This was not normal.
This was not humorous.
I could think of only one reason for my kidnappers to be moving me: their plan had failed. Whoever was meant to exchange something in return for my freedom had either refused or somehow played their cards wrong. It was time to make good on their threat. It was time to kill me. But, for some reason, they couldn’t do it where I was being held.
Based on the fact that the van was packed with several thick rolls of carpet, beside which I was now lying, I began to suspect that the day I’d been abducted from the Marrakech airport, I’d ended up not far from where I’d been planning to go anyway. What better place to stash a hostage than the crowded, famously-bewildering medina, where everything and everyone could get lost—and often did? It was a place choked from daybreak to nightfall with merchants, customers, suppliers, tourists, voyeurs, and cadres of enterprising thieves—the air hoarse with the ceaseless chatter of commerce. It was a place where almost nothing would seem out of the ordinary.
Over the past days, I’d frequently heard muffled voices rising through the floorboards from somewhere below me. I’d guessed the voices belonged to my kidnappers. But what if they didn't? What if all this time I was on the second floor of a carpet vendor’s shop—one amongst countless others, each a carbon copy of its neighbors, buried deep amidst the endless, crisscrossing streets of the ancient marketplace?
Now the game had changed. It was one thing to keep someone captive in a room above your place of business, another to kill him there.
I was content in the back of the van—comfortable, even. It was nice to finally be out of the cell-like space that had been my jail for the past several days. It smelled immeasurably better, and the fresh air washing over me from a slit of open window felt like cool silk as it brushed my fevered skin.
After interminable stops and starts as the van wove its way out of the medina then through busy city traffic, we eventually reached a cruising speed that told me we were on a highway. We’d left Marrakech. Disturbing but not surprising.
Time passed in a foggy blur, the steady hum of the tires lulling me into fits of sleep. There was no use wondering or caring about where I was going, or what would happen when we got there. I already knew.
The agent in charge of Mikki’s case told us her abductors likely hadn’t taken her far. Maybe somewhere on the outskirts of the city, where they’d be less likely to be spotted by nosy neighbors but still close to the scene of the crime. Maybe not even that far. He was concerned about why they were using the postal system rather than a faster delivery method for their communications with us. The general consensus was that the kidnappers believed that mailing the ransom notes made it easier for them to keep their identities hidden, or—worse from our perspective—they didn’t really care how fast this played out.
By the time the second note arrived in our mailbox, Mikki had been gone for five days. Attention from the media had grown exponentially with each passing hour. The resultant frenzy was quickly becoming unbearable to deal with.
Watching Jenn step out of the bathroom that night, my mouth dropped. I was already in bed, under a heavy layer of blankets. Even though we’d been experiencing summer-like temperatures all week, Jenn was always cold. Now I saw why. In only five days, the woman looked as if she’d lost ten pounds. She was wearing a nightshirt I used to love seeing her in. It hugged each curve in the right place, was sexily threadbare, and when she sat down the hem rode up high. But today the garment might have been made for a woman twice her size. It hung off her frame like an oversized bed sheet.
The sight took me by surprise, and I could feel my throat choke up as I jumped out of bed to embrace her. “Oh, Jenn.”
I wrapped my arms around her and hoped I could somehow infuse her with my own warmth. She didn’t seem surprised or question the sudden show of affection. She was aware of the toll the last few days had taken on her physically. Her head fell into the crook of my neck and I felt pinpricks of ice on my naked back; I realized they were her fingers.
We stood that way for several minutes. Just breathing. Just finding a way to keep on surviving.
“Come on,” I finally said, releasing her but holding on to the frozen mitt of her hand. “Get into bed. I’ll make you some tea. That’ll warm you up.”
“No, don’t,” she quickly said, pulling me under the covers with her. “I’ve had enough tea to sail a ship. Just stay with me. Talk to me. Tell me everything is going to be…” She stopped, as if frozen, then: “AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” she cried out.
I tightened my hold, hoping the agents sitting downstairs in our living room wouldn’t be alarmed and come barging into our bedroom, guns ablaze. But I knew they wouldn’t: they were used to this. Used to dealing with people who’d fallen into a hole of utter misery and, struggle as they might, never managed to crawl out, only getting deeper until…
“It’s a good thing, you know,” I said, swiping a tear from her cheek with my thumb.
“What?” she croaked, a heartbreaking look of hope on her face, as if there could possibly be something positive happening in our lives, some bit of good news that I’d somehow forgotten to share with her.
“The second note,” I said. “It means they’re ready to make a deal. We can find a way to get Mikki home.”
“They want ten million dollars, Jaspar. We don’t have that kind of money. We could give them everything we have—this house, my salary, your royalties, whatever we could beg, borrow and steal—and it still wouldn’t be enough. God, Jaspar, what’s going to happen to our baby when they realize we can’t pay?”
“Jenn, you can’t think like that. We’ll find a way to make this work. These people—whoever they are—they’re finally making a move. They’ve given us a date and a place. It’s only two days from now. In two days we’ll have Mikki back.” I pulled away and patted the area between us, feeling the warmth of the sheets radiate through the palm of my hand. “We’re going to put her right here, between us, and we’re not going to let her leave this bed until she’s thirty-five.”
The area around Jenn’s mouth, where sexy grins once lived, grew less taut. It was the best she could do. How I longed for her to smile—like she did the first night we met in that campus pub, her pouring shooters down my throat. Or like she did beneath her wedding veil as she floated down the aisle towards me. If only she would smile again—just for a moment, a brief moment. Then maybe my heart could stop clenching, and the agony would go away, just for a moment.
“They want us to go on TV,” she said after a minute. “To do one of those things where we plead with the assholes who took her to spare her life and give her back to us.”
“I know.”
“It’s ludicrous. It’s not like the kidnappers are going to be sitting around watching TV, see us and suddenly think, hey, you know what, they’re right. Let’s just call this off and send the little girl back to her mommy and daddy. The media are the only ones who get anything out of that. A perfect photo op of the famous author and his wife bawling their eyes out. Nothing better to sell papers and spike ratings.”
“I know.”
“I can’t do it, Jaspar. I can’t go on TV and beg for Mikki’s life. I would if I believed for even a second that it would help, but it won’t. It never does. These guys want money. Lots of it. They stole a child for Chrissakes! You think they care about what we have to say?”
“I know. You’re right. But we have to give them something. I know how the media works, Jenn. If we do nothing, they’ll only hound us longer and louder until we do. We need to say something.”
“Why? Because you’re worried how we’ll look if we don’t?” She sat up straighter, eyes heating up. I knew the pose. I knew the look. I braced. “If we don’t step in front of the cameras and beg those monsters to give our daughter back, then suddenly we’re the monsters? Suddenly we’re suspects in our own daughter’s disappearance? Is that it? You’re worried about how that will make you look? How it’ll ruin the reputa
tion of the oh-so-handsome, ever-so-charming, world-famous Jaspar Wills?” She was a battering ram in desperate need of a door to smash against.
“Jenn, you know I don’t give a shit about any of that. I’m only thinking about the right thing to do. I don’t know the perfect answer. And neither do you. All I know is that we have to do something.”
As quickly as it ignited, her fire extinguished. I got it. We both had unquenchable cauldrons full of hot, boiling anger bubbling up inside of us, with no one to douse—except the kidnappers. But they weren’t around. We’d each had mini-explosions over the past few days, usually directed at each other. When it happened, the best the other could do was ride it out, and then move on. Until now we were unaccustomed to fighting with each other like this, using rage and resentment as weapons. We were on the unfamiliar frontlines of a war we didn’t start or even understand. But we knew that, unless we had each other’s back, we’d never make it out alive.
“What about Katie?” Jenn suddenly said.
“What about Katie?” I asked. She and Jenn had gotten close over the past six months. I didn’t really know the woman, but I encouraged the friendship. Jenn was so busy being the perfect mom and lawyer, she forgot about just being Jenn. She was in desperate need of the kind of relationship that involved two women spending time together doing stuff that girlfriends do, spouses not included.
“She’s a reporter…or a journalist or something like that,” Jenn said. “Out of everyone we know, she’ll know what to do. She’ll know how to handle the media.”
I nodded. Relieved. A problem that actually had a solution. “Sounds good.”
Suddenly energized, Jenn hopped out of bed. “I’ll call her right now.”
“Now?”
“She’s up. She’s always telling me how she does her best work late at night.”
Having arrived at our destination, the back door of the van creaked open. Through a small sliver in the strip of fabric that covered my eyes, I could see it was night. Certain things are best done under the cover of darkness.
Chapter 13
I am alive.
In what circumstances does someone use those three words? I can think of only three. One: in times of personal triumph—successfully scaling Mount Everest; landing a dream job. Two: exclaiming physical exaltation—having sex with a beautiful woman; completing your first full marathon. Three: in moments of survival—when you’ve escaped, barely, the threat of certain death. Regardless of the circumstance—even if you’re struggling for air atop a mountain, admitting to yourself that the woman you just slept with is not your wife, or realizing just how precarious your existence really is—whenever you can say those three words—I AM ALIVE—it feels damn good.
With my blindfold now repositioned so that I couldn’t see a thing, two hands dragged me from the back of the van. Being outside had never felt so good. Fresh air. Gentle breeze. Pleasant, earthy smells.
I’d become a bit of a sleuth during my incarceration, specializing in using senses that I normally took for granted to provide me with clues. Changes in the sound the tires made suggested we’d eventually left paved road for gravel and maybe even dirt. Popping in my ears told me our elevation had changed. Given the time it took to reach our destination, my best guess was that we’d ascended into the Atlas Mountains—probably Toubkal, the country’s highest peak, in southwestern Morocco, only two hours from Marrakech.
I was alive, but I didn’t expect that status to last long. Soon, I suspected, I would be hurtling down the side of that same mountain. The plot, unpleasant as it was for me, made sense. The chance of my bloodied and broken body ever being found in such a desolate area was probably pretty low.
As the men silently led me to my fate, I sucked in fresh drafts of air, deeply, exuberantly, as if they were my last, for surely they were. I began to think of Mikki, and Jenn, and various family and friends. Just as quickly, I pushed them out of my mind. The images simply hurt too much.
The distance between what I’d become and what I was about to be—dead—was not such a lengthy one. Physically, there wasn’t much left to save. It was my mind and soul that needed protecting.
In those final moments, as I was being steered toward my end, I suddenly realized something important. Incredible things lived in my mind and soul: memories of loving and being loved, laughing, being cared for and taking care of others, friendships, kindnesses, moments of amazement and awe. There was nothing these men could do to destroy them. They were greater than any of this. They existed in a place I was sadly deficient to describe, a kind of “me” cloud. They would survive beyond whatever happened to me here today.
Whoa. Deep.
Apparently I’d suddenly become a man of spirituality. Of faith. Be it the influence of a guardian angel, or even God, or maybe nothing more than body chemicals run amok in my body doing strange things to my brain—whatever it was, I believed. As much as I’d believed anything in my entire life. I believed in the survival of something greater than my physical being.
I was being propelled forward, my feet tripping across rough, uneven surfaces, the men’s fingers clawing my armpits as they urged me along. Just like when I’d been beaten, I felt myself floating above it all. I gazed down on the ghastly scene, the three of us proceeding at death march speed, to the edge of the precipice from which I would be tossed. I felt weightless, free, at peace.
Except I’d written the wrong ending.
There was no precipice. There was no end-over-end tumble down Toubklal mountain.
Instead, I heard a door opening, its bottom edge scraping harshly against hardened earth. The rope binding my hands was loosened. With one final thrust forward, I was set free.
The door closed.
Silence.
Were they gone?
Was I alone?
Unencumbered, my trembling hands rose to the blindfold. Slowly, slowly, I lowered it.
I was ready for anything. Anything but what I saw.
Chapter 14
Hand in hand, Jenn and I approached the dead fountain. Just as the ransom note instructed us to. In my left hand, I carried a briefcase. Inside, astonishingly, was ten million dollars. None of it ours. The money had been supplied by the FBI. On the off chance the kidnappers actually got their hands on it—an eventuality that was nowhere in the plan—each bill was marked and traceable.
We’d had two notes. Both identically prepared with letters and words cut from magazines and newspapers. Both appeared in our post office box with the regular delivery. Both were effectively devoid of clues as to who sent them. The first note told us they had Mikki. The second asked for the money, with instructions on when and where to deliver it.
The investigators were frustrated. Other than through the media—to which there was no guarantee the kidnappers even paid attention—there’d been no opportunity for them to communicate directly with the hostage takers and, consequently, no opportunity for negotiations. “Highly irregular,” they called it. Highly effective, as far as I could see. At least so far.
Along with the cash, the briefcase also contained a message. It said everything the officials would have said to the hostage takers, if they could have. Most pointedly that they would never get their hands on the money without proof that Mikki was still alive and well. Although the ten million was in the case, the case itself was constructed of blast-proof titanium, and could only be opened by a complex alphanumeric code entered into a keypad. The agents figured the kidnappers assumed they’d be safe to retrieve the case without interference as long as they still held onto Mikki. Which was true. But the FBI rarely play on the side of any game where the foregone conclusion is their own defeat.
With a visible shake to my hand, I dropped the briefcase into the dried-out bowl of the fountain, which had long ago stopped spewing water. For a moment we stood there, our eyes traveling the circumference of the clearing, hoping beyond reasonable hope that suddenly—miraculously, jubilantly, mercifully—our daughter would appear and rush into
our arms.
That did not happen.
Just the typical, casual activity of any urban park on a sunny weekday morning.
“Jaspar, suppose this doesn’t work?” Jenn whispered.
I squeezed her hand. It felt cold, clammy, nearly lifeless. We’d placed all of our faith in the expertise of people we’d met only a week ago. Under normal circumstances, such an action would be foolhardy, unwise. But nothing about this was normal or logical.
“It has to work, baby,” I said. “There’s no other way. Mikki will come back to us. Very soon.”
We turned, marched back to our car, and drove away.
Two days later, the case was still in the fountain.
Two days after that, a third note arrived in the mail.
The kidnappers claimed to have spotted police and FBI surveillance teams in the park. They were unhappy about that. In the same bizarre, cut-out-letter fashion, they threatened to give us only one more chance. We were to deliver the money to a different location. If they were allowed to retrieve it unseen, Mikki would appear on our doorstep that same evening. Again, negotiation was not an option.
“We have to do it their way!” Jenn’s voice was stern as she addressed the lead FBI agent in our front room, standing as tall and motionless as a slab of granite. “I want my daughter back now!”
I could read the look in the man’s eyes. Silently, he was saying: “Do you have ten million dollars to make that happen?” Instead, he said, “If we give them the money without proof that your daughter is still alive, I promise you, Mrs. Wills, the chances of Mikki showing up on your doorstep are less than zero.”
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