Page 75 of The Circle

I ask the question now because we’ve just entered onto the Autobahn and I had assumed Vienna would be our final stop. But we’re now being hauled to another location? I don’t like this. Which is not to say I liked it before. I didn’t. But I continue not to. More and more.

“It is just a few hours’ drive south. We shall be there soon.”

“Where is ‘there?’ Where the fuck are we going?” I hate repeating myself, but my first question was never answered. Alec continues staring out of the window on his side of the car and I know that he’s resisting the urge to chastise me for asking too many questions. Fuck him. I know he has the same ones I do, so I’m asking for the both of us. I’m done playing fucking games.

“As I say, Mr. Fortnight, we shall be there soon.”

Maybe I will just choke this fucking guy out. What’s the worst that could happen?

A lot. A lot of bad shit is the worst that could happen. So, I don’t choke anybody. Even though it would release a fair amount of tension.

The driver is a big guy. Dark skin. He hasn’t spoken at all, so I can’t tell if he’s also Austrian or if this is, in fact, some multinational coalition of assholes that we’re dealing with. The plates on this car, just like the one we were given in Belfast, are Russian diplomatic ones. Hans is definitely Austrian, according to Alec’s well-attuned-to-dialects ear. Nigel and Nigel the Second were clearly Brits. Since we now know that Brasil wasn’t behind keeping Alec and Lars penned up in that English estate, it makes more sense why the guards there were apparently South African rather than Irish. But then who…? Fuck. It makes my head hurt.

I ask the driver, “What’s your name, bro?” in an attempt to get him to speak and maybe give me a hint as to what he’s all about, but he remains predictably silent. Unless I hear him say something, I can’t guess where the fuck this dick might hail from. Dude could be from fuckin’… I dunno… Pensacola for all I know. It doesn’t make that much of a difference really, but the only thing I can surmise with any degree of certainty right now is that whoever these jokers are, they have extremely deep pockets, a wide reach, and a particular affinity for keeping motherfuckers in suspense.

Honestly, they sound kind of like us back when we used to be fully operational. Back when we stole the diamond. The diamond. Which is where my head keeps coming back to. Especially since Christine blurted it out the way she did. I just keep thinking it has to all be related somehow. Too coincidental for it not to be.

Whatever organization this is that we’re dealing with, it has tendrils and isn’t afraid to let them scope and prod and irritate the shit out of someone. I really wish Christine could remember even ten percent more. When was she here with Lars and why? And speaking of Christine…

I look back over my shoulder to make sure the car carrying her and Eliza is still behind us as promised. It is. I pull out my phone and text her: U good?

CHRISTINE

My phone is vibrating. Eliza looks away from the window and over to me as I pull it out of my pocket.

It’s Danny. U good? he types. It’s so funny to me that Danny texts like a teenager.

I type in So far, so good, and am about to hit ‘send’ when a monumental wave of nausea takes me over. Like, massive. I sometimes get a little queasy when looking at my phone or typing or whatever when I’m in the backseat of a car to begin with. I once ruined the back of a New York City taxi while trying to send a text to Alec (although, to be fair, the New York City taxi was already pretty fucked up—not sure I really “ruined” anything other than the cabbie’s day), but this is something else. A combination of the motion sickness I’m already susceptible to combined with the morning-slash-afternoon-slash-evening sickness that has oh so recently decided to start showing up.

“You need to pull over,” I say to the driver, a big guy with dreadlocks spilling out from underneath his chauffeur’s cap. “Now,” I add when he makes no move at all to slow down.

Eliza looks at me and I must look back at her with a face that projects exactly what I’m about to… uh, project… all over the beautiful leather interior of this Mercedes, because she immediately echoes me in the streetwise version of her accent that comes out whenever anything gets really serious. “Oi! Pull the car over, mate! She’s going to be sick!”

DANNY

I wait for a replyfor a few moments, but when one doesn’t come, I slip the phone back in my jacket pocket. She probably has the ringer off and didn’t feel it vibrate. No sense in making a big deal about it or letting my head go someplace unhelpful. I can see that the car is there and that means that everything’s fine.

If there were some kind of—

Ring. Ring.

It’s not my phone. Nor is it Alec’s. Big Driver Guy doesn’t take his hands off the wheel. It’s Hans’s. He answers.

“Allo?” There’s a pause as I watch the back of his unmoving head, which now has a cell phone pressed against it. “Oh. All right. I suppose.”

He tabs ‘end’ on the call and, in a language I don’t immediately recognize, tells the driver something. Alec apparently understands what’s being said, because he asks, “What’s the problem, man?”

“What’s going on?” I say, quickly on the heels of Alec asking, and with probably a whiff more urgency in my voice than I’d like as the car begins to slow and we pull over to the side of the road. “What’s happening?” I repeat. “Alec, what the fuck?”

Alec shakes his head at me—I don’t know—and I look over my shoulder once more to see that the car behind us is slowing down and pulling over as well. And I’m pretty sure I see the back passenger door swing open. And, even more fucking alarmingly, I see… Christine diving out.

“Somebody tell me what’s fucking going on right now, please!” I shout loudly and with a heat that makes it clear that the addition of the word ‘please’ is only for emphasis and has absolutely nothing to do with courtesy.

The car rolls to a stop, the driver puts the hazards on, and as Hans opens the door to jump out he says, “It appears we have an issue.”

CHRISTINE

Our driver glancesin the rearview mirror and sees me put my hand over my mouth in an attempt not to vomit quite literally everywhere. In the reflection, I see his eyes register the seriousness of the situation and he presses a button on the steering wheel. The words “Calling: Boss” appear on the screen embedded in the car’s main console and after two quick rings the voice of the guy from the train station—the one who clearly remembers me even if I don’t fully remember him—comes over Bluetooth.