14
THE HOSPITAL building might well be a hundred years old, brick dark with grime, windows not lately washed. The modernization inside was minimal. This was for the poor, the indigent, the victims of accident and violence. Its neighbors were as drab. The traffic that rumbled and screeched about them was mostly commercial and industrial. The air was foul with its fumes.
A taxi drew up at the curb. Hanno passed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Wait here,” he directed. “We’re fetching a friend. She’ll be pretty weak, needs to get home right away.”
“I’ll hafta circle the block if ya take too long,” the driver warned.
“Circle it fast, then, and park again whenever you see a chance. This is worth a nice tip.”
The driver looked dubious, understandable considering the institution. Svoboda ostentatiously jotted down his name and number. Hanno followed her out and closed the door. He carried a parcel, she an overnight bag. “Remember, now, this will only work if we behave as though we owned the accounts receivable office,” he muttered.
“ You remember I have been a sharpshooter and slipped through the Iron Curtain,” she answered haughtily.
“Uh, sorry, that was a stupid thing for me to say. I’m distracted. Ah, there he is.” Hanno inclined his head hi the direction of Wanderer. Shabbily clad, hat pulled low, the Indian slouched along the sidewalk tike one with nothing better to do.
Hanno and Svoboda entered a gloomy lobby. A uniformed guard cast them an incurious glance. Even these patients sometimes got visitors. Reconnoitering yesterday, they had ascertained that no police guard was on Rosa Do-nau. She had automatically been taken here and it was deemed unsafe to transfer her to a better hospital when the word came that money was available to pay for that. Therefore this place’s security ought to suffice.
Hanno sought a men’s room. It was unoccupied, but he entered a stall to be cautious. Opening his parcel, he unfolded a smock coat and donned it. He’d acquired it, plus a lot of other stuff, at a medical supply firm. It wasn’t quite identical with what the orderlies wore, but should get by if nobody had cause to look closely. Outfits faded or stained were more the rule than the exception. He dropped the wrapping in a trash can and rejoined Svoboda. They took an elevator upward.
They had learned yesterday that Rosa Donau was on the seventh floor. The receptionist had told them she could only have very brief visits, and remarked on how many people came, anxiously inquiring.
Two women had been on hand when Hanno and Svoboda walked into the ward. They had brought flowers, which they could probably HI afford. Hanno smiled at them, went to the bedside, bent over the victim. She lay white, hollow-cheeked, shallowly breathing. He would not have recognized her had he not seen the pictures his detectives took for him. Indeed, without the hunch than this was she, he might well never have known her by those snapshots. It had been a long, long time. He hoped that her Romaic Greek was no rustier than his. After all, he supposed, she’d mostly been in the Levant before coming to America. “Aliyat, my friend and I believe we can smuggle you out. Do you want that? Otherwise you’ll lose your liberty forever, you know. I have money. I can give you the freedom of the world. Do you want to escape?”
She lay mute for a moment that stretched, before she barely nodded.
“Well, do you think you can walk a short distance and make it look natural? A hundred meters, perhaps. We’ll help you, but if you fall, we’ll have to leave you and flee.”
A ghost of color tinged her skin. “Yes,” she whispered, unthinkingly in English.
“Tomorrow afternoon, then. Make sure you have no callers. Tell these people you feel worse and need a few days undisturbed. Ask them to spread the word. Husband your strength.”
He straightened, to meet the stares of the women from Unity. “I wasn’t aware she’s in this serious a condition,” he told them. “Otfterwise I’d have let her know beforehand my wife and I were coming.”