The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,81
put the lantern on a small side table, and turned it low. Then she crouched to a small outdoor fireplace and struck a match. Soon a fire crackled in the clay hearth.
Hope turned her back to the fire, warming her hands behind her. ‘I’m off grid,’ she said. ‘I have a twelve-volt solar photovoltaic system, gas for cooking, and my water comes from a spring out back that runs all year. This is my sanctuary.’
Clay checked his watch. Just over two hours since he’d spoken with Crowbar. There was no way he’d find the place. Hope was curled up in her chair, arms clasped over her shins, like he’d seen Rania do sometimes.
‘Okay?’ he said.
She nodded.
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find her.’
‘I miss her.’
Clay bit down, said nothing, sipped his beer. Me too.
Hope opened her letters, slicing open the envelopes on their short end with a polished wooden opener, glancing at the contents, setting them aside. ‘Bills,’ she said. She drank some beer, then picked up the last letter, opened it, unfolded the thick bond paper, read, turned it over, and reread. She looked up at Clay and let out a little laugh, setting the paper with the others.
‘What is it?’ said Clay.
Hope shook her head. ‘It’s…’ She picked up the letter, looked at it again, crumpled it in her hand and dropped to the floor. ‘It’s nothing.’
Before he had time to ask again, a rapping sound echoed through the house. Clay pulled out the Beretta and walked quickly to the front door.
‘Die fokken duer oopmaak.’
Clay opened the door. Crowbar stood on the veranda, stamping his feet on the tile. He was wrapped against the cold in a thick woollen jumper and black leather jacket. ‘Fokken Med, ja? Is supposed to be fokken hot, ja? Fok I miss Afrika.’ His gaze wandered over the cuts on Clay’s face, the singed eyebrows, the puffy red burns on his forehead and nose. ‘Fok mie, Straker. You get better-looking every day.’
Clay shrugged and led Crowbar through the house to the veranda.
‘Hope, this is my friend Crowbar. He’s helping me find Rania.’
Hope looked her new guest over. ‘Crowbar?’
‘Koevoet,’ said Crowbar. ‘That’s how you say it.’
Hope brought him a beer. ‘Here you go, Mister Koofoot.’
Crowbar smiled at the attempt and took a slug of the beer. Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket and placed a folded newspaper on the table. ‘She’s alive, broer.’
Clay grabbed the paper, opened it up and tilted it towards the light. There it was, on the front page of that day’s Independent. The headline read: ‘North Cyprus Land Grab Terror’.
Clay looked up at Crowbar. ‘It only happened the night before last.’
‘So she must have filed yesterday, ja. She’s here, on the island.’
The title of the piece also clearly ruled out Erkan. A cascade of relief washed through him, like being in the field hospital and the doctor looking down at you through a blood-spattered surgical mask, the blur of people moving all around you, yelling, screaming, the moans of the wounded and the dying, and his muffled voice telling you not to worry, that you’re going to make it and you believe him.
‘And if she’s writing and filing stories, then she must be free,’ said Hope, breathless. ‘She hasn’t been kidnapped at all.’ Her smile was big, like her name.
‘Then why hasn’t she contacted anyone?’ said Clay, looking at Hope. ‘Not even you.’ He could see the words hit her, the smile die, the pain spread through her. It felt good for a second, faded fast.
Hope grabbed the paper, read the article in silence, put it down.
‘Rania writes here that the murders we witnessed were made to look like the work of Neo-Enosis, but that in fact it was Erkan’s men, hired guns. Not simple retaliation for some old grievance, she says, but an attempt to silence those who would speak out against the land grab in the north.’ Hope frowned. ‘She doesn’t want to make contact. She’s hiding. How else could she have accessed this kind of information?’
It made sense. Rania had been trained by French intelligence. Clay knew that if she wanted to disappear, she could. But then, why the note left in the hotel room in Istanbul? Had he misread it after all, willed into it some meaning that was never there?
Hope said, ‘The Turks are saying that the gunmen were Greek. Rania appears convinced they were Erkan’s men, Turks. You told me you thought the gunmen were speaking Russian.’