I crouched and used my phone to look around, leery of thrusting my hand into a dark damp hole.
The bunker floor was covered in sand, and smooth. I shined the flashlight around.
“Vic!” Nic called out. “We have to go!”
To the left, tucked up against the sloping wall was another canvas bag. I dropped my bag and picked up the new one. It was empty.
Damn, damn, damn.
I exchanged the bags anyway and quickly hiked back to the idling bus.
Nic was already in his seat, looking as innocent as he could, which is to say, not that innocent.
I sat and held onto the empty bag, not wanting to say anything until we could talk under the cover of the bus engine noise.
“That’s it?” He whispered. I nodded.
“Son of a bitch.”
As we barreled back down to our hotel, I felt around inside the bag and pulled out a business card of—yes, our own hotel. I held it up.
“What would I do without you?” He took the card and turned it back and forth, as if it would reveal more information, maybe something written in invisible ink.
“They aren’t making it easy.” In fact, the whole day was wasted. We could have stayed in the hotel, made the exchange there and we were done. This seemed too convoluted.
Nic tucked the card into one of his pants pockets. “May as well see it through.”
He settled back and closed his eyes. This was why he wanted to sit next to me. He didn’t have to talk.
“What would I do without you?”
That phrase sent a shiver down my spine and made my stomach grow cold and heavy. It was what Tina said after that first month I rushed home to stay with the new baby. It was what Vince said after I had lived with Mom and Dad for a year. It was what Tina texted. It’s what Max whispered. It was what Miranda breathed before she fell asleep.
What would they do without me? I had two days to figure out who killed Miranda. And I wasn’t even close.
Madonna’s "Into the Groove" drifted though the PA system as we entered the Hotel Piccolino, ratty business card in hand. I glanced at Nic, but he was intent on finding the hotel bar.
New, unfamiliar music is a lovely, pleasant background. Old music, the music of a specific time, is distracting. You either know all the words and are compelled by some lizard part of your brain, to sing along. Or the song makes you cry. There isn’t a single Madonna hit that doesn’t transport me back to my ill-spent youth. Well, ill-spent according to my parents, according to my brothers. No house, no husband, no children. But I told my mother, I’ll always have Paris. Paris a number of times. Over and over. I love Paris. Cairo, Milan, Venice. There is nothing more satisfying than reflecting on an ill-spent youth.
But if I want to relax, give me hip-hop with its decided lack of nostalgia.
Madonna did eventually find her groove. Nic and I separated, and I entered the bar first like the start of a bad joke—a former photo assistant walks into a bar…and orders an iced tea.
I was already dressed for invisibility and stealth. The casual slacks in tan, a short sleeve blouse in light peach, the sensible tan walking shoes. I pulled back my hair, my beautiful auburn hair, and tucked it under a scarf and topped it all with a yellow visor.
During the bouncy ride back, Nic announced that he would be the lead. He would meet whomever at the bar and get the goods. He announced it assuming I would agree and because what would he do without me? I would back him up.
I would have preferred to dress differently, bat my eyes and over drinks encourage our contact to overexplain his position, the hippo, the find, the dig, I was confident I would get it all and it would only require two gin and tonics to do it. When they aren’t paying attention, men often underestimate our reasons for listening to them so intensely and for too long.
But no, this was to be Nic’s thing.
I hesitated at the door to the bar, glancing in to see if I would be welcome, more to see if there was a table adjacent to the bar. There was. I sat down and pulled out a guidebook to the ruins. It was so badly translated it was painful to read.
Eventually a waiter approached me, just as Nic walked in.
“Iced tea. And make sure there is enough ice.” I whispered.
The man lifted an eyebrow and I struggled to look as sincere and naive as possible. How dangerous is iced tea in a foreign country? As dangerous as crossing the street in Rome or sky diving in unregulated Bulgaria. Seriously. Order the local drink: vodka in Saint Petersburg, gin in London, wine in France. Or beer. Beer is always a good choice, preferably in the bottle. And wipe off the neck.
But iced tea? Deadly.
While I waited for my dangerous drink, I kept my head down and studied the brochure. Nic hiked up to the bar and ordered a bourbon, no ice. His job was to look dejected. I scooted my chair a half foot closer. He did not look up.
Our mark waltzed in and correctly singled out Nic. My drink was served with a pitying look. I avoided the waiter’s eyes.
The men greeted each other as men do, with one-word, single syllable utterances and a quick head bob.
The new guy hitched up on the bar stool next to Nic. He was not, interestingly, one of the men from last night. He was blond with long curls much like an aging member of Queen. Half the size of the guards, he still carried himself like a man armed with a concealed weapon.
My first impression was right. All the countries in question were in the middle of regime changes (always rough on the general population). Another group muscled in on the first, like a hostile takeover. They must have intercepted today’s drop and were now ready to negotiate for a piece of whatever pie Nic was holding.
“You are missing something?” His voice was low, but I caught the words. I cupped my hand around my ear to filter out Queen’s back beating "We Will Rock You."
Nic nodded and kept his eyes on the shelf behind the bar. Even with the back mirrors doubling the offerings, the bar inventory maxed out at a dozen bottles.
Nic offered the card to the man who took it like it was ice in a drink.
He pocketed the card. “We can make you a deal.”
Nic nodded.
“1,000 euros. Cash.”
I wanted to ask about the store and almost hissed it out from under my breath but Nic, fortunately, read my mind, or probably my agitated vibrations.
“And the store?”
“We took care of that. You deal with us now.” He added. “Direct.”
The man slid off the seat and walked away. Nic downed his Jim Beam and left the bar. I waited, eyeing the tea, longing for a shot of bourbon. But that would not be in keeping with my persona. I sighed, left bills on the table and followed Nic out.
There is a reason the most memorable Greek tragedies are based on human hubris. Since I believed I was invisible, I was careless. Who pays attention to a gray-haired older woman?
Two thugs.
The men who I had noticed at the hotel in Saranda abruptly reappeared in the hall. I ducked my head to avoid eye contact and hunched my shoulders to look exactly what I looked like: an older woman. Nothing to see here.
They marched past me, and just as I took a deep breath of relief, one of the men grabbed my arm and swung me around. The deep breath caught halfway, and I gasped out loud.
“Don’t scream or we kill you.” The taller blonde, our refugee from Queen, jabbed something very hard into my very soft waist. I struggled, but that only inspired him to shove the gun more deeply into my side and squeeze my arm harder. His partner grabbed my other arm. I searched the empty hallway but Nic was nowhere to be seen. In fact, there wasn’t a soul around. Damn the off season.
The shorter bald man pulled me forward, but the taller man didn’t move. This was not going to end well. Two more steps, and my arm socket would give from the pull. The blonde barked at his partner who jumped and the two finally coordinated their hustle. They propelled me down the hall and through the emergency exit doors, which, despite the alarm warnings listed in
three languages, made no sound. The landing was narrow, devolving down crumbling cement stairs. There was no place to go but down. I stumbled twice, trying to find footing between the treacherous debris, rocks and dirt. The man behind me stumbled and cursed.
“Quiet!”
It took a second to figure out how to protest. I went with the little old lady who was silly enough to order iced tea in a bar.
“What are you doing? Who are you! Where are we going? You can’t treat me like this I’m an American Citizen!”
“You, quiet or I shoot.”
A little old lady from Duluth, Minnesota, would have believed him. I stopped talking. The stairs curved to the right. There were no signs and no exit doors as far as I could see, but I couldn’t see much. The light was dim. Forty-watt bulbs swung on single wires over the stairs. I did my best not to stumble, because every time I listed to one side or the other, the gun jammed deeper into my side. Finally, we reached the end of the stairs. The bulbs flickered, then blacked out.
Both men cursed. But the man behind me had the foresight to bring a flashlight. The weak light illuminated an ordinary interior door, no alarm, no exit. The first man jerked it open and pushed me. The basement was grim, clearly used only for storage. Taking me to the top of the hotel would have be kinder: a view, fresh air. But no less dangerous. Like most of the buildings we passed, the top of the hotel was an unfinished mess of rebar and cement. I learned that as soon as a building is finished, it is taxed. Thus, if a building remains unfinished—no tax. The towns we passed through this morning all took advantage of this tax loophole and as a result, looked like they had just survived a major bombing. Or maybe a bombing would improve them. It was still up for debate. Solid cement walls, dank. Ridiculous.
They threw me onto a rickety chair that pitched to the left, I righted it, trying to keep my balance. The blonde thug (seemed an appropriate categorization, they didn’t strike me as part of a more organized system, maybe it was their suits, old, rough, like they had to dig up something they last wore to their sister’s wedding twenty-five years ago) roughly tied my hands behind my back, snaking the rope through the slats of the chair. The other faced me shining a flashlight into my eyes.
The gray wig itched. I hoped it was staying firmly in place, I couldn’t tell. I was used to plopping them onto models, not wearing them myself.
“What do you know?” He demanded in English.
“I don’t know anything!” I raised my voice to that old-lady pitch, channeling my mother and every other elderly woman I encountered at the doctors and senior discount day at the Safeway. Sorry, ladies.
“I was just having tea, you have terrible tea here, what kind of country is this?”
“A free one, an emerging economy. We will never…"
“Shut up.”
The other man shut up, I couldn’t see him, but sensed he was no longer behind me.
My essential problem was that I was terribly excited. I have never, ever been viewed as a threat, never worried about getting abruptly shoved into the back of a windowless kidnap van, I’m not even cut off in traffic. Me, Victoria Gardner a kidnap-worthy threat. I was feeling pretty important until they started hitting me.
Flashlight man hit me across the face, almost knocking me from the unstable chair. Pain shot through my head, my arms jerked to brace my body and protect me from the fall. One of the slats gave. My head snapped back, and I sucked in a breath of choking dust and mold.
“We don’t ask again. Tell us what you know!” He held up the flashlight like a bat. The light illuminated the room like a searchlight operated by a drunk. I followed the light. The storage room walls curved. There were no windows, so this could be one of the re-purposed bunkers I learned so much about this afternoon. Free-standing cupboards lined one wall. Thick bowls and plates, the kind favored by university commissaries, spilled from sagging damp cardboard banker boxes. Wide spatulas and large forks for industrial-size cooking were jumbled together in makeshift crates. The utilitarian equipment spoke of years of heavy, tasteless meals.
My phone buzzed. Of course, it did. I was trapped in a third-world cement underground ground bunker and for once AT&T comes through. Marvelous.
“What is this? Are you spying?” The man tucked the flashlight under his arm. The light pointed behind him, illuminating the door and plunging him into darkness. He realized his error just in time.
“Find the phone!” He flipped the flashlight around and illuminated my purse, now furiously vibrating. The partner gingerly unzipped the bag and pulled out my phone.
“Recording?” Flashlight man thrust the phone into my face so close I couldn’t read it.
“Hold it away, please.” I said calmly.
He pulled it away. It was a text, disappearing as soon as I could read it. It was Tiffany, something about the realtor and Cindy and an offer on the apartment.
“Text her back, tell her I’m tied up at the moment.”
“She knows nothing.” The blonde man, we will call him Oslo, barked.
Flashlight man, we will call him Oscar, threw the phone and it bounced off my chest and landed at my feet. I struggled against the ropes, burning my wrists, stretching the rope at the cost of tightening the knots. But nothing gave. Of all the cheap-ass materials used in this country, they had to make good rope. Perhaps it was an import.
“Then what is she doing with him?”
Oh, dear lord Horus. I stopped struggling. “We are old friends.” I enunciated the words.
The men smirked.
“I’m just here for a romantic getaway. You know, he is quite irresistible.” I tried to conjure up some tears but was unsuccessful. Cindy had a black belt in tears, I was clearly not as gifted. “He said it would be romantic.” I at least produced a catch in my voice.
Both men puffed up on behalf of all males in every country, emerging economy or not, all of whom believe with every fiber of their being that they are the final word in intellect, cunning, and sexuality, contrary to any woman’s reactions or even careful explanation.
“I told you, asgje.” Nothing. I could tell from his tone.
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“Where is Dr. Ratzenberg going next?”
“Why would I know that?” God’s truth, when did I ever know what Nic would do next? Shit. Talk about sleeping with the enemy.
“She knows nothing.” The other man repeated. Well, yes, I did know nothing, until you two came along.
The flashlight suddenly went off, the man uttered an oath that sounded pointed and strong. I wasn’t sure if we were done or if the flashlight batteries just gave out. A phone buzzed, not mine this time.
“We go.” And just as abruptly as I was taken, I was abandoned.
“Hey, you can’t leave me here.” I yelled. My phone buzzed again and illuminated the low ceiling. It did give me a second of light. The door, dim across the room, was firmly shut probably locked from the outside. Oh damn, damn, damn.
I waited until their footsteps faded. I pushed at the chair. The slat finally gave, and I could pull my hands out. But they were still tied behind me. You know those actors who quickly jump through their hands so their hands are in front and they can do all sorts of escape—based activities? Think Jackie Chan or James Bond.
Yeah. About that. I couldn’t lean over because my hands wouldn’t ever clear my butt. I awkwardly lowered to the gritty floor and after what felt like five excruciating hours and almost dislocating both arms in the process, I managed to pull my tied hands under my butt and wiggle them out from under my legs (easier). It was not a sanctioned move from Senior Stretch, but it did the job. I hit the flashlight app on my phone, which had a fifty percent battery life and spent a number of precious minutes picking apart the knots to free one hand. This all took far longer to do than to explain.
I rattled the door. Since what was stored here wasn’t all that valuable, there was no deadbolt, just a lock like on a domestic bedroom door. I knew from experience that a determi
ned brother could smash a big hole through the typical suburban hollow core door (and pay for it with his own allowance, I’m not naming names. Vance.). And a pair of intrepid brothers could jimmy a lock with, what was it? A spatula. They had used Dad’s best metal barbecue spatula.
With the phone in one hand, I rifled through the rejected utensils until I found the heaviest spatula. With the phone on the floor for light, I worked the tip of the spatula between the doorknob and door frame. Two strong leveraged pulls and the door frame gave. It had taken Vance and Vince longer but that was because I was yelling at them from inside my bedroom and throwing all my stuffed animals at the door to distract them. My bedroom was ostensibly my own sanctuary and off-limits to boys. But they never did respect my boundaries.
Free at last. I turned off the phone and dropped it back into my purse. My left hand was still bound in rope. It looked like I forgot my safe word.
I closed the door behind me, jamming the spatula under the door to keep it from falling open and revealing my escape.
There wasn’t anywhere to go but up. Our storage room was essentially a dead end. How long would it have taken for someone to find me? Had Nic even noticed my absence? How is it possible to get building permits for a hotel that doesn’t offer adequate fire escapes?
I climbed to the first landing very cautiously, pausing to listen to any echoes or sounds. Fortunately, my shoes were silent. The first door grimly warned me about fire alarms. I took a pass and climbed to the second landing and second door, the one Oscar and Oslo used. It too warned about fire alarms, but I had had enough. I pushed open the door and emerged next to the restrooms on the ground floor of the hotel. No alarms. False advertising.
I righted myself as best I could in the ladies’ room, happy to pee and to thoroughly wash my hands and abrasions. The rope dragged in the sink. I glanced around. The paper towel dispenser was empty but fortunately it was one of those older models equipped with sharp teeth to tear off sections of towels. I shoved my hand under it and sawed at the rope around my wrist as best I could. After a minute, the rope gave.
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