A Risk Worth Taking

“Time Has Come Today,” squeaked out of the phone.

Indeed. Time to come out of hiding and end this, whether she liked it or not—and she definitely did not. But Hyland had just made her decision for her.

“Yes, Joan,” Samira said, swinging into a side road. “The time has come.”

CHAPTER TWO

London

IT WASN’T PARANOIA. Samira was being followed. A tall, brittle man with crisp blond hair fading to white. Jeans, a brown leather jacket, a burgundy overnight bag. The guy who’d shoulder-charged the French doors the night before last?

In Paris that morning he’d been one of the few other patrons at the café two blocks from the Gare du Nord, apparently engrossed in the weekend Le Monde. At the station, she’d bought her ticket to London minutes before the cutoff for the 8:13 a.m. train—but as she’d crossed the concourse she’d glanced back to see him scurrying into the Eurostar ticket office. If he had time to read the newspaper and drink a café latte, why wait until the last moment? She should have kept walking, waited for the next train, aborted the whole lunatic mission. Midway through the Channel tunnel, he’d strolled into her carriage and slipped into a vacant aisle seat three rows behind. He’d hung back as the train emptied at St Pancras and lingered among the seats, tapping on a phone. She’d ducked into the bathroom, willing him to disappear, hissing to her sunken-eyed mirror image that she was being irrational. More than one man in Europe had white-blond hair. When she emerged, he was still there.

Now he was trailing her down the travellator to border control. Coincidence? She dragged her tongue over her teeth. She didn’t do coincidences anymore.

She looked around for a clock. Tess and Flynn should be waiting at Pancras Square near the station, after landing at Heathrow overnight, as they’d hurriedly planned. Very soon, if the passport worked, Samira could sponge off their confidence. Just having people to talk to would be a novelty, if she was even capable of carrying a conversation.

After the hushed voices and hum of the train, the station boomed with white noise that filled the air like a gas, curving up to its soaring glass dome and sweeping back down. Pearly light hung in the air. As she pulled up at the back of the immigration queue, she adjusted the plastic shopping bag on her shoulder. Inside, the polystyrene-wrapped champagne bottles whispered and clunked. Somewhere among the thick-coated passengers a newborn baby yelled, long beyond the reach of comfort, its shuddering mews swelling, ebbing, swelling, ebbing. Her blood pressure was playing that song, too.

She tightened her scarf and pulled her necklace over top of it, fingering the small gold cross. The queue was moving slower than she’d bargained for. There blew the theory that fooling UK border control at the Gare du Nord was enough, that the check at this end would be cursory. She shuffled to her right. Ahead, at a counter hung with a sagging string of red tinsel, a blue-shirted officer studied a passenger’s passport and ticket. Did they suspect something or were these checks standard? She’d only ever entered Britain with her parents, through diplomatic checkpoints.

Not that she always got a free pass into the United States, either, despite her green card. Carrying alcohol was a ruse Latif had adopted for their many flights in and out of JFK, when foreign students with names and faces like his had begun to draw suspicion.

They see the whiskey and figure you’re not some extremist jihadist, he’d once said at duty-free, picking up a bottle of Jim Beam he’d later donated to Charlotte.

She’d laughed. Or they conclude it’s an elaborate ruse to make you look less like a jihadist and pin you down for a cavity search.

She’d called him paranoid.

She shut her eyes tight until the burn eased. Not paranoid enough, in the end. Really, she needed to stop reliving their every conversation. And if she wasn’t doing that, she was having imaginary new ones. Sometimes imaginary arguments, sometimes aloud, pausing for his answers as they ran through her head. Day by day his image faded but his voice still curled through her.

Great, so she had two voices in her head—Latif’s and Jamie’s. Way too much time alone.

She pulled down the edge of the champagne bag to better reveal its contents. Doubling down on the paranoia because today it was her friend—and racial profiling wasn’t.

On the pretense of cricking her neck, which really did need a crick after a night sleeping in her car, she glanced over her shoulder. The blond man was two people behind. She swallowed past a prickly lump in her throat. Subterfuge was way beyond her comfort zone. Sure, she’d done shady things—hacked into secure systems, cracked passwords, unleashed harmless viruses—but only from behind a keyboard and monitor and only to prove she could or to test her clients’ systems. It was Latif who’d got off on this spy stuff, Latif who’d dragged her into this world of shadows, Latif who’d got killed and left her to finish this.

She spun her backpack to her front and removed the passport. Her hand trembled. Pretending to be engrossed in fiddling with a zip, she shuffled forward with the crowd.

Here she was in strolling distance of Regent’s Park but not yet officially in the country. No-man’s-land. In front, a toddler peeped over his mother’s shoulder, eyeing Samira through thick black curls. She gave what she hoped was an indulgent smile. The tot ducked. After a few seconds he peeped one hazel eye up. She winked and the boy buried his face, wrapping fat arms around his mother’s neck. The game continued until they moved off—and didn’t do a thing to settle Samira’s nerves. From somewhere the newborn was still wailing. Samira’s breath was getting shorter. Her chest stung.

Not now. Not ever but not now. But when did a panic attack ever come at a convenient time? She forced a deep inhalation.

“Next!” An officer beckoned Samira—young, light brown hair tied back, expression set to don’t-fuck-with-me. “Ticket and passport.”

The woman flattened Samira’s passport at the photo page, wincing. “This is a very old passport. Not machine-readable.”

Heat rolled up Samira’s face. “Yes, I need to get a new one soon.” She’d checked it was legally valid for entry, despite its looming expiry date. The forger had sworn that everything about the passport was legit except the photo, which had been swapped for hers, and that it hadn’t been reported stolen. Its owner had sold it to him and he’d repurposed it for Samira—for a gagging price.

The woman made a ticking noise. “What is the purpose of your visit?”

“A wedding, of a university friend.” Samira had been confidently faking an Italian accent all morning but suddenly she felt like a bad actor.

“Where is this wedding?”

“In Cornwall.”

“Where in Cornwall?”

Samira frowned. “Ah, it’s in...” She riffled through her backpack and pulled out a gilt-edged invitation on heavy matte card, created yesterday at a self-serve print shop on the outskirts of Paris. “Mousehole?” She held out the card, deliberately mispronouncing the town’s name. According to the forger, the passport’s former owner—real owner—had never visited Britain.

The woman smirked. “Mow-zul. Wait here.” She left her post, with Samira’s documents. Damn. Why?

Behind Samira, a man groaned. One thing she wished she hadn’t double-checked: using a fake passport at the border could get her ten years in prison or—once they figured out her real identity—deportation, probably to Ethiopia, though she’d spent only a few years of her life there. Either way, assassins would be waiting. And questions would be asked of her parents. The Ivy League–educated daughter of career diplomats busted for identity fraud? She pulled a water bottle from her bag and worked a sip down her throat. Maybe she should have taken the risk with her real passport.

No. It could have taken weeks to get a visa, raising too many flags in too many systems and giving her enemies ample notice to arrange a welcoming party. And she’d already lost time with the postcard delay. This plan was imperfect but it was the best she had. In risk versus risk, risk had won out.

The woman approached a man in the same blue uniform, who was surveying the queue with his arms crossed. He bent his head to one side to catch her words, his pale forehead creasing. Both faces turned to Samira. Here we go. She forced her expression to neutral, channeling the psychology journal article she’d read online yesterday. “The Physical Manifestations of Guilt.” She’d converted it into a list of takeaways and memorized them—because she was that much of a geek—then set fire to her list in a Dumpster in a deserted alley, followed by every page of her evidence. Tess had a copy, for what it was (not) worth.

Look unconcerned but not wide-eyed. Not flustered but not cocky. And, most challenging of all: don’t try too hard.

The man sauntered toward Samira, unfolding his arms. A master of the neutral face she’d practiced in her car mirror. Her vision swam until he looked like he’d turned to jelly and was dancing. She tightened her hand around the liquor bag, as if that’d keep her upright. Hold it together. She’d made it this far. Now it was either freedom and a chance at reclaiming her life, or prison. Or worse.

“Good morning, ma’am. If you wouldn’t mind coming with me a minute...” He spoke quietly, stepping aside to let her by as if it were the gentlemanly thing to do.

They can’t see the nerves in your belly, so don’t let them show in your face.

He led her to a high metal table and leaned an elbow back on it, as if settling in for a leisurely chat-up at a bar. Deliberately keeping this low-key, for now?

“Dove vive, Signorina...” He peered at the passport, clicking and unclicking a cheap ballpoint. “...Moretti?” he asked. A confident Italian speaker but not a native one.

“Certaldo,” she replied. “In una piccola città vicino Firenze.” Bravo, Samira. Six weeks in Tuscany had been just long enough to take her Italian from rough back to smooth, though it might not fool a real Italiano.

“I know it,” he said. “È una bellissima città.” Click. Unclick. Click. Unclick.

“Si,” she said, forcing a proud smile. “The most beautiful place in Italy.”

“Big call.” Click. Unclick. “Che lavoro fa?”

“I have my own web design company.” She reached for her side pocket, where she’d slipped her freshly printed fake business cards—and froze. Not yet. Be accommodating but not too forthcoming. She’d loaded herself with layers of deception, to be revealed gradually and only as necessary.

Click. Unclick. Click. Unclick.

She’d even found a genuine wedding she could claim to be attending, harvesting the details from a bride’s blog. Everyday people put too much on the web—people who thought they had nothing to hide, who thought the world had only benign intentions. People who weren’t being hunted by one of the world’s most powerful people.

Not if I catch you first, Senator.

The officer pulled out a cell phone, held it where they could both see it and typed into the browser her fake name and “web design.” Her breath stalled.

“This one?” he asked, pointing to the top hit.

She nodded, not trusting her voice. The SEO had worked but any second he’d notice the search had netted suspiciously few results—because the site was less than twenty-four hours old.

He clicked the link and the site loaded. “It’s in English.”

“Awo.” She bit her lip. She’d used the Ethiopian word for yes. Old habits... “Pardon me,” she said, patting her upper chest, as if she’d hiccuped. “Si, that version is. Most of my clients are in English-speaking countries. I also have an Italian site.” She pointed to the green, white and red flag icon in a corner of the home page. She’d be almost disappointed if he didn’t open it, after the effort it’d taken to translate.

He studied her as if he could see right through to her Ethiopian DNA sequence. “How much do you charge for a simple e-commerce site?”

“Scusi, signore?” Damn. She had no idea of the going rates.

“My wife and I are thinking about setting up an online...” The other officer signaled him and he raised a pointer finger—one minute. The ambient noise crescendoed, as though it’d been silenced for their conversation and someone had just pressed the unmute button. “Never mind.” He handed back Samira’s documents. “When you return to Certaldo I suggest you update your passport. You’d be surprised how much ID fraud we’re seeing these days. Desperate people out there.” He swept a hand toward the thinning queue. “Hence the extra checks.”

He moved on to his next target, leaving Samira’s “Grazie” hanging—and her way clear to the exit. She zipped the documents into her bag and let her chest fill. It’d gone almost concave. She walked—not too fast—boots clicking on the floor, heartbeat thumping along in her ears in double time.

There was something to be said for paranoia. But her delay had given the blond man time to clear the checkpoint. Leaning on a white column ahead, bag at his feet, he swiped at his phone. He caught her eye and quickly looked away. Too quickly? Dear God. She skirted behind a tribe of tracksuit-clad teenagers—some lanky, overgrown sports team—and strode toward the border control exit. The border itself, technically. Once she left the station, once she found Tess, her nerves would settle. She took note of the area’s security cameras then angled herself away, bunching her hair around her face. She pulled a beanie from her bag and tugged it down to her eyebrows. Facial recognition software wasn’t as easily fooled as human eyes. She slipped on the Audrey Hepburn–style sunglasses she’d picked up in Paris.

Tension fell from her shoulders as she emerged into a soaring atrium—an arcade, with shimmering glass shopfronts over Victorian brick arches. A massive Christmas tree circled up to the dome, so laden with ornaments she could almost hear it groan. She adjusted her backpack. Her shoulders were beginning to ache under its weight, coupled with the champagne. She’d used precious euros to buy a dress, coat and heels at a Parisian outlet store, suitable for a fall wedding, and had gift wrapped some of her spare tech gear. It seemed absurd now to have spent all that money. Or maybe the knowledge that she had proof to back up her ruse had warded off the panic attack. Either way, what was done was done. Very soon, she and Tess would be toasting their breakthrough with the champagne.

She walked faster. Every step got her closer to Tess, Charlotte’s flat and the evidence. A sign ahead pointed to the overland trains. Wait—that wasn’t the right exit. She needed to find the pedestrian tunnel linking St Pancras to the square Tess was waiting in. This was the opposite direction. She stopped and looked around as if she were waiting for someone, picturing the station map she’d studied online. Discordant piano chords plinked out a toe-curling tune. Which way was she supposed to have turned out of border control? The blond guy emerged from the crowd, looked up at the signs and headed toward a taxi rank, without a glance her way.

She closed her eyes a second. She never used to be paranoid. She used to trust that the world was a good place, that nothing bad would happen to a thoroughly ordinary woman. She used to have complete faith in the digital age, in its promise to connect cultures and minds, blur borders between the developing and developed worlds, make information and education accessible for all. She clicked her tongue. At some point the limitless possibilities had become limitless threats. Emails, phone calls, databases, servers, web searches...nothing was private, nothing was truly secure, everything could be traced and hacked in an ever-accelerating spiral of cat and mouse between the security analysts and the hackers—in her case, sometimes one and the same person. Once, she’d been contracted to infiltrate a system she’d previously been hired to secure, and that remained the only one that’d eluded her. She still didn’t know whether to be proud of that or embarrassed.

She blew out a breath. One step at a time. First, find the tunnel. After hours enclosed in a capsule, the thought of fresh air and freedom tugged her toward daylight like a magnet was clamped to her chest. Freedom would come when this was done. Freedom from danger and—just maybe, just a little—freedom from grief and guilt?

A large man in a navy suit pushed past. She snapped out a hand to catch the champagne, and patted her bag’s zip pocket, checking for the outline of her wallet—the fictional Italian signorina’s wallet, rounded out by a fake driver’s license and fake credit card, and the remainder of Samira’s real euros. Getting pickpocketed would be a disaster.

Ignoring her clenching stomach muscles, she followed the signs toward the far end of the long station, white columns marching along beside her. The blond guy couldn’t be the one from the cottage. Her enemy couldn’t know she was here. Nothing would go wrong. She’d passed the biggest challenge—getting into Britain. Maybe the evidence would be damning enough that she wouldn’t need to testify. She could wait out the storm at a cozy flat in an English seaside village where she didn’t see a threat in every shaking leaf or heavy footfall. Then maybe she’d be able to breathe without forcing every inhalation. Since Latif’s death, her every breath had seemed like a conscious effort, as if it were her instinct to die, not live. She’d had the sense she was viewing the world from afar, hardly feeling the ground under her feet.

With the exception of that one day—and night—last fall...

Which she shouldn’t be thinking about.

And today was real. Stomach-curlingly real. Despite the fear, it was empowering to do something that wasn’t sitting around lurching between anger and sorrow and frustration and regret. She would finish the mission Latif died for. If she died, too, so be it, so long as she avenged his death and made his sacrifice worth something.

She passed a TV on the wall of a café, tuned to a news channel, just as it flicked to...something familiar. Someone. She backtracked. Tess. Tess was on the screen, walking between two black-uniformed cops. Handcuffed. Samira’s throat dried. Whistle-blowing reporter arrested, read the scroll at the bottom. Then, Sen. Tristan Hyland cleared.

Feet operating automatically, she stepped inside the café, hardly able to absorb the words. The special counsel had announced there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Hyland, and had instead charged Tess with obstruction of justice for her sworn testimony. She’d been hauled off a plane on the tarmac at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC, “caught trying to flee the country,” according to the voice-over. The picture changed. Tess’s Legionnaire boyfriend, Flynn, surged through a churn of journalists, his face thunderous. “How the [bleep] do you think I feel?” he mumbled. “This is bullshit.”

Samira pulled her scarf away from her throat.

A family bustled into the café, speaking loud German, drowning out the news report. Suddenly another familiar face was staring out from the TV. Shit. Shit. Samira’s green-card photo—she looked so young. Warrant issued for arrest of Newell accomplice.

Samira yanked her beanie lower. The senator appeared on the screen, speaking to reporters in front of a plane. His daughter, Laura, rested a hand on his shoulder, almost protectively. As the German family retreated into the back of the café, his words became audible.

“...would like to thank the many loyal Americans who’ve supported us through these baseless and incredibly hurtful allegations. It’s been a long and tough road but we always had faith that the truth would prevail and the real villains would be exposed—those people in the media and my political opposition who would manufacture lies to destroy me, my family and my career, solely for ratings and profit and political point scoring.” He eyeballed the TV camera, as if he could see Samira standing there. “Today, the scales of justice rebalanced. For that I am grateful, if not surprised. God bless you, America.”

Applause.

Samira clenched her fists as the senator hushed the cheers and listened to a question. It was inaudible but a smile relaxed his face. Laura wiped away tears—real tears, going by the smudges in her heavy black makeup. The audio faded out and the network’s presenters began speaking over the footage, lamenting the millions “squandered on this witch hunt” and predicting Hyland would revive his presidential ambitions. The senator adjusted his tie and rolled his shoulders, drawing attention to his broad frame. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing tanned, muscular forearms and his Marines tattoo. He laughed, like he was sharing a joke with the reporters.

How the hell had Tess and Latif ever thought they could take him on and win? The darling of American politics, with his boyish grin and blue eyes and square face and thick salt-and-pepper hair and insane popularity—JFK and Reagan rolled into one physically and politically attractive package. When he wasn’t being declared the sitter for America’s next president, he was being hailed the country’s most eligible bachelor. The next silver fox–in-chief. Heck, Samira had once thought him hot. Latif had teased her about it but she wasn’t alone. A meme cult had grown out of his good looks. And the senator knew just what he was doing when he brought his chic environmental crusader of a daughter to press conferences and functions—a reminder that he was a grieving widower and devoted father, and there was an opening for a future First Lady.

Teflon Tristan. When Tess and Latif had uncovered evidence that the military contractor he’d founded had orchestrated the LA terror attack, Hyland had argued it’d gone bad long after he’d sold it—successfully, it now appeared. Somehow he’d swum clear of the maelstrom that’d dragged down his former pals. But Latif, who’d worked for the contractor, had sworn that Hyland had still been calling the shots at the time of the attack, desperate to save the foundering company from liquidation and legal scrutiny by securing more war contracts. Latif had died searching for evidence to skewer his former boss.

The screen switched to the presenters, who moved on to another story. Eyes on the white tiled floor, Samira walked out robotically, hollow from her stomach to her toes. She no longer had anyone to meet. At a newsstand she picked up the Guardian. Nothing yet about Tess—or Samira. But on page three, a story about Hyland announcing a UK visit. Shit, he was coming here? She scanned the story. The secretary of state had fallen ill overnight, so Hyland was on his way to Edinburgh for a NATO meeting, and to observe a joint military exercise in Scotland.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Was he coming to supervise Samira’s capture and extradition? He always kept a private security team around him and Laura—was this an excuse to bring them to Britain? Had he known Samira was heading to London when she fled Tuscany? Did he know about Charlotte? What the hell did any of this mean?

Below the main story, another article zeroed in on controversy that Laura was traveling with him, having hurriedly arranged a book signing in Edinburgh for her memoir, which reportedly painted her father as a saint. A quote from the minority House leader: “This is yet another clear case of the Hylands profiting from the senator’s—”

“No free reads,” belted a voice from the stand.

Samira jumped, nearly ripping the paper. She shut it abruptly and tossed it back on the pile.

Tess wasn’t in London, wasn’t waiting in the square with Flynn. And Samira was officially a wanted woman. Thank God she’d turned down the special counsel’s offer of witness protection in the United States, or they’d have her now, too. Thank God she hadn’t used her own passport. Thank God she no longer looked like the naive, optimistic ingenue in her green-card photo. But the UK probably had a swift extradition agreement with the United States—if she survived long enough to fight a legal battle. What now?

Small steps. First, get out of the station. Fresh air. She needed fresh air. She slipped out of the atrium into a brick-walled space with a low industrial ceiling. Where was the damn tunnel to the square? Icy fingers from an invisible draft brushed her cheeks. Her camel coat was so thick it could stand up by itself, but the dry cold rushed into her lungs, chilling her from the inside.

Behind her, a man shouted. Indecipherable but panicked. She straightened, her spine prickling. Border guards, coming for her? More shouts. A clunk. Clattering. Hissing. Ahead, people began turning. People began running.

She swiveled, wheezing. Blue smoke gushed and fizzed from dozens of tin cans rolling along the floor. This was no arrest. It was an ambush. Urgent beeping bounced around the room. The smoke billowed, boiling across the low ceiling and pouring back down like a dozen waterfalls, lit by a strobing white emergency light. Screams, shouts. Shadowy figures darted through the thickening mist. Someone slammed into her arm, knocking her sideways. Her shoulder struck the floor first, then the side of her skull. The champagne bag swung out and smashed behind her. Coughing, she pushed to her feet. Bitter chemicals stung the back of her throat. Tear gas? She stumbled across the floor, her feet swallowed by a blue snowdrift. An alarm wailed. Dark smudges shunted her like a pin in a bowling alley.

“Attention, please.” A male voice, over a loudspeaker. “Due to a reported emergency, would all passengers leave the station immediately?”

Sure—if she could figure out where the exit was. She staggered like a zombie, one arm flailing in front of her. Wasn’t tear gas supposed to burn? Her hand scraped something rough. A brick wall. She swiveled and leaned back on it. She had to return to the atrium. If she just walked straight...or was it left...?

But if the smoke was cover for Hyland’s people to capture her, wouldn’t they be waiting for her to stumble out? Should she head for the Tube, try her luck in the maze of tunnels?

Yes. She pulled up her scarf, breathing into it as she inched along the wall, panic clamping her chest. Her arm fell through space. A doorway? Smoke cocooned her. Her head spun like she’d been spit from a carousel. A clonk, nearby, and a man’s head and shoulders loomed out of the fog, a green-and-yellow jacket zipped to his chin, his face hidden under a gas mask and beanie. She sidestepped but he caught her arms, kicked her legs out from under her and lifted.

She bucked but he was too strong, too solid. Her backpack was snatched away. Her spine hit something soft and flat—a gurney? A second man, in matching jacket and gas mask, leaned over the other side. A white patch was stamped on his chest pocket: AMBULANCE.

Her lungs pinched. She wrenched away but the first guy trapped her upper arms. Something yanked her stomach into the gurney. A strap. One by one her wrists and ankles were pinned, too. A creature from the deep catching her in its tentacles. The trolley began to roll. The first guy shoved a hat over her beanie and a mask over her face. They were sedating her? She lashed her head side to side but he pushed the mask’s straps on. A few tugs and her head was locked down like the rest of her, the arms of her sunglasses digging into her temples. She resisted inhaling until her chest rebelled and sucked in a desperate breath. It came out again as a Darth Vader wheeze. The world narrowed to the visor in front of her eyes—blue smoke, the men’s bent heads. The first guy laid a hand on her belly. A warning.

She didn’t flake out—it wasn’t a sedation mask; it was a gas mask like those the men wore. The blue haze dissolved into white light. Columns, brickwork and glinting glass sheets flashed by. Back in the atrium. The alarm sharpened, the dome swelling the panicked uproar. Anxious faces rushed past, people swerved out of the speeding gurney’s path.

Samira shouted for help but the mask muffled her. She was being kidnapped in front of hundreds of people and all she could do was squeak.