The Progeny (15 page)

I think back again to the way Ivan and the others looked at me, as though I were the ghost of my mother. Recall what Ivan said about forgetting who I am and wonder how I’m ever supposed to remember in the shadow of her dubious celebrity.

And I can’t stop hearing Claudia’s statement that it might be better if I had truly died.

The ferry landing in the port city of Rijeka is a curving stretch of road. By the time we arrive, it is filled with cars lined all the way up the hill so far that we can’t even see the ferry itself. Farther down, several people have gotten out of their vehicles.

The driver is saying something, lifting the hand that was dangling over the wheel a moment ago to gesture in the direction of the bay.

“There is some problem,” he says and then clucks his tongue at the rearview mirror as the lane fills with more cars behind us.

“Stay here,” Luka says, getting out. I watch him walk twenty yards down the road to get a good look at the dock.

The driver is becoming impatient, sighing and gesturing to the meter.

“Don’t worry about that,” I say, not sure if he understands me.
This is the only place you need to be.
A moment later, he turns off the engine and steps out of the cab for a smoke as a few cars farther down negotiate tight turns and begin to move back up the road.

I lose sight of Luka a few minutes later and find myself staring out the window, drumming my fingers against my knee. At last I can sit still no longer and get out of the cab, start walking down the road.

When I reach the bend, the scene opens below me: white police vans blocking the landing, blue lights flickering in the early evening. I hurry several steps, trying to see what’s happening. There are people in front of the dock craning to see around the police blockade.

A hand on my shoulder. Luka.

“We need to go,” he says.

“What’s going on?” I say, eyes glued to the growing crowd. The police don’t seem to be breaking up a fight or arresting anyone. Just a few officers keeping the passengers back while others talk to what look like the captain and some ferry workers. And one lone car in the gaping hull of the ferry itself.

Luka pulls me by the elbow. I yank my arm away.

“This is the last ferry. We have to get to—”

“There’s been a murder. We have to get you out of here. Now.”

Just then a murmur passes through a group of people standing ten feet away from us. I turn back in time to see a covered stretcher emerge from the hull, two uniformed men wheeling it toward the back of a van.

The tremor, when it starts, begins in my knees. Luka seizes me by the arm and walks me swiftly toward the cab. He spots the driver, who has wandered down to get a look for himself, and says something to him, gesturing to the car.

Back at the cab, Luka climbs into the backseat after me.

“You don’t think that—” I can’t get the words out.

“The police were waiting when the ferry got back. Someone with a car never got off on the island.”

The 7:30 ferry. The same one Ivan was taking back to Cres.

My mind races as I try to remember if I knew anything about Ivan having a car in Opatija. Well, there’s one good way to find out for sure whether Ivan’s safe. I look for my pack and, as I do, realize Luka is frantically searching around us.

The backpacks are gone.

“Have you seen our bags? Our things?” he says to the driver.

The driver shakes his head, answering in Croatian, and gestures to where he was standing outside.

“I got out last,” I say, stunned. “I got out after he did. I left them in here.”

Luka curses, shoves out of the car to look in the trunk and then along the road. A moment later he’s talking to the people in the car in front of us, gesturing in our direction.

I was out of the cab for what—ten minutes? Fifteen? How long did I stare at the body being wheeled into the van?

“Please,” I say to the driver urgently. He’s backed to the very edge of the shoulder and is cranking the steering wheel. “Can I use your phone?”

My hands are starting to shake. I have to redial the number twice.

This time it is not picked up on the first ring, or even the second or third. By the fifth ring, I feel sick.

It is answered on the sixth.

“Hello?” I say. “Ivan? Are you there? Are you all right?”

Silence.

And then: “Hallo, Audra.”

It isn’t Ivan.

17

“W
ho is this?” I demand, heart pounding against my ribs. “Who are you?”

The call clicks off.

The cab door opens and Luka gets back in. “They’re gone,” he says grimly. “No one’s seen them.” And then he notices the phone tremoring in my hand. “Did you reach him?”

“Someone else answered,” I say.

The driver has finally managed to get us pointed across the road and is about to pull forward into the other lane when a light shines through the back window, right in my face. I shield my eyes. The light disappears. Someone pounds on the window.

Luka lunges across me to lock the door, tells the driver to go.

“Wait!” I say, unlocking the door. Hands from the outside pull it open.

“What are you doing?” Luka shouts, and I practically feel him prepare to launch through the door at the figure outside. At the sight of Claudia, he pulls up short.

“Hurry!” she says, grabbing my arm.

“What are you doing here?”

The driver shouts; Claudia snaps back and then launches into a diatribe that culminates with her throwing several kuna at him. A moment later he seems to apologize. Too profusely. And I sense she’s worked her Progeny ways on him, though I have no idea what she’s just said.

“He cheated your meter,” she says as we move away. A lie—for Luka’s sake, I assume.

We trek up the hill after Claudia as one car after another pulls from the line below us.

“Have you heard from Ivan?” I say.

“I did.” Her eyes dart to Luka.

“Where is he? Is he okay?”

“Come,” she says, and though her tone is brisk, her face is pale.

She leads us farther up the hill to a car idling on the side of the road. Piotrek’s behind the wheel. We get in, and Claudia turns around in the front seat. She looks younger in the dark without her black sunglasses, and far more human.

“So this is the friend,” she says, as Piotrek pulls ahead of the traffic.

“Luka,” I say.

“Well, Luka, I’m sorry to say you have come at a very bad time.” She slides a meaningful look to me.

“Any idea what happened?” Luka asks tightly, well aware, I know, that he isn’t supposed to know anything about this.

“I am afraid for the worst. Ivan has a history of bad company. It appears the past may have caught up to him tonight.”

“You mean like the mafia?”

“Well, he was from Serbia.”

“How did you know to come for us?” I ask.

“We were headed to Karlovac when Ivan called to say he thought he was being followed and to get you away. We came as quickly as we could.” She glances at Luka. “Ivan’s old associates have a habit of going after their victims’ friends.” She turns forward, and I can hear her exhale an unsteady breath.

“I tried his phone,” I say. “Someone else answered.”

Luka says, “If someone killed him on the ferry, they did it on the way over. They’d still be on the island.”

“You know your way around,” Piotrek says, silent until now. “But your accent is Slovakian.”

“I studied in Croatia—it’s where we met.” He takes my hand. “Before the mess of Audra’s ex showing up, of course, and everything since.”

For a moment there’s nothing but the sound of the car whizzing down the road. And then I realize we are headed not back toward Opatija but east.

“Where are we going?” I say.

“We go to Karlovac and then Zagreb,” Piotrek says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

“No. We can’t! Ivan had something to give me. Something from my mother, maybe. I need it.”

“It isn’t safe,” Claudia says.

“You don’t understand—”

“No,
you
don’t understand. Ivan lived in Lubenice. There are only two old ladies and hardly any tourists this time of year. You will stand out. And we cannot stay in Rijeka.”

“Actually, I would think they’d expect us to be running as far from Rijeka as possible,” Luka says slowly. And I suppose he should know, being a hunter himself.

“Whoever answered Ivan’s phone knew it was me,” I say. “They said my name.” I don’t need to tell her that Ivan’s killer by now knows everything Ivan himself did—including the fact that we had planned to meet him in Cres tonight. The thought makes my skin prickle, because it means they now know everything he did about me.

Piotrek exchanges a glance with Claudia. He says something in another language, which I expect Claudia to snap at. But she murmurs instead and covers her mouth. And I realize that, for as steely as she appeared earlier, she, too, has been badly shaken by tonight.

A minute later she makes a call. After a few brief exchanges I can’t make out, she nods to Piotrek. The car slows and pulls off onto a side street. Moments later, we’re headed back to Rijeka and Claudia has pulled the chip from her phone.

In the darkness, Luka has not let go of my hand. And I realize that whoever killed Ivan now knows that I’m traveling with someone, even if they don’t know his name. And I’m not certain if that is a good or a bad thing.

“I didn’t tell you that I met Claudia and Piotrek earlier,” I say to Luka. “They came with Ivan.”

“Yes,” Claudia says. “I promised our friends in Zagreb that I would confirm that she is alive before they go to the trouble of planning a celebration.”

“Ivan could have told you that,” I say. “I think you wanted to see me yourself . . . because you know me.”

Her head turns, her perfect profile illuminated by the headlights of passing cars. “So clever, always,” she murmurs. “Even with no memory you are hard to fool. Welcome back, Audra.”

18

“I
called Ivan a liar when he told me you were alive,” Claudia says, turned sideways in the front seat. “But I admit I hoped he was right. Piotrek would not agree to come, said anywhere within a hundred kilometers of Ivan was too dangerous.” I know she really means within a hundred kilometers of
me,
though of course she can’t say so in front of Luka. I’m a little surprised; somehow I thought it was Claudia, not Piotrek, who called the shots.

“In the end, I had to see for myself,” she says.

I think back to the phone conversation that just took place. She was checking in with someone in Zagreb. She might have wanted to see me, but she was indeed confirming I was alive to someone else.

“I’m sorry, but how did we know one another?” I say.

“We were friends,” she says coolly.

“You’ll have to tell me all about that.”

“In the meantime, we have a small problem,” Luka says. “Our backpacks were stolen from the cab. Our money, passports, phones are gone.”

“We’ll get you new ones,” Piotrek says. “Under different names. It’s better under the circumstances, yes?”

“That seems a little shady. Shouldn’t we go to the embassy?” Luka frowns, though I know that’s the last thing he would advise.

“Not if you don’t want to be taken in for questioning. Audra has ties to Ivan. Better that we call friends.”

Piotrek and Claudia are in fast conversation by the time Piotrek parks in front of a ship anchored in the harbor. Some kind of maritime hostel, judging by the sign.

I’m confused. “You don’t know anyone we could stay with? I mean, we just had everything stolen.” Where’s the so-called underground?

Claudia’s look is droll. “We’re far less likely to be noticed here than in a neighborhood. Besides. We’re not exactly checking in at the front desk. Wait here.” They get out of the car and head toward the entrance ramp.

The minute they’re out of sight I cover my face with my hands. I’m shaking. Luka slides closer, lays an arm around me.

Don’t go digging. Others’ lives depend on it.

I was right. And Piotrek is right; no one around me is safe.

“He’s dead because of me,” I say, breath ragged.

Luka pulls me against him. “He knew the risks. He chose to come.”

“He was going to tell me everything.” My words catch in my throat. I feel like I’m having some kind of breakdown. “He said he had something—something for me.”

And now, whatever it is,
they
have it. Whatever he knew and meant to tell me has been harvested. They know it now.

“I wonder if I was right, saying we should come back here,” Luka murmurs.

“How’d they find Ivan? He was experienced—older. He was smart.”

“I don’t know. This whole thing feels off.”

I glance up at a movement in the parking lot. Claudia. I drag a sleeve across my eyes.

A moment later the car door opens. “Rooms, on the house,” Claudia says. “You’re 205.”

“Wow. How’d you manage that?” Luka says, if only for her benefit.

“A very helpful housekeeper.”

We get out of the car and she hands us a key card and a couple of disposable toothbrushes. “Wait a few minutes and then let yourself in. We’ll come get you in the morning.”

*  *  *

A
pparently the bad blood between Claudia and me runs deep enough that she doesn’t want to bunk with us. And literally, there are four bunk beds in our IKEA-inspired room in primary yellow and white.

I slump into the metal desk chair, aware of Luka standing at the window, staring out at the water. He’s purposefully kept the room light off, cracking the bathroom door just enough that I can see his silhouette against the moonlit harbor.

“We shouldn’t have come. This is my fault,” he says.

“Do you think Ivan knew his hunter?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you get? For making a kill, I mean. A non-botched one.”

He shrugs. “An executive position somewhere. A hefty lottery win. Who knows?”

“How do you know you won’t just end up with a bullet in the back for your effort?”

“You don’t,” he says hollowly. “But it doesn’t matter. Because you believe in it so much . . . you’d do it even without the reward.”