d4

by Sherrie Cronin

  “We’re done,” Baldur announced as he glanced up and saw the dawn, and frankly Ariel thought that he looked every bit as relieved as she felt.

  “Did you do it this way just to wear me out?” she asked as she stood up on shaky legs.

  “It wasn’t my original plan, but I suppose that was one advantage of this approach. You are more cooperative when you’re exhausted.”

  “So now what happens?” Ariel said.

  “I put you on a plane,” he said. “You’re much too tired to fly commercial. I called the hangar late last night. My pilot is expecting you and my driver will take you over. My head of security and I are going to ride along and make sure you get off safely.”

  Yeah, Ariel thought. Of course you are.

  When they left the office soon after, Nell was still sound asleep with her head on the desk. Ariel was surprised that her friend could sleep so soundly for so long in such an uncomfortable position, but then she dozed herself as soon as she got into in the car. When they got to the airport almost an hour later, she noticed that the sun was above the horizon.

  “It has been a pleasure,” Baldur said simply as she took her bag away from Geirs and rolled it over to the plane herself. She looked inside the aircraft. The door to the cockpit was closed. Geirs was standing behind her, waiting to follow her up the steps. She looked at him puzzled.

  “Geirs will be going with you. Ariel, I want you to know that you’ve done your part and done it well,” he said. He gave a little shrug. “This is the best I could come up with for you.”

  Ariel willed her tired brain to think. Geirs was Baldur’s trusted employee. Ariel doubted that Baldur would do something as inefficient as killing Geirs, so maybe he hadn’t sabotaged the plane.

  She tried to focus on the future. Was there more emptiness in the weeks ahead if she walked onto the plane, or less? There was a good bit of it either way, she noticed with real fear, but definitely less if she put one foot in front of the other and went with this. Very well, onto the plane it was. She settled into one of the soft cushioned chairs, and before the plane had even taken off she had fallen back into a sleep far deeper than she intended.

  ******

  Cillian and Eoin had left on a red eye out of Dublin the night before. It was late morning by the time they had their rental car and made their first phone call to Baldur. Eoin was the one who had decided it would be best to just contact the man once he was on the ground and explain to his client that he was in Iceland and on the way over because he had to talk to him in person that morning. Cillian’s presence could just be a surprise.

  They thought that their best hope was that Baldur had allowed Ariel to return home already, opting to give himself time to eliminate her in a way that would not point so directly to him. Worst case, Cillian and Eoin guessed that Ariel might still be tucked away in the offices of d4. If Nell was still maintaining her charade then she could help them find Ariel. They knew that Ariel’s family and y1 were ready to provide assistance too, standing by for any call for help and actively seeking ways to ensure Ariel’s safety, once they all knew more.

  Baldur didn’t answer his cell phone, and after a few tries, Eoin called the landline at the d4 office. Nell answered.

  “Thank god it’s you,” they both said at once, and then laughed. Eoin explained to Nell that they were on their way into Reykjavik to see Baldur.

  “He’s not here,” Nell said, adding in embarrassment that she had fallen asleep at her desk sometime in the wee hours of the morning and had only woken up a bit ago only to find both Ariel and Baldur gone.

  “Why were you all there in the middle of the night?” Eoin asked.

  Nell explained how Ariel had been persuaded at the last minute to work with Baldur through the night so they could tap into the Asian markets.

  “I asked Hulda to let you guys know. She talked to Fergus and Ronan who were manning the phone last night. They said you were coming and they told her to sit tight and see how things evolved. I didn’t want to leave Ariel alone here with him so I stayed, but I don’t know how much use I was,” she said.

  “Can you find out where they are now?” Cillian asked.

  “That’s the problem,” Nell answered. “Baldur left me a very specific note saying he and Geirs left at 9:30 this morning to take Ariel to the airport. He gave me her flight number, seat number, confirmation number, everything, you name it, and he asked me to call Ullow and let everyone there know that she was safely on her way home. So I called the office right after I woke up.”

  “That’s great news” Cillian said.

  “Not really. Someone at the hangar for Baldur’s private plane called here not long after that looking for Geirs. He was supposed to be on a flight leaving at ten-thirty.”

  “So they dropped Geirs off after Ariel,” Cillian surmised.

  “Not possible. Hulda is taking all these calls, remember, she’s handling them in Icelandic and then filling me in afterwards. She knows that Baldur’s private plane flies out of a much smaller airport and it is a good two hours in the opposite direction.”

  “So you think they didn’t really put Ariel on a commercial flight at all? It could be that the three of them were running late getting to the private hanger and maybe they are all on Baldur’s plane instead. That wouldn’t be good. I wonder where Baldur would take her?”

  Nell gave an audible sigh. “I don’t know. Hulda is trying to reach the folks back at Ullow now to figure out what to do. Look, I’ve got another call coming in. Maybe it’s Baldur. Sit tight. I’ll get right back to you.”

  ******

  Stocks and newscasts and prices floated through Ariel’s dreams. She was lying on a table, uncomfortable, with strange hands touching her, and she couldn’t move. She realized that her leg was falling asleep and tried to move it, waking up in alarm only to realize that she actually could not move her leg. What the hell?

  She turned behind her and saw that her right wrist was held behind her back, firmly attached to her left ankle with a plastic band. Geirs was studying her from the other end of the cabin.

  “I’m sorry. Baldur told me not to restrain you, but I’ve seen you fight. A little restraint appeared to be a good idea.”

  “Un. Tie. Me. Now.” Ariel said it with all the force she could find, as the copilot made his way back into the cabin to see what the noise was about. He wasn’t as big a man as Geirs, and she supposed that much was lucky, because she was willing to bet that they were working together. Could she take both of these guys out?

  “Make. Me.” Geirs responded.

  “That was probably the wrong thing to say,” the copilot muttered quietly.

  ******

  Eoin and Cillian drove towards town, discussing options for where Ariel might find herself going. After a few minutes Nell called back and Cillian took the call.

  “Sorry it took so long. Baldur isn’t taking her anywhere. I’ve found out now that Baldur isn’t even on his plane.”

  “That’s worse,” Cillian decided. “How do you know?”

  “Because his pilot just had a call patched through to here. He told Hulda that he had to talk to Baldur immediately, and Hulda told him that was nonsense because Baldur was with him. He told Hulda that no, Baldur wasn’t. Hulda and I both figure the pilot knows who is on the plane. So she offers to relay a message, and he tells her that there has been a lot of noise going on in the back cabin and that he hasn’t seen the co-pilot in a while. Apparently Baldur ordered the pilot to stay in the cockpit, and now he wants permission to go back and check on things.”

  Cillian felt icy tendrils move throughout his body. “That’s really not good.”

  “You think,” Nell agreed. “Damn. Phone’s ringing again. Let me call you back.”

  “A noise means a scuffle,” Eoin said when he heard the news. “It means Ariel is alert enough to put up a fight.” He was refusing to give up hope. “For all we know she’s got everybody but the pilot tied up in the back of the plane by now.” Cillian
gave him a weak smile and they made nervous jokes until the phone rang with Nell calling back.

  ******

  Ariel wasn’t sure why, but Geirs’s childish taunt annoyed her. She didn’t take time to think about it. The position he had locked her into would have held most men and many women immobile, but it was barely a challenge for someone as limber as Ariel. She managed to bring her arm and leg under her body and in a single motion she slammed a foot hard into Geirs’s stomach before she lost the element of surprise.

  He doubled over but grabbed for her legs. The adrenaline had started the little aftershocks going again in her brain and she saw his grab a fraction of a second before it happened. It was enough for her to know that she needed to latch on to his leg with her unfettered left hand and do something to cause him a great deal of hurt. She bit him in the ankle as hard as she could. It wasn’t elegant, but he screamed in pain, and that’s when the copilot pulled out a syringe.

  ******

  “This could be good news,” Nell offered. “That was the hangar calling me this time. They just found the co-pilot tied up in a supply closet sleeping off a dose of ketamine. Which is very odd, because the man at the hangar told Hulda that he clearly saw the co-pilot board the plane.”

  “You might have lost me there,” Cillian complained.

  “Me too, but then I remembered that Ariel said her brother has talents a lot like mine. So I figure if I can be a temp named Sigrun, why couldn’t her brother have ended up as the co-pilot?”

  “That’s a little far-fetched,” Cillian said. “I guess we should call Toby or Ariel’s family, though, and see if they decided to take matters into their own hands.”

  “Hang on, it’s ringing again,” Nell said.

  ******

  The co-pilot stuck the syringe in Geirs’s arm.

  “Thanks. I was wondering how I was ever going to get this into him,” he said, and Ariel noticed that the guy was looking more like her brother Zane every second.

  “What the hell?” she said again.

  “Ariel, you’re doing a fine job of rescuing yourself here, but I thought, you know, you maybe could use a little help. So I had the guy who was supposed to be the co-pilot take a nap for a few hours while I filled in for him.”

  “What about the pilot?” Ariel whispered

  “Oh, he’s Baldur’s man alright. But he’s been instructed to stay in the cockpit and not come back here no matter what. He told me so.”

  “So what were you thinking, Zane? I’ve seen this. This plane goes down in the ocean.”

  “No it doesn’t.” Zane kept looking at his watch. “We’re flying at five thousand feet. Geirs and I are supposed to open the emergency exit and dump you out over the North Atlantic. Then the pilot takes us on to some bogus stop over in Greenland where we lay low for a while. You go missing, Baldur and Geirs say they took you to the airport in Reykjavik for your normally scheduled flight, swear they don’t know why you never boarded the plane, but imply it has to do with you embezzling funds.”

  “That asshole,” Ariel said. “So what’s your plan?”

  ******

  Eoin and Cillian were getting close to the city center when Eoin’s phone rang again.

  “That was Baldur’s driver calling me this time,” Nell said. “Guess what he wanted?”

  “I’m not even going to try,” Cillian answered.

  “He’s new, and he didn’t know that I’m a temp so he called me for advice. The driver confirmed that Ariel and Geirs both left on Baldur’s private plane and Baldur did not. He said that Baldur looked despondent and would hardly talk after they left the hangar and that Baldur had him drive over to Laugardalur, a big park east of city center here in Reykjavik. I guess that Baldur told the driver to wait for him. Baldur is there now, sitting in the hottest of the bathing pools. The driver is worried because he’s been in there a while, staring straight ahead with tears running down his cheeks, and the driver wondered if maybe he should call someone.”

  “Nell, you and Hulda could not have been more helpful,” Cillian said. “We’ve got it from here.”

  ******

  “My plan is that we jump out over the North Atlantic,” Zane said with a notable lack of enthusiasm. “Of our own free will. You’ve parachuted before, right?”

  “Yeah, about twelve times,” Ariel said. Her brother rolled his eyes. “Zane, it’s easy to enjoy things like that when you can see yourself almost certainly having a happy life a month later. It’s not that I’m as daring as everyone thinks I am. I get to know that I’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t get to see myself safe like you do,” Zane replied.

  “Then why don’t we just make the pilot take us somewhere we want to go?” Ariel asked. “That way you don’t have to jump out of anything.”

  Zane shook his head. “I think that’s a great idea. But Toby thinks that Baldur will be tracking the plane. Go where we’re supposed to and Baldur’s men met us there. Go somewhere else and his men still meet us there. He says it’s best to get you out of this aircraft altogether. So in exactly,” Zane squinted at a watch “eight minutes and twelve seconds, we are going out that door.”

  “Why such exact timing?” Ariel asked.

  “At this low altitude, we need to open our chutes right away, and we need our ride to be down there waiting on us,” Zane said.

  “Oh yeah. You don’t last long in that ice water. Didn’t you see Titanic? You die in a couple of minutes. How sure are you that this is going to work?”

  “Positive,” Zane said. “Toby’s been sailing for decades and he knows exactly what he is doing. Plus, I’ve got a GPS tracker on me and our parachutes come with these little inflatable things to crawl onto once we’re in the water. We’ll be fine.”

  Ariel finally understood. “No we won’t. I’m such an idiot. The plane doesn’t go down. What I was seeing was us jumping in the water ourselves and finding out that Toby isn’t there. By the time we hit the ocean we’re way too cold to inflate anything fast enough and we die. Or at least one of us does, because in the best of cases he can’t get to us both.”

  ******

  Fifteen minutes later Eoin had found a place to park, and a local store near Laugardalur had sold them both cheap swim trunks. They had showered naked under watchful eyes as required by the park’s regulations and marched over to the small, very hot body of water that now held only Baldur and two other bathers. Apparently public displays of grief worked well here for emptying out a hot pool. Baldur didn’t even look up at them as they got in, but the remaining two bathers decided this was as good a time as any to go.

  “You need to let her live,” Cillian announced in his deep brogue as he climbed into the hot water.

  “It’s too late for that,” Baldur replied without looking at him.

  “Are you sure?” Eoin barked out the question.

  Baldur shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe.”

  “Dammit man, then make a call.” Eoin thrust his cell phone at Baldur. “See if you can stop whatever nonsense you’ve started.”

  ******

  “What do you mean one or both of us die?” Zane ask, horrified.

  “I mean that I’ve seen this scene before. You’re the person with me, only I didn’t get it. You’re the person I’m so sad is dying too. Or dying instead of me because Toby has been told that it’s more important that I live. Only now it doesn’t have to go that way. Look.”

  Ariel pulled two garbage bags out from her roller bag. Out fell a couple of kitchen knives that she ignored. She handed Zane the bag that Nell had labeled “his.”

  “Get this on, quick. Boots, gloves, hoods, six-millimeter neoprene suit and, here, tape it anywhere two pieces meet. It will do the job, but it’s still gonna be cold going down so wear your hat and gloves and whatever else you can pull off easily on top of the wetsuit.”

  Zane looked at his watch again. “We jump in exactly five minutes and four seconds. If you’re sure about this, we bette
r get dressed fast and get our parachutes on.”

  They pulled on the stretchy, uncooperative neoprene fabric as quickly as they could, and helped each other double check every clasp on the parachutes. With one minute to go they started to open the emergency door, thinking that they had plenty of time.

  ******

  “Can’t do that,” Baldur said. “If I stop it, I lose. I don’t win. I can’t do that.”

  “You idiot,” Cillian said. “You don’t win anything. You think because you can do what you can, that makes you special? Wise? It makes you short-sighted—that’s what it does. You can’t see past the nose on your face. Let me show you what this is all about.”

  He reached towards Baldur and Baldur backed away, remembering all too well the sting he had felt when Siarnaq touched him.

  “I don’t care if it hurts a little, for me or for you,” Cillian yelled at him. “You are going to see. You are going to know. Here is what really happens, here is what really matters.”

  Baldur turned to climb out before Cillian’s electric touch could shock him. An exasperated Eoin intervened. He grabbed Cillian’s wrist with his left hand and Baldur’s leg with his right hand and then screamed.

  ******

  It was a poor moment to discover that the process of opening a door in a moving aircraft was more difficult than either Zane or Ariel realized. It took them almost two minutes before they figured out the mechanism. An extra minute at three-hundred miles an hour put them five miles away from a boat that would need ten long, cold minutes to travel that extra distance. At this point there was no survival without the wetsuits, and unless that boat was positioned as well as it could possibly be, there wasn’t even much chance of survival with them.