alena moved her left hand, a slight gesture, side to side, impatiently. "Don't make assumptions, Atticus. We do not know if they were in position when we arrived. It is just as likely that they had to call for more men to set the ambush as it is that the three who attacked you were part of the larger unit."
I snagged on the word "unit." "You think they were military?"
"Not active duty, no."
"Civilian contractors."
"That would be my suspicion, yes. And we both know who civilian contractors contract with, Atticus." She ran a hand through her hair. "As I said, we both know who 'they' are."
I put my tea down, on the shelf, beside my glasses. I was tired and I was sore, and I hurt in body and heart. I let my head fall back against the cushion behind me, closed my eyes.
Natalie Trent was still resting on her bed of leaves.
"I love my country," I said softly. "But I fear my government."
Beside me, Alena said, "With good reason."
Then she reached across the aisle, and took hold of my hand, and held it until the government I feared was far, far behind us.