The basement was perhaps twelve feet by fourteen. Clutter had accumulated along the walls. The room was drafty. The only light was a bare bulb dangling forlornly from a wire between rafters. There were no other doors. No windows. No light coming in, no light leaking out. The 60-watt bulb overhead sprayed white light onto every dull gray surface and formed shadows among the clutter and the wood of the rafters.
Inside this room, they found Gaston Dunbar right where they’d left him, chained to a vertical support beam hewn from Lodgepole Pine, his form distorted by crazed shadows via the cone of stark white light. His head hung limply, his neck exhausted from days of supporting it. His hands were pinned behind the dense post of heavy timber, his wrists manacled by iron cuffs. Both his legs and upper body were banded to the post with layers of chain and rope. His shirt had been stripped off.
The three of them filed into the room and lined up along the wall, staring at Dunbar pinned there helplessly to the beam like a sacrifice to a pagan deity. They had finally caught up with him, tracking him to this lake house where he had been living for the past several months. They had caught him ten days ago, having tracked him halfway around the world and across four continents. Patiently and methodically following leads and piecing together his trail. They had gotten close four months earlier in Bangkok, but before they could jump on him he vanished again, fleeing the country in the dead of night. The turning point came in Madrid. An American expatriate working as an importer recognized him from a posting on the Internet and snapped a digital photo of Dunbar standing on a street corner. The ex-pat emailed the photo to Special Agent Kline in Los Angeles, and Archer and Raj hopped the next flight across the Atlantic. The trail eventually led to Holland. They paid ten thousand dollars for the address to the lake house and waited in the shadows for him to return home with his weekly ration of groceries.
Dunbar endured great pain at their hands as they labored at extracting answers from him. He lasted several long days before he began to crack. Slowly the details of his escape plan began to surface as exhaustion settled in and his defenses crumbled. Leonard Monroe had put the pieces in place, he said, organizing the entire operation from the outside. Dunbar had promised the lawyer four hundred of the five hundred million for his efforts. A bargain, as far as Dunbar was concerned. He told them about a banker in the Caribbean who could verify the existence of Monroe’s share of the fortune.
Most of Dunbar’s money was now tucked away in a handful of Swiss accounts spread across Zurich. He gave them account numbers, and within hours nearly ninety-three million of it had been accounted for.
But the money was of least interest to them. They had come for Sidney and Robin. Dunbar had held out until his body could simply no longer withstand the agony. Forty-eight hours ago he had finally folded.
Dunbar flicked his eyes at them. His long stringy hair sagged around his face. Sweat dripped from his chin and chest. He was striped with lashes and cuts. Beaten purple and black. His cheeks and lips bulged from something stuffed inside his mouth.
Raj stepped forward and forced Dunbar’s jaws open, withdrawing a damp greasy rag.
“Let…me…go…” Dunbar spat when the gag had been removed, his voice reduced to a raspy hiss.
“Kline found them,” Archer said. “Right where you told us we’d find them.”
“Go to hell,” Dunbar growled, barely able to breathe. His strength had left days ago.
“You think you were pretty clever, don’t you?”
“I’m more brilliant than you could ever dream.”
“Well, you’ve reached the end of the road.”
“Let…me…go…”
Archer stared at him a long moment, then turned and placed a hand on Raj’s shoulder, sharing a short moment of silence with his old friend.
Raj said, “This is for Simeon.”
“I know.” Archer nodded.
Raj turned away and crossed the basement to a darkened corner opposite the door. A dozen plastic gallon jugs stood in a neat row against the wall. The plastic jugs were transparent. Each was filled with gasoline.
Archer turned to Lindsay.
She had prepared a long, hateful speech, rehearsed a thousand times in her head over the years since the murders of her sister and niece. But now, standing there, in the moment leading up to his execution, the words failed her. She now simply wanted him gone.
“We should wait outside,” Archer said.
She shook her head. “I want to watch.”
“No. You’d be better off not seeing any more than you already have.”
“I want him to rot in hell.”
“He’s on his way.”
She stared long and hard at Dunbar’s broken body eerily silhouetted before her. Her eyes were glassy. It had taken so many years for her to arrive at that moment, to know that it was finally going to happen. She closed her eyes and exhaled a deep breath. Then she took Archer by the hand, reluctantly turning for the stairs.
Archer nodded at Raj.
Then Archer and Lindsay returned up the narrow flight of stairs and closed the upper basement door behind them.
Alone in the room with Dunbar, Raj stuffed the greasy rag back into Dunbar’s mouth. Then he twisted off the cap from one of the gallon jugs. The fuel sloshed about. He stepped close to the man bound to the vertical beam. Stepped close enough for Dunbar to feel his hot breath as he spoke.
“This is for my brother,” Raj said. “An eye for an eye.”
Dunbar glanced at the transparent plastic jug. Smelled the unmistakable fumes. His eyes widened in horror.
Raj raised the gallon jug and splashed fuel onto Dunbar’s torso. Then splashed it liberally onto Dunbar’s face. Dunbar jerked his head side to side, grunting through the mass of cotton plugging his mouth.
The first jug emptied quickly. Raj grabbed two more. Within a few minutes the walls were dripping with fuel, the gray concrete stained with broad patches where the liquid had immediately soaked in. The basement reeked of gasoline. He worked his way up the stairs, moving quickly and methodically.
Dunbar made his best attempt at screaming, but managed to produce only a pathetic muffled grunt. The fumes were already making his head swim. His chest heaved and his pulse accelerated as he realized what was about to happen, and that there was no escaping his fate.
Raj shut the door at the top of the stairs, leaving behind the condemned man in the darkness below. He reached the front door and opened it. Saw Archer and Lindsay waiting in the Peugeot. He turned his back to them and stood in the open doorway, facing inside at the murky outline of furniture and the upstairs banister and the deck beyond the vertical blinds that overlooked the dark water of the inlet.
He had a single wooden match in the pocket of his shirt. He used his thumbnail to ignite the tip, and let it flame up tall before pitching it inside. The wavering flame dropped onto the hardwood floor where the gasoline had puddled. The fuel ignited like someone had flipped a switch. The fire hissed across the length and breadth of the house as it gained strength and speed. Flames seared up the walls in a matter of seconds.
Raj took several steps back and watched the blaze expand. Watched the curtain of flames rise. He listened to the crackle and roar as the structure was consumed. Then he turned for the car.
The Peugeot navigated the narrow dirt road through the forested landscape in the milky gloom of twilight. When they stopped to open the gate, they could already see columns of smoke from the lake house rising above the treetops into the night sky.
* * *
It was best to leave Amsterdam immediately.
They took a train to Rotterdam, riding in silence as the dark fields and distant silhouettes of homes and communities fluttered by outside the windows of the coach car.
Raj was the first to part ways. He bought a ticket to Frankfurt.
Archer and Lindsay sat together on the train and whispered as they passed from country to country and crossed the French border. She held his hand until she fell asleep. S
he slept all the way to Paris. And when she awoke, sometime around dawn, she glanced over at him, but Archer was already gone.
To Shana, my muse.
Copyrightv © William Casey Moreton, 2012 All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
72 HOURS is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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72 Hours (A Thriller) Page 28