Black Scorpion

by Jon Land

  Because it was his father.

  SIXTY-TWO

  BUNĂ ZIUA, ROMANIA

  As a much younger man, late twenties or early thirties, probably, some time in the late 1950s.

  What was his picture doing on the desk of a colonel in the Romanian Securitate?

  Michael peeled the picture back to better read the name scrawled partially beneath it.

  Davide Schapira.

  He regarded the folder again, the picture and the name, wondering if his vision had been skewed by the goggles and the smoke. But it hadn’t. This was definitely Vito Nunziato.

  Then who was Davide Schapira?

  Michael tucked the thick contents of the folder under his ammo vest. He felt Alexander grasp him hard at the elbow and tug, the sound of wailing sirens clear in his mind now. The two of them surged back into the hallway for the stairs. Michael heard moans of pain and occasional screams from the security forces who’d managed to survive the onslaught. The next thing he knew he was following Alexander down the fourth-floor hall toward a locked door on the right-hand side.

  Facing the rear of the building, just as Alexander had surmised.

  Michael trained his weapon back toward the stairs, while Alexander fit the key into the lock. The Heckler & Koch submachine gun suddenly felt heavy in his hands, as if its cooling steel made for a heavier tote. He heard Alexander kick the unlocked door all the way open, ready with his submachine gun as well, and rushed to join him in the doorway.

  Scarlett Swan sat chained to a wooden plank table, fear and resignation claiming her expression when she saw weapons in the hands of two masked figures, certain she was going to die. Until Michael peeled up his mask and her eyes widened, in shock and then relief.

  “Michael,” she managed, her emotions choking off most of his name before her senses cleared further. “I knew you’d come, I knew it!”

  Alexander unlocked the chains binding her in place and she staggered into Michael’s arms, kissing him more deeply and passionately than he’d ever been kissed before. She hugged him tight and Michael hugged her back, not wanting the embrace to end.

  “Michael,” she kept muttering, as they held each other. “Michael…”

  He eased her away and kissed her again. Emotions swept through him, starting with relief that she was alive, that he’d managed to save her life a second time. His hands swam through her hair that smelled of the same lilac-scented shampoo it had the first time they’d met, felt her hands sliding about the slippery surface of the Nomex hood that still rode his skull. Michael didn’t want to let go. He wanted to hold her, and be held, like this forever.

  “Time, Michael,” he heard Alexander say.

  It still took all his resolve to ease Scarlett away. “We have to go,” he said, holding her by the shoulders.

  “Quickly,” Alexander added, the wail of sirens screaming closer now. “This way,” he added, pulling back the heavy wood shutters over a window to reveal a fire escape that descended all the way to the ground. “And take off your mask, so we’re not spotted.”

  He went first, followed by Scarlett in the middle and Michael bringing up the rear, grateful this route of escape would keep her from seeing the bodies of all the men he and Alexander had killed to reach her.

  Michael shielded her from view of the carnage, when they reached the bottom of the fire escape. His feet suddenly felt slow and heavy, his steps labored as if slowed by the slog of thick air. He had feared the worst. And the worst had happened.

  Which didn’t explain why the archaeologists had been killed, what all this was about.

  Or what a mug shot of his father as a young man under the name Davide Schapira was doing on the desk of a colonel in the Romanian secret police.

  Alexander yanked them both forward, on toward their rental car just as a flood of fire, rescue, and police vehicles tore onto the scene from all directions at once. Screeching to halts in whatever space the road before the smoking building allowed.

  “Don’t look back,” Alexander instructed, “and follow me.”

  He led them to where the Alfa Romeo was parked in a darkened patch across the street just within the spill of the flames’ glow. In that moment Michael realized how all the practice and training in the world was nothing compared to the kind of true experience that defined Alexander’s life. Michael had known danger before, had experienced his life threatened before, but never anything like this. And nothing could prepare him, or any man, for the fog it left implanted in his mind hazing over memories of actions completed just moments before. A defense mechanism that cloaked it all with a dreamlike quality that left him wondering if he was about to wake up.

  Michael piled into the back of the car with Scarlett in tow, while Alexander climbed behind the wheel and tore off down the street, leaving the flames and chaos in the rearview mirror.

  Alexander kept his eyes glued to that mirror until finally satisfied no one was in pursuit. At that point, Michael settled himself with a deep breath, and opened the file folder featuring a picture of his father under the name Davide Schapira.

  SIXTY-THREE

  BUNĂ ZIUA, ROMANIA, 1958

  The man arrived on the noon train, one of the last passengers to step off into a driving rainstorm. He was tall and lean, casually dressed with a single suitcase and no hat or coat to shield him from the torrents. Had there been anyone about to notice, they would’ve thought the presence of such a man strange here, since it wasn’t a place prone to visitors.

  The Socialist Republic of Romania, formed just over a decade earlier, after all, was little more than a Soviet satellite, the country’s resources drained at will by one-sided SovRom agreements and the move to collectivization draining morale along with any hope for a better life. Stalin himself saw the country as no more than a “breadbasket,” his death five years before the man’s arrival ushering in few changes, other than a festering of crime under those bosses with the resources to pay off corrupt local officials who were mere Soviet sycophants.

  The past, meanwhile, had proven no friendlier than the present. World War II had ravaged the countryside, stripping the fertile, generous lands of their beauty and innocence. Barely a dent had been made in ridding Romania of the war’s residue and, over the years, a general malaise and grim acceptance had set in that the sorry conditions were there to stay under communism.

  That made it unusual to say the least to see any stranger, and a foreigner no less, in a remote Transylvanian town like Bună Ziua. Yet the tall man who climbed off the train that day attracted little attention. His dark, rugged features drew not a second look, except from the poor children hoping to fetch a few coins by carrying his bags. But the man carried his single bag himself, his ratty, tattered clothes indicating he was likely as poor as they were.

  The man walked the short distance from the train station to a still privately owned and operated type of establishment unique in Eastern Europe known as a crisma, a combination restaurant and bar that also offered a few rooms for rent. The man bypassed the small, local hotel on an adjoining street in favor of it and entered to the sight of heavy wooden tables spread about a plank floor. A smell like cabbage wafted out from what must’ve been the kitchen and the stranger moved toward a smiling, attractive young woman standing behind a counter.

  “I understand you have rooms available for rent.”

  “Just one right now, on the fourth floor,” the woman said. She was close to beautiful with flawless skin and a warm smile. “Where are you from?” she asked the man.

  “Italy.”

  “And what brings you to Transylvania?”

  The man looked about the restaurant tables that remained empty, leaving them the only two people present.

  “I smell food cooking in your kitchen,” he told the young woman. “I’d like some lunch. What did you say your name was?”

  * * *

  “Stefania,” he repeated after she told him, taking a seat at one of the tables. “Nice. Your last name…”

 
“Tepesche.”

  “Similar to Vlad Tepes, the monster who terrorized this area back in the fifteenth century.”

  “Some consider him a hero, actually, for protecting them against the Turks. And my family’s original name was Tepes, thought to be descended from Vlad himself. They changed it to Tepesche for obvious reasons. And what’s yours?” she asked, after studying his reaction.

  “Davide Schapira.”

  “Schapira doesn’t sound Italian.”

  “I’m also Jewish. You can’t join me?”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “Please, just for a moment. I don’t know anyone here.”

  “I can’t sit.”

  “But you can talk. We’re talking now.”

  Stefania recommended the sarmale, mincemeat wrapped in cabbage leaves.

  “Then that’s what I’ll have. I’m here searching for relatives lost during the war. Perhaps you can help me.”

  “I don’t know anyone by the name Schapira,” Stefania told him, still holding her order pad in hand. “And there are few Jews left in this area.”

  “They wouldn’t be using Jewish names—that’s one of the reasons why they’ve been so difficult to track down.” Schapira paused, as if gathering his thoughts. “And they may have resettled in different parts of this area, might even still be keeping themselves scarce out of fear of what happened in the war.”

  “They wouldn’t settle here if they wanted jobs. We have more going than coming. Who can blame them with all the poverty around in these parts?”

  “Tough for a woman to make a living then.”

  “Tougher for some than others, like those of us who refuse to sell their bodies.”

  Schapira looked about again. “Is this a…”

  “No,” she broke in, “not officially. The government looks the other way here in the mountains. As long as the owner keeps making his payments to the local branch of the Securitate, the secret police, there are no problems. Just a few women, each with a room to use upstairs. Would you like to meet one?”

  “I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”

  “I’m just a clerk and housekeeper. Sorry.” She hesitated, growing uneasy. “Let me put your order in. I really should get back to—”

  “I’m wondering if the Jews I’m searching for might be among these other women’s customers.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Schapira leaned forward. “You know this town well.”

  Stefania nervously brushed the dark hair that had strayed from her face. She had a luscious mouth and the deepest, most piercing eyes he’d ever seen, almost hypnotic in how they never seemed to leave him.

  “I’ve lived around here all my life. But I really should be getting back to—”

  “Then you must know everyone. I’m interested in those who came here after or even during the war. That would’ve been the case for my relatives who fled Italy after Mussolini let them.”

  Finally, he had exhausted her patience. “I can’t help you.”

  And then she was gone.

  * * *

  After that day, they crossed paths occasionally in the house when he was coming or going from the fourth-floor room he rented. The rumor was that Davide Schapira might be hiding out in Romania, but no one ever learned for sure. He always carried a notebook with a vinyl cover that grew more tattered by the day, and he was sometimes spotted making a notation inside it.

  Then one night Schapira answered a pounding on his fourth-floor room door to find Stefania standing before him.

  “Please, Davide, please help!” she managed between sobs, swiping the tears from her eyes. “One of the women…”

  He grasped her shoulders to help settle her down. “What is it?”

  “A man is beating her,” Stefania completed through trembling lips.

  “Show me,” Schapira said, joining her in the hallway.

  * * *

  The second-floor room door was locked when they got there. So Schapira reared back with his work boot and slammed it into the wood frame even with the latch. The door splintered and flew inward, just as a resounding thwack of an open hand striking flesh sounded.

  A big, hairy man, much broader than Schapira but not as tall, lurched away from the pleading woman, snatching a knife from his pants strewn over the back of a nearby chair. He smelled like stale onions and lumbered forward emitting a guttural growl-like sound.

  His knife slashed forward, straight for Schapira who’d come dangerously close to the stocky man. In a blur of motion, Schapira twisted to the side and snatched the man’s wrist out of the air. Then the knife was gone, clamoring against the floor, and the man’s wrist and hand were bent the wrong way. He was screaming horribly until Schapira rammed the heel of his hand into the man’s face. Again and again. Until the man’s eyes grew glassy and he went limp. Schapira then hoisted the bulky frame over his shoulders and deposited him outside the house in the gutter.

  Stefania was waiting for him back on the stoop, wide-eyed with relief and appreciation.

  “I’m looking for outsiders,” Schapira said, wasting no time, “foreigners like me even, who arrived out of nowhere and would not have advertised their true identities. Maybe they live in town, maybe in the countryside. Would you know such men, because my lost relatives could be among them?”

  “We call them the Strangers,” she said, when Schapira drew near. “I serve them food. Between me and the women working here, we probably know all of them in these parts.”

  Schapira’s face changed; no, more than changed. As if a mask he’d been wearing had fallen off to reveal an entirely different man beneath it. A man with eyes like black ice whose intense stare chilled Stefania to the bone.

  “And you can tell me their names, where they live?”

  Stefania nodded. “Given time.”

  “Take all you need. How much do I owe you?”

  She looked toward the bloodied body lying in the gutter, his face mashed to pulp. “You’ve already paid in advance. And he was one of them, one of these Strangers.”

  Schapira touched her shoulder with a gentleness and compassion that belied the display of violence Stefania had just witnessed. “The women in this house are under my protection now,” he told her. “I won’t let any harm come to them or to you. Especially to you,” he added, before he could think twice about it.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Stefania said, repeating it two more times before kissing the hand that had just left her shoulder. “Please, if there’s ever anything I can do to help you…”

  “You already have,” Schapira said, smiling.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA

  Michael finished studying the contents of the file folder just as they reached Napoca Airport. He felt numb, on the inside as well as out, the killing he had done tonight transposed over the mystery of what had brought his father to Romania in the guise of a Jew looking for missing relatives.

  What had he really been doing here? Who had sent him? And who were these “Strangers” he’d seemed so interested in?

  None of it made any sense.

  Michael didn’t know what to feel, to think. The car’s cabin seemed to be closing in on him and only him, leaving Alexander and Scarlett unscathed. He realized only then a storm had swept in, battering the car with torrents of rain. The windshield wipers were fighting a losing battle against the windswept downpour.

  Alexander finally screeched to a halt in a parking space out of sight from the private terminal around the corner. The three of them lurched out together and hurried the rest of the way inside.

  “She needs to clean up,” Alexander told Michael, casting a glance toward Scarlett. “She’ll attract too much attention looking like this. And we need to disguise ourselves. Fast.”

  Michael, his mind still in a fog, looked at Scarlett.

  “I heard him,” she said, spotting the nearest woman’s bathroom. “See if you can find me something to wear.”

  * * *

&nbs
p; The best they could do was a souvenir sweatshirt that read I SURVIVED ROMANIA and a New York Yankees baseball cap, of all things. Michael knocked on the lavatory door and handed them to Scarlett as soon as she opened it, her skin smelling of commercial soap and hair sodden and matted from being rinsed in the sink.

  “Thanks,” she told him, managing a smile. “For everything.”

  Fortunately, they’d prepared for this eventuality by having Paddy fabricate a British passport with Scarlett’s picture for her to use. As he and Alexander used an adjacent men’s room to better disguise themselves to resemble the faces in their passports, Michael’s mind drifted back to the contents of the file on his father. He continued to struggle with what it all meant, as his turn finally came in the line to pass through Romanian Customs and Immigration.

  “I asked you,” the clerk repeated in English, his voice growing impatient, “what was your purpose here?”

  “I was on vacation,” Michael responded in broken English with a thick Spanish accent. His fake beard was itching and he didn’t dare scratch it for fear it might come off.

  “Did you buy anything while in the country?… Sir?”

  “What?”

  “Did you buy anything while in the country?” the clerk asked, clearly perturbed now.

  “I’m sorry. No, I didn’t buy anything. I was here to visit Transylvania, the mountains and the countryside. Very beautiful.”

  Michael realized he’d said too much, the clerk eyeing him suspiciously and letting the passport stamp hang in the air between them. Their eyes met, the clerk’s intentions unsure.

  Michael’s heart was racing. What if a warning had been already been issued to be on the lookout for two men meeting his and Alexander’s general descriptions? What if the clerk had already triggered an alarm and was stalling so security could arrive?

  Madness!

  His heart skipped a beat when he heard a thump, realizing in the next breathless moment the sound had come from the clerk smacking the proper immigration stamp down on Michael’s fake passport.

  “Come back and visit us again. Next, please.”