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He signed on the dotted line and they rose and left. The evening was still warm, at least by London standards, though now Reggie wished she had brought the sweater. Noticing her chill bumps, Shaw took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. It hung down like a dress.
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“Forty-six extra long?” she said, gripping the material.
“Something like that. How’re the feet?”
“Depends on where we’re headed.”
“My hotel’s in that direction. Ten-minute cab ride.”
She looked startled. “Your hotel?”
“Or we can go to your place.”
“Why does it have to be either one?”
“Or we can just go to another public place and talk about it and hope nobody overhears us.”
Reggie thought of the sex-crazed couple in the rooms above her. “My place is not that quiet,” she said.
“Mine is.”
“Where exactly is it?”
“The Savoy. It recently reopened. Excellent river views. Very nice.”
“What did you tell me before about being forward? Going to your hotel room this late at night seems to fall into that category.”
“That was before, this is now. We can cab it. It’s down in the Strand.”
“I know where the damn Savoy is.”
“Then let’s go.”
An efficient cabbie with “the knowledge,” as Londoners referred to the mental map cabdrivers were required to learn over several years, whisked them along Piccadilly, over to Haymarket, around Lord Nelson and his army of pigeons, and onto the Strand.
“It’s always puzzled me why the only place one drives on the right in all of Britain is down the little street to the Savoy entrance,” said Shaw.
“It’s because the hotel’s forecourt was too narrow for coachmen to pull up to the front doors if they had to hug the left side.” Shaw stared at her in mild amusement. She said sharply, “What? I am English, after all.”
They walked through the lobby, up a flight of stairs, and rode an elevator car up to Shaw’s room. He closed the door behind them, dropped his keys on the table, and pointed to a chair for Reggie to take while he sat on the edge of the bed.
“Wretched heels.” She slipped off her shoes and rubbed her aching feet. “Now what?”
“Now we talk survival.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Both, if we’re lucky.”
“Maybe it was just me, but your boss didn’t seem all that keen on working with us. It was more like he wanted to arrest us.”
“Should he want to do that?”
Reggie’s features stiffened a bit. “I’m not going to think for him.”
Shaw opened the room safe housed in a cabinet and pulled out a paper file. He flicked through some pages. “Fedir Kuchin. I read up on him.”
