Page 70 of End Game
Artemisia only had to wait for a few more moments before Natasha walked past and followed Alain towards security.
Once Natasha was out of sight, Artemisia took a lift to the observation tower on the seventh floor, bought a coffee and found a seat by the window.
She checked the departures board. The Air France flight to Lyon was due to take off in forty minutes. She used the time to finish her article, describing how the two lovers had escaped the clutches of the Russians right in front of their eyes.
At security, Natasha took off her watch and shoes and placed them with her passport and boarding pass in thetray. She picked them up on the other side. On the move once again, she only broke her stride to check the gate number on the departures board. Lyon. Gate 42. Now boarding. She began to follow the directions for Gates 40 to 50, not even glancing in any of the tempting shop windows as she hurried by.
When she reached the departure gate, Natasha was greeted with a long queue waiting to board the aircraft. She looked anxiously around in search of Alain, who she couldn’t see standing in the queue. Then she spotted him seated in the far corner of the waiting room, reading a copy ofLe Figaro.
When he looked up, she pointed to the toilet. He nodded and tapped his watch. She quickly disappeared inside and found a vacant cubicle.
Moments later, a man pushing a lady in a wheelchair followed her in. An observant person might have wondered why they hadn’t taken advantage of the disabled toilet next door. However, the only other people in the washroom were two women washing their hands, who appeared to be in a hurry.
Natasha flushed the toilet, opened her cubicle door and was about to step out when a wheelchair came hurtling towards her, knocking her back onto the seat, while the man remained outside and pulled the door closed. As he did so, the woman leapt out of her wheelchair, grabbed a startled Natasha by the throat and, with her other hand, thrust a heavily scented cloth over her nose and mouth. Natasha tried to put up a struggle, but within moments, she fell back unconscious.
Sun Anqi lifted up the limp body and dumped it unceremoniously in the wheelchair, before placing her woollen hat on Natasha’s head and the blanket over her legs. She thententatively opened the cubicle door, to find Petrov standing there. She pushed the wheelchair out, locked herself back in, sat on the toilet seat and waited.
Petrov wheeled Natasha slowly out of the washroom into the corridor and headed off in the opposite direction.
Alain glanced across to see a man pushing a wheelchair, but he didn’t give him a second look, as he’d seen them entering the washroom a few minutes before.
He was becoming more and more anxious by the minute as the queue to board the aircraft was getting shorter and shorter. His eyes switched every few seconds between the dwindling queue and the entrance to the ladies’ toilet. He phoned Natasha on her mobile, but she didn’t pick up.
He became even more anxious when an announcement came over the tannoy: ‘Last call for Flight 043 to Lyon. Please board immediately as the plane is about to depart.’
Alain ran across to the toilet, stopped at the entrance and desperately called out, ‘Natasha, Natasha’ – but there was no reply. When another lady came out, he asked her if she’d seen a tall, thin woman in her mid-twenties, only to be told there was no one who fitted that description in the washroom.
He ran inside and began to check each of the cubicles one by one, but couldn’t find her. And then the only occupied cubicle door opened, and out stepped a small Asian woman, who he could have sworn he’d seen somewhere before.
Alain quickly left the washroom, only to see that the departure gate had closed. He ran across to the check-in desk.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the attendant, ‘but we couldn’t wait any longer. Would you like me to book you onto our next flight in two hours’ time?’
•••
Petrov pushed the wheelchair towards Gate 21, arriving just as the plane bound for Lyon began to taxi out onto the runway.
He handed over two passports to the clerk behind the counter. She checked them both before looking down at the young woman in the wheelchair. ‘I think my daughter must have fallen asleep,’ he said. ‘She’s had a long day.’
The attendant smiled, looked sympathetic and said, ‘I’ll make sure you’re among the first to board.’
He thanked her.
•••
Artemisia sat at a table by the window and completed her article, which she would file the moment she saw the plane take off.
She glanced out of the window to see the aircraft bound for Lyon had reached the front of the queue and was waiting to be cleared for take-off. She took several photographs, then read her article one more time, making only a couple of small changes before she called the news desk.
‘I’ll be filing my copy in a few minutes’ time,’ she said.
‘It’s been a slow day,’ said the news editor, ‘so I hope it’s good.’
Artemisia didn’t comment.
•••
Another woman was also looking down from the observation deck, not at an Air France plane that was about to take off, but at an Aeroflot flight that had just begun boarding. She watched as her colleague carried a young woman in his armsup the steps of the aircraft. She was still wearing the woollen hat. An attendant followed close behind with her wheelchair. They disappeared inside.
