Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  The fresh air sharpened his senses. He had to get off the balcony. The question was how. A leap to one of the neighboring structures was fifteen feet at least; out of the question. A drop to the floor below was at least that much and at a difficult angle to boot. But he could manage it if he could swing himself beneath this balcony properly and work up enough momentum.

  Locke gripped the balcony railing with his ruined hand. It seemed to catch fire. The pain brought floods of tears to his eyes and the swelling made a sure grip impossible. He did the best he could, lowering himself until his legs were stretched toward the ground six stories below, hands supporting his entire weight.

  The pain in his broken fingers was worse than he could have imagined and he grimaced against it, starting to sway back and forth, trying for enough impetus forward so that when he dropped, the angle would carry him to a safe landing on the balcony below. Incredibly, it seemed to be working, each sweep bringing him closer over his target.

  Then a massive hand reached over the railing.

  Locke looked up and saw the Chinese giant. Six bullets in the gut and still alive! Black powder burns dotted his white suit jacket but no splatters of blood surrounded them.

  Why didn‘t you die? Locke wanted to scream.

  But he couldn’t waste the effort. His final swing was almost complete when the giant’s hand found his hair.

  Chris’s legs carried him well beneath the balcony, and out of reflex he let go his hands an instant before Shang’s grasp on his hair became firm. Then he was falling, unsure in that drawn-out moment whether his movement had carried him far enough or if he would drop sixty feet to oblivion.

  He landed hard on the balcony tile below, breaking the fall with his left side and sending bolts of electric agony right through to his brain. His eyes dimmed and he felt himself hitting a wrought-iron table. But he couldn’t give in to the pain or the force of impact, couldn’t let himself forget Greg and what they had done to him.

  Chris pushed himself back to his feet and staggered to the glass doors of the room directly beneath the one he had escaped from.

  They were locked.

  He picked up one of the wrought-iron balcony chairs, taking as much of its weight as he could in his right hand, and smashed it against the glass door. It shattered into a spider-web pattern on the first thrust and gave way on the second. Locke reached inside, unbolted the door, and slid it open.

  He rushed through it into the darkness of the room without stopping. Shapes were indistinct, and he did his best to avoid them. A footpost of the bed nearly tripped him up and he wondered madly if someone there might be asleep. No matter. He was in the corridor an instant later holding his breath against the very real possibility that Shang and Mandala would smash into him around the next turn.

  Footsteps pounded the floor in the corridor immediately ahead of him. Locke turned onto another hall and bolted for the first exit sign he saw. He wasn’t sure if his pursuers saw him as they passed and didn’t bother thinking about it. Instinctively his feet carried him up to the floor he had just left. They wouldn’t expect that. An amateur’s move would have been to make a straight line for the lobby and a desperate escape. But he wasn’t an amateur any longer. They would still consider him one, and that was the best thing he had working on his side.

  He emerged back on the sixth floor with no plan of what to do next. He couldn’t stay in the open. The dark man could have people scouring the hotel even now. He would be spotted too easily. A room, he had to get into a room. But how?

  If you‘re in trouble, contact the hotel manager. Tell him you work for the Grendel Corporation and your room isn‘t satisfactory.

  Some of Dogan’s last words to him. But to get to a phone he had to first get into a room, which put him back where he started. Locke kept himself moving. There had to be something, some way to—

  He saw a maid with a towel cart close a door behind her. She was doubtless on her nightly rounds to turn down beds and replenish bathroom supplies. That was it!

  Locke started to tuck his shirt back tight into his pants, briefly forgetting about his swollen hand. The agony bit into him like a sharp knife. He withdrew his left hand from his pants slowly and set about tucking the rest of his shirt in with his right. Satisfied, he started down the corridor whistling, his pace that of a contented tourist.

  The maid had just stopped her cart in front of another room and was sliding her passkey into the door.

  “What timing,” Locke announced buoyantly, pretending to tuck a nonexistent key back into his pocket. “I need two glasses.”

  Startled, the maid looked at him. She didn’t speak English well, if at all.

  “Glasses,” Locke said slower, pointing to a tray of paper-wrapped ones on her cart and stealing a glance back down the corridor.

  The maid nodded her understanding and handed him two.

  “Anything else?” she tried to say in English.

  Chris shook his head and thanked her, already inside the room and closing the door behind him. He glanced quickly about to assure himself he was alone, then hurried over to the phone. His left hand was still ravaged by pain and he could feel the sweat dripping from his brow.

  “Front desk.”

  “I’d like to speak to the manager please.”

  “I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “No. I need the manager,” Locke insisted.

  “If you leave your name and room number, I’ll—”

  “This is an emergency, goddammit!”

  The clerk hesitated. “Hold for a moment please.”

  Seconds passed with agonizing slowness. Chris’s eyes fixed themselves on the door, expecting Shang to burst through it any moment.

  “This is the manager” came a male voice in Italian-laced English.

  “This is Mr. Locke. I work for the Grendel Corporation and my room isn’t satisfactory.”

  A short pause.

  “What room are you in, Mr. Locke?”

  Chris eyed the number on the phone. “Six twenty-seven.”

  Another pause, longer this time.

  “My records show that is not the room you checked into.”

  “Circumstances forced me to move.”

  “Very well. Stay where you are. I’ll be up presently.”

  The phone clicked off. Locke tried to steady himself with a series of deep breaths. The throbbing in his hand was incessant. His gaze fell on his mangled fingers. They made him think of Greg, of what the bastards had done to him.

  Show him, Shang.

  Locke’s mind filled with a picture of the championship ring caked with dried blood. He fell backward on the bed and stared mindlessly at the ceiling. He wanted so much to cry, as if tears might purge his emotions. But no tears came. He was beyond them, beyond everything.

  They had mutilated his son!

  Chris felt himself about to pass out when the knock came on the door. He swung it open without checking the peephole.

  A gaunt man with olive features and dark hair, in his late thirties probably, stepped in. One foot dragged behind the other in a slight limp.

  “My name is Forenzo, Mr. Locke,” the man said, closing the door behind him. “I am the hotel manager. You must tell me what has happened.”

  “When I got to my room less than an hour ago, two men were waiting inside. They … tortured me in an attempt to gain certain information I possess.”

  “And you are working with Mr. Dogan on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did these men do to you?”

  Locke held up his swollen hand.

  Forenzo’s eyes bulged. “We must have the hotel doctor look at that immediately. There will be time to finish your story later.”

  Chris shook his head. “No doctors. I’ve had my fill of strangers for one night.”

  “Please, Mr. Locke, I have had experience in these matters before. The doctor is a man to be trusted and your hand must be treated. If the
bones are set wrong, the damage will be permanent. We have splendid facilities within the hotel. Everything can be handled here, I assure you.”

  “The men who did this are still in the building.”

  “Then you must give me their descriptions and I will have security watch for them.”

  “Make sure your men carry bazookas,” Chris said, still wondering why his bullets had not killed the giant.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Forenzo cleared his throat. “The first thing we must do is get you settled in another room. After the doctor has attended to you, the next step will be to determine how we can get you out of here safely.”

  “I’m supposed to stay and wait for Dogan.”

  “To insure your safety, that is out of the question. Where might safe ground exist for you?”

  Locke hadn’t considered that question yet but the answer was quick in coming. Colin Burgess! England. He would call the contact number and have the girl set everything up. Burgess would take care of him now as he had before. Together they would link up with Dogan again somehow. Maybe the man who had tracked down German spies would be able to track down the bastards who had his son. The big Brit was the answer!

  “England,” Locke said finally.

  “And your passport, should I have it retrieved from your old room?”

  “Ye—I mean, no. The people who were waiting for me there must have known the alias I was traveling under. They’ll be watching for that name at the airport. Can’t you arrange for a new passport?”

  Forenzo tried to smile. “I am only a simple hotel manager, Mr. Locke. I possess no such resources on such short notice.” Something seemed to occur to him. “But wait. England is your destination, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chartered flights travel several times daily from Rome to London and the Customs officials are sometimes lax in checking passports for charter customers. Random collections and stampings are made to speed up the process so as not to create logjams. We Italians prefer to pass such problems onto you. Yes, I think I can come up with a way to get you out of Rome. The problem is what happens once you reach London… .”

  “Let me worry about that. Just get me safely to the airport with a ticket and keep me alive for tonight.”

  “That much I can do. Mr. Dogan is an honored guest of the hotel. Any friend of his …” Forenzo’s shrug completed his thought.

  “Speaking of Mr. Dogan, he said you would provide a warding-off signal if things weren’t safe.”

  “Indeed. When is he scheduled to arrive?”

  “Tomorrow evening sometime.”

  “My eyes will be alert and the proper signals will be in place.” Forenzo started back for the door. “Now I better see about arranging for the doctor and getting you moved. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Locke’s new room was on the tenth floor. As soon as he had chained the door behind him, he made for the telephone and read the instructions for dialing beyond Italian borders. The line in this particular room was not routed through the hotel switchboard, so no one could trace the call back to him there. He pulled the girl’s number in Falmouth from his memory and dialed it properly.

  “Hello,” she said tentatively.

  “I’m in trouble. I need Colin.”

  There was no response.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said this is Locke. I need Colin.”

  Locke could hear the girl’s erratic breathing on the other end before she spoke again.

  “Uncle Colin has gone Fishing.”

  The phone clicked off and Chris felt the walls closing in around him.

  Chapter 22

  DOGAN AND MARNA moved up the hill together, keeping the shack always in sight.

  “It looks deserted,” Dogan said as they moved within killing range for his Heckler and Koch P-9.

  “It’s not,” Marna responded confidently.

  Dogan made sure the P-9 was ready for a quick draw, wishing he had taken the Mac-10 machine pistol along instead. Its nine-millimeter, thirty-shot clip would be infinitely more comforting at this point.

  They had cleared a ridge thirty yards before the shack when the blast rang out. Instinctively both Dogan and Marna dove to the ground.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “A little shaken, that’s all. What did you make it?”

  “Shotgun, double-barrel. Whoever’s inside isn’t much of a shot.”

  Another blast sounded, apparently aimed at nothing.

  “Just trying to scare us away, you think?” Marna asked.

  “They would have waited until we were in range if they meant to kill us. Hell, they could have waited till we were right on top of their doorstep the way we were moving.”

  “Then who the hell is it?”

  Dogan was already starting to rise. “There’s only one way to find out… .”

  “Ross!” Marna shouted as loud as she dared.

  But it was too late. Dogan was already standing straight up with his hands held directly over his head and pistol plainly in view.

  “I’m throwing my weapon down,” he yelled to the inhabitants of the shack. He tossed the P-9 aside. It rolled across the dirt. “I’m unarmed now,” he said calmly, still holding his hands high. “We mean you no harm. We only want to ask you a few questions.” A pause. “We can help you.” Another pause. “I’m going to walk slowly forward. Please signal me if it’s all right to keep going.”

  Dogan started walking, heart in his mouth, ready to lunge to the side at the first sight of a gun barrel. His actions represented a clear violation of every rule in the book. This was the last thing a field agent was supposed to do, but his instincts overruled standard precautions.

  Dogan kept walking, his pace slow and measured, until he was within ten yards of the shack and could see that it was haphazardly constructed almost totally of nearly burned wood. There was movement inside, followed by a loud creak. Dogan froze.

  The door swung open. Still he could make out nothing inside. He reduced his pace slightly, ready to spring.

  When he reached the doorway, he had to bend at the knees to pass inside. His vision fizzled in the darkness. He started to straighten up and something crashed into his back, pitching him down hard to the floor.

  “The other one I saw, tell her to come in too!” a voice demanded in broken English.

  Dogan looked up. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Before him was a boy of barely thirteen, dressed in tattered white clothes. His dirty face was all but hidden by his long, scraggly hair. Dogan raised himself to a sitting position slowly, keeping his hands in the air so not to spook the boy who held a shotgun in trembling hands before him.

  “I’m going to stand up now. Don’t worry, I mean you no harm.”

  Dogan rose deliberately and moved to the doorway. He could have stripped the gun away from the boy effortlessly at any time but he needed his trust, and that was no way to gain it.

  “It’s all right,” he yelled to Marna. “You can come in. And pick up my gun on the way.”

  The boy paled at that.

  “You can hold it if you want,” Dogan told him. Then he heard the others.

  They emerged from the shadows of the makeshift shack—two girls and another boy. The oldest girl seemed eleven, twelve maybe. She held the other girl, three or so years younger, from behind at the shoulders. The second boy was the youngest, about four. The small shack stank of dirt, sweat, and above all, fear.

  “Ross, are you—” Marna’s eyes bulged in shock as she entered the shack. “Ross, who are these … children?”

  “That’s what I was about to find out. How’s your Spanish?”

  “Better than ever.”

  “Good. Tell them we mean them no harm. Tell them we’re here to help them.”

  The oldest girl screeched out words Dogan couldn’t keep up with. “What did she say?” he asked Marna.

  Marna’s eyes showed fear. “She said that’s what the others said a
nd they killed her town.”

  “Ask her who the others were.”

  Before Marna could oblige, the boy with the shotgun spoke in broken English.

  “Men, señor, many men. Bad men with guns from far away.” Dogan could see the tears welling in the boy’s eyes. The contrast between the sweaty hands grasping the shotgun and the scared, vulnerable eyes of youth was bizarre. “My papa did not trust them. When the … bad things started he sent us away. Now we can never go back!”

  The gun slipped from the boy’s hands and he collapsed to his knees crying. Dogan felt for this boy as he hadn’t felt for anyone in years. He moved forward to grasp him at the shoulders.

  “We will help you, all of you. We will take you away from here, where the men can’t get you. But you must tell us what happened. Can you do that?”

  The boy nodded, hiding his eyes as though ashamed of his tears. “But my English, it is not very good yet.”

  “Speak in your own language. My friend Marna will translate. Try not to get too far ahead of her. My name is Ross.”

  The boy slid out of Dogan’s grasp and backed away until his shoulders struck one of the walls. Dogan sat again on the cold dirt floor.

  “My name is Juan, señor,” the boy said in his best English. “But my padres called me John because someday I would go to live in los Estados Unidos and live better than they.”

  “Are these your brothers and sisters?”

  “The two girls, yes. The boy is my primo.”

  Dogan looked at Marna.

  “Cousin,” she said.

  Dogan looked the boy warmly in the eyes, trying to reassure him that he was not alone anymore.

  “I want you to tell us the story of what happened from the beginning. Take your time.”

  The words started spilling out in a flood and Marna began translating them into English almost as fast. Locke knew quickly there would be no sense in interrupting the boy to ask questions; that would only break his train of thought. Eventually he would answer all the questions he could anyway.