Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1)

by Evans, Jon

  “How much were they?” I asked.

  “A hundred US dollars each.”

  “You spent three hundred dollars on guns? Jesus. Sounds like a waste of money.”

  “You’ll sing in a very different key if we ever have to use one.”

  “Yeah? And what if we don’t?”

  “Then you’ll be so grateful that we were so incredibly lucky that you won’t give a shit about a measly three hundred dollars.”

  She had a point.

  “I bought an English textbook for Saskia,” Talena said. “She’s going to start studying again. Her English used to be pretty good, ten years ago. I bet it’ll come back in a hurry.”

  Saskia caught enough of that to understand and smiled hopefully at me.

  “Good,” I said, and smiled back at Saskia. It was weird to be risking my life for and spending so much time around this person with whom I could only communicate in baby talk. I wondered how she felt. She seemed pale but determined, and a little colour had returned to her doll-like features. Spending the day with Talena had probably been good for her.

  A phone rang. It took a couple of rings, and perplexed stares from Saskia and Talena, before I remembered the cell phone in my pocket. I dug it out and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “With whom am I speaking?” Major Botham’s clipped South African accent.

  “Major Botham, hello. This is Paul.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you find anyone who could help us?”

  “Not yet. I’m ringing because I have important information for you. I had some troops keep an eye on the bus station today. Dragan, a man who fits your description of his friend Josip, and four associates arrived in Sarajevo approximately thirty minutes ago.”

  A cold chill gathered at the base of my spine and slowly began to work its way upward. I wasn’t surprised. Stealing Dragan’s wife was an unforgivable insult, and the Balkan cultural mindset has a penchant for melodramatic revenge. I imagined some of the Tigers were actually grateful for this juicy little blood vendetta; this hunt was probably the most excitement, the closest thing to the war they had so loved, in ages. I hadn’t doubted they would come for us. But knowing and knowing are two different things.

  “I recommend you maintain high awareness of your surroundings,” Major Botham said.

  “I understand,” I said faintly. “I’ll do that.”

  “You have my number. I’ll keep at least one patrol near the Pansione Konack all night.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I’ll call you by ten-hundred. If nothing happens before then.”

  “Great,” I said, but he had already hung up.

  “Who was that?” Talena asked.

  “The bearer of bad news.”

  “What kind of bad news?”

  “Dragan arrived at the bus station today,” I said.

  A hush fell.

  Then Talena snorted, a black-comedy chuckle, and said, “Tell me again how upset you are that I bought you a gun.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon inside the Pansione Konack, teaching Saskia how to play Shithead and Hearts. She was a natural. After nightfall Talena and I went out to pick up some cevapcici, a Bosnian snack that like all Balkan food was about eighty percent meat, and pizza and Coke. It was a nervous expedition. We were glad to get back into the relative safety of the Pansione.

  I wondered if Talena was going to jump me again when we returned to our room, but after we got into bed she turned her back to me. I lay and watched her for a little while. I could tell she was wide awake, thinking. I wondered how she would react if I reached over, took her shoulder, told her I loved her, told her I wanted a second chance.

  Not yet, I decided. I leaned over, kissed her cheek, and murmured, “Sweet dreams.”

  Her answering smile, like all her smiles, made my heart skip a beat.

  “Back atcha,” she whispered.

  Chapter 8

  Pursuits

  “Mr Wood,” Major Botham said. “I have two phone numbers for you. Either one of them should be able to provide you with the services you require. Feel free to mention my name during negotiations, but understand that I cannot provide you with any tangible assistance.”

  “I understand.”

  “The first number is for a man named Mladen.” I wrote it down. “The second is for a man named Sinisa. The number is –”

  “Wait,” I said. “Sinisa?”

  “Correct.”

  “Does he, does he have a weird accent?”

  There was a brief pause. “Yes, he does,” Major Botham said curiously. “Half-Dutch, half-Serbian. I understand he was raised in Holland. Did Hallam mention him?”

  I hadn’t told the major about my expedition with the Tamil child. I didn’t want to get into the story now, partly because I didn’t want him questioning my judgement and general sanity. “We’ve made some other inquiries as well,” I said lamely.

  “Yes, I see. Sinisa is supposed to be more reliable but also more expensive. Do you want his number?”

  “Yes, please.” Better the gangsta you know than the gangsta you don’t. Sinisa had at least been polite.

  I explained the situation to Talena, who in turn explained it to Saskia.

  “So are you going to call him?” Talena asked me.

  I didn’t want to. My stomach was rumbling with hunger and I wanted to go get breakfast. I didn’t feel ready to have a conversation with a dangerous criminal overlord. But that was only part of it. I was reluctant to make this connection, to open this particular door. I wasn’t exactly sure what lay behind it but I suspected the path was long and dark.

  But on the other hand Dragan was already in town looking for us and immediate peril does tend to trump existential angst. I dialled the number. It rang five times and I figured I would get voice mail. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what message to leave and decided to call back instead.

  “Da?” A human voice, not a machine.

  I almost passed the phone over to Talena, but decided that would be ducking responsibility. “Does anybody there speak English?”

  “Yes. Who is this?” Sinisa’s unmistakable accent.

  “My name is Paul Wood. I’m the Canadian guy who barged into your factory outside the city,” I did the math and the brevity of the period since came as a shock, it felt like weeks had passed, “four days ago with the little boy.”

  After a pause Sinisa asked, an edge in his voice, “And how did you get this number?”

  “From Major William Botham of SFOR. He suggested you as a person who could possibly help me out with a problem I’m having.”

  “You are Canadian and you need to employ my services?”

  “Not me. My friend who is not Canadian.”

  “Mr. Wood, I am a very busy man, and I do not appreciate intrusions on my private line. Give my regards to Major Botham and remind him I am not a help service for troubled Canadian tourists.”

  “No,” I said desperately. “Wait. Don’t hang up. This is serious. This is life and death.”

  “Perhaps. But not my life. Not my death. Why should I care?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Wood. And if you ever call this number again, I assure you –”

  Then he paused.

  “Wait,” he said. “You are the computer programmer, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You are Canadian, but you live in America.”

  “Yes.”

  After a moment he said, “I can meet you on Thursday at noon.”

  It was Tuesday. Our flight would leave Wednesday night. “If it’s at all possible to make it earlier –” I began.

  “Thursday at noon or not at all.”

  I swallowed and looked at Saskia. Well, it was only money, and compared to what Sinisa would charge for Saskia’s escape, airfare wasn’t much. I could declare bankruptcy when I went home and spend the next year saving up enough to pay back what I would soo
n owe to Lawrence. If I could find a job. But compared to worrying about Dragan breaking into the Pansione and riddling us all with bullets, a job hunt would be a day at the circus. One thing about a life of constant physical danger is that it puts everything else into its proper miniscule perspective.

  “Thursday at noon,” I said. “Where?”

  “Call me at eleven AM Thursday and I will tell you.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye. I suppose terrible phone manners are a common side effect of near-absolute power.

  “We have an appointment,” I reported.

  “Good,” Talena said. “Well done.”

  “Should we call the other guy too?” I asked. “We might save money.” Comparison shopping for criminals.

  “How much money?”

  “He didn’t say. I’m expecting about five thousand dollars.”

  Talena shook her head. “Never mind the money. The important thing is that Saskia gets out safe. Major Botham said Sinisa was the reliable expensive one, right? And he’s the one you met? Well, if what you saw in that factory was the Nieman Marcus version of smuggling, there’s no way in hell I’m sending her to Wal-Mart.”

  “Fair enough. So we’ve got two days to kill.”

  Talena sighed. “You have to work on your word choice.”

  * * *

  They found us on Wednesday.

  It was near sunset. Talena and I were lined up at a pizza stand in the pedestrian thoroughfare near Sarajevo’s ravaged cathedral. We had grown almost complacent. We only had to get through this expedition and the next day’s breakfast before meeting with Sinisa. The streets were churning with people, mostly teenage and twentysomething men and women preening and flirting. I was sure we were veiled by the crowd.

  “Paul,” Talena murmured hoarsely, and when I heard her tone, my false sense of security popped like a soap bubble. “That guy on the church stairs. Was he with them?”

  I looked up. A man who looked very familiar, a pretty-boy type in his mid-twenties, stood on the cathedral steps, looking our way. He reached into his pocket without taking his eyes off us. For a moment I was afraid he might pull a gun and try to shoot through the crowd at us, but his hand emerged holding a cell phone.

  He caught my eye and smiled. It was the smile that made me remember. I had seen him playing soccer in Mostar. He had smiled like that, wide and childlike, after scoring a goal. He was one of Dragan’s Tigers. The pit of my stomach dropped nauseatingly away.

  “Yes,” I said. “Shit. Yes.”

  “He’s calling the others, shit, shit, come on.”

  We abandoned the pizza line and walked away as fast as we dared, westward, away from the Pansione. I felt sick and clumsy with fear. The crowd was too thick to break into a run. I looked over my shoulder and saw him following us while punching numbers into his phone, shouldering people out of his way to keep up. I didn’t think we could lose him in the crowd, he was too close. I pulled out my own Nokia and dialled Major Botham with shaking fingers. Up to ten minutes before NATO could arrive. If we didn’t run, if we just stayed in this public place, would the Tigers try anything? They just might. Where could we go? Out of the pedestrian area and into a taxi, maybe. If one arrived in time. We didn’t dare wait for one. The pretty boy behind us was sure to have a gun.

  “Left, turn left, down here.” Talena’s voice vibrated with tension.

  Major Botham’s phone began to ring.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as we turned into a narrow, pedestrian-filled alley.

  “Across the river. The Yugoslav embassy. Tell him.”

  I couldn’t imagine why but I didn’t have any better ideas.

  “Major William Botham,” the major said.

  “Major. This is Paul Wood. We’re in trouble. One of Dragan’s men has seen us and he’s chasing us. He’s called the others. We’re near the big church and we’re going to the Yugoslav embassy.”

  “The embassy. Good. I’ll dispatch immediately.” He hung up.

  I looked over our shoulder. The pretty boy was still about fifty feet behind us. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to catch up, which was good, but he had transferred the phone to his left hand, and his right was hidden in the pocket of his denim jacket, which was bad.

  I had a gun too, tucked uncomfortably into the back of my jeans. So did Talena. But I had absolutely no desire to draw my weapon. Shooting it out with the Tigers was the craziest idea of all, there was no way we would get out in one piece if we got into a firefight.

  “Why the embassy?” I asked.

  “They have guards.”

  Of course. The Yugoslav Embassy, being the official representation of the widely hated Serbian government in Belgrade, had to be heavily guarded at all times. Hopefully its guards would not allow an armed confrontation to take place there. The Tigers couldn’t just shoot us down from a distance, they needed us to find Saskia. Hopefully we could stall until NATO showed up.

  But if not – the embassy was next to the river, on the other side, and only a thin pedestrian walkway ran between its gate and the bank of the Miljacka. There would be nowhere to hide there, and no escape.

  “We should split up,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Yes. That way if it goes bad one of us can go back and get Saskia out.”

  She didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Not yet,” I said. “When we cross the river. Who do you think he’ll follow?”

  After a moment she said, “You. He’ll follow you.”

  Near the edge of the pedestrian zone the crowds thinned out, and Talena broke into a run. I followed, even though irrationally I didn’t want to. Our previous brisk walk had maintained the illusion that the situation was under control, but running was an admission of panic.

  A horn blared and we only just avoided being pancaked by a van as we dashed across the street. I could see the river a block ahead. We accelerated towards it. People scampered out of our way. The gun protruded painfully into the small of my back and I was afraid it might fall out. I wondered if our pursuer was running too. We dodged in and out of the pedestrian traffic. I knocked over a little girl and barely overcame a crazy impulse to stop and apologize.

  We finally emerged onto Obala Kulina, the main road that parallelled the north side of the Miljacka. Traffic was too thick to cross and there were no available taxis so we turned right and sprinted for the next crossing, where there was a bridge. By the time we arrived there was a gap in the flow of cars, and we danced through the traffic, across the road and onto the bridge. I looked back, hoping that we had lost him. No joy. Our pursuer looked relaxed, like he was out on his regular afternoon jog. I told myself this couldn’t really be happening, this was just a dream, we weren’t really being pursued by an armed gunman, it wasn’t the kind of thing that really happened.

  I was already covered with thick sweat, and panted like a dog with adrenaline and exhaustion. We had run for only a couple of minutes, but fear had caused all of my muscles to tense up so strongly they actually quavered, and my strength had begun to ebb. Midway across the bridge I looked down at the Miljacka’s dark steady flow and for a moment thought crazily about jumping in, escaping by river like Butch and Sundance. But that would never work. I forced myself to relax a little, to try to think.

  “You go straight,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’ll go to the embassy.”

  I was afraid Talena would insist on accompanying me, but she kept going as I turned right and sprinted along the pedestrian walkway that parallelled the river. I ran straight through a couple walking hand in hand, severing their connection. Occasional walkways led south, away from the river, but I ignored them.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Talena had been right, our pretty-boy pursuer had followed me. That was a relief. At least they wouldn’t get her, thanks to Bosnian machismo. He was only a hundred feet away, talking into his phone as he jogged, doubtless reporting my movements. I knew the chase wouldn’t last much longer. My lungs w
ere thick with exhaustion and he didn’t look like he had even broken a sweat. Somewhere in a deep detached corner of my mind I told myself I should really get in shape if I got out of this mess.

  The Yugoslav Embassy was just ahead of me. Razor-wire fence to my left, Miljacka to my right, nowhere to escape to but the river itself. There was a security cubicle next to the gate, a box of bulletproof glass.

  The security cubicle was empty.

  I halted. For a moment my mind went blank with sheer panic.

  Then a cool, precise voice, one I did not entirely recognize as my own, cut through the fog of fear in my head. Two choices, Paul, it said. Always two choices. Fight or flight.

  The Miljacka, where it coursed through downtown Sarajevo, was walled on both sides by concrete, looked more like a giant sewer than a river. The drop into it was sheer but modest, maybe ten feet. I had no idea how deep the water was or what the surface beneath consisted of. A jump could easily result in shattered legs if the river before us was just a few feet of water over uneven stones. But better that than falling into the hands of the Tigers.

  On the other hand, the voice reminded me, you do have a gun.

  “Good point,” I gasped. I turned around and fumbled for the revolver in my waistband. My throat was so dry it chafed painfully with every panting breath. My hand shook as if I was suffering from an epileptic seizure.

  The pretty boy slowed down when he saw the gun, but when he saw how it shook he smiled widely and accelerated towards me, past one of the walkways that led away from the river. I crouched down and tried to aim, ready to launch myself into the river if I missed. I remembered I needed to switch off the safety and attempted to do so with a trembling thumb. I wondered if I was really about to shoot a man.

  Then Talena thundered out of the intersecting walkway and slammed into the pretty boy like an NFL linebacker. He flew off the riverside path and hung in the air like Michael Jordan, pure surprise etched on his face, before tumbling into the Miljacka with a violent splash.

  I stared disbelievingly at Talena.

  “Come on,” she said, breathing as hard as I was, “hurry!”

  I stuck the gun in my windbreaker pocket and ran towards her, giddy with relief. We pelted side-by-side down the walkway from which she had emerged, then sprinted down random Sarajevo streets for several minutes, newly energized by our narrow escape, until we finally came to a stop in a parking lot and collapsed against each other. We were utterly drained. But when we got our breath back we looked at each other and started to giggle uncontrollably, like children.