The Belgrade Exit
When Russian operatives breach his Belgrade apartment, American intelligence officer Graham Sullivan begins an eighteen-hour escape toward Hungary, wounded and hunted through compromised refuges, a river ambush, and a relentless road pursuit. After discovering that his own contact sold him out, Graham survives with help from mechanic Dragan and interpreter Ivana—and turns back for Ivana in a final confrontation rather than escape alone. They reach Hungary alive, but with Dragan detained and Ivana’s livelihood damaged, Graham must accept that survival does not settle what he owes the people who made it possible.
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Graham Sullivan set the speaker on a folded dishcloth and ran the low tone again. At twelve fifty-eight in the morning, the rubbish truck below his third-floor kitchen in Dorćol spoiled his last measurement. A neighbor’s television came through the wall above the sink. He saved the work, rinsed his coffee cup, and put bread beside the toaster for later. Forty-two, five years into his Belgrade posting, he still liked finding the small physical fault that made a client’s room unbearable. This one needed a different floor fixing. He would tell them after helping Dragan Nikolic move the repaired boat. His mechanic friend had already complained twice about the promised early start. Late May, two thousand twenty-six. A weekday he had allowed to run too long.
At one, something struck his front door hard enough to shake dust from the kitchen lintel. Graham left the cup under the tap. He pulled on his jacket, shoved his phone into its pocket, and slung the small bag from beneath the chair across his body. His shoes stood by the kitchen door. He stepped into them without tying the laces.
The second impact tore the lock out of the frame. He reached the short hallway as the door came inward. Beyond it stood a broad-faced man with close-cropped hair and a pistol held tight against his chest. A heavy-shouldered man in a pale overshirt moved behind him.
“Back door,” the broad-faced man said in Russian.
Graham slammed the kitchen door and went through the narrow service entrance beside the refrigerator. A shared stair connected the rear balconies to a rooftop laundry space. He started down. A man below raised a gun between the rails. Graham threw himself back above the landing. The shot struck plaster beside his shoe.
He climbed instead, dragging the bag against his thigh, hearing the man below change direction.
“Roof,” the broad-faced man called. “Other end.”
These were Russian operatives, armed and working together. Graham had spent five years in Serbia as an American intelligence officer whose consulting business happened to be real. Someone had exposed the part of his life that could get him killed. He needed the fallback flat first, somewhere out of sight to make a call. Then he needed to leave Serbia.
He pushed through the roof door into a tall man coming from the adjoining terrace. The man’s pistol struck the edge of the door. Graham drove forward before he could bring it back. They hit the low dividing wall together. Pain spread through Graham’s right side, deep enough to stop his next breath.
The pistol clattered onto the roof. The man caught Graham’s sleeve with one hand. A blade appeared in the other. Graham felt the cut before he saw it, a hot opening along his right forearm. His hand loosened on the man’s jacket.
“Fuck.”
He drove his left shoulder into the man and kept pushing. Loose chairs collapsed behind them. The man tripped across one, bringing Graham down to a knee. Graham caught the fallen pistol with his left hand, scrambled over the low wall, and backed across the neighboring terrace.
The man got up clutching his forehead. Blood ran between his fingers. Below, the man in the pale overshirt got into a car. It accelerated, its unpainted front wing passing under a streetlamp. Its headlights swept the mouth of the lane Graham had meant to use.
They were changing the perimeter.
Graham went through the neighboring roof door instead. He pulled it shut as the wounded man reached the wall, then descended into a building that smelled of boiled cabbage and floor cleaner. His right hand left a wet mark on the rail. At the second-floor landing he tied his shoes, teeth clamped together as he bent. He pushed the pistol inside his waistband beneath the jacket. The bag held a spare shirt; he wound it around his forearm and pulled the knot with his left hand.
A woman called through a door. Graham kept going. He emerged onto a side street, walked until the corner hid him, then ran.
By the time he reached the fallback building, he had spent nearly an hour moving through the old city. He had stopped twice in recessed entrances to listen and once to press harder on the shirt around his arm. His right ribs hurt whenever he lengthened his stride. The fallback flat belonged to the official part of his life. He knew the approach, the entrance, the narrow hall where he could get out of sight.
A man stood inside that hall. Graham had seen him below the apartment roof, beside the car. Pale overshirt, heavy shoulders. Recognition changed the man’s face before he lowered his head and pretended to study the entrance buzzer.
Graham turned away. The man came through the doorway and caught the bag strap. Graham’s injured hand failed when he tried to pull free. The strap tightened across his chest, dragging him backward toward the entrance.
He let the bag go.
The man stumbled with its weight. Graham rounded the corner with his left hand inside his jacket, but kept the pistol concealed. A delivery rider came between them, swearing at Graham as he crossed the pavement. He ran until his ribs forced him to walk.
The bag stayed behind, with the medicine and everything else that might have made the next few hours easier. His phone remained in his jacket. His genuine passport and private money had never been in the bag. Both official addresses were gone. He needed the things he had kept outside that system, and transport that would keep moving.
He called Dragan from a passage behind shuttered shops.
“What?” Dragan answered, his voice thick with sleep.
“Boat still ready?”
“You woke me to ask that?”
“Six thirty. Same place,” Graham said.
“You promised to carry the batteries, Sullivan. I am not doing that alone.”
“I’ll be there. There’s something I have to tell you first.”
“Tell me now,” Dragan said.
“Face to face. You can still say no.”
Dragan stayed silent long enough for Graham to hear him shift in bed.
“If this is about money, I already paid for the fuel.”
“It isn’t.”
The call ended with an irritated grunt.
Until the trams started, Graham moved between short periods of concealment. He crouched behind stacked café furniture while a street-cleaning machine passed, then left when the staff arrived. He walked toward the first working tram route through the old city, keeping his wounded arm close to his body. The folded shirt grew stiff against his skin.
At the stop, early commuters stood apart in the pale morning. Graham boarded behind a woman carrying a bakery bag and took a place near the middle doors. The motion helped. So did the ordinary friction of people making room, all intent on getting to work.
Three stops later, the tall man from the roof boarded at the front. A strip of dressing crossed his forehead. He surveyed the carriage without haste. Graham turned toward the window.
In the road lane beside them, a dark gray sedan slowed to the tram’s pace. Its front wing carried an unpainted replacement panel. He had seen the same pale panel when the car moved below the roof.
The tall man advanced down the carriage. Graham’s fingers closed on the pistol beneath his jacket. His right hand trembled, then lost pressure. He could bring the gun out with his left. At this distance, among standing passengers, the first missed shot would belong to someone going to work.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath, and took his hand away.
At the next stop the platform filled the windows. Graham moved with the people preparing to leave. The tall man increased his pace.
“Excuse me,” Graham said to the woman with the bread.
He let her go first. The doors opened, and people pressed both ways. Graham stepped off behind her, turned along the stationary tram, and crossed behind it when the opposing lane cleared. A horn sounded from the gray sedan. Its driver had to wait for the crossing passengers.
Graham reached the far pavement before the tall man cleared the doors. He took the first passage between buildings and kept walking through the pain.
Two turns later he had to stop beside a wall, bent over his right side. He had gained separation, not safety. It had cost him another twenty minutes and enough strength that straightening up took two attempts.
His small acoustics workshop lay a few streets beyond. He let himself into the basement room as its first neighboring businesses opened. The room smelled of felt, timber, and the damp he had never persuaded the landlord to fix. He recovered his genuine American passport and the cash from a cupboard above the spare test panels. No official contact knew he kept them there. He put both inside his clothing and took a clean cloth from the bench.
There would be no resting here. If anyone came through the door, the basement offered one way out. He changed the makeshift dressing and drank from the tap. He checked the captured pistol before putting it inside his jacket. Eight rounds, including the one in the chamber. He left.
Dragan stood on the Danube pontoon at six thirty with a battery trolley and an expression that hardened when Graham came down the steps.
“What happened to your arm?”
“I need you to listen before I get aboard.”
“Then stand still,” Dragan said. “You’re dripping on the planks.”
Graham stopped beside the trolley. The repaired working boat rocked against its fenders. He had helped Dragan strip its engine in February. The new exhaust hose still carried a bright manufacturer’s label.
“Armed men came to my apartment,” he said. “Russians. They’re trying to kill me.”
Dragan’s hands settled on the trolley handle. “Why?” he asked.
“I work for the Americans. Intelligence.”
“You work on sound.”
“That too,” Graham said.
Dragan pushed the trolley away from the edge. “And now you want my boat.”
“I need to get across to Novi Beograd. Away from the addresses they know.”
“Will they follow?”
“They might,” Graham said. “I saw their car again this morning.”
“So they could follow you here.”
“Yes. Or the police could stop us over the shooting. You could lose the boat while they ask questions. You could get hurt.”
Dragan rubbed both hands down his face. “Jesus Christ. I have an engine waiting on the other bank. A man is paying me to arrive this morning.”
“Go without me.”
“And you?”
“I’ll find something else,” Graham said.
“You just said they found your other places.”
Graham let that stand. Across the road above the moorings, traffic passed between gaps in the trees. He watched each opening.
“I can pay for the fuel,” he said. “For the work you lose.”
“Fuel is not the fucking problem.”
Dragan took the trolley again. “Can you carry anything?”
“With my left.”
“Then carry that case. Don’t touch the batteries.”
“Dragan,” Graham said.
“I heard you. Get on before I change my mind.”
They loaded without further argument. Graham could lift the tool case, but lowering it into the boat pulled at his ribs. Dragan reached over and took the weight before it fell.
Once they were clear of the pontoon, Graham saw the gray sedan on the upper road. Its pale front panel passed behind a bus, appeared again, then continued toward a crossing. He crouched beside the engine housing.
“Same car?” Dragan asked.
“Yes.”
“We can turn.”
“They can turn faster,” Graham said.
Dragan muttered something and opened the throttle.
They followed the Danube toward the confluence, then entered the Sava. The engine’s vibration traveled through the deck into Graham’s bruised side. He kept his injured hand tucked against his chest and used his left to hold on. The water gave them distance from doorways and crowded streets. It also left them visible. Graham could see road traffic moving above the banks and bridges carrying it between them.
“How many?” Dragan asked.
“I’ve seen four.”
“Soldiers?”
“Trained,” Graham said.
“And your people?”
“The places I could reach were compromised.”
Dragan checked the engine gauges. “You might have said that on the telephone.”
“You might have come anyway,” Graham said.
“I might have stayed in bed.”
Graham had no answer worth giving.
Their intended landing lay on the Novi Beograd bank, below a road with access for work vehicles. Dragan needed to leave equipment there. Graham needed pavement, a little cover, and another way north. The gray sedan waited above the ramp.
“Keep going,” Graham said.
Dragan had already eased off. A maintenance barge narrowed the passage ahead, and the boat carried too much momentum for an immediate turn. The tall man stepped from behind a mooring post on the landing.
Graham ducked as the first shot struck the boat’s windscreen. Dragan dropped behind the console. Glass scattered over his shoulders. The engine rose, then faltered as he hauled it into reverse. The hull bumped the landing. A loose line caught on a cleat, swinging the stern back toward the bank.
Graham climbed onto the low concrete edge to free it. His right hand closed on the rope and opened uselessly.
“Fucking move.”
He pulled with his left. The line came free, and the boat drifted out from beneath him.
At the top of the ramp, the broad-faced commander raised one hand. “Down there. Keep him off the boat.”
Graham pressed behind the concrete abutment. The tall man came along the landing toward him. Graham braced his left hand against the concrete and fired once. The shot broke stone beside the man’s foot. He stopped, brought his gun around, and Graham fired again.
The man fell hard, one leg folded beneath him. He tried to rise and went down onto his hands. Blood spread across the upper part of his trousers.
“Get back in,” Dragan shouted.
The boat had cleared the landing. Dragan held it a few yards out, still giving him the chance.
Graham saw the commander shift along the upper rail to get an angle past the abutment.
“Go. Get the boat clear,” Graham said.
“Get in the damn boat.”
“Go!”
A shot hit the concrete above Graham’s shoulder. He hunched lower, tearing the cut open against the edge. Warm blood ran into his palm. Dragan turned the boat away.
The movement brought back another departure, years earlier: a friend beside a stalled car in Tunis, Graham climbing into the vehicle that still ran. He had never gone back for him. He shoved the memory aside and moved along the bank.
A siren sounded beyond the road. People were gathering at the far end of the landing, some pointing, one holding a phone. Graham had fired twice in front of witnesses. He could see neither a safe approach to the police nor a way back to Dragan without bringing the guns toward him again. He climbed through a gap beside a locked service gate and left the river behind.
The last he saw of the boat was its stern beyond the moored barge. By the time he reached the first large office blocks, the siren had been joined by another. He kept walking.
Ivana Jovic answered on his second call, shortly before eight.
“I’m at work,” she said. “Can this wait?”
“I need your car.”
“You need a taxi.”
“Armed men are following me,” Graham said. “I’m hurt. Please keep listening.”
Her voice changed. “Where are you?”
“Novi Beograd. Away from your building.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No. There’s been shooting,” Graham said. “A patrol would have to disarm and hold me while they checked it. I’m still trying to get clear of the men who did it.”
“Who are these men?”
“Russians. I’ll explain properly when I see you.”
“You’ll explain before I lend you anything,” Ivana said.
Graham sat on the end of a concrete planter. Ivana had interpreted for three of his commercial clients. She had seen him argue over wall fixings and explain noise limits to impatient contractors. He wanted to keep that man available to her, someone whose bad morning could still have an ordinary solution.
“I need a place to sit out of sight,” he said. “Then a car to leave Belgrade.”
“I’m interpreting for an installation team. I cannot walk out while they’re using equipment they don’t understand. We finish at eleven thirty.”
“Can you leave the keys somewhere?”
“No,” Ivana said. “You can wait until I finish, or ask someone else.”
He closed his eyes against the sun and opened them immediately.
“All right,” he said.
“I have another job this afternoon. You’re not taking the car all day.”
“I’ll arrange something.”
“You haven’t arranged this,” Ivana said.
She gave him the street where she would leave the building and told him to call again later.
Graham bought dressings, water, and pain tablets from an open pharmacy. The woman serving him said the cut needed a doctor. He agreed, paid, and used the washroom to clean it as well as he could. The dressing slowed the blood. It gave him no stronger grip.
He waited first behind a row of parked delivery vans. When their drivers arrived, he moved to a bench where he could see both ends of a pedestrian walk. After a police car passed slowly along the adjoining road, he left that too.
At nine thirty, Ivana sent a message. The installation was running late. She still expected to finish before noon. He called her.
“Has anyone asked for me?” Graham asked.
“No. Are you bringing them here?”
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Then keep away from the entrance,” Ivana said.
“I will.”
“And Graham, don’t tell me you’ll only need five minutes. I need to know what I’m agreeing to.”
He put the phone back in his jacket. His left hand had begun to shake when he held it still.
Through the rest of the morning, he changed places whenever remaining there required an explanation. A porter opened the loading passage where he had found shade. Office workers filled the terrace where he had bought another bottle of water. Each move took him farther from the river and kept him beyond the windows of Ivana’s building.
He watched cars without finding the pale front panel. That proved nothing. The hunters could wait on a road he would eventually need.
Late in the wait, Graham sat beside an open ground-floor window in a residential courtyard. An elderly man inside was playing a short waltz on a cheap keyboard. The plastic keys knocked beneath the amplified notes. He lost the same turn twice, stopped, and worked through it slowly with one hand.
“Leave it until tomorrow,” a woman said from farther inside.
“I nearly have it.”
Graham pressed his thumb against the edge of his dressing. The man began again. This time the troublesome phrase came cleanly, followed by three steady bars before he stopped of his own accord.
“There,” the woman said.
The man tried the beginning once more. Graham stayed through the first few notes. Then a delivery van pulled away from the courtyard entrance, leaving him exposed to the road, and he got up.
At eleven forty, Ivana called.
“I’ve finished. Are you still able to walk?”
“Yes.”
“Cross at the west side in five minutes. Keep going. I’ll give you the keys. The car is in the next row, gray, with the cracked rear light.”
“Then you go back inside,” Graham said.
“No. Wait in the car. We’re going to talk.”
He crossed with a group of office workers. Ivana came toward him carrying her work bag and a folded cardigan. She put the keys into his left hand without stopping.
“Next row,” she said. “Passenger side faces the wall.”
He found the car and lowered himself into the front passenger seat. Getting his legs inside sent pain through his ribs so sharply that he caught the door with his wounded hand.
“Fuck.”
He pulled it shut with his left. The interior smelled of warm fabric and peppermint gum. He checked the street through the mirror, then the space between the parked cars. His passport and cash pressed against his chest. The pistol sat concealed inside his jacket, awkward against the ribs on the other side.
Ivana opened the driver’s door a minute later.
“Keep your arm off the seat.”
He lifted it. She put the cardigan beneath his elbow and remained standing outside.
“Tell me,” she said.
“I’m an American intelligence officer. Men came to my apartment last night. The place I was supposed to go afterward had another of them waiting.”
She gripped the top of the door. “And the acoustics?”
“Real,” Graham said. “The clients are real.”
“Did you use my work for the other thing?”
“No.”
She held him there in silence until he met her eyes.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“All right. Who knows you called me?”
“As far as I know, no one. I’ve never used you for this.”
“How many men?” Ivana asked.
“Four. One is badly hurt. I shot him at the river. Dragan brought me across.”
Ivana’s hand left the door. She took a step back, into the narrow space beside the next car.
“Dragan took you across?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Graham said. “His boat got clear. Police were arriving when I left.”
She reached for her phone, then stopped. “Would calling him put him in more trouble?”
“I don’t know that either,” Graham said.
“You have a lot of those.”
“I can tell you what happened. I can’t tell you what happened after.”
Ivana put the phone away.
“I need to get north,” Graham said. “Toward Hungary. I have my passport. I can buy another car if I can find one without standing around.”
“You can barely close this door.”
“I could drive.”
“Show me your right hand,” Ivana said.
He opened it. The last two fingers moved slowly. Closing it pulled fresh blood into the dressing.
“No,” she said. “You could leave me somewhere beyond the city. I’ll pay for the car until I get it back to you.”
“Stop making the dangerous part sound finished.”
“I’m trying to keep you out of it,” Graham said.
“You’re sitting in my car with a gun, near the place I work.”
“I can get out.”
“Yes. You can.”
She waited, watching him. Graham wanted to stay seated. The relief of having a backrest had made the thought of standing worse.
“If they see me here,” he said, “they could come after the car. They could shoot at it. If police stop us, you may be held while they establish what happened. You could lose work. The car. More than that.”
“Could they already have seen you get in?”
“Yes.”
“Will giving you the keys and walking away make that better?” Ivana asked.
“I can’t promise it will.”
“Then don’t sell it to me as a fucking solution.”
He shifted the pistol farther inside his jacket, keeping it covered. Ivana watched the movement and stayed outside.
“I’ll cover what you lose,” he said.
“You don’t know what I could lose. And paying doesn’t end this for me.”
He let his hand fall onto his thigh.
“What do you need?” Graham asked.
“For you to answer questions without trying to choose my answer.”
She leaned into the car. “There’s enough fuel to get out of the city and past the bridge. We’ll need more after that.”
“You have your passport?”
“In my work bag. I was in Croatia for a client on Monday.”
“You shouldn’t cross with me unless you’re sure,” Graham said.
“I’m sure about nothing yet.”
She took out her phone again and made a call. Graham heard a greeting, then the brisk voice she used when a client kept changing terms.
“I can’t take this afternoon’s session,” she said. “I understand. You’ll have to find someone else.”
She listened, jaw set.
“No, I haven’t forgotten the contract,” Ivana said. “I’m telling you now so you have time.”
Another pause.
“Then keep the fee. I still can’t come.”
She ended the call and put the phone in her bag.
“That was separate from this morning,” she said. “This morning is finished. This afternoon is cancelled. Don’t call it a favor I fitted in.”
“I won’t.”
Graham handed her the keys. Ivana sat behind the wheel. For a few breaths she held the key without putting it into the ignition.
“If there’s shooting, I’m driving away from it,” she said. “I’m not waiting for instructions I can’t understand.”
“Good.”
“And if you need me to do something, use ordinary words.”
“I will,” Graham said.
She started the engine. Leaving the parking row required three attempts to get past a delivery truck. Graham kept his head below the top of the seat without folding forward; his ribs would allow one position or the other, never both. Ivana waited for a gap, pulled out, and joined the traffic.
They passed the building where she had worked that morning. She kept both hands on the wheel. Graham watched the side roads and saw delivery cars, buses, a man struggling to park. No pale front panel.
The bandage under his sleeve had begun to seep onto the cardigan.
“Are you staying with me to Hungary?” he asked.
“I’m driving north,” Ivana said. “We’ll decide the rest where we can stop without getting shot.”
He accepted that. His phone was still working in his jacket, his passport and money were on him, and the bag was gone. None of it gave him a clean next stage.
The dashboard clock changed to twelve noon as they reached the New Belgrade access road feeding the northbound motorway. Ivana committed to the northbound lane, and Graham turned against the pain in his ribs to check behind them.
A delivery van filled the lane behind them. Graham kept looking back until a gap opened beside it, then settled against the passenger seat. The engine sent a thin vibration through the door beneath his elbow.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Nothing I recognize.”
“That’s different from nothing.”
“Yes.”
He faced forward. Turning had pulled the dressing away from the cut. He pressed through his sleeve with his left hand while Ivana worked past a slow lorry.
For the first stretch, traffic gave them enough room. Then brake lights spread ahead, and she eased off. Graham could see the backs of trucks extending toward the Danube crossing near Beška. A lane had been narrowed around a stationary maintenance vehicle. Cars were feeding into the remaining space one at a time.
The fuel warning came on before they reached the bridge.
Ivana tapped the gauge. “We stop at the next services.”
“How far?”
“Beyond this. Depends how long we sit here.”
He brought his right hand up from the cardigan. Two fingers had curled toward his palm. Straightening them sent pain along the inside of his arm.
“Can you hold that higher?” she asked.
He raised his elbow. Blood had reached the cardigan’s cuff.
They spent most of an hour moving across the bridge and through the restriction beyond it. Graham watched the mirrors whenever the traffic stopped. On the far side of the river, a truck changed lanes and uncovered the dark gray sedan.
The pale replacement wing stood out beneath its windscreen.
“Four cars back,” he said.
Ivana kept her position. “The one you told me about?”
“Yes.”
“Can we pass the services?”
He pressed the dressing harder. “How much fuel?”
“Enough to make a bad decision.”
The sedan disappeared behind a coach.
A moment later, a dark estate car moved into the outside lane, then dropped behind the same coach. Graham waited until it came into view again. A man sat low in its front passenger seat, his head against the window. Even at that distance, the strip of white across his forehead showed.
“They have a second car.”
“I still need fuel.”
“I know.”
By the time they reached the service entrance, it was well past one. Ivana followed a tanker off the road. Graham counted the spaces as they passed them: fuel lanes nearest the entrance, a shop beyond, parked cars along its front, trucks farther left. The exit curved past the truck parking before joining the motorway again.
“Use the end pump,” he said. “Keep facing out.”
“I can see it.”
She stopped beside the last pump. Graham gave her cash and opened his door carefully. Standing brought a dull pressure into his knees. He stayed beside the car, partly screened from the entrance by the pump, and peeled his sleeve off the dressing.
Ivana set the nozzle running, then came around the bonnet.
“That needs more than another piece of cloth.”
“Press it for me.”
She put his left hand back over the wound. “You press it. I’m getting something clean.”
The nozzle clicked off as she went toward the shop. Through the window, he watched her speak to the cashier. An adult couple stood near the coffee machine. A driver in a reflective vest carried a sandwich toward a parked truck. Ordinary people, close enough to be hit if the stop became a fight.
The gray sedan entered behind a van.
Graham lowered himself into the passenger seat and left the door open. The sedan continued beyond the fuel lanes toward the exit. It carried Serbian plates. The broad-faced commander sat in the front passenger seat; another man drove.
The estate car came in more slowly.
Ivana returned with dressings, water, and a bread roll. “Fuel’s paid. The cashier’s watching you.”
“Get the nozzle out.”
She followed his attention toward the estate, hung up the nozzle, then handed him the packet. “We have enough.”
Graham tore the wrapper with his teeth. The estate passed behind the pumps and stopped beside a short concrete island, its nose pointed toward them. The heavy-shouldered man from the fallback flat opened the driver’s door.
At the exit, the sedan began turning across the lane.
“Start the car,” Graham said.
Ivana went around the bonnet. He laid the fresh pad against his arm and reached across himself with his right hand to pull the passenger door shut.
His fingers closed on the handle, then opened.
The door stayed where it was.
“Fuck. Come on.”
The heavy-shouldered man advanced along the far side of the pump. His hand had gone beneath his overshirt.
Graham reached inside his jacket with his right hand. The pistol shifted against his ribs, cleared the pocket, and slipped. It struck the seat edge and fell into the footwell.
“Fucking hand.”
He folded forward after it. Pain drove him sideways against the open door.
“Down,” Ivana said.
The engine rose. She reversed before he had recovered the pistol, swinging the back of her car toward the estate’s front corner. Graham caught the weapon with his left hand as the first impact threw him against the dashboard.
Metal scraped behind them. Ivana kept reversing.
The estate’s front wheel struck the concrete island. Its driver lurched away from their car, one arm raised. A sharp crack came through the open passenger door. Graham could not tell whether it came from a gun or the collision.
Then Ivana went forward.
The open door slammed against the pump’s protective post and bounced shut hard enough to jar his teeth. She cut across the end of the parking row, missing a man with a coffee cup who had already begun running toward the shop.
“Exit’s blocked,” Graham said.
“I see it.”
A long trailer was pulling out of the truck parking. The sedan’s driver had stopped to let it clear before finishing his turn. Ivana took the narrowing gap between its rear corner and the parked cars.
Their left mirror broke against the sedan.
“Shit,” she said, and kept going.
Graham twisted far enough to see the estate. One front wheel had folded inward. Steam rose beneath its bonnet. The heavy-shouldered man had opened the passenger door and was trying to lift the injured man out. The man’s leg dragged across the sill, leaving blood on the pale trim.
The cashier stood outside the shop with a phone against her face.
Then the exit bend took the service area away.
Ivana joined the motorway with a grinding sound beneath the rear of her car. She held the wheel firmly while the car pulled left.
“What’s rubbing?” she asked.
“Rear corner, I think.”
“You think.”
“I can’t see from here.”
The sedan appeared at the top of the joining lane.
“Those two are still coming,” he said.
“How many behind?”
“Only the sedan. The other man couldn’t stand. His driver was carrying him.”
Ivana glanced at the next junction sign. “We’re getting off.”
Graham wanted the motorway’s speed and width. He also wanted her steering wheel to stop trembling beneath her hands. He put the pistol away with his left hand.
“All right.”
She took the exit before the sedan could close the distance. A truck crossed between them at the roundabout. By the time Graham could see back along the road, the gray car had vanished.
Ivana drove into the afternoon on the lesser road, keeping below the speed at which the rubbing became a continuous shriek.
“Give me the water,” she said.
He opened it for her with his left hand and held it while she drank.
Neither of them called the turn an escape.
At a broad farm entrance beyond the next village, Ivana stopped without switching off the engine. Graham watched the road while she pulled the loose rear bumper away from the tyre. It came free on one side with a crack.
“That’s my fucking car,” she said.
He started to answer, then kept his mouth shut.
She put the broken section in the boot rather than leave it in the road. The tyre’s outer surface had a dark scored line. When she returned to the driver’s seat, she held up a piece of jagged metal trim.
“That was touching it. The wheel itself is wrong too.”
“Can it keep going?”
“For now.”
She helped him replace the wet dressing while the engine idled. Pressure slowed the bleeding again. The cut opened whenever he tried to make a fist.
They left before a second vehicle passed the farm entrance.
The smaller road took them through settlements, level crossings, and stretches where repairs had reduced traffic to a single lane. Ivana checked the route on her phone at a stop. The alternative roads bent away from the border and added distance they could no longer trust the car to cover.
Graham stayed awake by naming what he could see behind them. A white van. A tractor. Three cars waiting at the crossing. He drank water in small amounts and ate the bread roll Ivana had bought at the services, though chewing made him aware of how long he had gone without food.
His phone rang while they waited for a temporary traffic light.
Simon Croft.
Graham answered without putting the call on speaker.
“Where are you?” Simon asked.
“Moving.”
“We can still arrange a pickup. Don’t go back for the bag. That flat’s finished.”
Graham stopped pressing the dressing.
He had spoken to no one about the bag.
“How do you know I left it?”
The road signal changed. Ivana moved off, watching him between checks of the lane ahead.
Simon said, “Graham, listen carefully. I’m trying to give you a way out.”
Graham waited.
“I sold them the two addresses,” Simon said. His calm had become tight and thin. “Your apartment and the fallback. For money. They confirmed they had the bag. That’s all I know.”
The car struck a patched section of road. Graham’s ribs hurt so badly that he had to wait before speaking.
“No pickup,” he said.
“You don’t know what’s still available.”
“Nothing from you.”
He ended the call.
Ivana waited until she had cleared the roadworks. “What did he sell?”
“Where I lived. Where I was supposed to go afterward.”
“Does he know about me?”
“No. He asked where I was. I didn’t tell him.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Not from that call.”
She absorbed the distinction without answering. Graham put the phone back inside his jacket. There would be no destination from Simon, no car, no room where someone else promised to have made the danger stop. He kept watching the road behind them.
By midafternoon, a fresh vibration had begun coming through the floor. Ivana reduced speed again. At the next junction she stopped long enough to inspect the route, her phone resting against the steering wheel.
“We’re going back to the main road north of Novi Sad,” she said.
“More traffic.”
“Wider road. Fewer turns. This wheel hates every turn.”
He studied the display without taking it from her. Continuing on the diversion meant more broken surfaces and a long return east later.
“Do it.”
Ivana stayed still.
“Is that what you want to do?” he asked.
“It’s what the car can do.”
She put the phone away and drove.
The principal route gave them smoother tarmac, but the car could no longer use the speed it offered. Graham saw the gray sedan again after they had joined, coming up behind a coach. A pale scrape marked its side where Ivana’s mirror had struck.
He watched it stay back.
“They found us.”
Ivana tightened her hands on the wheel. “How close?”
“Ten cars. Maybe more.”
A sign pointed toward a town and a public parking area beyond the next exit. Graham worked through a plan, making each part smaller until it sounded manageable.
“We could stop there. You stay somewhere public. I take the car onward.”
“You cannot hold the wheel.”
“I can use my left.”
“And when that tyre goes?” she asked.
He had no useful answer.
“I could leave you with money,” he said.
The sedan moved into the outside lane.
Ivana checked her mirror. “They know this car. They’ve seen me driving it. Tell me which part ends when you get out.”
Graham watched the sedan draw level with the coach.
“We need to separate you from me.”
“Then find a separation that exists.”
The sedan accelerated.
It came past them, continued ahead, and slowed sharply as a heavy lorry drew alongside Ivana. The gap in front narrowed. She braked and moved toward the shoulder rather than let the sedan hold her beside the lorry.
The right wheels dropped off the good surface.
Something struck beneath the front of the car. The wheel jerked in her hands, and Graham’s shoulder hit the door.
Ivana brought them back onto the lane behind the lorry. A harsh clatter replaced the earlier vibration.
The sedan went on.
For several seconds she said nothing. Graham held the dashboard with his left hand until the car steadied.
“Still want to take it alone?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then watch for him.”
He did.
The remaining road north took them more than an hour. Ivana kept the car at the highest speed it would tolerate without dragging toward the verge. Graham counted the sedan’s appearances: ahead of a truck, at the far side of a long curve, once stationary on a broad shoulder before moving out again.
Its driver had stopped trying to remain hidden.
They could reach the border, Graham thought, if the car held together. The thought gave him something precise to want. It also left him watching every slight change in the bonnet’s position and every movement of Ivana’s hands.
Late in the afternoon, the signs divided freight traffic from the passenger approach to Horgoš. Ivana followed the passenger branch.
Ahead, the road bent around a low bank. Above it, Graham could see the roofs of standing vehicles farther on, waiting for the controlled lanes. The inspection buildings were beyond them, too far away and out of sight. On their left, a shallow drainage ditch ran behind a short steel rail. To the right lay a narrow verge and open ground without useful cover.
The gray sedan had stopped just before the bend, angled across most of the road.
Its engine was running.
“Slow,” Graham said.
Ivana was already braking. The damaged wheel pulled them toward the rail.
The commander stood beside the sedan’s front quarter. The other man came away from its rear, moving toward Ivana’s side of the road with a pistol held low.
Behind them, the last junction had fallen out of sight.
Graham drew his gun with his left hand. Six rounds remained.
“Can you reverse?”
Ivana tried. The front wheel shuddered, and the car barely moved.
The commander raised his pistol.
“Down,” Graham said.
The first shot broke the windscreen near its upper edge. Ivana folded toward the wheel. Graham opened his door and slid down beside it, dragging his right leg out after him.
The commander shifted toward the sedan’s bonnet, using it for cover.
Graham fired once. The shot struck the road beyond him. Recoil drove the pistol sideways in Graham’s left hand.
The second man was coming along Ivana’s side.
“Move across him,” Graham said. “Keep the car between you.”
She turned the wheel and pressed the accelerator.
The car lurched diagonally. The gunman jumped back, losing his line toward her window. Ivana kept moving until the front corner hit the end of the drainage rail.
The impact stopped the car across the lane.
Graham fell against his open door. Steam burst from beneath the bonnet. The rail had driven back along the driver’s side, crushing the lower door against the seat.
Ivana pulled the handle. Her door moved a finger’s width.
“Across,” Graham said. “Come this way.”
“My foot.”
The second gunman crouched beyond the boot, cut off from her by the car. The commander had moved away from the sedan’s front to find an angle toward Graham.
For a few clear yards, the sedan stood open and reachable.
Its driver’s door faced the verge. Graham could get there behind the cover of Ivana’s bonnet, drop into the seat, and drive. The commander would have to cross open road to stop him.
Graham put one foot toward it.
Ivana tried to pull herself across the centre console. Her shoe stayed caught beneath the distorted lower panel. She fell back against the seat with a short, angry cry.
He turned back.
“Undo the belt.”
“It’s off.”
He pushed his pistol into the open door pocket and leaned across the passenger seat. His ribs met the console. He made a sound he could not stop.
“Lift your knee.”
“I am lifting it.”
“Higher.”
His right hand would not hold her ankle. He slid his left beneath her knee and hauled it toward him. The trapped shoe resisted.
A shot punched through the rear side window.
“Fuck. Leave the shoe.”
He pulled again. Her foot came free, the shoe staying under the panel. She scrambled toward him, striking his wounded arm with her elbow. Pain took the strength from both his legs.
The commander reached the passenger door as Ivana crawled out.
“Move,” Graham told her.
She dropped onto the verge.
Graham got his left hand back into the door pocket. The commander struck him across the side of the head with his pistol before he could raise his own.
His ear rang. He hit the door frame, then the commander’s weight drove him against the seat.
“Keep him down,” the man said in Russian.
Graham’s gun was trapped between their bodies. He tried to shove with his right hand and felt the cut open under the dressing. His fingers slid down the man’s jacket.
The commander hit him in the ribs.
Graham’s knees folded. The man followed him down, trying to wrench the pistol out of his left hand. Graham clamped his elbow against his side. He had no room to aim, no strength for another exchange.
“Get the fuck off.”
He fired.
The report filled the car. The commander jerked, but his hand stayed on the gun. His other fist caught Graham beneath the jaw and drove his head back against the seat edge.
Graham fired again.
The weight against him changed. He shoved with his shoulder until the commander fell backward through the doorway. The man’s pistol struck the road and slid beneath the car.
Graham stayed folded over the passenger seat. He needed air and could get only a shallow mouthful.
“Other side,” Ivana said.
She caught the back of his jacket and pulled.
The remaining gunman had come around the boot. His first shot struck the open door. Graham fell onto one knee, turned, and rested his left wrist against the lower door frame.
The man was close. Graham could see the strain in his face as he brought his pistol back down.
He fired once.
The gunman went sideways onto the road, his leg folding beneath him. His weapon skidded toward the rail. He reached for it with his free hand.
Ivana kicked it into the drainage opening.
Graham kept his pistol on the man until he stopped reaching. Blood spread beneath his thigh. He pressed both hands over it and tried to draw himself farther from the car.
The commander lay on his back beside the open passenger door. His eyes remained open. Graham could see no movement in his chest.
Four shots. Two rounds left.
Graham pushed himself upright against the door. His left thigh had begun to hurt where it had struck the sill. Each attempt to straighten brought another sharp pain through his side.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
Ivana stood with one foot bare on the road. “Yes.”
“Take the sedan.”
“My bag.”
“Get it.”
She opened the rear door of her wrecked car and pulled the work bag out, then retrieved the water bottle from the front. Coolant ran down the road beneath the bonnet. The front wheel sat crooked under the damaged wing, and the crushed driver’s door remained closed.
“My car,” she said.
Graham had nothing to offer that would alter it.
He checked his own pockets by touch. Passport, money, phone. The bloodied cardigan lay on the passenger seat. He left his pistol on the floor of the wreck and pushed it beyond reach under the seat with his shoe.
“All of them stay,” he said.
Ivana was already moving toward the sedan.
Graham crossed the few yards after her. He had to stop at its rear quarter until the road stopped shifting beneath his feet. The wounded gunman remained on the ground, working a strip of his shirt against his leg. Beyond the bend, a horn sounded from the standing traffic.
Ivana climbed into the sedan. Graham lowered himself into the passenger seat and shut the door with his left hand.
The glove compartment held the original registration and insurance papers in a plastic wallet. He passed them to her.
“These match the car,” he said. “They don’t make it ours.”
“I know.”
She checked the controls, adjusted the seat, and moved out around her own car.
Graham kept watching through the rear window until the bend hid the two men and the wreck. Only the forward pair had followed them through the afternoon. Now neither man was following at all.
Beyond the bend, Ivana joined the waiting line.
For the first time since noon, stopping was the only way forward.
She kept her passport and the vehicle papers together on her lap. Graham put his own passport beside them. He could still smell burned powder in his clothes.
“We may be held,” he said.
“Yes.”
“If they ask about the car—”
“I’ll answer what they ask.”
He nodded.
The queue moved a car’s length.
He reached toward the seat controls, trying to find a position that would let him breathe. The movement sent a tremor through his left hand. Ivana took the water bottle from the cup holder and placed it where he could reach it.
“Don’t finish it,” she said. “You might be sick.”
He drank only enough to wet his mouth.
The Serbian exit checks took place in full daylight. An officer accepted their passports, then asked for the vehicle registration. He compared the plate with the paper and stepped out to inspect the car.
Graham kept both hands visible.
The officer checked the identifying number, walked around the rear, and asked Ivana to open the boot. It held a coat, a bottle of screen wash, and an empty shopping bag. He returned to the window.
“Your vehicle?”
“No,” Ivana said.
He examined the registration again, then took the papers inside the booth.
Graham watched people move behind the glass. Each minute gave his mind time to supply a reason the barrier would stay down. His jacket smelled of burned powder. There was blood on his sleeve, and he was sitting in a car he had taken from a dead man. He could neither change those facts nor improve them by talking.
When the officer returned, he asked Graham about his arm.
“I cut it in Belgrade,” Graham said. “It needs treatment.”
The officer studied the dressing, then his face. Graham waited through another check of the passport.
At last the papers came back through the window.
They moved into the space between the controls.
Ivana exhaled through her nose and kept both hands on the wheel. Graham could see the edge of her bare heel beneath the pedals. She had put her remaining shoe into her bag.
The Hungarian entry line moved more slowly. The dashboard clock showed that seven in the evening was approaching. A coach ahead required its passengers to leave their seats, and for several minutes everyone in their lane stayed where they were.
Graham’s phone still worked. So did Ivana’s. Neither rang.
At the booth, they gave their genuine passports to another officer. There were questions about their purpose, where they would stay, and how long they intended to remain. Ivana said she needed accommodation for the night. Graham said he needed medical treatment before deciding when he could travel onward.
They were sent to a marked space for a further vehicle check.
Ivana switched off the engine.
Graham waited while the officer examined the registration and insurance, then compared the vehicle details himself. Another officer checked their bag and asked Graham to open his jacket. He did it slowly, exposing the empty inner pocket and bloodstained shirt.
The officer asked him to raise his arms. Graham managed the left and lifted the right only to shoulder height.
“Sorry,” he said.
The search continued without haste. There was no weapon to find.
They returned to the booth for the remaining entry checks. Graham stood where he was directed for the photograph and put his fingers on the scanner when asked. Holding his right hand flat hurt. The officer waited until the machine accepted it.
Then there was another stretch of sitting while their passports remained on the other side of the glass.
Ivana rubbed the heel of her hand against the steering wheel. “I need these back.”
He understood which documents she meant. Her passport. Her work. The ability to make a next choice without asking him.
“They’re checking,” he said.
“I can see that.”
He let her wait without adding another assurance.
When the passports were returned, the officer pointed them toward a public stop beyond the crossing for medical assistance. No one promised that the car was theirs to keep. No one promised anything about what might follow from the day.
The barrier rose at seven.
Ivana drove into Hungary.
Graham watched the lowered barrier in the mirror until the road curved. His body had kept him upright through the checks. Once the booths were behind them, his left hand began shaking so hard that he could no longer hold the water bottle.
He put it between his knees.
“Stop at the first public place,” he said.
“I am.”
She pulled into the signed roadside stop a few minutes later. There were parked cars, a small café, and toilets beside a bright public doorway. She chose a space near the entrance and switched off the engine.
Graham opened his door. His legs took his weight, then almost gave it back.
Ivana caught his jacket at the shoulder. “Sit down.”
He lowered himself onto the low curb beside the doorway. The concrete pressed into the bruising beneath his thigh. For several breaths he could do nothing except hold his right arm against his body.
Ivana spoke to the café worker and used her phone to help arrange medical assistance. Then she stepped away and made a call of her own.
Graham heard Dragan’s name.
She spoke for less than two minutes. When she returned, she stayed standing.
“His sister,” she said. “She’s spoken to him.”
“Alive?”
“Yes. Still being questioned. They impounded the boat.”
He bowed his head. The motion pulled at the bruise beneath his jaw.
“She says he needs his medicine,” Ivana continued. “She’s taking it. She doesn’t know when they’ll let him go.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Glass cuts. Nothing worse that she knows.”
He had wanted that answer badly enough to mistake it for good news. Dragan was alive, in detention, without the boat he needed for work. Ivana stood barefoot beside him with her cancelled engagement and her car left across a Serbian approach road.
Graham took the cash from inside his clothing. Separating the notes with one hand took longer than it should.
“What do you need tonight?” he asked.
“A room I can lock. Clothes. A way home that I choose.”
He held out the larger share of the money.
She counted it once. “This won’t replace the car.”
“No.”
“And I’m not making your arrangements.”
“Just yours.”
She put the money in her work bag.
“Can I pay for someone to help Dragan?” he asked. “Someone his sister chooses.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“Will you need more for the room and transport?”
“I’ll tell you when I know.”
He nodded. There was no reason to turn the amount into a settlement. She had money she could use without coming back to him for permission. It was one useful thing, late in a day full of damage.
The café worker brought a clean towel and said medical help was on its way. Graham pressed it over the dressing. He had begun to shiver despite the warmth beneath the doorway.
Ivana used her phone to book accommodation in her own name. Then she called Dragan’s sister again and passed on the offer without putting Graham on the line.
He listened to the traffic in the car park. Twice he began calculating how soon he could leave after treatment. Both times his attention returned to Ivana’s bare foot, the bag on her shoulder, and the fact that she was still arranging a night she had never intended to spend here.
She ended the call and checked the time.
“Seven fifteen,” she said. “I’m calling my brother. He needs to hear it from me.”
“Do you want me here when you finish?”
“Yes. I need to know what the doctor says before I decide about tomorrow.”
“All right.”
She stepped into the public doorway for the call. Graham eased the towel beneath his forearm and settled his feet flat on the paving. He stayed seated on the low curb and waited for her to finish.