Overbrook Farms

by Neal Goldstein

  “Come here, girl,” he ordered.

  She approached keeping her head bowed.

  “How did you learn to do that?”

  She looked up at the man. He was young and handsome, she smiled and replied, “I taught myself.”

  The man gave Hak-Won a cold and penetrating stare. Hak-Won continued to look back at him, as she tried to figure out what he wanted.

  “What is your name?”

  “Kim Hak-Won.”

  He knew who she was. The encounter was not by chance. He had come to the camp for the express purpose of seeing the girl. After a few silent moments he directed his driver to leave. As the jeep pulled away, he turned and looked back at the young woman who was still staring at him.

  “Who was that?” she asked the guard she had been assisting.

  “He’s the new Director of the Department,” he replied. “A nephew of Kim Jun Ill,” he added.

  The following morning, she was summoned to the Camp Commandant’s office. When she entered the outer room, the clerks gave her steely stares. She had no idea why she had been summoned and searched her memory for some infraction she must have committed to warrant such a directive.

  When she was led into his office and told to stand in front of his desk the Commandant asked, “Prisoner 12004, do you know why you’re here?”

  She was sure he was about to tell her the punishment he was about to impose. Although she wanted to cry, she held back her tears, stood erect, locked her eyes on his and answered, “I have no idea.” If she were to be whipped, or executed, she would not grovel and beg for her life. If she remained in the camp for an extended period, she had come to the realization that she would be dead in a short time anyway.

  “You told the Director that you taught yourself how to fix the motor on the pump. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you learn that skill?”

  “I have degrees in Mechanical and Chemical Engineering. Fixing a motor is a basic skill,” she replied evenly.

  The Commandant asked her a series of questions about her family and background, subjects of which she believed he must be aware. Throughout the interrogation he never looked away, keeping his eyes fixed on her face.

  Hak-Won was all but certain the Commandant was about to order her execution when he asked once again, “Do you know why you are here?”

  “I have no idea,” she repeated her previous response.

  His cruel eyes gave nothing away as she waited for the man to announce her fate. Finally, he said, “Very well. You are being transferred to another facility.”

  A transfer to another facility, what did that mean she wondered as she was ushered out of his office? Was she being taken to a location where she would be shot, a place even more remote and isolated than the hellhole in which she had been housed for the past several months?

  Eight hours later she was back in Pyongyang. She still had no idea why she had been taken from Yodok or what her future held.

  The guard took her to a hospital, where a nurse directed her to shower, and a female doctor administered a thorough examination and gave her a series of injections. When the examination was over, the nurse took her to a room and told her she would be given dinner and would spend the night there. When the nurse left Hak-Won noticed there was no lock on the door.

  She tried to force herself to remain calm, however, her anxiety and confusion over the events of the last several hours made that impossible. There was no way she could eat or sleep, she thought, but when the dinner tray was brought to her room, the aroma of the food overwhelmed her. The sight of the fresh vegetables and roast chicken brought tears to her eyes. She ate as slowly as possible, so as not to choke. As soon as she lay down on the soft mattress, she fell into a deep sleep.

  The next morning when she awoke there was a dress hanging on the inside of the door, new underwear, and a pair of sandals had been placed on the chair beside her bed. There was a knock on her door and a woman wearing a military style uniform with no insignia or identification entered. “Ms. Kim, after your breakfast I’ll be accompanying you to your meeting.”

  “Who will I be meeting?” Hak-Won asked.

  The woman smiled and left without answering.

  Hak-Won put on the new clothes and could not believe how wonderful it felt to be clean and wearing something other than the filthy coarse prison rags she had worn for the past several months. She sat in the chair lost in thought and hadn’t noticed the uniformed woman return.

  “Ms. Kim?” the woman spoke and jolted her back to reality. “Please come with me.”

  She was driven in silence to a nondescript government building, taken to the top floor and told to wait in an outer office where two armed guards wearing the same uniform as her female escort were stationed. When her escort left, Hak-Won shifted her eyes to the guards who refused to make eye contact.

  After what seemed like hours to Hak-Won, the door to the inner office opened and the man she had encountered at Yodok the previous day whom she had been told was the new Director of State security, stepped out. “Good morning Ms. Kim.” The two guards snapped to attention and Hak-Won stood up.

  The man gestured with his hand for her to enter his office.

  “Please be seated,” he said as he sat down in one of the two straight-backed chairs that had been placed in front of an oversized desk. She took her seat and looked around the room. With the exception of a picture of Kim Jun Ill, the office walls were barren. There was no furniture other than the two chairs and the desk. She noticed there was nothing on the desk.

  “I assume you must be wondering why you are here,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He smiled and told her.

  Six months later Hanna Chao arrived in London.

  8

  August 2015, The Dijonari Farm

  The days stretched into weeks, and Haley became more and more comfortable and secure living in the loving environment with Hunter and the Dijonari family. There were still many moments of melancholy when the devastating memories of the terrible recent events, her father’s accident, the kidnapping, and her mother’s murder would descend upon her. With the advice of a child psychologist, Lena and Hunter gently helped the child get through the dark times. One or the other, sometimes both, were always with Haley.

  Lena arranged for a private tutor, one of the teachers from the best academy in Caracas, to come to the farm three afternoons a week, to work with Haley. Hunter and she were amazed at how quickly the child picked up Spanish and her facility with math and science. The tutor believed Haley had an IQ that must be off the charts.

  One afternoon after her tutoring session Haley found Hunter on the back porch. He was bending a wire hanger with a pair of pliers, fashioning it into what appeared to be a flower. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  He looked up and smiled, “I’m making a gift for you.”

  Haley sat down across from him and watched Hunter as he worked. A half-hour later, he handed her a long stem rose made out of wire.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you…how did you learn to do that?”

  Hunter hesitated for several seconds before responding as he recalled a distant memory, and said, “When I was around your age, I used to make drawings- pencil sketches of people in my neighborhood, and make little figures…toys and other things out of wire hangers and pipe cleaners. Gifts for my mother.”

  “Like this rose?” Haley asked.

  He nodded.

  “How did you know how to do that?”

  Hunter shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know. I just did.”

  After a moment Haley said, “Maybe we should ask your mother.”

  He looked at the child’s earnest face and responded, “I’m afraid we can’t. My mother passed away a long time ago.”

  “Oh,” she stood up, walked over to Hunter, embraced him and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. It’s alright sweetheart,” he said as they continued to hold one a
nother.

  When he wasn’t with the child, Hunter continued to try to uncover who was behind the murders of Haley’s parents and likely continued to pose a threat to the child. Although he trusted the Dijonari family, he realized Haley and he could not remain in Caracas permanently, at least not now. Their continued presence posed a threat to Lena and her family, and this he could not allow. Sooner or later, whoever was behind the plot would send agents to find them, if they had not already done so.

  He needed a way to get them safely to a more secure location. Some place they would never trace to him or the girl, somewhere they could disappear and buy the time he needed to get to the bottom of this, no matter how long it would take.

  * * *

  While Hunter devoted his time and energy to keeping Haley safe, Sinclair, the assassin hired by Global Security, was searching for the girl. Over the years Sinclair had amassed a perfect record of finding and eliminating the designated targets, regardless of the seemingly impossible obstacles and extremes to which the quarry would go to survive. In this instance, with unlimited resources available, and the brief interval between the escape and the assignment, the odds were distinctly in favor of a short and successful hunt.

  Sinclair traced Hunter and the girl’s escape from the compound in El Hatillo to their last known location six kilometers from the center of Caracas. The assassin had access to both official channels and extensive gang and other criminal contacts, and thus far there had been no results. There was no record of either of them passing through immigration, no video from the airport or the port of anyone meeting their descriptions using false documentation leaving Caracas.

  In consideration of the brief period of time that had passed since the search began, the odds were against Hunter having arranged for false documents and having obtained sufficient cash to secure private transportation on his own. It seemed more likely to Sinclair that Hunter must know someone in Caracas who offered sanctuary.

  Even though Caracas was a city of 3 million inhabitants, a black man traveling with an eight-year-old blond, blue-eyed girl could not easily disappear without a trace. Sinclair eliminated the slums and neighborhoods in which such an odd couple would attract undue attention. That left the more affluent areas, a much smaller radius in which to concentrate the search. Sinclair’s experience demonstrated that the hunted became less diligent and would eventually slip up as the time passed.

  Three months in, one of Sinclair’s informants reported a possible sighting of the child. The next afternoon, Sinclair watched as a handsome young man got out of the passenger seat of a jeep a young woman was driving that stopped in front of La Chiro Grille in the Altamiro neighborhood of Caracas. Before he closed his door, a blond girl got out of the back seat of the vehicle, kissed the man and took his place in the front of vehicle. The young man scanned his surroundings, apparently concerned that someone may have taken notice of the girl. The child was Haley Montgomery.

  8

  August 2015, the Dijonari Farm

  “Have you made any progress with your investigation?” Don Carlos asked Hunter as they watched Lena putting nail polish on Haley’s toenails while the two of them chatted and laughed.

  Hunter felt the warmth spread through his body as the woman he loved and the child he had fallen in love with sat together like mother and daughter and made girl talk. He saw Haley look his way and say something to Lena and they both laughed.

  Hunter turned to Don Carlos, “Not really.” He glanced back at the girls and said, “You know we can’t stay here much longer. It’s too dangerous for the girl and to you and your family.”

  Don Carlos nodded, “It will break the child’s heart…and Lena’s …again.”

  He exhaled heavily and responded, “I know.”

  “Where will you go?”

  Hunter told his friend he had given his exit from Venezuela a great deal of thought. “I came up with a location where no one knows me. A place where, there’s absolutely no connection to me.”

  He explained that several years ago he inherited a property in Philadelphia from his maternal great aunt, a woman he never knew existed until he received the inheritance. The lawyer handling the estate found him through a search of the Veterans Administration after years of trying to track him down. For the past several years Hunter had paid the taxes and hired a caretaker to maintain the premises. However, he never changed the title to the property so it was not traceable to him.

  “When will you be leaving?”

  “As soon as the passports and ID are ready. It’ll probably take another week or so. I’ll have to make a stop at the Cayman Islands,” he added.

  Don Carlos gave him a questioning look.

  “It’s better you don’t ask,” Hunter responded.

  “When do you plan to tell Lena?”

  “Tonight, after Haley goes to bed.”

  A few hours later, Lena found Hunter in her office sitting at her desk staring at the computer monitor. “You’ve been avoiding me all day,” she said as she leaned against the desk and folded her arms across her chest. Since his return, when the two of them devoted their time helping Haley overcome the horrific events she had endured, Hunter could tell that Lena gradually came to understand that his failure to contact her and return to Caracas, was out of what he believed to be for her and her family’s safety and wellbeing.

  He turned his face to her, and as always was momentarily captivated by her beauty. “Lena, we need to talk,” he responded, keeping his voice soft.

  “So, talk.”

  He switched off the computer stood, offered his hand to her and led her out of the house to the back porch. They stood close, looking out at the star-filled night sky, neither saying a word. The chirping of crickets and the occasional hoot of an owl were the only sounds.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “If I could, I would spend the rest of my days here with you and Haley.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her gently on the lips. She remained in his embrace and they kissed once more, this time with more passion. It was the first sign of real intimacy since Hunter had returned. She gently pushed him away. “Are you telling me you’re leaving?”

  “It’s not safe for Haley or you and your family if we stay.”

  * * *

  “Buenos noches, Senorita,” the maître d’ greeted the drop-dead gorgeous woman who had gotten out of a taxi and entered the restaurant. “Welcome to La Chiro Grille. Will you be dining with us this evening?”

  The woman knew he was Carlos Dijonari, Jr., the son of the restaurant’s owner, and held the maître d’s gaze, her smoky dark, almost violet eyes conveying sensuality. Her sun bleached, blond hair had been cut short, accentuating her high cheekbones. She was wearing a short, sleeveless black dress that showed off well-toned, tan arms and legs. She was tall; her high heels brought her almost up to the man’s six feet two inches.

  “Would you like to wait at the bar until the rest of your party arrives?”

  She shook her head, and replied, “I’ll be dining alone. Do you have a table available?”

  “Of course. Please follow me.”

  He led her to a table by the window and pulled back the chair. She gently brushed against his arm with her hand as she took her seat. She knew in the brief contact the man would feel the heat of her touch.

  “Can I bring you something to drink?” he asked.

  “Can you make me a vesper?”

  “Of course. Straight up with Boodles gin and Polish vodka?”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “Olives or a twist?”

  “A twist.”

  He bowed and turned away. She watched as he walked to the bar. She smiled; he was handsome. She imagined that he would be a good lover. There was no need to hurry. After all, even she was entitled to have some fun from time to time.

  He brought her the drink and waited as she took a sip.

  “Is it to your satisfaction?”
<
br />   “It’s delicious.”

  “Would you like to hear what we’re serving this evening?”

  She took another sip of her drink and asked, “What do you recommend?”

  “This evening Chef’s preparing bronzino, it’s right off the boat. He brushes the whole fish with virgin olive oil and herbs and grills it. I’ll filet it at your table. It’s very delicate. Everyone seems to enjoy it.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  With the ritual of ordering the meal completed, she turned her thoughts to how she would seduce the man and complete her assignment.

  From the reflection in the window, she was able to watch the maître d’ without being obvious as he attended to the other diners. She admired his proficiency as he directed the wait staff and the confident manner with which he kept the pace of the busy room at just the right tempo, always making sure the patrons were served timely, without a hint of hurry.

  He stopped by her table from time to time to inquire if she was enjoying her meal and about her stay in Caracas. During these brief encounters they exchanged introductions and tidbits about their backgrounds. Her name was Alicia Sinclair. She told him she was a consultant for a security company on a long-term assignment in Caracas. This was the first occasion she had a night off. One of her colleagues had recommended the restaurant.

  When she finished her espresso, he approached her table with a shot glass of clear liquid in one hand and a black leather folder with the bill in the other.

  “Sambuca, on the house Alicia,” he said as he placed the drink and the bill on the table. “Please enjoy.” Before he left her table, he asked, “Can I help arrange transportation back to your hotel?”

  She smiled, “Actually, I’m not staying at a hotel. I’m at an Airbnb nearby in Las Mercedes. It’s a lovely evening. I thought I’d walk back,”