took a book, which she carried over to the dressing table. It was a cheap scrapbook, coarse paper between cardboard covers, so well used that some of the pages were starting to fall out. She laid it flat and opened it up.
The book was filled with photographs. A few of them would have been a serious giveaway in any frontier search, but these she'd covered over with postcard views bought from the Europiskaya Hotel.
She began to take out the postcards, revealing the snapshots underneath. When she reached a particular one, she stopped.
It was a group view, slightly blurred, a dozen friends on a day in the country. They were in rows like a football team, the people in the front row all kneeling on the ground.
Old times, sad times, a million miles away. For a while Alina sat looking at her younger, unmarked self. She was in the back row, lifted higher than anybody by the boys on either side of her.
That was how she'd been, back then. Open, smiling, everything before her.
Lifted on the arm of a boy named Pavel.
SEVEN
Pavel's was a city dawn, seen from the rear seat of the unmarked car as they circled back in on the motorway network toward their base near the airport. The night had not been a success. He knew that he'd been close, but then somehow it had all slipped away from him; when Alina hadn't come out and the three of them had finally gone into the building, it was to find incomprehension from the woman who lived alone and an empty flat where she said she'd gone for help. Pavel had no names, no numbers. He could go no further.
And his two escorts had shrugged and sympathised, and called it bad luck.
A couple of years ago, he'd never even have been able to get this far. The notion of such international cooperation would have been unthinkable even at senior Investigator level; but here the arrangements had been made and he'd been on a plane within a matter of hours. He had no official status and no powers of arrest, but once he'd identified Alina then the two officers along with him would have been able to detain her on immigration charges. Since she'd entered the country on stolen papers, she could then be deported back to Russia and the knotty question of extradition would never have arisen. An appeal for political asylum would have been likely to get her nowhere; Alina wasn't political, and never really had been. By most people's definition, she was a common criminal and nothing more.
For most people, but not in the eyes of Pavel. To Pavel, and probably to many of the others who'd fallen under her influence, she was the most uncommon criminal ever.
The Finns had found the boy within half an hour. He'd been hiding in a woodland graveyard, only half-heartedly concealed behind one of the leaning roofed crosses. He'd known almost nothing. Nothing of her true nature, not even - and here Pavel had been holding his breath at the back of the Border Control's interrogation room - where she'd been living for the past two years. The boy's eyes had met his own, and for a moment Pavel had been afraid; but the boy hadn't said anything, and after a moment he'd looked away.
An example of her power: scared as he was, the boy Nikolai had managed to hold out against telling them of her destination until it was too late for them to prevent her from reaching it. She'd used him and then abandoned him, and yet still he'd continued to protect her.
It was an impulse that Pavel could understand only too well. And compared to some in her past, the boy had been lucky.
The car rolled into the police yard, a hurricane-fenced compound within sight of the main runway and with a constant background of big jet engines racing up to power. There were a few marked vans here, but most of the cars were officers' private vehicles. As Pavel stepped out onto the asphalt, he could see the takeoff of a Cathay Pacific 747 through the chainlink and across a few hundred feet of grass; it seemed shockingly, dangerously close, and he turned his face away to
The book was filled with photographs. A few of them would have been a serious giveaway in any frontier search, but these she'd covered over with postcard views bought from the Europiskaya Hotel.
She began to take out the postcards, revealing the snapshots underneath. When she reached a particular one, she stopped.
It was a group view, slightly blurred, a dozen friends on a day in the country. They were in rows like a football team, the people in the front row all kneeling on the ground.
Old times, sad times, a million miles away. For a while Alina sat looking at her younger, unmarked self. She was in the back row, lifted higher than anybody by the boys on either side of her.
That was how she'd been, back then. Open, smiling, everything before her.
Lifted on the arm of a boy named Pavel.
SEVEN
Pavel's was a city dawn, seen from the rear seat of the unmarked car as they circled back in on the motorway network toward their base near the airport. The night had not been a success. He knew that he'd been close, but then somehow it had all slipped away from him; when Alina hadn't come out and the three of them had finally gone into the building, it was to find incomprehension from the woman who lived alone and an empty flat where she said she'd gone for help. Pavel had no names, no numbers. He could go no further.
And his two escorts had shrugged and sympathised, and called it bad luck.
A couple of years ago, he'd never even have been able to get this far. The notion of such international cooperation would have been unthinkable even at senior Investigator level; but here the arrangements had been made and he'd been on a plane within a matter of hours. He had no official status and no powers of arrest, but once he'd identified Alina then the two officers along with him would have been able to detain her on immigration charges. Since she'd entered the country on stolen papers, she could then be deported back to Russia and the knotty question of extradition would never have arisen. An appeal for political asylum would have been likely to get her nowhere; Alina wasn't political, and never really had been. By most people's definition, she was a common criminal and nothing more.
For most people, but not in the eyes of Pavel. To Pavel, and probably to many of the others who'd fallen under her influence, she was the most uncommon criminal ever.
The Finns had found the boy within half an hour. He'd been hiding in a woodland graveyard, only half-heartedly concealed behind one of the leaning roofed crosses. He'd known almost nothing. Nothing of her true nature, not even - and here Pavel had been holding his breath at the back of the Border Control's interrogation room - where she'd been living for the past two years. The boy's eyes had met his own, and for a moment Pavel had been afraid; but the boy hadn't said anything, and after a moment he'd looked away.
An example of her power: scared as he was, the boy Nikolai had managed to hold out against telling them of her destination until it was too late for them to prevent her from reaching it. She'd used him and then abandoned him, and yet still he'd continued to protect her.
It was an impulse that Pavel could understand only too well. And compared to some in her past, the boy had been lucky.
The car rolled into the police yard, a hurricane-fenced compound within sight of the main runway and with a constant background of big jet engines racing up to power. There were a few marked vans here, but most of the cars were officers' private vehicles. As Pavel stepped out onto the asphalt, he could see the takeoff of a Cathay Pacific 747 through the chainlink and across a few hundred feet of grass; it seemed shockingly, dangerously close, and he turned his face away to
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