The guard muttered something to the others, and they laughed. As Evan hiked up to the trees, their amusement became clearer. Despite the sweaters and shirts he was wearing, the cold asserted itself in his joints. Already his feet felt numb in the hiking boots. He could hold out for an hour, maybe two, but without heavier clothes and a fire, hypothermia would set in. However, escaping wasn’t today’s plan.
From the edge of the woods, he looked back. Two magenta circles winked at him from the tower, the guard’s binoculars tracking his movement. The big chimney behind him sighed a tendril of black smoke.
Evan paused to search for that notch in the western rim of the mountains. The silhouette had looked promising last night, but now, seeing the sheer face leading up to it, he felt his hopefulness evaporate. The southern rise was higher but the ascent more gradual. A viable second option if the northern route proved unmanageable.
As Evan turned back, something caught his eye on the distant treetops. A large bird perched in the upper reaches of a pine tree, its white head as pronounced as a golf ball against the dark tones of the forest. He did a double take, focusing his gaze.
A noise from the tower carried to him on the breeze, the guard talking into a radio. A moment later a hidden rifle cracked and the bird disappeared, a few feathers floating in the space where it had been.
Evan’s brain was still working on what his eyes had just seen, the imprint of that bird floating in the white space, a visual memory.
A bald eagle.
In Switzerland.
Not likely.
He understood now why the tower guard had relayed word to the sniper to remove it from the picture. René could control a lot, certainly. But not nature.
Not wanting to give away what he’d seen, Evan didn’t dwell. Continuing quickly up through the trees, he berated himself for forgetting the First Commandment—Assume nothing.
He was in North America somewhere. Vermont, maybe. Alaska or Canada. René wanted him to believe he was halfway around the world on the desolate edge of the Alps, a further disincentive to escape.
But he was closer to home than that.
He remembered hearing that whip-poor-will last night, annoyed that he didn’t know what region the damn bird was indigenous to. Jack would’ve chided him for not paying better attention during wilderness-survival skills.
Really, Evan? It took a bald friggin’ eagle to pin you down on a continent?
But this was good news, too. Closer to home meant he was closer to Alison Siegler. And closer to the kid who had called.
Evan hiked to the clearing he’d made it to last time. There was no buck at the water’s edge, no loon in the half-frozen puddle. Just a porcupine feeding in a treetop, sprinkling down needles, forty pounds of quilled bowling ball.
Evan looked up the ridgeline, hoping to catch a glint from a scope to place the sniper. No such luck. Wind whipped his cheeks raw.
He thought about the perfect shot placement that had dropped the buck, two inches behind the shoulder, slightly below the midline of the body, straight through the lung to the upper heart. The tournament-worthy round to knock the bald eagle from the treetop. Even more impressively, both shots had been made from a cold bore.
He searched the ground, spotting a pinecone. He retrieved it, placed it on the flat of his palm, held out his hand, and faced upslope.
A challenge.
He waited. Waited some more.
A muzzle flashed high on the slope, and the pinecone exploded, seemingly at the same instant. Shrapnel flecked his cheeks as the supersonic crack echoed around the bowl of the valley.
Evan’s stomach had leapt into his throat at the impact, but he focused, judging the sound, gauging the distance. A high-power, major-caliber rifle was in play, .30 or bigger. Given that the shooter could take a pinecone off a flattened hand at five hundred meters, he could probably hit critical mass at three times that distance. Committing the sniper’s position to memory, Evan nodded respectfully toward him, lowered his hand, and started back toward the house.
Halfway down the slope, he became aware of a stinging in his palm. A closer examination revealed that a few splinters from the pinecone had been embedded in the skin. He picked them out with his teeth and spit them to the wind.
The guards no longer held their spot by the fire outside the barn. The wide door was rolled back slightly, and he could hear them inside. The tower guard remained alert above, watching Evan’s every move, the binoculars swiveling with him like a part of his face.
Rather than veering toward the porch, Evan continued past the chalet and into the tree line on the other side. He made his way up the southern slope a short distance, the chill razoring beneath his skin. The sun was low, the sky textured with dusk. He didn’t have much more time before the cold would drive him inside.
An outcropping of shale shaved a treeless patch on the mountainside. Evan clambered onto the rock and stood, eyeing the rise, thinking about where he’d tuck in himself if he were behind a sniper scope.
A gulley two-thirds up provided an ideal vantage of the surrounding terrain while guarding the pass. Evan hopped off the rock, found another pinecone, and returned to his position in the open.
He displayed the pinecone on his outstretched hand, held his breath, closed his eyes.
A crack.
The whistle of a round.
A wet thud behind him.
He exhaled, letting the pinecone drop. The sniper to the south was a weaker shot, a fact that Evan filed away for future use. It was a trial of one, sure, but that was all he was willing to risk. Judging by the miss, he was lucky his hand was still connected to his wrist.
His cheeks and nose felt stiff, his flesh gone to rubber. Time to get indoors. Turning back, he eyed where the bullet had blown a hole through the side of a soggy log, revealing clumps of moss and a white conical cap the size of a quail egg.
Drawing close, he knelt with his back to the sniper and pretended to tie his bootlaces. He studied the mushroom.
It grew singly out of a sack at the base of the stem. A thin skein of moss covered the cap. Evan plucked it and ran a nail across the surface, revealing pure white beneath. Amanita virosa.
Destroying angel.
Even a few drops of its juice could shut down a person’s kidneys.
He rose, palming the mushroom to hide it from the sniper. As he started down the mountainside, he pinched at the cap with a thumbnail, chopping it into tiny pieces, which he wadded in his hand.
Breaking from cover, he looked up at the tower guard peering down at him through the graying air. Holding the powdered bits in a loose fist, he walked over toward the barn and the deserted fire.
The tower was behind him now, but he could hear the skinny guard chattering into the radio. Evan neared the barn door, the crates where the narcos sat, the pot hanging over the fire.
He’d barely arrived when the door rolled open, both Dobermans charging at him. Snapping and snarling, they strained their leashes into straight lines. Two narcos spilled out after them, AK-47s raised, barking orders in Spanish.
Evan pointed to the fire, made a shivering gesture. The guards yelled some more, one of them prodding him toward the house with a gun barrel.
He gave no resistance, stumbling from being shoved. Shuddering in his layers of clothes, he hastened his pace toward the porch, dusting off his empty hands.
24
A Complex, Sticky Business
Crimea smelled like sewage, artillery shells, and boiled hot dogs. Candy strolled with Ben Jaggers along a boardwalk overlooking a rocky beach. Holding his arm through his raincoat felt like clutching a stick wrapped in cloth. A head taller than him, she wore leather pants and a bustier top. She’d teased out her blond hair voluminously, hoping to pass for a local girl. Jaggers was playing the role of a rich married guy out for a little fun, though he seemed to have forgotten to tell his face. He slouched along in a plaid button-up and brown slacks.
She felt like a Bentley being taken
for a spin by the mechanic’s kid.
Girls passed by, laughing and waving lipstick-smeared cigarettes. They were magnificent creatures, as girls from this region of the world were, all fuck-you sneers and aggressive makeup. Tights wrapped their impossibly long legs, and they wore white platform boots capped with fur, trotting along with the graceful force of Clydesdales.
As they wafted by in clouds of hair spray, smoke, and knockoff Chanel No. 5, the sullen little man at Candy’s side didn’t so much as raise his head to take in the girl-power scenery. His nose twitched, his mouth pursing as if on the verge of hocking a loogie. He smelled vaguely of mothballs. A camera dangled from around his neck, bouncing off what passed for his chest.
He eyed the streets behind the boardwalk, his hand tightening on her forearm. “Here,” he said.
She posed for him, leaning back against the railing as he snapped photos. Though he pretended to focus on her, he was really zooming in over her shoulder on a building up the hill from the beach.
She blew kisses. Scoop-crossed her arms to shove her tits together. Turned sideways and threw up a Marilyn Monroe leg.
He continued shooting the boulevard behind her. “Most of them have cleared out, but he’s still in the office on the second floor,” he said, his words snatched away by the wind.
They’d spent the day photographing the building from every angle.
The mottled skin of Candy’s back complained beneath her fitted top, no doubt angry from the cold breeze and salty air. She put the pain in the bank, a mental account she’d been saving up for Orphan X. She couldn’t wait to start taking withdrawals out of his flesh.
Willing away the discomfort, she smacked her bubble gum. The gum was neon green, her lipstick orange, both props to help her blend in. A gaggle of girls legged by, giving her competitive glares. God bless these Ukrainian-Russian broads. They oozed so much natural sexuality that they could slap the 1980s all over themselves and still knock the skin right off an American girl.
Except for Candy, of course.
She leaned over, grabbing her knees, gave the knock-’em-dead smile. Jaggers clicked and clicked.
“Everyone else is gone,” he said. “He’s the last one there now.”
“Hey, M,” she said. “It’s not polite to not stare at a lady. Especially when she looks like this.” She straightened up, spreading her stance, arms on her hips, her breasts pushing high—Colossus of Rhodes if he was fucking hot.
Jaggers moved the camera to the side of his cheek. His flat eyes observed her. Blinked. The zoom lens drifted over her shoulder. More clicking. At least it blocked his face.
She should be thankful for small mercies.
She thought about the kind of fun she could have here if it weren’t for Orphan M.
Of course, the mission was primary. Though they’d been in-country for only twelve hours, they’d ascertained a few things.
The phone-service company to which Orphan X had moved his number was located on the second and third floors of the converted cannery that Jaggers was currently lensed in on. Given present conditions in Crimea and the Nowhere Man’s proclivities, it was no surprise that TeleFon Star placed a premium on the privacy of their customers.
Van Sciver had identified the target as Refat Setyeyiva, vice president of operations, a thick-bodied man with scruffy good looks. A youthful forty, he had come up as a hammer thrower in the Soviet Olympic program, juiced and primed from the age of eight. He’d blown out his knees in his late teens, and here he was, overseeing operations for the discreet comms company that Candy and Jaggers needed to infiltrate.
Rather than dick around with hacking through firewalls, which neither of them specialized in, they’d been tasked with stealing Setyeyiva’s laptop to get the passwords and access the company databases. They were to eliminate him to buy themselves time with the computer before it could be reported as missing.
Given Setyeyiva’s sturdiness and physical prowess, this would be challenging. Attaining a gun in this climate would be conspicuous. So they’d come up with another plan.
Jaggers let the camera drop from around his neck. “He’s leaving now.” He checked his watch, jotted down the time in his notepad with a skinny silver pen.
Candy pictured the route Refat Setyeyiva would likely trace on his way out—through the rear door and across the narrow alley to the parking structure next door. There were specifics to lock down, angles to consider, sight lines to account for. It would be a complex, sticky business, and success rested on timing and preparation.
As her junior-high shop teacher used to say, Measure twice, cut once.
25
Not Very Nice
Back in his luxurious cell, Evan checked his phone to see if the boy had called back, but the shattered screen showed no missed calls. He slid the RoamZone between mattress and box spring again and went into the bathroom. Getting down on his hands and knees by the sink in the hidden camera’s blind spot, he stared at the J-plug outlet placed beneath the floating counter. Then he rolled onto his back and smashed the plastic cover with the heel of his boot. It took only a few kicks for it to chip and fall away.
Beneath it was nothing but an empty hole in the drywall. Wires stubbed out of the socket, connected to nothing. It was a prop, inserted in the space where a functional outlet had been.
He broke the cover into smaller pieces and flushed them down the toilet.
In the bedroom again, he crawled beneath the built-in desk. The Type C outlet was there in the darkness behind the back panel and the wall. He slipped his hand into the gap and managed to slide the edge of his thumbnail into the groove of one of the tiny screws. After five minutes of cramped machinations, the screw pinged loose, the outlet cover swinging down to reveal the blank wall beneath.
Evan sat back on his heels and marveled at René’s attention to detail. So many fakes and misdirects. Impeccable tradecraft.
When he crawled out, Despi was once more standing by the fireplace. She wore lipstick and a hair tie.
“Wanna not have sex again?” Her full lips shaped the words, a hoarse whisper to thwart the surveillance.
He drew himself upright. “Don’t you get cold?”
She stepped closer, her hips ticktocking. She ran a finger along his jaw. “What I feel is irrelevant. There’s only what I have to do.” Her flat words and expression were divorced from her body language, which she laid on thick for the hidden camera.
He regretted the joke.
She undressed him, pulling off the layers. Then she slid her hand to the nape of his neck, tugging him toward her. “Should we get this over with?” The sensuous affect paired with her matter-of-fact declarations made her seem like an actress who’d been given the wrong dialogue.
Evan steered her to the same spot on the bed, keeping them mostly in the camera’s blind spot. She pulled him on top of her, putting her mouth to his ear. “You have very strong willpower.”
“To not rape you?”
“What it would be,” she said, “is complicated.”
“Not to me.”
“So virtuous.” Her lips tugged to one side, a smirk. “Have you decided that you trust me?”
“Mostly.”
“Only mostly?” She feigned offense. “Well, I have no chopstick. So how would you kill me now, Virtuous Man? Right now?”
He ran his fingers through her thick hair. “I’d rake your head to the side hard enough to fragment your C2 vertebra into your brain stem.”
She took a moment with that one. “And there is a Hollywood movie crackle, and then I die instantly?”
“No. You’d be a quadriplegic. Maybe you could still speak. Or scream. But the break would cut off impulses from your brain to your diaphragm, and you’d eventually suffocate.”
Their faces were close, and they spoke in whispers. “That’s not very nice,” she said.
“No.”
“I’m glad you mostly trust me.” She clasped her hands around his ribs and pulled him tighter. She was sk
illed at selling the performance. He cringed to think of the experiences that had led her to perfect this skill set.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Were you taken like me?”
“I was stupid. There was a party on a yacht docked off the coast of Rhodes—that’s where I’m from. My girlfriend was going, and she asked me to join. I was recently divorced, so I said what the hell. René was there. I interested him. Not sexually. But as an object. He takes things and people. He doesn’t understand the difference.”
“No,” Evan said. “He doesn’t seem to.”
“He thinks I am a Greek goddess. It is the only thing we agree on.”
“How did he take you?”
“I drank the champagne. I woke up very much later out at sea. He showed me pictures of my parents in our little apartment. My younger sister at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She’s nineteen. René had her class schedule printed up. He set the pictures and documents before me but said nothing. He didn’t have to.”
He studied her liquid brown eyes for a sign that she was lying. “How long ago was that?”
“Seventeen months, two weeks, and a day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
“You weren’t stupid.”
“Yes. I was. That doesn’t mean it was my fault, though.” A pause. “When people think of human trafficking, they think of Thai virgins kidnapped from villages and shipped overseas. But sometimes it’s just drinking the wrong glass of champagne.” She let that one land for a moment, then said, “But I don’t know how to fragment a C2 vertebra into someone’s brain stem. So I must do this.” Her grip on his back flagged. “You’re no good at not having sex.”
“Thanks.”
She flipped them over so she was on top. “Let me be in charge.”
“Gladly.”
Her hips did something magical. “Is that you getting aroused?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Uh-uh,” he said.
“Nope,” he said.
She smiled. “Maybe I should be less in charge?”
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