by Tikiri
I returned the magazine to the rack and walked over to the glass shelf, then, after another quick glance, I picked up the dark chocolate roll. As casually as I could, I walked out the door, carrying my booty with me.
“Hey!”
I didn’t look back. I hopped down the steps and ran.
“Arret!”
“Voleur!”
I broke into a sprint, running toward the shawarma joint, the only place I could get lost in the bustle of the market.
“Asha!”
I’d bumped into Luc head-on. I didn’t even look at him. I grabbed him by the shirt and said, “Run! Now! No time to explain.”
He held me by my arms. I struggled in panic. “They’re after me.”
“What the heck’s going on?”
“I stole a chocolate roll,” I said, breathlessly. “We gotta run!”
“No, we don’t,” he said, pointing at something down the street. “Look.”
I turned to look.
The man in the apron was standing on his side of the street, waving an angry fist. That invisible line that separated the fancy stores from the immigrant district was like a force field. He didn’t dare cross to this side.
I looked around. A crowd had gathered around us now. It was the gang of men who’d been admiring the motorcycle earlier. They stood casually, arms crossed, watching the scene. It dawned on me it was them who were keeping the man from the café away.
I couldn’t look at him anymore. Even from this distance, I could see the hurt on his face, that shaking of his head. He’d welcomed me in with a smile to try his baked treats, and I’d rewarded him by stealing one of his most expensive pastries. A pang of guilt went through me, but my desire to rescue Katy was far greater.
Someone jostled me. The crowd was inching closer, claustrophobic now.
“Who are those people?” I whispered to Luc.
A bearded man looked me over, his creepy eyes slithering down me. I inched closer to Luc.
“Your girl?” he said.
Luc grabbed me by the elbow. “Come,” he said, pulling me out of the crowd. “Let’s get out of here.”
He didn’t say anything until we were halfway back to the market, well away from the men.
“Why did you take off like that?” he said.
“Look what I got,” I said, showing him the luxurious chocolate roll. “This’ll keep Zero busy and we can get the key.”
“Asha,” Luc said, giving me a piercing look with his bright blue eyes.
“What?”
He put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed them gently. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“How come?”
“I got enough cash now to buy a thousand chocolate rolls.”
Part FIVE
I am strong, because I’ve been weak.
I am fearless, because I’ve been afraid.
I am wise, because I’ve been foolish.
Unknown
Chapter Thirty
“How’s Katy?”
It was my first question when I got to the third floor.
“You’re back!” Tetyana jumped up when she saw us.
She was still holding the gun, and had been leaning back in her chair when we’d tiptoed up. Vlad remained tied up and on his knees, weakened, his face lined with exhaustion. I noticed a couple more bruises on his face. He didn’t even bother opening his eyes when we came up.
According to Win, who’d been waiting patiently in the kitchen, Zero had been sound asleep for the past hour, having succumbed to the cocktail of drugs and alcohol he’d taken that morning. We heard his sonorous snores through the locked door as we walked up.
I had Bibi’s robe back on now and on our way back, had managed to sail past the police patrol outside. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but I detected a note of sympathy from them. One of them even nodded as we walked holding hands, trying hard not to hurry, as if we were merely returning home from a casual trip to the market.
“So did you get some?” Tetyana asked Luc.
Digging into his trouser pockets, Luc produced a small yellow container of pills, like one you’d find in a drugstore.
“A gift from the men in the market,” he explained.
“Not as strong as what I usually use, but it’ll do,” Tetyana said, inspecting the container. “You’re resourceful, Luc. Don’t know how you do it, but you always come through.”
I pulled out the chocolate roll from under my robe.
“I got this for Zero,” I said. “To distract him.”
“That’s it?” Tetyana’s face fell.
That’s it? A Chef Pierre luxury chocolate roll?
“We also got this,” I said, pulling out a plain brown paper bag of shawarma and fries.
“Oh good,” she said. “What else do you have under that thing?”
Luc and I had picked up anything that resembled Pakistani food on our way back. We piled these food containers on a table on the second floor, and moved it right next to the room Zero had barricaded himself in. I pointed to the table at the bottom of the steps.
“Everything else is down there,” I said.
“Once he starts to smell it, he’ll come out,” Luc said.
I could smell it too. My stomach rumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten for more than two days now, but with Katy gagged and locked up and not knowing what our future held, I didn’t feel much like eating at all.
“I’m starved,” Win said, looking longingly down the stairs.
“Here,” I said, handing over the chocolate roll to Win. “It’s really good.” Someone might as well enjoy it.
“We have to wake the man first,” Tetyana said thoughtfully as she reached over to break a piece of the cake in Win’s hands. “Then, we have to figure out how to take the key without him seeing. That’s where the pills come in.”
“What do they do?” I asked.
“Put him back to sleep,” Tetyana said, with a wry smile. “He managed to do that all by himself, I know. But we need him out here, sleeping, so we can grab the gun and the keys and get out.”
“What about the passageway?” I said, looking at Win. “Did you find anything?”
She shook her head. “There’s a door in the basement, but it opens to a cellar. There’s no way out there. Just some food.”
“Food?” I looked at her in surprise. We went on a wild goose chase for food when there was some right here?
“Not much,” Win said. “There’s one small bag of old flour, a can of oil and a bag of moldy potatoes. There’s also a loaf of bread, but it’s gone hard. Must have been sitting there for ages. There’s nothing to eat.”
We were silent for a minute, everyone in deep thought.
Luc cleared his throat. “Oh, I forgot to tell you something.”
Tetyana’s eyes narrowed.
“While you were away—er—procuring your chocolate roll, Asha,” he said with a side glance at me, “I sold my remaining packets to get the money.”
“I knew it,” Tetyana said, shaking the container of pills. “This didn’t come free, did it?”
Luc shook his head. “I had no choice. They were hard negotiators.”
“Who are these people? You know them from London?”
Luc nodded. “My crew in Amsterdam knows these guys. There’s always someone who knows someone, so I just had to connect the dots. It’s a small world.”
“How did you do that with the cops around?” Tetyana asked, her brow furrowed.
“The police never go to the immigrant district. They’re scared shitless, especially to the middle of the market. They burn cop cars there. Same thing in Paris, Amsterdam and everywhere else. So it worked for me.” Luc reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.
We huddled closer to take a look.
“This is their deposit. Not much left now,” he said. “They gave me fifty, but I spent most of it on the pills and food.” From his other pocket, he pulled out a mobile phone. “They also gave me this
to call for the pickup.” He paused. “And to track me.”
This was news to me. I looked at the phone.
“Why did you take such a risk?” I asked, aghast.
“How did you expect me to find money to buy the food and the pills?”
“Steal it,” I said, ignoring that guilty pang going through me. “Like I did.”
“You were lucky,” Luc said. “You were lucky in so many ways. You think we can go around stealing all that food and get away, especially in the immigrant district? They’d beat us up!”
“We didn’t need all that food. The chocolate roll would have done the job!” I said, feeling a little warm under my robe.
“Zero doesn’t even like chocolate!” Luc snapped back.
“People, people,” Tetyana said. “We’re here now. Let’s move on, okay?”
Luc shrugged. “I was trying my best.”
“You both were,” Tetyana said gently. “So when’s the delivery?”
“In two hours,” Luc said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Do we have time to wake Zero up, get him outside, put him to sleep again, rescue Katy, run out and sell drugs in two hours?”
“We’ll find a way,” Luc said confidently. “We always do.”
Right on cue, the phone rang, startling all of us. It rang twice before Luc answered. With trembling fingers, he put the phone on speaker.
“Luc?” a strange voice said.
“Oui.” Luc squinted his eyes.
“Haven’t skipped town, eh?”
“Just preparing your delivery.”
“Good boy. We got eyes in every city.”
“Sure,” Luc said. “Er, can I get an extra hour?”
“No.” That sounded final. We all looked at Luc to see what he’d say.
“The thing is, there’s police everywhere. Can’t rush out, man.”
“You got an extra thirty minutes. I’ll call you in an hour with the meeting place.”
The phone line went dead.
We stared at each other silently for a minute.
“I see one big problem,” Tetyana said finally, folding her arms. “How to get the packets out without those cops intercepting?”
“They didn’t check us when we got back,” I pointed out.
“Don’t let that fool you,” Tetyana said. “They can stop you at any time. Again and again if they feel like it, and if they take you away, I won’t be able to help you.”
“Can we just ignore them, these drug men?” I said. “I mean, we have the police all around us, right? It’s good protection.”
“Cops won’t be here forever,” Tetyana said. “They make lot of fuss for a day or two, check everyone, then move to a new place.”
“Why can’t we get these men to come here, then?” Win asked. “Then, it will be their problem.”
“Good thinking, Win, but that’d be too dangerous,” Luc said, shaking his head. “The police probably know all of them, and they won’t want to come anywhere near here and show their faces.”
“Recipe for a gun battle,” Tetyana said nodding. “And we’ll be right in the crosshairs.”
Recipe? My mind began to whir.
“We need a waterproof system. Those dogs smell everything,” Luc said. “And the police know all the tricks.”
“I know a Russian woman who hid packets in her implants,” Tetyana said, patting her breast. “They found her out pretty fast.”
“I know one woman in Bangkok who swallowed a package, and it burst in her tummy in the plane,” Win said.
“Extreme,” Luc said.
“She died,” Win said.
“Luc,” I said, an idea solidifying in my mind. “Can you break your stuff into tiny packets? Say this size?” I showed a three-inch gap using my fingers.
“Should work.”
“I think I know how to confuse the police dogs,” I said. “And get your packets to those men.”
“They’re smarter than you think,” Tetyana said. “The dogs, I mean.”
“There’s a risk, but let me try my idea,” I said.
“How long you need?” Tetyana asked.
“Thirty minutes, tops.”
Tetyana nodded, “You and Luc take care of the delivery. I will try to pull Zero out with a shawarma filled with pills. If I need you, I’ll call.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Oh my god, so cute!”
“Take picture with me!”
I stared at the little boy peeing brazenly in front of everyone. A throng of older Japanese women were giggling and jostling each other to take a picture of the two-foot bronze statue posing in all his naked glory, unabashedly urinating into a stone fountain. The statue was near a busy street full of lace shops, chocolatiers, and buzzing tourists.
“I used to do that all the time as a kid and they yelled at me,” Luc said. “And if I did that now, they’d arrest me.”
We were walking toward Brussels’ Grand-Place looking for his “partner,” as Luc called the man from the market we were supposed to meet. Back at the house, we’d made enough noise to wake the devil, but the devil, Zero, had slept through it all. The plan now was for us to deliver the packets and return quickly to help Tetyana.
It bothered me to leave her and Win alone to battle the madman, and I also worried about Katy. After another huddle, we decided the delivery job had to be taken care of quickly, and it would be better for me to go with Luc to show the police what a lovely, sweet couple we were.
No one bothered us when we walked out. The police dog was nowhere to be seen and no one seemed to notice us. I ditched Bibi’s robe in the same spot as before, and walked freely in the streets of Brussels.
“Are you sure he said pissing girl?” I said. “Not boy?”
“That’s what he said.” Luc furrowed his brow as he tried to recollect the instructions the strange man had barked at him through the phone. “He said go three streets to Delirium Café. But this GPS doesn’t show any statues over there. And we’re late.”
He stopped to click through the phone again and fiddle with the map. It had taken us longer than we’d planned to get here, as we’d dived into side streets every time we saw anyone remotely resembling the authorities. By the time the GPS recalibrated and got us back on track again, we’d run out of time.
While Luc fought with the GPS, cursing it in an impressive array of languages, I stood on the sidewalk gawking at the architecture around us. We were surrounded by thousand-year-old buildings, each adorned with intricate carvings and exquisite wrought-iron balconies. I’d seen these sights in Mrs. Rao’s fancy travel magazines, but I’d never dreamed I’d be lucky enough to see them in real life.
I wasn’t the only person mesmerized by what I saw. Every tourist had their camera trained on building facades, doorways and statues. Despite everything that was going on, it felt good to be in this beautiful place, under the warm sun, taking in the happy sounds and smells around us.
“Merde! Why can’t this stupid phone give good directions?” Luc muttered. “Okay, let’s cut across La Grand-Place and get to the other end at least.” He ushered me through a cobblestone alleyway. “Think this is a quick shortcut.”
My jaw dropped as we walked into the shortcut. If I’d thought the streets outside had been opulent, this place was magnificent beyond belief. It was an immense square we’d walked into, a majestic cobblestone space flanked by stately buildings, clustered so close together it was difficult to spot the passageways out. I looked around in awe. Surrounding this football field-sized square were beautiful medieval structures with gilded roofs pointing to the sky. If the modern light fixtures and tourists disappeared, I could easily imagine having time-traveled to a royal court of the seventeenth century.
We started crossing the square to get to the other side. Jotted here and there were street artists and vendors selling everything from paintings to flowers to figurines. The square was teeming with tourists from every part of the world, taking pictures, haggling with local vendors, bu
ying waffles and ice cream. But we couldn’t afford to linger or admire. We kept walking through the crowds, past the quaint lace boutiques, past the famous Belgian chocolate shops, past the outdoor cafés where people sat drinking coffee and beer and watching people stroll by.
Luc checked his phone every few seconds to make sure we were headed in the right direction.
“Oh, no!” I said.
“What?”
I nudged him and nodded in the direction of two hefty men in uniform, walking through the crowd toward us. One of them had a hulking police dog on a leash.
“I guess this is going to be the sniff test,” I whispered. If we lose this, we’re done.
“They’re here to stop pickpocketing,” Luc whispered.
“I’m worried about the dog,” I said.
The officers were now twenty feet away from us, casually scanning the crowd. From where I was standing, the dog looked like an overgrown monster; I could almost imagine its bared fangs ripping at my throat. All of a sudden, I felt exposed, like the entire square knew what I was carrying, like I was emanating a neon radiation light that declared, “Here! Check these babies out.”
I glanced around nervously, but no one was scrutinizing us, not even the cops. Yet they were coming straight toward us, pulled by the Alsatian’s nose. I felt Luc’s hand squeeze mine. We slowed to a stroll, as if to admire the chocolate shop nearby.
The officers were only fifteen feet from us now. They were so close I could hear the dog panting as it pulled on the leash, its nose intensely on the ground. I did the only thing I could think of. With a discreet twist of my hand, I pulled the dishcloth that had been covering the cupcakes I was carrying, and let it fall to the ground.
“Oh no,” I said loudly, putting my hand on my mouth. “My cakes!”
A gust of wind whipped the dishcloth right in the direction of the cops. Luc ran after it.
Oh no.
“Stop!”
I looked up, startled. The police officer had yanked at the dog’s chain so hard, it had almost flown back toward its master. The officer said something sharply to it. The second officer bent down, picked up the cloth and handed it to Luc.