by K. T. Tomb
Several curious observers had gathered around him while he was taking the shots and as he attempted to show the family the photos he had taken of them on the display screen, the others gathered around to get a look as well, laughing and chattering rapidly. Moments like that had made Max’s time in Beijing one of the most delightful he’d experienced in his career and departing was bittersweet. He swallowed a lump in his throat as he thought of it.
The warmth and cheer around him evaporated in an instant when three rapid reports from a pistol tore through the laughter and echoed in the street. Screams and scrambling figures quickly replaced the laughter with chaos. As mothers scrambled to get their children to safety and fathers scrambled to protect the mothers, Max turned his eyes towards the direction of where the shots had been fired.
He looked from the crumpled figure on the ground to the back of the retreating man who had caused the interruption and felt a sudden rage rise up inside his chest. Letting the camera drop to his chest, held in place by the thick strap, he sprinted after the withdrawing figure.
The man ducked into a narrow alley and Max followed behind him. The smaller Chinese man had the advantage in the tight places and Max was afraid that he would soon disappear around a corner and into someplace where Max could not follow. As the pursuit continued with the man just beyond his reach, but still within sight, Max began to wonder what exactly he intended to do once he caught the killer.
Though he was in decent shape and certainly much larger than the average Chinese man, he wasn’t exactly trained in any form of hand to hand combat tactics. The thought crossed his mind that he would do better to give up the pursuit, but as his camera bounced against his chest, he realized that he had the perfect tool for helping to bring the man to justice. He just had to get the man in position for a decent photo of his face.
What he had feared finally happened. The smaller man had slipped through a tight spot and scurried away as Max struggled to follow suit through the opening. Once on the other side, the alley opened up wider, but it was empty of any human life except his own. He could hear the sounds of the police as he walked cautiously down the cluttered alley. It seemed to be a junkyard of old appliances and even a couple of old cars that had been gutted for parts.
The sounds of the police were increasing.
Perhaps it was best that I leave things up to them, he thought with the intention of exiting the alley and finding his way back to the home of the happy couple he had been photographing. In an instant, he felt the solid impact of a body slamming into him from behind one of the junk appliances to his left. He tumbled, feeling and hearing his camera crunch under his weight as it made contact with the concrete.
Concern for the condition of his camera was far from his mind when he saw the pistol in the man’s hand. Instinctively, he reached for the hand bearing the pistol and turned the barrel away from himself. His greater size quickly worked to his advantage and he was soon in control of the struggle and beginning to wrestle the weapon free when the pistol discharged and the form of the man he was struggling with suddenly became limp in his arms.
With the pistol in his hand, he scrambled to his feet and looked down at the lifeless form. He froze in sudden shock and looked down at the dead man at his feet. It was in that position that the police found him.
Chapter Two
“We’ve done everything that we were able to. National Geographic has used considerable resources in an attempt to help you as well. None of our efforts have been working very well.”
Albert Meriwether was a tall, slender man who worked at the consulate’s office in Beijing and he had been working day and night on Max’s case.
“They are sticking to their story of seeing you standing over the dead man with the pistol in your hand.”
“I’ve gone through the story at least a thousand times. I pursued him from where he shot the man over on Oolong Street. We struggled for the gun and it went off.”
Max was so tired of repeating himself, but it seemed that nobody was listening to him. He fought to control the desire to scream the words as loud as he could so that someone would listen to him.
“They claim that the family on Oolong Street doesn’t exist. We’ve tried to find them, but no one will speak to us.”
“But my other equipment and my bag.” He’d been over the same thing a hundred times. “I know, it doesn’t exist. Nobody saw it. I’m screwed. My pictures? My camera?”
“According to the police, they don’t exist.”
“What about the photos that I already sent from Beijing? Doesn’t that help to prove that I was doing exactly what I claim to have been doing?”
“We tried that angle.”
“And?”
“They started to talk about espionage.”
“What?” His fury started to rise up and he stood. “Espionage? How? What deep secrets was I taking photos of?”
“Please sit, Max. You have to maintain control. You know that we are being watched and recorded.”
“But they are lying,” he shouted. “They are setting me up and they have covered up every shred of truth. There has to be a way out of this, Albert. There has to be!”
“We’re trying everything, Max.”
“But?” Max knew that there was a ‘but’ in the statement. He was exhausted from lack of sleep and the sudden explosion had brought on a head rush. He lowered himself back into the chair.
“With little success.” Albert’s face fell as he admitted that even the most recent attempts weren’t working. He brightened a little. “But you keep your chin up. We’re going to keep fighting this thing. We’ll bring as much pressure as we can to your case.”
“I know, Albert, I know.” Max slumped into his chair. His sentence had already been given. He was to be executed in three days. Every effort to prove his innocence had been blocked from the very first day. Though he couldn’t understand why, the police and the Chinese government had decided that he was a spy and that he had killed the man. He didn’t understand why they had turned on him and he was very near the point of no longer caring. Albert’s empty words of encouragement did little to help him.
“Keep your chin up, Max. I won’t sleep until we have you out of here.”
“I appreciate that Albert.”
He tried to force a smile on his face to communicate how grateful he was for Albert’s efforts, but it was a pretty weak one.
“I’ll be back in the morning.” Albert rose from his chair and gathered the few documents that had been spread out before him and pushed them into his attaché. “They are taking care of your needs, right? Feeding you, plenty of water, shower and facilities?”
“Not that it matters, but yes.”
Albert called to the guard to be let out and then fixed his eyes on Max’s.
“I’ll get you out of this, Max.”
“Yeah,” Max responded.
He could read the doubt in Albert’s eyes. That doubt carried a great deal more power in Max’s mind than the words that were coming from the man’s mouth. He stared at his hands, noticing a hangnail on his right index finger. He didn’t look up as Albert left the room.
Chapter Three
Settled into the duck blind, Max watched the slow moving waters of the river gently rocking the decoys.
He was seated on his bucket with steaming coffee rising from his thermos lid in one hand and a cheese danish in the other while the sun was beginning to break onto the horizon. It was still too early to shoot, but they were ready. The blind was tight, the decoys were perfectly set and his twelve gauge was in place in front of him, loaded with number two steel shot in magnum casings. When he was younger, number four lead had worked just fine, but with new regulations, they had been forced to use steel shot.
Lucky, his Labrador Retriever, had his broad nose resting on his knee and was looking up at him with pleading eyes. He always gave Lucky a few bites and he knew that the aging retriever was waiting patiently for his treat. He tore off a piece of t
he pastry and offered it to his buddy. Lucky accepted the piece politely, opening his graying muzzle and taking it softly in his teeth.
Max’s brother, Earl, was seated on his bucket beside him, their shoulders touching in the tight space. He was quietly sipping his coffee and biting off the end of a pepperoni stick. Max had never felt more content than in a duck blind. The peace of the early morning and the rising sun providing hope for a new day went far beyond the sport and the eating of duck breasts, which they typically wrapped in bacon and cooked on the charcoal grill.
He enjoyed the thrill of calling a pair of mallards into the decoys and watching them set their wings and touch down into the water. Standing and watching them jump from the water and then tumble back in after being plucked from the air by the spread of shot was actually the least thrilling part. Watching the expert, Lucky, do his work was more satisfying, but all in all, it was the atmosphere that attracted him to hunting ducks more than anything else.
Normally, he could empty his mind of everything and watch the rising sun while sipping coffee and listening to the morning begin to come to life in complete peace, but something was wrong. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. There were no physical signs that things were amiss, he could just feel it. He looked down at Lucky, but the dog was no longer there. Where had he gone? Panic suddenly began to rise up in his chest when he turned and saw that Earl wasn’t there either. The blind had crumbled apart in front of him and the decoys were flying up out of the water. What the hell? And then he woke up.
He stared at the wall for a few moments as he tried to calm his panic, but it had little effect. It was his last day to live. He’d be joining the old dog in a matter of hours. His heart began to pound in his chest as the anxiety of what was about to come gripped him in full force. The embassy and National Geographic had failed every attempt at preventing what was about to take place.
As he fought to calm himself, he had the sense of a presence in the room. Someone was in his cell with him. He could feel the person’s eyes on his back. Slowly he turned over on the narrow cot and saw that there was indeed a person crouched in the corner, but she was nothing like he had expected to see in the dim musty cell of a Chinese prison.
Her pale, round face was perfectly contoured and highlighted with soft, delicate lips and a tiny nose. Her eyes were the most striking feature, however, large, dark and the shape of almonds. Her black hair was in a long braid which touched the floor as she crouched in the corner. Even in the dim light, she was stunning. Max was pretty certain that he hadn’t actually awakened.
“I must be hallucinating,” he whispered.
The woman held a finger to her lips and shook her head, then reached out and touched his shoulder. The touch was real, but the fact that she was there was completely disconcerting. He shut his eyes tightly and then opened them again. She was still there.
“Come.”
She took his hand and helped him up from the cot and then moved toward the door, which she slid open with ease and then tugged on him to follow.
At his feet were the lifeless bodies of two guards. He looked up from them into the beautiful face of the woman. She was dressed in a skintight body suit that was jet-black. She blended into the shadows perfectly as she slipped along the corridor tugging on his hand. There seemed to be a long narrow shaft trailing along the side of her leg with a grip at the top which resembled a handle of a sword. Was she seriously carrying a sword? Was he still in the 21st century?
Slipping quietly along the corridor behind her, he was pretty sure that he would awaken from this second dream at any moment, but for the time being, it appeared that she was leading him on an escape. What condemned man wouldn’t dream of such an escape?
Reality quickly returned to him as they turned the corner and the two of them were face to face with three more guards who were on their way to replace those who were lying dead in front of his cell. They were certainly real and Max sucked in his breath, awaiting what was certain to come next.
He might as well have been dreaming, because the rapid movement of the beautiful woman who was leading him out of the cell block dispatched the three guards so quickly that none of them had time to do anything more than reach for their weapons. Drawing the blade of her sword across the chest of one of the dead guards, the woman wiped the blood from it and slid it back into the sheath on her hip.
Once more, she reached out and took his hand and they continued winding their way through the dim corridors until he was suddenly breathing the fresh air of a very early Beijing morning. They had no sooner broken away to freedom than the sounds of alarms accompanied by search lights exploded into the stillness of the night.
“Hurry!” she said, pulling him quickly across a broad street and into a narrow dark alley with the search light nipping at their heels.
Though still shocked by how quickly events had changed for him, Max needed little encouragement to pick up his pace. The taste of freedom and the hope of one more chance to continue living was all the motivation necessary to follow the mysterious woman wherever she went.
Chapter Four
They were inside a house with the door locked behind them and the curtains drawn shut before the woman spoke.
“My name is Min,” she said quietly. The sound of her voice was smooth and sweet and Max wasn’t entirely certain, even yet, that he wasn’t still dreaming. “We have little time. We need to get into more appropriate clothing so that we can blend in.”
“I’m Max. Thank you for rescuing me.” It sounded sort of corny, but he wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Don’t thank me yet, Max. You are far from being rescued.” Her dark eyes smiled up at him.
Questions were sprinting through his mind. Who was she? How did she get into the prison? How had she so easily dispatched of the guards? Where was she taking him? God, she was beautiful.
She crossed the room and he watched the perfect curvature of her form as she moved gracefully within the body suit. She reached for a bundle of clothing on a table and turned, catching him staring at her and a soft smile cracked her lips. “Put these on,” she said, tossing them at him. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
She slipped through a doorway and Max’s eyes followed after her, not quite willing to let her out of his sight. Once she disappeared, however, he wasted little more time, slipping into the Chinese peasant’s garb that he had caught against his chest when she tossed it to him. It fit pretty snugly, but he was certain that anything was better than the prison clothing.
When she reentered the room, he nearly collapsed at the sight of her. How she had gotten more beautiful didn’t seem possible, but dressed in a traditional Chinese robe and her long braid over her shoulder, she was even more breathtaking than before.
She smiled and stooped to pick up the discarded prison clothing. She pulled a tile loose in the corner, stuffed the clothing into the opening and then put the tile back into place.
“We must go at once. The entire city will be crawling with police and soldiers within the hour. If we are to have a chance, we must make it out of Beijing ahead of the searches.”
“Where are we going?” Max asked.
“To the mountains.”
“The mountains?” The mountains were at least a thousand miles to the south. “Wouldn’t it be better to go to the coast and get me on a boat?”
“They would be prepared for that. Besides, our destiny lies within the mountains.”
“Our destiny?” He repeated the words without believing them.
“We’ll talk about it later. We must move, now!”
Once again, she took his hand, opened the door, slipped through and pulled it shut quietly behind them.
The alley was quiet, but he could hear the sound of trucks and soldiers in the streets. They were everywhere. It would be impossible for them to escape without being seen. In spite of his doubt, however, he at least had a fighting chance and he had a guide who had proven to be pretty adept at not only maneuvering
under the cover of darkness, but of quickly dispatching guards with blinding speed. He would have to trust her.
They moved to a place where the alley met a wide street and crouched in the shadow of a wall. A large truck with a bright red star on the door rumbled by loaded with soldiers under its canvas top. Every one of them was armed with automatic weapons. It was only a matter of time before they were trapped.
Even after the truck had passed, Max could hear soldiers moving from house to house in the street. In a few moments, they would be adjacent to them in the alley. Where would they go? How could they possibly escape?
“Wait here,” she whispered. “Do not move.”
She slipped away from him into the street.
Sitting alone in the alley, covered by nothing more than a shadow, Max doubted that he had truly escaped his fate. Within the hour, he would likely be gunned down by an automatic rifle and meet the execution that he’d already been slated to receive, just in a different manner.
Though it was less than five minutes before she returned, Max was certain that close to an hour had passed while he sat quietly in the darkness. When she arrived, she took his hand and led him at a rapid pace across the street and into another alley on the other side, stepping carefully over two more bodies that were dim outlines in the narrow passage.
Max had gotten used to similar maneuvers throughout the early morning as they slipped from alley to alley in the streets of Beijing. The glow on the eastern horizon, however, was a looming threat to their being able to continue as they had and Max wondered if they would run out of darkness before they ran out of soldiers.
They did run out of soldiers before the first sliver of the sun exposed itself on the horizon and Max was beginning to believe that they might make it out of Beijing after all. He wasn’t sure how, but his hope was growing with each hour of freedom. As the sun rose fully above the horizon, he realized that had he not been rescued by Min, he would be dead. His execution had been scheduled for dawn.