The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Jeffrey Westhoff

  Brian returned to Google and typed “Positive Enforcement” into the window. Before he hit the search button someone stepped behind him and said, “Your time is up.”

  “I still have five minutes,” Brian replied as he clicked the mouse. Then he turned to look directly into the face of Matthias Skyrm.

  CHAPTER 10--STAIRS

  As he stared into Skyrm’s eyes, Brian knew why that subliminal chill had shot through him when he passed the man in the Lucerne alley. Skyrm’s irises, so pale they were closer to white than blue, were unnatural enough, but they were made unholy by their outlines, hair-thin circles the same dark red as dried blood.

  Brian could not tear his gaze away from these eyes. The world seemed to retract, leaving nothing but a frigid tunnel between his eyes and Skyrm’s. Was this what it felt like to have a cobra stare you down? Skyrm looked back impassively. His irises flitted back and forth as if a subroutine in his brain were scanning Brian’s face. After several seconds Skyrm’s eyebrows rose and his mouth opened in recognition.

  “The boy from the alley,” he said. “This makes some sense after all.”

  Brian was confused for a moment until he realized Skyrm wasn’t addressing him but a man standing behind him. It was the tall man with the beige shirt who had pounded on the door to board the bus in Nice. Things made more sense for Brian, too. Silver had been correct about being tailed. Skyrm and the other man were in the yellow Deux Cheveaux, and when Brian escaped, the other man followed him to the bus station and then to Cannes. The man must have overheard Brian asking directions to the Internet café, then called in Skyrm.

  The two men formed a wall that hid Brian from the other customers. The tall man pulled a flick knife from his jacket and held it with the flat of the blade across his belt so that only Brian could see it.

  Skyrm said, “You will come with Mr. Kralik and me to answer a few questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “We would like to know your name.”

  Brian didn’t answer.

  “Very well,” Skyrm said calmly. “You will tell us soon enough. Please rise and follow me. Mr. Kralik will follow you. Do not make a scene, because we are prepared to injure you.”

  When Skyrm said that, Kralik grinned like a demented jack-o’-lantern.

  Repulsed by the grin, Brian turned back to the computer. The results of his search for American military technology glowed incriminatingly on the screen. Brian quickly clicked off the browser, but he had time to read a single headline: “Congress stalls funds for Pentagon heat ray.” Had Skyrm seen it too?

  Brian reached for his backpack, but Skyrm knocked his hand away. “I will carry that,” he said as he lifted it from the floor. “Now, come.”

  Gripping Brian’s backpack by the handle as if it were a briefcase, Skyrm led them out of the Internet café. Kralik took up the rear of their little parade. He remained just beyond arm’s reach behind Brian—too far for Brian to strike but too close for Brian to make a run for it.

  Brian kept his eyes on Skyrm’s back as he followed him across the street. Skyrm wore the same leather bomber jacket from Lucerne and a pair of dark gray slacks. Neither man spoke. Brian needed to break the silence. Even though he knew the answer, Brian asked, “Were you following Silver in Nice?”

  Without turning his head, Skyrm replied, “We have been following Silver since he arrived in Lucerne.” Brian could not place Skyrm’s accent. Maybe it had once been Russian or Polish, but Brian guessed it was the Central European equivalent of the uninflected diction taught to news anchors across America.

  As they went up a short stairway to the next street, Skyrm said, “Until I recognized you a few minutes ago, we didn’t understand your involvement. We thought Silver might be protecting you, but you ran away. That was puzzling. Now I see that Silver needed you to protect himself. And that makes you useful to me.”

  “I doubt that,” Brian said without believing it. He wondered what had happened to Silver.

  Skyrm was leading him across the street to another narrow stone stairway between two shops. “No more talking,” Skyrm said. “My car is on the street above.”

  Stepping into a car with these two men would be the equivalent of stepping into a grave. Brian couldn’t let that happen, even if he had to yell for the police. But no police officer was in sight as they crossed to the opposite sidewalk and Skyrm started up the stairs. This stairway was steeper and taller than the last, rising the equivalent of two stories. A metal handrail in the center separated up traffic from down, or it would have if anyone else were on the stairs. The steps took a sharp bend near the middle, so that the street above wasn’t visible from the one below.

  The layout gave Brian an idea. If he timed it right, he could get away from these men unharmed. If not, he at least would provoke a struggle that might attract the police before he was seriously injured. Brian shuddered at the possibility he might get hurt, but he had to risk it. He did not escape from Silver to be captured by Skyrm.

  Choosing the right spot was crucial. Brian had to make his move after rounding the bend but before Skyrm reached the top. He could not give Skyrm the advantage of level ground. How Skyrm would react, and how quickly, was the plan’s critical unknown. But Brian would worry about Skyrm once he took care of Kralik.

  They trudged up the stairs in silence, too much like a funeral procession for Brian’s comfort. He didn’t dare turn around to measure the distance between himself and Kralik because that might signal his move. He listened to Kralik’s footfalls, satisfied the thug was maintaining the same strategic distance as on the street. Brian had to lure him closer.

  As he rounded the bend, Brian saw Skyrm had about twelve stairs to climb before reaching the street. Brian’s moment was now. He started to run, perilously closing the gap between himself and Skyrm. As soon as he heard Kralik quicken his pace, Brian put his hands forward and dropped to a crouch. He gripped the step that his hands landed upon and pulled his right knee forward. With Kralik almost on top of him, Brian kicked backward like a mule. His foot smashed into Kralik’s chest and sent the man flying. Kralik’s body bounced off the railing before crashing to the stone stairs. Brian heard a satisfying grunt as Kralik tumbled past the bend and out of view.

  Brian looked back up to see Skyrm’s foot swinging at his face. He rolled under the railing, just avoiding the kick. Brian bounced to his feet with the railing between himself and Skyrm.

  Skyrm leaned across the railing and snatched at Brian’s jacket. Brian countered the move with a simple bakat-marki, an inside-outside forearm block. Skyrm cocked his head, a sign that he did not expect such a move from a teenager. Then he smiled.

  “So you know some martial arts. I’d wager I know more.”

  As Skyrm said this, the thin red rings around his irises seemed to burn. Brian’s confidence faltered. He turned to run, but Skyrm grabbed his jacket with his left hand and yanked Brian backward. Brian lost his balance. Falling, he twisted himself around to grab the railing before he hit the ground. He stopped himself from pitching headlong down the stairs, but Skyrm had gained the advantage.

  Skyrm spiraled over the railing in a fluid motion that culminated in a roundhouse kick. Brian shoved himself from the railing, narrowly dodging the foot that would have crushed his ribs. Brian’s momentum carried him into the stone wall behind him. He blinked at the impact, and Skyrm was in his face. Pinning Brian to the wall, Skyrm threw a flurry of blows at him. Brian deflected them with competence, but Skyrm was moving too fast to allow counterstrikes. The constant buffeting was hurting Brian’s forearms and he knew it was only a matter of seconds before he faltered. That moment of doubt allowed Skyrm to score a knife-hand strike to Brian’s left shoulder. Brian yelped as his upper arm exploded in agony, but the intensity of the pain focused his mind in time to twist away from a rabbit punch that would have dropped him had it connected with his stomach.

  Skyrm resumed his boxing attack. As Brian continued to counter and dodge the blows he felt his left shou
lder grow numb. That arm would soon be useless. His only hope was that someone would see the fight and call the police. But no one appeared. Brian wished he had picked a fight on a busier stairway.

  Footsteps sounded from below. Brian didn’t dare take his concentration off Skyrm, but maybe a rescuer had arrived. When Skyrm didn’t break off his attack, Brian’s spirits sank lower. He knew who was running up the stairs even before Kralik growled, “Let me have him!”

  “Don’t interrupt!” Skyrm warned, but Kralik wanted vengeance. Brian caught the flash of Kralik’s knife as the man tried to step between the combatants. Skyrm turned his head toward Kralik. Brian punched Skyrm’s larynx. The blow only stunned Skyrm, but it was all Brian needed. He grabbed the lapels of Skyrm’s bomber jacket and spun him into Kralik. The two men tumbled together and landed in a heap halfway down the stairs.

  Brian ran, scooping up his backpack and breaking to the left once he reached the street. At the corner he turned right and then took the next right so that he was running in the opposite direction he had shown Skyrm and Kralik. He was heading toward the train station, and though he was exhausted and had a numb left arm and a bruised right arm, Brian did not slow. This was the second time this morning he had run full bore through a city on the sunny Riviera. Not the way he expected to see France.

  The Cannes train station was soon before him, its rectangular façade encased in decorative crosshatches of curved iron. Brian hurried inside and bought a ticket for the next train to Toulouse, which was leaving in forty-two minutes. He went into the men’s restroom and peeled off his shirt to look at his injured shoulder. The bruise was huge, a violent mixture of black and purple, but the shoulder wasn’t abnormally swollen. He sat down in one of the stalls and massaged the shoulder. This was painful, but the sooner normal circulation returned, the sooner the pain and numbness would dissipate.

  Brian went to the snack bar and ordered a Pepsi. He drank it quickly and held the cup of ice against his shoulder for several minutes. Then he went into the gift shop and selected a Michelin Green Guide to France’s Languedoc, Roussillon, and Tarn Gorges regions. The slim but heavy book contained a nineteen-page description of Toulouse, plus two street maps. Brian also wanted a cheap wristwatch to replace the one Silver had taken, but the only inexpensive, plastic watches the shop offered were branded with the Superman and Batman logos. Brian looked at the balding man behind the counter and said, “But I’m a Marvel guy.”

  The man shook his head. “Je ne comprends pas.”

  “That’s OK,” Brian said to himself, “most people who speak English don’t understand it either.” He chose the Batman watch because black was much less conspicuous than red, blue, and yellow. Brian paid for the guidebook and watch then went down the escalator and boarded the train.

  Exhausted from two getaways in one morning, Brian fell asleep as soon as the train left the station. He awoke six hours later in time to watch the sun sink into the Mediterranean, a circle of orange melting into wine-red ripples. He went into the bathroom and changed into a pair of olive drab cargo shorts and a black polo shirt. His left shoulder was still a deep purple, but with fewer black highlights. Brian returned to his seat and spent the remaining two hours of the trip reading about Toulouse and studying the maps.

  By the time he arrived in Toulouse, Brian had learned that its train station was separated from the central city by the Canal du Midi, the manmade waterway that connected the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. Stepping outside the station, Brian saw the downtown lights half a mile away. He took the nearest bridge over the canal and then spent the next fifteen minutes crisscrossing streets and doubling back on himself to make sure he hadn’t picked up another tail. Satisfied no one was following, Brian hailed a taxi in front of a hotel and showed DeJonge’s address to the driver.

  The cab headed south, which didn’t surprise Brian. Université Paul Sabatier was south of the city. As the cab entered residential neighborhoods, Brian hoped his ordeal would be ending soon, that he would reach Eduoard DeJonge in time and that the professor would arrange for his protection. The driver told him they had reached DeJonge’s street. Several vehicles were parked along the curb, including a dark red van. Brian imagined he saw the orange pinprick of a lit cigarette glow briefly behind the van’s windshield. The cab pulled up outside a small two-story house on a street crowded with similar homes. Brian looked at his Batman watch as the cab pulled away. It was 9:27. “Gotham Standard Time,” he murmured to himself.

  Brian doubted the professor typically received foreign visitors this late, but what could he do about it now? He rang the bell, hoping the door led to his safety.

  The door opened, and there, wearing blue jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, was the most beautiful girl Brian had ever seen.

  CHAPTER 11--LARISSA

  Her long, chestnut brown hair swept behind her neck and over her left shoulder, hanging low enough to partially hide the names Tommy and Johnny on her Ramones T-shirt, the ubiquitous one that spoofed the U.S. presidential seal. The girl’s lips were dark pink and soft, her cheekbones high and radiant. Carefree bangs curled above her full eyebrows. Her eyes, a deep luxuriant brown that matched her hair, conveyed intelligence and wisdom.

  Her hand still on the door, the girl asked, “Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”

  She was his age. Brian tried to keep his eyes off the curve of her neck, which—despite all his recent trauma—now consumed his consciousness. Loud and fast punk rock, not the Ramones but similar, echoed from upstairs, probably from her bedroom. Brian’s mind struggled to form a sentence in French. Haltingly, he said, “Est-ce que ce la maison d’Eduoard DeJonge?”

  “He does not see students at our home,” she said, switching to English, “and definitely not this late.”

  “I’m not one of his students. My name is Brian Parker, and I need to talk to your father about something important. Vitally important.”

  “He is not home. He is away on business—”

  “When will he be back? This is urgent.”

  “He will not be back for several days.” She began to close the door. “I am afraid, Brian Parker, I cannot help you anymore.”

  Brian’s hand shot forward to stop the door. “Please,” he said. “I think your father is in danger.”

  She stopped pushing the door shut, but didn’t pull it back open. “What do you mean?”

  “Your father is in charge of developing a weapon system called Project Prometheus. I believe people are trying to sabotage it.”

  Her mouth opened slightly, forming a little bow. She looked at Brian as if he were mad. “And how does a teenage American boy learn such a thing?”

  “For starters, he gets kidnapped by a crooked CIA officer.”

  “Quoi?”

  “Did your father ever mention a man named Heinrich Tetzel?”

  “I perhaps have heard the name.”

  “Heinrich Tetzel told me your father’s name just before he died in my arms two days ago in Lucerne, Switzerland.”

  The girl stared at him. A new song started playing upstairs. Brian recognized it as “Alex Chilton” by The Replacements. This girl, scrutinizing him with her beautiful brown eyes to determine if he were crazy, was into old-school punk, and for the moment Brian cared little about rogue CIA officers, heat rays, or his throbbing shoulder. All he wanted that very second was for this girl to invite him in so they could discuss The Ramones and to see whether she would be impressed that he had several Donnas songs on his iPod. But if he asked that now, she would think he was crazy. Instead he returned her silence with silence and hoped his face expressed urgent sincerity.

  Apparently it did, because she opened the door.

  “I don’t know how much I will be able to tell you,” she said as Brian stepped inside. “I hear names sometimes when he speaks on the telephone. That is how I know of this man Tetzel, but my father speaks little of his work. I would not know about his Prometheus project at all if my friend Mathilde had not read about it in Le Figaro
.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “In Spain.”

  “Will he be back soon?”

  “No,” she replied. “Not until next week.”

  Brian frowned. Next week might as well be next year.

  The girl led him into the living room. The house’s interior was smaller than the inside of an American home, even his family’s modest brick bungalow. The room was furnished with a cluttered warmth that countered its Ikea-approved construction. A rolled-up yoga mat leaned in a corner. Framed photographs dominated the bookshelves and end tables. Most were outdoor pictures of the girl in hiking gear with mountains in the background. In several pictures she was hugging a woman who looked like an older version of herself. The girl noticed Brian was looking at the photos.

  “My mother,” the girl said. She picked up one of the pictures and smiled at it sadly, which told Brian where her mother was.

  “She died two years ago of cancer,” the girl said. “This was from one of our hiking holidays in the Pyrenees.”

  Brian didn’t know what to say. He blurted, “Did you go a lot?”

  “Not with her. Only two times.” The girl looked up at him. “I started trekking in the Pyrenees five years ago with friends, and I persuaded her to join us one summer. We went together once again, just the two of us, shortly after she was diagnosed with her cancer. Soon after that, she was too sick to return.”

  She looked back at the photo. “But we made wonderful memories on that last trip.”

  Brian stuffed his hands in his pockets and stood there, letting The Replacements fill the conversational void. How the subject changed from the girl’s father to her mother, Brian wasn’t sure, but changing it back seemed inconsiderate. He let a few more moments pass.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” he said.

  She looked up from the photo and came back to the present. “Milles pardons—I am sorry. My name is Larissa. And your name is Brian, correct? Where do you live in America?”