The rag around Jordan’s hand had completely soaked through and blood was dripping steadily on the dirt floor, making a rust-colored slurry. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need another cloth or something.” He cupped his other hand to catch the drips and went outside. Feda’s father was standing outside the hujra in conversation with two other men. They stopped talking when Jordan came out and looked at him with hard eyes. Feda’s father saw the blood-soaked rag and took Jordan’s wrist. He unwrapped the wound and looked at it. There was no expression on his face, just a bland thoughtfulness. Without looking up he barked an order and Jordan heard a reply from inside. A moment later one of the women came out with a small cooking pot, a light cotton shirt and a jar of oil. Outside, two women were cooking flatbread on an oil drum stove. At a word from Feda’s father they gathered their things and hurried away with downcast eyes.
The woman from the hujra tore the cotton shirt into strips and put most of them into the pot. Then she took a burning stick from the fire and lit them. She gently fanned the pot as the cotton burned to ash. Then she poured in some of the amber oil and muddled it to make a thick gray paste. She took the remaining strips and soaked them in it. Satisfied, she nodded to Feda’s father. He called to Feda, who came running. There was a quick conversation. Jordan saw Feda’s eyes go wide for a moment.
“My father says you must stop the bleeding. This is the only way. He is sorry.”
“What do you mean, what is the only way?” Jordan said.
Before he could react the men had pushed him to his knees beside the incandescent half oil drum. The tribal chief seized Jordan’s wrist with an iron grip and turned his hand over and then pressed it right on the drum as another man stepped behind and put his hand over Jordan’s mouth.
Jordan screamed as the flesh of his hand seared and cauterized, but even as he did he registered with some surprise the almost complete absence of pain. If anything there was a sensation of extreme cold, nothing more. He smelled it, like meat searing on an iron skillet, and heard it, an angry sputtering hiss, but felt nothing. After a long second his mouth was released and his hand was lifted from the drum. He caught a glimpse of red puddled flesh already blistering; it looked like wax just starting to set. He watched as a bystander, someone present but not materially involved. Then, slowly, the hurt came. It was like a sound that was too high to hear but was now falling into the audible range; first just a high whisper, then building to a piercing whine, descending through a shriek to a howl and finally to a deafening, all-obliterating roar.
He gasped, his eyes bulging, dry heaving, his whole arm suddenly consumed by fire. The woman wrapped the cotton-ash-paste-soaked rags around his hand with quick, efficient movements, tying the bandage off and tucking the ends under. Jordan pulled the hand to his belly and rolled to the ground, rocking and moaning. He heard the men talking, their voices unconcerned, as if they’d already forgotten him. After a couple of minutes he came back into himself. The pain had peaked but then had settled. He didn’t know if it was the poultice or just a temporary respite, but while his hand still burned like hell, it was at a level he could handle. He found that he could push the pain down in his mind and wall it off. He started to shiver uncontrollably. Then he felt hands on him, pulling him roughly to his feet.
He was half carried, half dragged. He lost track of distance, of time. All around there were hushed voices. There was a banging sound and he had a sense of going up a steep incline. Then he was in the back of a huge truck. Several flashlights played crazily around the interior.
Packing crates were stacked everywhere like giant toy blocks. Jordan was led to the back of the truck. One of the crates had been pried open. There was room for five men if they stood back to front like forks in a drawer. Jordan leaned back against the hands that pushed him forward. He heard Feda’s voice high and clear through the babble.
“Mr. Jordan, Mr. Jordan. You must go. The ferry is about to sail. Friends will release you in Dover. It will be all right. It will be all right.”
He was coming closer. “You must go now. Go with God, Amerikaayi.” Jordan saw his face for just a moment before he was pushed in, pressed against a bony man who smelled sour and bitter, and then, with a bang of wood on wood, the light went away.
69
LUCKY MAN
At the end of the lecture as Stephanie was stuffing her notes back into her briefcase, Reina Nordstrom, one of her graduate students, came up, leading a thin boy with bad skin and oily black hair that hung in lank bangs over his face.
“Dr. Parrish, this is Tommy, the friend I told you about.”
Stephanie looked up. “Hi, Tommy.” He looked about as you’d expect, she thought. “Reina told you what I need?”
He didn’t meet her eyes but flipped his hair with a practiced jerk and nodded while focusing somewhere just over her right shoulder.
“Just need a picture.”
“It needs to look real,” Stephanie said.
“It will be real. My friend works for the DMV. It’ll look exactly like any other license.” There was a ring of professional pride in his voice. “When you take the picture, go to Kinko’s or something and get a passport photo on white background. I can change the background color but it looks bad if you don’t start clean.”
“Okay, I’ll get it to Reina tomorrow. How much is this going to cost?”
“Five hundred.” He was looking down at her feet, the hair once more flopped over his eyes. She was sure he wasn’t charging the high school kids that. She wondered how many people had died in car accidents caused by alcohol his work had made available. She nodded.
“All right. I’ll give her the cash, as well.” He seemed to inflate as she accepted the price. “Thank you, Tommy. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, no problem.” A final bang flip and he turned for the door. Reina gave Stephanie an apologetic smile over her shoulder. Stephanie shook her head and smiled back. No more than she expected.
* * *
It was like being buried alive. It was impossible to move. His shoulders were turned and his hips were pressed against the back of the crate. He was breathing shallowly through his mouth because when he breathed through his nose the smell made him gag. Air was getting in—if it wasn’t they all would have been dead already—but the thick smell of sweat and the rotting teeth of his coffin mates was unbearable. Jordan tried to take his mind away. He’d taken a couple meditation classes at the Y a lifetime ago, and while he’d decided it was all a little too flaky for him, he did remember the sense of timelessness the practice had given him. He could feel his heart beating and he concentrated on slowing and controlling its rhythm.
The two men at the far end of the crate were murmuring quietly. Jordan couldn’t tell if they were talking to each other or praying, though he suspected the latter as there seemed to be none of the natural give and take of dialogue. Suddenly the crate lurched. Jordan’s head slammed against the wood before he could brace with his arms. They were moving. The truck must be heading for the ferry. The murmur from his left paused for just a second and recommenced. There was a regular side-to-side sway as the truck drove. Turning was worse. At first Jordan tried to lean back against it, instinctively fighting to keep the crate from falling over, but soon he saw the futility in that effort and surrendered to the buffeting forces.
Then, with a lurch, the truck stopped. There was a muffled sound from outside and then a sharp crack and a shard of light as a crowbar burst in just above Jordan’s head. With a few quick pulls the side of the crate was ripped open and Jordan was blinded by four or five flashlights. He turned his head and raised one arm to protect his face. Someone grabbed his bad hand, making him cry out in pain. He was pulled roughly out of the box. His legs were unable to support him at first and he stumbled but several hands grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. He looked back at the crate and saw the four men inside yelling in confusion as several figures he c
ouldn’t make out shone lights in their faces and pushed them back in. Within seconds the side was back up and nailed into place. Jordan still heard the muffled voices of the men inside.
There wasn’t time to think. He was pulled roughly out of the truck and watched it drive away as he was hustled into the back of a rusted-out black Citroën. The driver was a man in his midthirties, full beard and intense, glowering eyes that constantly flashed to the rearview mirror to look at his passenger. He snarled something in Pashto and drove on, headlights catching the trees, dangerously close on either side of the unpaved single-lane road. Jordan was pretty sure he was going to be killed. He would give them one hell of a fight, though. He wasn’t afraid. Which was funny; he realized now he’d always been afraid. Afraid of losing something or missing something, but now, probably as close to death as he’d ever been, he felt nothing, no fear at all, just a mild impatience, a desire to get on with it.
With a skid of tires on gravel the car stopped in a little pullout. Several men came out of the woods and surrounded it, scanning the area. The lights switched off. The door opened and Jordan heard Feda’s voice with a mixture of confusion and relief.
“Come quickly, Mr. Jordan, change of plans.” Jordan climbed awkwardly out of the backseat. Feda was there and took his hand.
“Quickly.”
He led him through the trees to another dirt road. There was a small tan Renault idling on the shoulder with an older white woman in a green sweater and little round glasses standing next to it. She smiled at him. “Ça va, Monsieur Jordan?”
French, looked like someone’s granny, but she had a jaw like a bulldog. She offered a hand and he took it with his uninjured left. Thin skin, prominent veins but a firm grip and calloused palms.
“This is Maman,” Feda said. “That’s what everyone calls her. She is going to take you through the tunnel. There is a train. The man who was killed, Azir, one of his brothers was in the crate with you. They were going to kill you. A man was bragging about it and my father heard about it. No one will find out you are not in that crate until they open it in Dover.” He smiled, seeming to relish the image.
“You can trust Maman.”
Maman opened the trunk of her car and pulled up the carpet to reveal a hidden compartment cut into the backseat. Jordan looked at the tight faces of the men and nodded. He gingerly squeezed his body into the space. He was lying on his right side with his knees pulled halfway to his chest. The compartment was padded with old blankets and seemed comfortable enough. He craned his head around and found Feda’s eyes.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I think you are a very lucky man, Mr. Jordan,” the boy said. Then the carpet was pulled over him and it was dark.
A moment later he heard the car start and saw that there was a slit along the side of the seat back right at his eye level. He caught a glimpse of Maman in the rearview mirror before the interior light went out. Her mouth was set. He strained but all he could see was the odd flash of white as a tree caught the headlights and the green glow from the speedometer.
After a few minutes the ride became smoother as the car turned onto a paved road.
Streetlights swept the car’s faded interior. Jordan blinked to focus. Maman switched on the radio, syrupy strings and a French crooner. She smiled and her eyes twinkled with some happy, distant memory.
70
CURIOSITY
Julie Seward walked home as usual. It was just over half an hour from her office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the small Georgian house she shared with two cats and, once in a great while, a gentleman caller. She realized with some alarm that it had been almost a year and a half since the last time the cats had had to share her attention. It wasn’t that Julie was unattractive or had difficulty relating to men; it was just that the job, at least at this point, seemed to take all of her time and energy. She was a researcher for the FBI. She wanted to make Special Agent but that meant finishing her degree at night while still working a sixty-plus-hour week. She was tired.
She walked up Independence, along the side of the Capitol Building, then right on Pennsylvania and left onto North Carolina Avenue. Her house was two blocks up in the middle of a quiet elm-shaded street. She fumbled in her purse for the keys that always seemed to worm their way to the very bottom. She cursed silently under her breath as she opened the low wrought-iron gate and gingerly picked her way up the narrow walkway. The front light was out again, making the uneven brick treacherous in her low heels. She dug out her keys and opened the heavy door.
The hall light was out, too. The streetlights were still on and she could see lights on in the house next door. What a pain in the ass. Her hand groped along the wall for the switch that turned on the living room lights. Her foot slipped on something slick on the floor and something warm and wet brushed against the side of her face. Reflexively her left hand grabbed the doorjamb as her right swung up to protect her face. The arm struck something soft and heavy. There was a muted gurgling sound.
“Jesus Christ,” she screamed as she flailed in the dark and slipped to the floor. On her hands and knees she crawled into the living room and found the wall switch. The lights came on, blinding her momentarily. It took a moment for her brain to make sense of what she was seeing. The hook of the coat hanger had gone in through the back of the cat’s head and come out its mouth, holding the jaw open in what looked like a crooked snarl. The hanger had been looped over one of the arms of the brass chandelier in the foyer. The cat’s belly had been cut open and something that looked like link sausage hung out, dripping blood on the floor. The blood had smeared where Julie had slipped in it. The pool ran all the way to the stairs. The animal was still alive. One hind leg spasmodically pawed the air as if trying to get purchase on wet marble. Her open eyes met Julie’s, pleading. She was trying to make some sound but the hanger had clearly destroyed that capacity. Blood bubbled at the exit wound.
Something clicked in Julie’s mind. The raw panic receded and a clinical detachment took its place. She kicked off the pumps and smoothed down the skirt as she stood. She grabbed a side chair from the living room and stood on it, cradling Ruby’s body as she gently lifted the hanger off the chandelier. She felt the cat’s hind leg continue its fruitless pedaling against her jacket. She murmured softly to her as she carried her to the sofa. She looked away as she tried to nudge the sausagy thing back where it belonged with her elbow. “Shh, shh,” she whispered, “there’s a good girl.”
The front door was still ajar, keys dangling from the lock. No cars were on the street and it seemed unnaturally quiet in the house. A sound from the stairway made her heart skip. She hadn’t considered the possibility that whatever monster had done this was still in the house. Panic tightened her throat and squeezed her chest. Then she saw Buster, the other cat, a gray male, come slowly down the stairs, tail high, the tip flicking nervously from side to side. He ran his cheek and body along the rails the whole way down. He quickly crossed the foyer, delicately skirting the pooled blood, and came to her. Julie knew he’d be hiding under her bed if anyone was still in the house. He meowed accusingly while rubbing himself against her legs. Hungry. She was late. Buster seemed completely unaware of his companion on Julie’s lap.
Ruby’s breathing was shallow and her eyes were wide. She was dying. Julie knew it and knew there was nothing she could do except try to ease her suffering. She cradled her head and grabbed the hook of the hanger just below where it entered. With a firm turn of her wrist she twisted the hook out. Ruby’s eyes stretched even wider and her mouth opened in a silent scream, then shut, pale pinkish fluid beading at the exit wound. Julie dropped the hanger, startling Buster. Ruby’s eyes relaxed and found Julie’s and the tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth. For a second she looked perfectly normal and peaceful, then her body hiccuped. She got a faraway look in her eyes and was gone.
Julie took off her jacket and spread it out on the couch.
She laid Ruby on the jacket and went into the kitchen to feed Buster. She mopped up the blood in the hall, then poured herself a big tumbler of Maker’s. Ruby was still; it looked like she was smiling and squeezing her eyes shut. Her body was cold; she didn’t feel real, the weight felt wrong. Julie wrapped her up in the coat. She was scared, but more than that she was angry. This had nothing to do with her. She took out her phone and dialed Michael Herron in Boston. Herron picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, Jules. How’s it going?”
“Not so well, Michael. In fact it’s been a pretty shitty evening so far.” Through the cell latency she heard him start to speak, but she cut him off. “No. Don’t say anything. Just listen. I just finished cleaning up the blood from one of my cats who was gutted and hung up by a coat hanger through her head. She was still alive, Michael. She’s dead now, thank you very much. No, no, shut up and listen. This is on you. I’ve been thinking it through. This was a warning, you know, curiosity killed the cat, right? But I’m thinking, what the fuck have I been working on that could stir up a hornet’s nest like this? Nothing. There’s only one possibility and that’s you. Either that phone number you had me run or one of those pictures I tried to ID for you. And I fucking told you, too.” Her voice was rising, the composure slipping as she spoke.
“I fucking knew it. When that DC number came back cold I told you to back off. Goddamn it, Mike.” She was crying in earnest now. “So we’re done. You got it? No more little favors for old times’ sake. Nothing. You hear me? I don’t want to hear from you. Got it?”
Herron may have answered but she had already clicked off.
* * *
Matthew Chun refreshed the page for the umpteenth time. Nothing. ROBIN had gone completely silent. No new data in days. He should call Prenn but it was nerve-racking talking to him lately. He’d give it one more day.
Exit Strategy Page 25