Page 13 of The Pakhan's Captive
There’s a bakery three blocks up.
I saw it yesterday, clocked it the way I’ve started clocking everything now, exits, sightlines, how many people, whether any of them are watching the street instead of minding their own business.
You didn’t used to think like this.
No.
I used to think about translation deadlines and whether I’d remembered to buy coffee and whether Nadia wanted to get dinner on Friday.
I used to live in a world where bakeries were just bakeries.
My phone buzzes.
Nadia.
I answer it before the second vibration, ducking further into the doorway. “I’m here.”
“Oh thank god.” Her voice hits me like a physical thing—warm and sharp and so familiar I have to close my eyes for a second.
Nadia has been my best friend for six years and she has never once in that time sounded frightened.
She sounds frightened now, underneath the bossiness she uses to cover it. “I’ve been calling you since yesterday?—”
“I know. I couldn’t—”I was on the bathroom floor at two in the morning.“I’m here now. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong on my end, I’m calling because I have a plan and you need to hear it.” I can hear her moving around her apartment, that familiar shuffle-and-clank of Nadia doing three things at once. “I’m in Budapest. I want you to come here. I have a friend who does documentation—real documentation, not bad fakes—and I’ve already spoken to him. New name, new papers, somewhere to stay that nobody will think to look. You just need to get here, Lena. Can you get to Budapest?”
I lean my head back against the glass.Budapest.Clean. Safe. Nadia’s apartment with its ridiculous amount of plants and her terrible taste in television and the way she makes tea like it’s a military operation.
“Yes,” I say. “I can get there. How fast does your friend need?—”
“He’s already started. I sent him your photo from two years ago, I hope that’s okay, I didn’t know what else to—” She stops. “Are you eating? You sound hollow.”
“I’m going to eat right now, actually. There’s a bakery up the street.”
“Good. Lena.” Her voice sharpens. “The flash drive. Have you gotten into it yet?”
I look down at my hand.
The drive is in my jacket pocket, always, but I’ve had it out six times since Moscow trying everything—birthday dates, addresses, every number combination I can think of that my father might have used.
Nothing.
A password prompt that gives me nothing back. “No. I can’t get in no matter what I try. I don’t know what’s on it andI don’t know the code and I’m—” I stop because my voice is doing something I don’t want it to do. “I’m so frustrated, Nadia, because he died for whatever is on this thing and I can’t even?—”
“Okay. Okay, we’ll figure it out when you’re here. Yuri’s good with stuff like that.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Stay safe before then, okay? Don’t go—” She pauses. “Wait. Lena. What are you using to call me right now?”
“My phone.”
Silence.
Not a short silence. A long, horrible silence with a very specific shape.
“Your phone,” Nadia says. “Your actual phone. The one registered to your name. The one with your SIM card in it.”
