The Nowhere Man--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  A vibration in her jeans caught her attention, the punk rendition of “I’m Every Woman.”

  Excitement licked up her spine.

  She clicked TALK, held the phone to her cheek.

  “I HAVE made YOUR next RESERVation.”

  “Already?”

  “You HAVE to EAT WHILE the meal IS HOT.”

  “Gladly,” she said. “How hot is this particular meal?”

  “PIPING.”

  The lick of excitement turned to a tremor.

  “PARTICULARS to follow,” spoke the chorus, and then Van Sciver clicked off.

  Grinning, Candy slid the phone back into her pocket. She pulled on her shirt and shoved through the stall door. On her way out of the bathroom, she dumped her bra in the trash.

  After all, this called for a celebration.

  45

  A Different Kind of Ruckus

  Hot water pounded the top of Evan’s head, streaming down his shoulders. No matter how long he stayed in the shower, it seemed he could not get warm. His internal clock told him that it was a few hours past midnight. René seemed to be forgoing the sleeping gas, perhaps in honor of Evan’s last night at Chalet Savoir Faire. Evan had been told that he would be hooded and driven away tomorrow, dropped off somewhere in the middle of nowhere so René would have plenty of time to clear out.

  He had his doubts.

  He figured René was waiting for the next business day to get a human confirmation from his own bank that the money had arrived and was free and clear. Then he would dispose of Evan.

  For now Evan was back in his cage, and the cage had been made escapeproof. The bars on the balcony were rewelded and reinforced, the fireplace flue was bolted shut, and the front door had sprouted two more dead bolts. Evan had nowhere to go except into the shower, so here he was.

  At last he got out and dried off using one of the bamboo-shoot-patterned towels. The shock collar seemed to be waterproof. The tape holding René’s fingerprint had all but sealed to the underside of Evan’s arm like a clear Band-Aid.

  The plastic trash bag had been replaced in its spot near the toilet. The only person who’d seen him use it to thwart the collar was Nando, and he hadn’t survived long enough to tell anyone. Evan tried to take solace in this shred of an advantage.

  His clothes remained balled on the floor where he’d kicked them off. He’d been searched well, but René’s men hadn’t thought to check beneath the insole of his left boot, where he’d hidden the piano wire.

  They’d transformed his room into a dungeon, and all he had was a trash-can liner and a loop of piano wire.

  He reminded himself that despair was not a luxury in which he could indulge right now.

  He dug the RoamZone out from the pocket of his dirty jeans and studied the cracked screen, wondering where the boy was and what he was going through right now. He recalled the boy’s scared voice, his words distorted over a swollen lip: So what? I get beat up all the time. Evan looked at the four walls that held him. Being trapped was one thing. Being kept from helping a kid who needed him was nearly intolerable. You should see how they keep us here. Like cattle, all lined up.

  And Alison Siegler. The Horizon Express would be nearing the locks of the Panama Canal by now, where her cries would be drowned out by the massive gates, the roaring culverts, the grinding machinery of the chambers. Every minute Evan was in René’s hands brought her closer to her destination. She was eight days from delivery.

  Frustration raged, a blade-winged bird beating inside Evan’s chest. He forced himself to breathe evenly, to calm the bird, to focus.

  He headed out of the bathroom and into the walk-in closet. He was just pulling on some clean clothes when he heard a rumbling from outside.

  He rushed across the room and out onto the balcony, hard snow pelting him. The lights beneath the eaves bathed the front of the chalet in an alien glow that leaked around the corner. No one was in sight.

  He heard the noise louder now, powerful engines roaring off the walls of the valley. Straining, he peered through the bars. The steel slats had been tripled, slicing his view into fissures.

  The gravel road was blocked from view. He breathed and he waited.

  At last an enormous moving truck edged into sight as it turned in to the circular cobblestone driveway and passed from his field of vision.

  And then another.

  Another.

  The last parked with its rear still visible. Workers coalesced at the back of the truck around the rolling door. It rattled up on creaky tracks and banged, dislodging a shelf of ice from the roof.

  Several of the men hopped inside, and a moment later an enormous flat item, sized like a barn door and ensconced in protective wooden crating, emerged. The workers lowered it from the truck, laboring under its weight, and staggered out of view toward the porch.

  Evan realized now why René had chosen not to knock him out with halogenated ether. He wanted Evan to witness this.

  Whatever this was.

  The workers came back for another like-shaped object. Evan wondered just what the hell it was.

  A few minutes later came a different kind of ruckus from deep inside the chalet.

  Saws revving and power screwdrivers and the screech of rent metal.

  Construction noises.

  Evan returned to his room, put his ear to the sturdy front door, and listened for a while. After a time his legs grew sore, so he sat with his back to the door. An hour passed and then another, the clamor never subsiding. A few times he nodded off, but the sound was piercing and irregular enough to avert sleep.

  The dread gathering in his stomach didn’t help either.

  He watched the first light of morning filter through the bars. It crept across the floor, inch by inch. It had just reached his toes when he heard the moving trucks rumble away.

  A blissful moment of silence followed.

  Then the electricity hit, flame erupting around his neck, shooting tendrils of heat through his jaw and down into his chest. The shock flattened him to the floorboards.

  It continued, feeding Evan a steady current of pain. Somewhere beneath the static, he realized that these were the new procedures before anyone entered his room. René was taking no more chances.

  Sure enough, a moment later the door swung open, shoving his body aside.

  Dex reached down and gathered him up.

  46

  All the Honey

  Dead on his feet, Evan stumbled along the corridor a few paces ahead of Dex, a collared dog being taken for a walk. Instead of a leash, Dex had only to hold the transmitter up. A tap of his finger would send Evan to the floor.

  They passed the library and then the sunroom. Every step heightened Evan’s curiosity. And his concern. What torture device had René built for him?

  When they passed through the doorway into the ballroom, Evan was shocked into stillness. He gaped at the item that had been constructed in the dead center of the vast space.

  A rectangular box the size of a cargo-shipping container, built of what seemed to be bullet-resistant glass, probably Lexan or another sturdy-as-hell thermoplastic polymer. A freestanding room, nearly seamless, save for a small vent in the back befitting a reptile terrarium.

  A hatch resembling a bank vault’s door had been cut into one end of the rectangle, swung ajar on massive industrial hinges. The heavy door looked to be a solid foot thick, as were the walls. Embedded below the steel-bar handle was an inset screen and a sensor panel the size of a Frisbee.

  René stood proudly in front of the Lexan vault, his surviving guards lined up behind him like White House staff awaiting a new president. René nodded at the open door, and Dex prodded Evan forward.

  As Dex shoved Evan across the threshold, his shoulder skimmed the frame. The corner sliced right through the fabric of his shirt, as sharp as the lasered edge of a carbon-steel plate.

  Evan stood inside, the air compressing around him as Dex pushed the door closed. It clanked sonorously, and everything grew s
uddenly quiet.

  Dex pressed his left hand to the Frisbee-size panel. The inside of the door featured a matching panel and screen, both of which now lit up. The panel displayed the outline of Dex’s hand along with the network of veins running beneath the skin. A word glowed to life on the screen above: MATCH. Next, a series of commands populated the screen—LOCK, OPEN, DISABLE, RECODE. The LOCK button highlighted as Dex touched its counterpart outside, and lugs slotted into place, locking the door and sealing Evan inside.

  No cords or wires were in evidence anywhere in the clear Lexan around the instrument panels; the system was run by an internal battery, a safeguard against the power’s being cut.

  René observed Evan studying the controls. “The vein patterns beneath the surface of our skin are as unique as our fingerprints,” he said. “This system uses infrared sensors to identify those patterns. Something about hemoglobin absorbing the light—it’s all too clever for me to keep up with. What I do know is that you will never crack out of this box.”

  “So this is where I live now?”

  “No. I’m just testing it.”

  “For what?”

  René drew closer, facing Evan through the transparent door. “Remember when you said I would not be happy after you sent that wire?” A sly grin. “Well, I am happy.”

  His voice, at a conversational pitch, came through clearly; the sensor panel also served the function of relaying their words through the foot-thick Lexan.

  “You indicated that bad things would follow. You were right. Bad for you. Good for me.” René leaned in even more, his mouth close enough to the door that his breath clouded the Lexan. “I know who you are.”

  A sudden cold seemed to fill the transparent box.

  “Who am I?” Evan asked.

  “Orphan X. The Nowhere Man.”

  “You have me confused with someone else.”

  “I was given all the buzzwords. A ‘richly funded covert-action program.’ ‘Neutralized tier-one targets.’ ‘CONUS and OCONUS operations.’” René’s forehead wrinkled or at least did its approximation of wrinkling. “The last two sound like sexual acts. They mean what, precisely?”

  “Google ’em.”

  René smiled. “I know we had a deal, but you’ve hardly shown consideration for our agreement. Killing my men, destroying my equipment. Why should I honor what you won’t? Given what you did to my lab, I need even more funds to rebuild, to acquire new medical machinery, buy another doctor. All this time I’ve been focused on what you have. Little did I realize that who you are is more valuable.”

  Evan asked, “Who told you this about me?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “These sources,” Evan said. “They found you.”

  René wet his lips. “I put out inquiries. Answers came back.”

  “How did those answers come back?” Evan pressed.

  “Through an e-mail associated with the bank account in which your money landed.”

  “Your highly private account at the end of your highly encrypted trail of wire transfers?” Evan said. “Wonder how they got that information?”

  “No,” René said. “I wonder how much they’ll be willing to spend for you. I’m guessing it’ll be a lot more than twenty-seven million.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Evan said. “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

  “Not the initial party. But some of the others.”

  Evan felt another plunge in the temperature of the Lexan vault. “Others?”

  “It seems you’re a wanted commodity in many quarters. Once I received word of your … secret identity, I explored the market. My subsequent correspondents were willing to communicate through more traditional untraditional means. I managed to scare up a few more bidders.” René lifted a finger and tapped the glass in front of Evan’s face. “We’re having an auction.”

  “You might not want to stick your arm into that beehive.”

  “But, Evan,” René said, already turning to leave, “that’s where all the honey is.”

  47

  Collision Avoidance

  Evan stuck his head and torso into the fireplace like an auto mechanic, examining the new bolts studding the flue damper. It didn’t give even a millimeter when he pounded it with the heels of his hand.

  The Ninth Commandment dictated: Always play offense. But he was running out of moves fast.

  He thought about what his last sortie had cost Despi. He could see the glow of René’s iPad in her deep brown eyes, how her face had crumbled at the sight held up before her.

  He hit the flue even harder, the ring echoing up the closed-off chamber beyond. He kept striking the metal plate, unleashing frustration and rage until his knuckles ached.

  Jack came to him in a wisp of memory: Good thinking, son. Damage the only weapons you got left.

  Evan stopped, breathing hard in the musk of the hearth, letting the throb in his hands subside.

  A faint noise reached him, and at first he thought it had been conveyed from somewhere inside the building through the chimney itself. But no, it was more distant. He drew himself out and listened carefully.

  A scraping sound. Not from the chalet but from outside.

  He moved to the sliding glass door and stepped through into a blast of snow. It was late afternoon, the front edge of dusk made gloomier by bruise-colored clouds blotting out the sun. Squinting against the flakes, he peered through the dense bars toward the sound.

  It took a few moments, but finally several figures came visible about halfway between the chalet and the barn, forms laboring in the whiteness. He could make out only their outlines, but eventually it became clear that they were using shovels, their blades scraping against the ice.

  As the snowfall diminished, he noted four of them working away.

  Not digging. Clearing a space.

  He leaned closer, hands clenching the cold bars. The space, set a good distance from the buildings and any trees, looked to be about ten meters by ten meters.

  It struck him what they were making, and suddenly even the bite of the air couldn’t cool the electric surge of panic rolling through him.

  He came inside, put his shoulders against the sliding glass door, and closed his eyes. Tilting his head back, he took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

  The hissing from the air vent caught him off guard. His eyes flew open, and he gulped in a mouthful before realizing what he’d done. Already he felt the haze climbing into his head, the weight gathering on his eyelids.

  It was so much earlier than usual. René had been wise to vary the schedule, to make the gassing episodes unpredictable.

  Stumbling to the bed, Evan barely had time to curse his lack of preparedness before passing out.

  * * *

  The vibration stirred him from a deep, dreamless sleep. He groped beneath his pillow, came out with the wrecked RoamZone. A familiar number flickered across the cracked screen and then vanished.

  It took great effort to lift his head. “Yuh?”

  His mouth was bone dry, his tongue bitter, coated with a chemical aftertaste.

  The same hushed voice came through the line, barely audible over the poor connection. “Are you coming to get me?”

  Evan sat up. With mounting frustration he looked at the new dead bolts, the welded cage of the balcony. He forced a swallow down his sandpaper throat. “No, I’m…”

  He was at a loss for how to complete the sentence.

  “Why won’t you?”

  “I … I can’t right now.”

  Static flared up, and Evan prayed the line wouldn’t cut out. How fragile his connection to the world, to what his life had been.

  “Try,” the boy said. “You have to try.”

  “I did. I am.”

  “The girl said you take care of people who need help,” the boy said. “I should’ve known it was fake.”

  “It’s not fake,” Evan said. “I’m not fake.”

  Crackling on the line rendered the boy’s
response inaudible.

  Evan made a fist, pressed it against his thigh. Hard. “I just … I just don’t know how to help you right now.”

  “It’s all lies and stories,” the boy said. “No one saves anyone.”

  Breathing in powdered sugar and sunscreen at the Veterans Day parade, Jack’s warm hand resting on Evan’s coat-hanger shoulder. Pavarotti’s nine high Cs washing over them in the fire-warm study. The hard part is staying human. The view from the window of a dormer room that was his and only his.

  “Yes. They do.” Evan couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten choked up. It felt bizarre, out of control.

  In the silence he could hear the boy breathing across the phone.

  “You’ll forget me,” the boy finally said. “Everyone does.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  The voice grew even quieter, barely a whisper. “You have to remember me.”

  Heat burned beneath Evan’s face. “I will.”

  The connection cut in and out, stealing the boy’s words. “… have to … be too late…”

  As Evan strained to hear, a noise came from outside, a resonant thumping.

  A sound he knew all too well.

  He threw his legs over the side of the bed, willed himself to stand. His knees felt wobbly, his skull filled with concrete.

  The noise grew louder, vibrating the walls, the floor beneath his feet, the flesh on his bones. He was unsure if the vise pinching his temples was a headache or just dread tightening its grasp on him.

  “Listen,” he said into the phone. “Hold up. Just … hang on.”

  He dropped the RoamZone onto the bed and stumbled to the balcony. The frosty air hit him full force, but the snow had vanished, leaving the night as clear as glass.

  Two glowing dots approached through the sky, one red, one green.

  Collision-avoidance lights.

  The helicopter banked and set down on the patch of cleared ground between the chalet and the barn. A door swung open, and a man emerged onto the makeshift helipad, a black hood tied over his head.

  Bundled in a thick coat, Dex walked out to meet him. The Dobermans at his side barked and barked at the still-spinning blades. Dex untied the hood from around the man’s head and tugged it off.