Her thoughts cut off when Angel stopped next to a tree trunk. She hadn’t realized it, but he’d been guiding her closer to the edge of the forest. Now they stood just inside the tree line, looking out at a large courtyard with a circular building squatting in the middle of it.
It was an odd structure with V-shaped prow beams circling a steeply pitched dome. The whole thing resembled a massive cement crown. An abandoned crown. The grass growing up through the cracks in the courtyard and the trash littering the front steps stood testament to the building’s deserted status.
Oxidized playground equipment sat in an area of sand and patchy grass in back of the building. The swing set looked like an old skeleton. Proof that life had once been part of this place, but no more.
“What is it?” she asked, struck by its sad beauty.
“The old Chisinau Circus.”
“A circus?” She looked at the cheerless structure with a bit of wonder.
“Circuses were huge in the Soviet Union. There was even a state-run circus school in Moscow where they trained the performers. But no one comes here anymore. It should be safe.”
She shook her head. Apparently it was her lot in life to get busy with beautiful, dangerous men in dusty, dilapidated buildings.
“What?” Angel eyed her curiously.
“Someone once said—some baseball guy, I think—that it’s like déjà vu all over again.” When Angel frowned, she waved a hand. “Never mind. How do we get in?”
“Quietly,” he told her, scanning the area before tugging her from behind the tree.
Quietly. Duh.
Walking across the courtyard left her feeling oddly exposed. A forlorn dog barked in the distance. A crow sat on the branch of a tree at the edge of the clearing and scolded them for intruding on its territory. The wind blew a lone plastic bag across the clearing while gently pushing the swings back and forth, their rusted chains emitting a melancholy squeak, squeak, squeak. It all combined to give Sonya a chill similar to the ones she got any time Grafton turned his dead eyes her way. Which reminded her…
“Do you think he’ll try to find us? Grafton, I mean?”
“Of course. That’s why we need to stay quiet and off the grid until we know it’s safe.”
“How long do you think that’ll take?”
Angel hitched a shoulder. “No way to know. Less than twenty-four hours would be my guess.”
That was a relief. Sonya was totally on board with having Angel all to herself since he didn’t seem to mind if she used him as a substitute for Mark, and since she was sick and tired of engaging in ménages à moi. But she didn’t much care for the idea of spending days on end inside a creepy old circus with no electricity or running water.
Not that she was a diva or anything. But if she didn’t wash her hair every day, it turned into an oil slick. And without the benefit of a little foundation and some lipstick, there were times she could scare away small children.
“Make sure no one comes up the boulevard,” Angel instructed. They’d reached the front of the building, and Sonya wasn’t surprised to find the entrance sealed shut with plywood. Hanging above their heads was a clay crest supporting two dancing clowns. One was missing a head, and when the shattered pieces of pottery crunched under the soles of her shoes, she got the oddest feeling that she was walking on the bones of Moldova’s storied past, a more prosperous time when it was part of the mighty USSR.
She surveyed the wide road leading up to the circus and tried to imagine what it must have looked like packed with cars brimming with bright-eyed children looking forward to a night of spectacular feats of derring-do. Now the boulevard was much like the courtyard, full of cracks where tall weeds and tufts of grass lifted their leaves toward the sun.
The forlorn dog barked in the distance again. The crow answered back as a soft-sounding squeak had Sonya turning to see that Angel had managed to pull one side of the plywood away from the entrance. When he pushed on the front door, it opened with a soft shush of sound.
Angel looked surprised. Well, as surprised as an expressionless man could look. Which was to say one of his eyebrows twitched. “After you.” He motioned for her to precede him inside.
Curious what the interior looked like, Sonya ducked under Angel’s arm and slipped through the front door. She stopped barely a foot from the entrance, her mouth hanging open in wonder and surprise.
Tall glass windows circled the structure, but they were covered in the grit and grime of neglect—not to mention a ton of red Coca-Cola stickers. Still, they let in enough of the fading afternoon light to show two grand staircases that circled upward toward a second story. Dust covered the beautiful marble floors. Elegant light fixtures hung from ornate ceilings that showcased Stalinist architecture at the height of its appeal. In front of her was a ticket counter, a procession of little glass windows set inside a wooden enclosure. Old posters hung above the windows featuring clowns and tigers, acrobats and elephants.
All in all, it was enchanting. In a gloomy and abandoned way. Like a dollhouse left to gather dust in an attic.
When Angel slipped past her, she heard the whack of the plywood slapping back over the door, followed by the shush of the door shutting behind him. Unlike her, he didn’t waste time gawking at the surroundings. Instead, he strode purposefully around the place, opening doors, poking his head through one of the ticket windows, disappearing through the entrance to the ring only to return a few seconds later. He made one full circuit around the building before trotting up the stairs and slipping from view for what felt like forever. It wasn’t forever, of course. But it was long enough that Sonja began to feel the true solitude of the place, the true loneliness of it.
She was about to go in search of him when he appeared at the top of the steps. “Looking for something in particular?” she asked. “Maybe I can help.”
“Familiarizing myself with the surroundings.” He bounded down the steps, moving in an easy way that highlighted his supreme coordination and fitness.
She probably should have done some familiarizing herself. But unlike him, she wasn’t trained in the fine art of espionage or even simple escape and evasion. She was trained in languages and how to make people from different countries and cultures work well together. When she thought about it, she was more of a politician than any sort of operator.
