Dave Hutchinson by Europe in Winter

Author:Europe in Winter [Winter, Europe in]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2016-11-02T21:00:00+00:00

IN THE END it was ridiculously easy. Bradley simply drove her out to Komárom and put her on a coach and the coach took her across the bridge and the border guards on either side barely glanced at her New Zealand passport and then she was in Slovakia. Two days later, travelling on the French passport, she was getting off a flight in Houston. It was some time before she returned to Europe, and she never again set foot in Hungary.

1.

“THEY’RE LATE,” SAID Andreas.

Yngvar looked at his watch. “Only five minutes later than the last time you said that,” he said.

“Ah, fuck it,” Andreas muttered. They’d been sitting here in the car, parked beside the road in Østfold, a few kilometres from the border with Sweden, for almost two hours. It was cold outside, and Yngvar, who did not smoke, refused to let him roll down a window so he could have a cigarette. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”

Yngvar sighed and pulled up the GPS on his phone and held it up so Andreas could see the screen. “Look,” he said. “Can you see the coordinates here? Can you? Hm? And don’t you dare ask if I’m sure we have the right day.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Andreas muttered.

No traffic passed them on the road. A few kilometres further back, the Norwegian authorities had closed it by the simple expedient of bringing in a maintenance crew to dig up the carriageways under the pretence of emergency repairs. On the other side of the border, the Swedes had opted for something more showy, staging a chemical tanker crash. Between these two pieces of pantomime, the road and the old Svinesund Bridge were empty.

“I need a piss,” Andreas grumbled. He got out of the car and did up his coat, looked along the line of other cars parked along the side of the road. He waved to the nearest, got an answering wave from within, and walked into the trees.

He found himself a spot, unzipped, and began to relieve himself against a tree, but he’d hardly started when he heard undergrowth crunching under a number of feet. He sighed. Typical. He finished hurriedly, zipped up, and made himself presentable just as eight soldiers in vaguely old-fashioned uniform stepped out of the forest. They were carrying modern European automatic rifles, and behind them were half a dozen men and women wearing formal clothes and carrying document cases, their breath pluming in the cold air.

The soldiers reached him and stopped. One of them saluted.

“You’re late,” Andreas told him.

One of the diplomats, a tall man in late middle age, stepped forward. “You’ll have to speak English, I’m afraid,” he said affably. “None of us speaks Norwegian.”

Andreas regarded him levelly. “Very well,” he said in English. He waved behind him, towards the road. “We make the exchange over here.”

“Lead on then, please,” said the diplomat.

They walked back to the road, where there was a sudden flurry of activity, people getting out of the cars. Yngvar shot Andreas a sour look as he went by, but Andreas just shrugged.

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