The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (9 page)

I shrugged off my mackintosh and lifted up my shirt to inspect my stomach. It was enflamed and tender. A lot of blood vessels had burst beneath my skin. I prodded and poked myself, gauging my pain. I imagined it was possible that I was bleeding internally, and I supposed it was the sort of thing one should see a doctor about. But a doctor would require an explanation.

Apparently, they weren’t the only one.

“Charlie,” Victoria said, “what
is
happening?”

“We were robbed, Vic. At gunpoint.” I dropped my shirt and pressed my hand to my side. My stomach pulsed angrily. “It’s pretty ironic when you think about it.”

“Ironic?”

“Yes. The robbers, getting robbed. We go out and do all the hard work, and they just wait here for us to get back and snatch what we’ve found.”

Victoria sucked in a deep breath. “I am
not
a robber.”

“I hear you.” I raised my free hand. “I hate the term, too. ‘Robbery’ always suggests some level of violence. It’s a grubby form of theft. No art to it. No craft.”

“Not what I meant,” she said. “As well you know. And can we please dispense with the breezy attitude? Who were those men?”

I glanced out the window again, as if they might still be there. They weren’t. The street was deserted. Even the table-tennis tables were abandoned.

“Well, I don’t know for certain, Vic. You have to understand that I’ve never seen them before tonight. But I think they really were Russian. And their car was fitted with diplomatic plates.”

Victoria gripped tightly to the arms of the chair. “You’re saying those men were working for the Russian state?”

“It would make sense, I suppose. Freddy has us working for the British embassy, and he wanted that folder recovered very badly. He was afraid of it falling into the wrong hands. I guess those were some of the hands he was concerned by.”

“And what was in the folder?”

I turned to face her, resting my legs against the radiator beneath the window. It was warm. It was pleasant. I hoped it might begin to dry my jeans.

“I don’t know.”

“But you said you looked,” Victoria protested.

“And I did. But the information inside the folder was in code.”

“Code?”

“Four pages of it. Densely scrawled in cramped handwriting. The paper was yellowed with age and the ink had faded.”

“You mean like spy code?”

“I mean like code, code. The type you can’t read without the key.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps it was in Cyrillic. Maybe that’s why the Russians want it.”

“No,” I told her. “The letters were from the Roman alphabet. But they were scrambled up. Consonants and vowels all over the place. It was like no kind of language I’ve ever seen.”

“Was there anything else? Any pictures? Names?”

“Nope.”

“Drawings? Diagrams?”

I sighed. “There was just the code, Vic.”

“Huh. And do you think the Russians have the key to the code?”

“I don’t know. And if I’m honest, I really don’t care.”

My legs were getting toasty. I bent down to gather my raincoat from the floor, then stumbled across the living room with my hand clutching my gut to inspect the open door to my apartment.

There were three locks on the door. Good ones, too. I’d fitted them myself when I’d first moved in. It’s a habit I’ve fallen into over the years. Being a thief does tend to give you an appreciation of your own potential vulnerability.

The locks had been engaged when we’d got home—I’d had to use my keys on all three of them. And they showed no obvious signs of tampering.

I hung my coat on a hook fixed to the wall, then removed my penlight and crouched down to study the locks more closely. I started with the unit at the top and worked my way to the bottom. I looked very carefully. Very thoroughly. But I couldn’t see any nicks or scratches.

I found that interesting. I knew for a fact that picking the locks would require a high degree of skill. I’d find them challenging myself, and I’m a pro with just the right tools and exactly the right knowledge. Now, it was possible that one of my visitors had a similar skill base, but setting all modesty aside for a moment, I thought it was highly unlikely they’d be as good as me, let alone better. Sure, the stocky guy with the scar was capable of getting through my door, though he’d most likely have used his head for a key. And his boss, Pavel, didn’t seem the type to spend time teasing away at pins and tumblers when one of my neighbors might have spotted him.

I closed my door and turned the locks from the inside, and the clunk—thunk—clunk was like a set of ideas falling into place in my mind. I headed along the corridor and poked my head inside Victoria’s room, flicking on the light, and when I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, I checked my own bedroom at the rear of the apartment.

The temperature inside my room was several degrees colder than out in the corridor. The window was a sash and one of the panes had been broken. A chill, damp breeze was funneling inside. Fragments of broken glass were spread across the carpet next to my bed, and they crunched under my feet as I approached the window.

The metal catch between the two sashes was undone. It wasn’t the most sophisticated of security devices to begin with, I grant you, but there was no way I would have left it like that. I heaved up the bottom sash and stuck my head outside, shining my torch into the black. An aluminum ladder was propped against the wall, its rubberized feet resting in the narrow, unlit alley running behind my building.

So that was how they’d got inside. Not the most dignified of approaches, but undeniably effective.

“You should really close that window,” Victoria said from behind me. “It’s freezing in here.”

She was leaning against my doorway, hugging her arms about herself. She’d shed her padded jacket and was wearing a long green cardigan over damp blue jeans. Her mobile was in her hand.

I pointed to the broken windowpane.

“Oh,” she said. Then she shivered. Partly the cold, I guessed. Partly the shock of coming home to find two strange men lying in wait for us, with threats and guns and violence.

Ducking my head, I got a firm grip on the ladder and pushed it sideways, so that it fell away from my window and crashed against the ground. Not a complete solution, by any means, but the alleyway was dark and the likelihood of an opportunistic thief spotting the ladder and my broken window didn’t seem very high. I yanked down the sash. Engaged the catch. Short of taping a piece of cardboard over the broken pane, it was the best I could do for now.

“Freddy just sent me a text,” Victoria said, and showed me the lit screen of her phone from across the room. “He wants to meet tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Should I tell him what’s happened?”

“No, not yet. Just say that we’ll be there.”

“But we don’t have the file anymore.”

“You can leave me to worry about that.”

Victoria didn’t look convinced. She chewed on her lip and considered Freddy’s message. How many
x
s this time? I wondered.

“Don’t you think we should let him know that the Russians have the secret file?” she asked.

“We will, Vic. Tomorrow.”

“It might be too late by then.”

“Not our problem.”

She twisted her lips in thought. “You do realize we won’t get paid our bonus now you can’t give him the file?”

I smiled. Notice how that telltale “we” and “our” had crept in there?

“You can leave me to worry about that, too,” I said.

“But what about those men? What if they come back?”

“They won’t.”

“For God’s sake, Charlie.” She thumped her fist into the door frame. “I’m scared.”

She looked it, too. She was pale and she was trembling. Her teeth were clamped together and her eyes were half shut, like she was bracing for some kind of impact. Perhaps she was seeing haunting visions of Vladislav and Pavel returning when we least expected it. Sneaking through my apartment in the dead of night. Pouncing on us. Attacking us.

Hell, now I was getting a little scared, too.

“Hug me, can’t you?” she said.

Could I? I guessed I was going to have to. I mean, it’s not the kind of request you can very well decline without causing offense.

I dumped my torch on my bed and edged across the room, like I was moving toward a very high and treacherous precipice. I spread my arms very wide, like a kid playing airplane, and gently closed my arms around her.

“Christ, Charlie, that’s not a hug.
This
is a hug.”

She squeezed me hard and held me close, her head just below my chin. Her hair scratched my neck and I could smell the scent of her shampoo. It was fragrant and sweet and undeniably pleasant. So was holding her. She was warm and soft and shapely. And, well, we just seemed to
fit.

I relaxed. My shoulders dropped. I smoothed my hands up and down her back, stroking the material of her knitted cardigan. I lowered my lips to the crown of her head. I could feel the beat of her heart. It was beating very fast.

“Your heart is racing,” she said.

“Adrenaline,” I muttered. “Been an eventful night.”

She stirred and backed away from me, resting the flat of her hand against my chest. I lowered my arms, cradling her waist. I looked deep into her eyes.

“You know, I almost forgot about what happened at that first apartment,” she said.

“Lucky you. I’ve been trying my best to forget it altogether.”

“I wonder if the police are still there.”

I wondered that, too. I didn’t think it was likely. They hadn’t found the blonde, and it wouldn’t have taken long for the female officer to discover that the guy who’d called them to report the incident wasn’t at home. They’d probably concluded that my report was a hoax.

“Nothing we can do now,” I told her. “Feeling better?”

“A little.”

She smiled timidly and we released each other. I stuffed my hands inside my pockets and shifted my weight between my feet. Victoria pushed her hair behind her ear.

“Do you think we should stay in a hotel tonight, Charlie?”

“There’s really no need. They won’t return. I promise. And even if they did, they couldn’t get in. The locks on my door were too much for them the first time around. And if they tried to crawl through my window again, I’d hear them right away.”

She looked down at the floor. She nodded and she sniffed.

“I’m still a little scared,” she said. “And it’s so cold in here, Charlie. With the broken window and all.” She raised her eyes, and they were wet and glimmering and shifting around with a fidgety uncertainty. “And I don’t want this to be weird or to freak you out at all, but I’d really appreciate it if you might sleep in my room tonight.” She paused, monitoring my reaction. “On the floor,” she added hurriedly. “Next to my bed. I think it would really help me to know that you’re close.”

My mouth had gone dry. I swallowed. It felt like something was lodged in my throat. My heart, perhaps.

“I can do that,” I managed.

“I just have a bad feeling, you know?”

Oh, I knew all about bad feelings. I had plenty of them myself. Sleeping in Victoria’s room seemed like a terrible idea to me. There were countless pitfalls. Any number of traps. But one thought alone filled me with more dread than anything else. If I was so aware of the perils, then why hadn’t I said no?

TWELVE

Victoria snores in her sleep. There, I’ve said it. But she snores ever so sweetly. She makes a halting kind of whimper as she inhales. And when she exhales, she half sighs, as if each and every breath is a minor obstacle she’s overcome.

At first, it’s endearing. But trust me, it rapidly loses its appeal. Pretty soon, the faltering whimper and the faint sigh become loud and insistent. You start to dread them each and every time they come around. I dreaded them for sure. And it wasn’t long before I wanted to thump her.

My desire to thump Victoria explains why I was digging my fingernails hard into my thighs. But it wasn’t the only reason. I was also trying to distract myself from the thoughts that were preoccupying me. My mind wouldn’t settle, and that meant I couldn’t settle, and once you add in the discomfort my bruised stomach was causing me, perhaps you’ll begin to understand why I was still awake at closing in on two in the morning.

I really didn’t believe the Russians would be back. I hadn’t simply said it to ease Victoria’s nerves. Why would they return? What possible reason could they have? They already had the file. And they’d taken a risk by breaking into my home the first time around.

It was my suspicion that Pavel held a certain oblique position in a highly secretive branch of the Russian government that came with a particular degree of power. He was an educated and cultured type. He was accustomed to riding in the back of luxury town cars, and perhaps he even enjoyed some level of diplomatic immunity. But it wouldn’t have done him much good to be caught breaking in to an apartment. The police might have become involved. The justice system. The press. And he wouldn’t be eager to flirt with that kind of notoriety a second time around.

But he’d flirted with it once. He’d dirtied his hands. Climbed up a ladder and in through a window. Pointed a gun at a defenseless man and woman. Robbed them and threatened them. Overseen a shabby beating.

He’d gone to what even I, as a self-confessed crook, would tend to view as extremes. And to get there had required a high level of motivation. It suggested that whatever was in the file I’d taken from Jane Parker’s hotel room was of real importance. I knew that already, of course, because Freddy had hired me to retrieve it. He’d offered me a very generous fee, and he’d told me it was vital that the information not fall into the wrong hands.

It seemed to me that his fears had now been realized. But the situation was worse than that. I’d been targeted precisely because Pavel knew that I was involved. He knew that Freddy had hired me and that Victoria had helped to negotiate my fee. That kind of knowledge implied that Freddy’s security had been breached at a fundamental level. Sure, it was possible that someone had eavesdropped on our Ping-Pong game in some way. Perhaps the Russians had even used some variety of sophisticated listening device. But it was also possible that Freddy had a leak inside his own department. It could be he suspected that already. After all, he’d gone outside the embassy and approached me to help locate the stolen file. But he can’t have imagined that his own solution would have been used against him.