Chapter 16: Vanish

Mara had a go-bag packed for me on the walkway outside room nine.

She sat on the railing beside it at dawn with a paper cup.

She watched me come up the steps in the same cardigan, with blood dried on one cuff.

Luka was behind me, bare under his jacket, with a fresh bandage I had tied myself.

She looked at him. She looked at me.

"Good morning," she said dryly. "I'd ask where you slept, but the van has fogged-up windows."

"Mara," I said.

"Luka, go and sit with Pavel. Eat something. Nika and I need a word."

Luka glanced at me.

"Go," I said. "I'll tell you what she says."

"You'll tell me everything she says."

"I'll tell you everything."

He went. The door of room ten closed behind him.

Mara put the cup down on the rail.

"Forty men saw your face last night," she said.

"Seven."

"Seven in the yard. They've told the men who weren't there, who've told a crew in Detroit and one in Marseille."

"By tonight there will be a dozen people who say they've seen the Ghost, and half of them will be lying."

"The other half won't."

"I know."

"Do you? Because the thing you've sold for twelve years is that nobody sees you."

I leaned my back against the wall.

"Pavel's ledger is in Chicago," I said. "Friday there is a table. Seven elders."

"There's a car on the other side of the lot with a full tank. Two passports, yours and Pavel's. A flight out of Detroit on Tuesday."

"Mara."

"You take the old man to Lisbon. I'll sit on the money. In a year, nobody will remember what the Ghost looked like."

"And Luka?"

"Luka has known what you are for twenty months, and he spent them lying to his own family."

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