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‘Do you need more time to make a decision?’
She shook her head and turned away. ‘No. Take him now. Take him away. I don’t care.’
‘Do you like yellow tulips?’
Her gaze met his in the mirror above the mantelpiece as she poured herself a shot glass full of cognac and swallowed it. ‘They’re a little common.’
‘Once a year, on this date, you’ll receive a bunch of yellow tulips. A message, if you will, that your son is alive and well.’
Once upon a time Jared would never have thought to offer anyone that kind of solace. These days he better understood that some situations could be beyond a person’s capacity to deal with them.
‘You really don’t have to do that.’
‘I’ll do it once. Should you refuse the delivery, you won’t get any others.’
‘Will you take the boy with you now?’
‘Before six this evening—yes.’
‘You have my thanks.’ She shrugged, elegant, unapologetic, and whimsical again now that her life had been rearranged to her liking. She crossed to the window and drew the curtains aside. ‘They watch my house all the time now. Two from below. One from a house across the canal. There may be more.’
‘There are more. But I’ve got this. May I see the boy now?’
‘Take the stairs to the top floor. He’s in the room on the left. You can’t miss it. His tutor is with him.’ She shot him a wry smile. ‘It’s school time.’
Jared climbed the stairs, opened the first door to the left and watched the solemn-eyed little boy’s face light up with relief.
‘Jimmy!’
‘Hey there, champ. How’s it going?’ was all he had time to say before his arms were full of boy.
‘And you are …?’ enquired the steel-haired matron sitting at a desk filled with books.
‘Just passing through.’ Jared smiled his most charming smile and watched the older woman’s eyes start to thaw. He looked down at Celik next and shot the boy a grin. ‘According to your mother you have five minutes of school left before we can break you out of here and go have some fun,’ he said in Russian.
‘Schooling is important,’ the teacher said, clearly having no trouble at all understanding Jared’s somewhat thick northern Russia accent. And then she offered them both a smile. ‘But maybe today we will finish early, no? Maybe just this once.’
By the time darkness fell Jared and Celik were in the basement of the old canal house and Jared was busy removing the narrow window that sat just above the waterline from its hinges.
‘Remember what I told you.’ Jared crouched down and held the boy’s gaze. ‘We’re going through the window and then we’re going for a swim using scuba gear. It’s just like the snorkelling gear you used to use, only better.’
‘Like what you used when you checked the hull for bombs. You showed me.’
‘Exactly like that. But it’s going to be dark underwater and you won’t be able to see much.’
‘And I’m going to be clipped to you.’
‘That’s right. And we’ll only be this far under the water.’ Jared’s spread his arms about a meter or so wide and then shortened it to half that before lengthening the distance again. ‘So the moment you want to go to the surface you tug on my arm and up we go. Got that?’
The boy nodded.
‘And what does this mean?’ Jared continued the drill, commanding the little boy’s attention with his voice and eyes as he made the universal sign for okay with his fingers.
‘It means I’m okay.’
‘When we come up to the surface—and we will a few times—that’s the signal I want to see. It’ll tell me that you’re ready to go back under again. Okay? Make the sign.’
He held up his own curled fingers as an example. Celik made the sign and Jared nodded.
‘Good. Are you ready?’
The boy nodded enthusiastically, and Jared picked him up and stood him on the bench he’d placed below the window. They watched together as a long, many-seated, shallow-bottomed tourist boat stalled right in front of the little window. The pilot would slip overboard and then the boat would catch fire and provide them with some smoke and cover. Bless Damon and his remote management skills.
‘Remember when I told you that a boat was going to help hide us while we slide out the window and into the water? That’s the boat. And it’s going to blow up now.’
Celik’s eyes grew big and round.
Yeah, not a sentence a seven-year-old boy heard every day … Not even Antonov’s son.
The explosion was a good one. The boat went up in flames, accompanied by a roil of black smoke. Jared took the window out and hoisted himself through it and into the inky black water, and then motioned for Celik to come. It helped that the boy could swim like a fish and looked upon this as an adventure. It also helped that one of Antonov’s thugs had shown him as a six-year-old how scuba gear worked and had let the boy play around with it in a swimming pool before Antonov had put a stop to it.
