The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Jeffrey Westhoff

  “My friend is shooting this with the latest in buttonhole cameras,” Silver said. “Incredible technology, isn’t it?”

  Brian had to agree. As his father approached, Brian could see he had nicked his chin shaving again. His father’s face, seen from a low angle, filled the screen and Brian heard the voice of Silver’s accomplice.

  “Excuse me. What time is it?”

  Brian’s father glanced at his watch and smiled at the stranger. “It’s about eight to nine,” he said and walked past.

  Silver hunched down so his mouth was next to Brian’s ear. “Your dad’s watch is four minutes slow,” he said. “I hope you get the chance to tell him to reset it.”

  Brian understood the stakes now. If he didn’t follow Silver’s orders, the people he loved were at risk. Although they were thousands of miles away on the other side of an ocean, Silver had just taken Brian’s family hostage.

  CHAPTER 6--ESCAPE

  Sitting on his haunches, Brian examined the locked door to his cell and contemplated escape.

  It was shortly after midnight, ninety minutes since the hallway light went out and one hour and ten minutes since Silver last made a sound. Holding his penlight in his mouth, Brian had spent the previous ten minutes quietly assembling an escape kit in his backpack. He had bought the penlight on a whim after spotting it in the checkout line at Target when his mother took him shopping for vacation supplies.

  Thank God for whims, he thought.

  Kneeling next to the backpack, Brian had assembled the items he thought he would need: three changes of clothes, windbreaker, Milwaukee Brewers cap, sunglasses, collapsible umbrella, rain poncho (still in its package), shaving kit, and Fodors guides to Switzerland, France, and Germany (just in case he was in one of those countries). He restocked his money belt and fastened it around his waist. Then he began his examination of the door.

  The hinges were on the inside. The easiest way to open the door would have been to pop out the pins holding the hinges together. But Brian’s penlight revealed the hinges were flanged on the bottom as well as the top. Only a bolt cutter could take them apart.

  Brian had already ruled out breaking the window because Silver said it was alarmed. He might have lied, but Brian didn’t want to chance it. The only way out was the door, and the only way to open the door was to pick the lock. When Silver had left four hours earlier, Brian heard him lock the door but did not hear him slide a bolt or a chain. Brian moved the beam to illuminate the crack between the door and the frame and hoped he wouldn’t see a deadbolt. If the lock was a deadbolt, Brian could do nothing but climb back into the cot and wait for morning.

  Not that it was going to help him open the door, but Brian was grateful Silver had left him his watch. It allowed Brian to track the hours as he lay on the cot contemplating everything Silver had said that evening, trying to separate the credible threats from the bluffs.

  Brian had challenged Silver immediately after seeing the video feed of his father. “It’s illegal for the CIA to operate within the United States,” Brian said, but Silver quickly responded, “It was illegal for me to kidnap you.”

  Following a bland dinner of microwaved burritos and Spanish rice, Silver told Brian to get a good night’s sleep because they had a busy day tomorrow. Sleep—what a joke. Brian didn’t need sleep after being sedated for so long, and he was too wired anyway. He turned out the light but lay awake mulling the situation that he and his family were in. He felt certain Silver had only the one person watching his family; Silver did not have the time to mount a full surveillance operation. Nevertheless, Brian thought it prudent to assume Silver’s man would tap his family’s home phone, cell phones, and e-mail accounts and might even intercept and read their mail.

  After four hours of deep, deliberative thought, Brian was certain he would not put his family in danger if he escaped Silver, not unless he tried to contact them after he got away. Still, Brian wrestled with the notion of whether escaping Silver was wise. He would be alone in a foreign country (which one, he didn’t know) without his passport. He wouldn’t be able to return to his school group because Silver would be monitoring them. He wouldn’t be able to go to the local police or the nearest U.S. consulate, because no one would believe his story and he eventually would be handed back to Silver. If he did get away, Brian would have only his wits, the supplies in his backpack, about eight hundred dollars worth of euros, and a single name to pursue: DeJonge. Escape was a foolish prospect.

  But staying with his kidnapper might be a deadly prospect. Brian fixated on Silver’s offhand comment about Tetzel being his “million-dollar asset.” He had an idea what that meant, and he suspected Silver might sacrifice his captive to save his own skin. Brian couldn’t risk being Silver’s pawn. He needed to be a player. He needed to escape, so he smiled when his penlight revealed a spring latch and not a deadbolt.

  Brian knew the difference between the two locking mechanisms from helping his father install a new back door on their house. More importantly, he knew how to pick this type of lock from reading Silver’s favorite Foster Blake novel, Dying on Borrowed Time.

  Inserting a curved bar or length of plastic behind the slanted side of the latch and quickly pulling it back should spring the lock. Brian had a curved piece of plastic. In fact, he had two. He reached into his backpack’s side pocket and retrieved the sunglasses. He folded the glasses so that one curved temple stuck out, then wriggled the temple behind the latch. It fit perfectly, but the plastic was too flimsy. When Brian pulled, the temple bent and slid back over the top of the latch without springing it. He needed something to hold the temple steady from the bottom. If Brian had a longer, more flexible length of plastic, he would have been able to thread it around the latch and pull both ends of the plastic. Thread! That’s it! Brian blessed his mother, because he was finally going to use the dental floss she insisted he pack.

  If this worked, Brian would have to move fast. After cutting off a six-inch length of floss, he replaced his shaving kit and hoisted the backpack over his shoulders. The floss was waxed, which made it easier to manipulate. Brian folded the length of floss in half and stuck the looped end into the crack just beneath the latch. It took four attempts to maneuver the temple behind the latch so that the tip was caught inside the loop. He pulled the floss taut and felt it tug the temple. So far, so good. Brian placed the impromptu apparatus in his left hand and gripped the knob with his right. He twisted the knob. It held firm, but would give once the latch popped. Brian counted in his mind. One. Two. Three!

  He yanked on the floss and sunglasses, and the latch retracted with a snap that sounded like a gunshot to Brian’s ears. The doorknob gave and turned left. Brian had beaten the lock.

  He held the door closed and kept the doorknob in the open position as he slipped his sunglasses and penlight into his jacket pocket with his left hand. He listened intently for two minutes but heard no sound. Calling upon his tae kwon do training, Brian closed his eyes and took deep breaths to center himself. Rising from his crouch, Brian pulled the door open and was met instantly by a merciless electronic screech.

  Silver had been sleeping in a chair at the end of the hall, but the high-pitched alarm woke him and he kicked over a bottle of Captain Morgan rum as he came after Brian. Silver blocked the only passage. Brian put his head down and ran to bull past him, but the hallway was too narrow. Silver grabbed his arm. Brian tried to counter, but the weight of the backpack threw off his balance. Silver only had to pivot on his heel to send Brian crashing into the wall. Brian went down on one knee and tried to recover when he saw Silver reach for something inside his belt and, God, would that horrible monotone whine ever stop? Brian recognized the device in Silver’s hand as a stun gun a split second before Silver pressed it into his chest. With a crackle, Brian’s body arched into a rictus and he collapsed to the floor.

  Next, Brian had the sensation of bouncing. Silver had thrown Brian over his shoulder. Brian wanted to push away, but his flaccid limbs would not respond. A
ll he could do was loll his head to the side and watch as Silver switched off a simple door alarm that consisted of two magnetic sensors. The racket ceased, yet lingered inside Brian’s head like the cry of some vicious bird.

  Silver said, “I picked up that alarm at a Home Depot the last time I was home visiting my mother in Bayonne.” He carried Brian back into the room.

  “Only thirty bucks. Not a bad investment,” he said as he dropped Brian onto the cot.

  CHAPTER 7--CATCH

  “You can take off your blindfold.”

  Brian guessed the trip had lasted ten minutes by the time Silver said those words, his first since they got into the car. Or perhaps fifteen minutes. Brian was a lousy judge of time, and Silver had taken his watch as punishment for the escape attempt. Silver also took his money belt before they left the safe house that morning, but Brian had anticipated that. Once the effects of the stun gun had worn off, Brian replaced the money in the belt with torn pages from the Spider-Girl comic. Brian’s cash was now hidden in his socks and sneakers.

  Most of the drive had been downhill, along twisting roads. During the last few minutes the roads had straightened, Silver had braked more frequently, and the traffic noise had grown louder and closer. They were nearing a city. Brian could hear another sound pushing from beneath the buzzes and whirrs of small European engines. Was that? Yes, the sound of waves rolling into a shoreline. He felt the sun’s warmth, magnified by the windshield, on his face. He smelled fish and seaweed and … something else. A tangy scent he never encountered while in-line skating along Milwaukee’s lakefront.

  And then, while the car was idling, Silver told him to take off his blindfold.

  Brian did and was dazzled by blue.

  Silver said, “Not quite like Lake Michigan, huh kid?”

  Brian nodded dumbly. Even on the brightest and clearest day, the waters of Lake Michigan were tinted dark green. But the waters now filling his view were the purest blue Brian had seen—a blue purer than he had imagined possible. The waters seemed to radiate with a mysterious energy, as if this sea were the source of all the blue in the universe. Only a distant oil tanker told him where the sea ended and the sky began.

  Brian knew this was the Mediterranean. He guessed that the unfamiliar, tangy scent was the salt in the sea air.

  He thought he had been staring at the bright turquoise sea for twenty minutes, but when Silver put the car in gear and jerked him back to reality, Brian realized his reverie had lasted only seconds. He looked around to figure out where they were. A harbor filled with yachts and sailboats was to their left. A steep hill whizzed past on their right. As they rounded the hill a columned monument came into view. The road signs were in French, and on most cars a white F stood beneath the circle of stars next to the license plate numbers. These “eurobands” were one of the first things Brian and his schoolmates had noticed about Europe’s vehicles. The letters signified what country each car was from, and F stood for France.

  “Figured out where you are yet?” Silver asked.

  This had to be the French Riviera, so Brian named the first city to enter his thoughts.

  “Monte Carlo?”

  “You’re only eight miles off,” Silver said, “but you got the country wrong. Monte Carlo is part of Monaco, one of those pocket principalities stuck between Europe’s borders like a gob of spinach stuck between your teeth.”

  Brian decided it was a good thing Silver didn’t work for the State Department.

  “What’s your next guess?” Silver said.

  Brian knew of only three French cities on the Mediterranean. He knew Cannes because of its film festival, but this city seemed too large. And he knew Marseilles because many a thug in the Foster Blake novels—how did Clive Hastings usually phrase it?—“had brawled his way up through the Marseilles drug trade.” But Marseilles wasn’t on the Riviera.

  Through process of elimination Brian said, “Nice.”

  “You got it,” Silver said. “The jewel of the Cote d’Azure. I’ve never been here on a day when the weather wasn’t gorgeous.”

  The car passed the steep hill and the road straightened and widened into a seaside thoroughfare.

  “Great view, huh?” Silver said.

  Again, Brian had to agree. Golden beaches stretched for miles alongside the blue sea. Brian saw hundreds of figures swimming, wading, or sunbathing. Tim would be giddy to know his friend was looking at probably dozens of topless women, even if Brian couldn’t make anything out from this distance.

  To their immediate right were buildings that had changed little since the nineteenth century. Houses and shops were packed together. They had skinny windows and shutters and the type of red-tiled roofs Brian associated with Mexico.

  Silver made a hard right turn into this older neighborhood of thin, pastel-colored buildings. Traffic was slower on these narrow streets, but Silver didn’t seem to mind. He made another right turn at the next intersection, followed quickly by a left. The car rolled past shops, taverns, and open-air markets. Another right and two more lefts and the car passed four churches within three blocks.

  Silver made another left. They passed the first church again and Brian wondered why Silver was driving in circles. Then he understood. He said, “Are you making sure we haven’t picked up a tail?”

  The CIA man nodded. “If you want to play junior spy, you might as well make yourself useful. There’s a yellow Citroën Deux Cheveaux back there that I’ve seen too many times for comfort. Keep an eye out for it.” He added, “A Deux Cheveaux looks like an old Volkswagen Beetle, except flatter.”

  Brian was about to say he wouldn’t be playing junior spy if Silver hadn’t kidnapped him, but something below the dashboard caught his attention. It was the car’s cigarette lighter. Silver wasn’t using its receptacle to charge a cell phone or laptop or MP3 player. The knob of an actual lighter jutted from the console. It was on the passenger side, within an inch of Brian’s knee. Just like in his mother’s car, the old one she had inherited from her father.

  In chapter eight of A Whisper of Death, Foster Blake uses a dashboard lighter to escape from Von Himmelsteen’s henchman, Mr. Nix. The day after Brian finished reading the book for the second time, his mother drove him to the Mayfair Mall. Sitting in the passenger seat, Brian had wondered if he could mimic Foster Blake’s sly maneuver of pushing in the cigarette lighter with his knee, then easing his knee back the millimeter required for the heated lighter to spring out without the usual popping sound.

  The first time Brian tried the trick, not only did the lighter pop out noisily, it hit his knee in the same way as a doctor’s mallet. Brian reflexively kicked the underside of the glove compartment and received a safety lecture from his mother. The second time he tried the trick, it worked. For weeks after that, whenever his mother gave him a ride Brian silently armed the lighter, secretly content that if his mother tore off a rubber mask to reveal herself as a S.C.Y.L.L.A. assassin, he’d have a weapon ready.

  Then it had been a private joke, but could Brian do it now when his situation was urgent and the driver was not a suburban mom but a CIA officer? Fortunately, Silver was driving on crowded streets and making frequent turns to flush a possible tail. If Silver were roaring down whatever the French call a freeway, Brian couldn’t attempt the stunt without getting them maimed or killed.

  Brian assessed his situation. Silver had bound his ankles with plastic straps, but not his hands. Silver didn’t want people to look inside the car and see Brian in handcuffs. Instead, he told Brian to sit with his backpack on his lap, figuring its bulk would hamper Brian’s movements. The backpack would be in his way once the lighter was primed, but it still contained the escape gear from the night before and would be valuable once Brian got out of the car. He had to forget about his suitcase in the trunk.

  The door locks were electronic, and the switch to unlock them was on the center arm console. That was another piece of luck. Reaching across Silver to unlock the doors would have been dangerous. Brian consid
ered the timing. He couldn’t control when the lighter popped; he guessed that once it did he would have thirty seconds before the inner coil lost the intense heat he needed. The safest time to act would be when they were stopped at an intersection, but Silver would be less likely to anticipate an escape attempt while the car was moving. Brian decided to do it while Silver was slowing to a stop. This opened the possibility that they would crash and the air bags would deploy. Brian didn’t know how hard the air bag would hit him, but he would be prepared for the impact and Silver wouldn’t.

  Silver glanced from the driver’s side mirror to the rearview mirror. He was preoccupied with spotting the phantom Deux Cheveaux, but that wasn’t enough. Brian needed to distract him further. He started talking.

  “What kind of gun do you carry?”

  Silver shook his head. “That’s one thing the books and movies get wrong. Few case officers carry guns. They invite trouble. You ever see me holding a gun, you’ll know I’m desperate.”

  Brian tried another tack. “What do you think Tetzel wanted to tell you?”

  Silver glanced at him. “Trying to help me crack the case?”

  “Do I have anything better to do?”

  “Point taken,” Silver replied. “I don’t know what Tetzel wanted to tell me, because I wasn’t expecting his signal. Our next scheduled meeting wasn’t for three weeks. The signal indicated he had important information, but that it wasn’t safe to meet in Neuchatel. That was last Tuesday. On Friday night he contacted me and set up the rendezvous in Lucerne.”

  “And on Saturday he died.”

  “Right.”