The Aggrieved

by Brett Battles

  As the BMW drove out of sight, Nate started looking for a place to park.

  A few seconds later, Jar said, “They have stopped.”

  “Comms,” Nate said.

  Jar rummaged through the duffel then handed two sets of communication gear to Daeng, who tossed one into Nate’s lap.

  “Are either of our final Vogels in the area?”

  “The tailor shop is two streets over,” Jar said. “The other one is a kilometer farther south.”

  There was no place to park, so Nate stopped the car and said to Daeng, “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  As soon as Daeng jumped out, Nate continued looking for a spot. When the reverse lights of a car at the curb thirty meters ahead lit up, he let out a triumphant yes!

  He stopped in the road right behind it and waited for it to pull out, but the driver was obviously not in a hurry as the car simply sat there. Nate fought the urge to honk the horn since doing so would make the driver more likely to remember him. That could be a problem later.

  He waited another ten seconds, and when it looked like the woman was no more ready to leave than before, he shifted into Park, applied the emergency brake, and looked back at Jar. “You’re going to have to do it.”

  “What?” she asked, her eyes wider than he’d ever seen them.

  “You do know how to drive, don’t you?”

  “In principle,” she said.

  “You’ll do fine,” he said, and opened his door. “When you’re done, just stay in the car and give us updates on Dehler’s movements.”

  He jumped out and sprinted toward the pass-through. When he neared, he flicked on his comm. “Jar, where’s the BMW?”

  “What do you want me to do? Drive or check?”

  “Both.”

  She said something under her breath in Thai. “It has stopped on the other side of the tunnel and—” Another outburst of Thai.

  Nate glanced over his shoulder and saw she was partially pulled into the now open spot, but had stopped. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I just…” He could hear the engine turn over and catch, and realized she’d somehow killed it.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  Her response this time was not just a single phrase in her native language, but a whole paragraph packed full of frustration.

  “Daeng, do you see them?”

  No response.

  “Daeng?”

  Nothing.

  Nate paused at the opening to the pass-through, saw it was empty, and then hurried to the other end.

  Centuries old, five-story buildings surrounded the central courtyard. The area itself was divided between a parking lot and a sporting complex, which consisted of two snow-covered tennis courts and an old one-story building, with windows fogged up by people using the gym equipment inside.

  A scan of the parking area revealed the BMW in a spot about a dozen meters away, but no sign of its occupants or Daeng.

  “Daeng, where are you?” Nate said into the comm.

  No vocal reply, but this time there was a scratch, like someone dragging a finger over a mic.

  “Is that you?”

  Another scratch. Yes.

  Nate’s friend was somewhere he couldn’t talk.

  “Do you have eyes on Dehler?”

  One scratch.

  “Hang on. I’ll be right there. Jar, give me a location on Daeng’s phone.”

  Nothing.

  “Jar!”

  “One moment.”

  Nate could hear the rev of an engine. “Are you still trying to park?”

  She spared him her Thai curses, and settled on growling this time.

  Unsure how long it would be before she could help him again, he hurried toward the BMW, hoping to pick up Dehler’s and Reiser’s footprints in the snow. As he neared, he spotted a single set of footprints that started below the passenger door and moved toward a walkway on the other side of the parking lot.

  He straightened up to follow them, but movement inside the vehicle caught his attention. His hand went for his gun, but he left the weapon untouched when he realized the twitch came from the prone form of Dehler’s hostage, now lying in the backseat, tied up and semiconscious.

  He tried the door. Locked.

  Jar’s voice came over the comm. “Daeng is three blocks on the other side of the building. Moving north.”

  Nate said, “Daeng, I’m going to need a minute before I can get to you. You okay with that?”

  One scratch.

  “No trouble?”

  Two scratches. No.

  “All right. Don’t lose them. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  One scratch.

  Nate pulled out his gun and flipped it around so that he was holding it by the barrel. He unzipped his jacket and held an open flap across the car’s window. He rapped the grip end of the gun against it. It took four tries before the tempered glass cracked. Instead of hitting it again, he shoved his elbow against the window and pushed it inward, bracing himself in case the car alarm went off.

  The glass crunched as it folded into the car, but there was no other sound. Reiser had played it smart. Not activating the alarm meant it couldn’t go off if the woman regained consciousness and opened the door. Nate unlocked the door, pulled it open, and pushed the passenger seat out of the way so he could lean in next to the woman.

  She was moaning softly, her eyes still closed. Seeing no obvious injuries, he touched her neck to check her pulse. It was strong and even. She’d probably been drugged but otherwise appeared to be all right.

  “Jar, I need you to call the police.” He told her about the hostage. “Have them send an ambulance, too.”

  “You do remember I do not speak German, right?”

  “Someone there should speak English. You’ll do fine.”

  “Do I need to watch her until they arrive?”

  “No. Stay in the car. She’ll be okay. Now make the call.”

  He closed the BMW’s door but didn’t latch it, and headed toward the exit on the other side of the courtyard.

  “Daeng, I’m on my way.”

  Silence.

  “Daeng, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  DAENG REACHED THE end of the pass-through and scanned the courtyard.

  For a split second, he thought he was too late. No one was near the BMW, nor was anyone walking across the open space. When he heard the tap of a shoe on stone, his gaze shot across the courtyard to another tunnel that went through the opposite building. Toward the middle were the silhouettes of three people walking quickly away from Daeng.

  Daeng hurried over to the pass-through, arriving as the others exited the far end and turned right, out of sight. Daeng sprinted through the tunnel and slowed to a walk as he emerged, matching his pace to the pedestrians walking by.

  Dehler, Reiser, and Morgan were twenty meters ahead of him, moving down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Daeng didn’t see the hostage anywhere. Had they let her go? That didn’t seem likely. The woman could raise an alarm and cause all sorts of problems. Besides, Daeng would have seen her at some point.

  He looked over his shoulder to make sure she hadn’t gone the other way. But no, not there, either.

  Ahead, Dehler and her friends paused at the curb, clearly intending to cross to the other side. Daeng quickened his pace, closing the distance between them to a mere five meters before a gap in the traffic allowed the others through.

  Daeng didn’t want to get any closer, in case Reiser looked back and recognized him, but if he didn’t take advantage of the same gap between cars, he’d be stuck where he was for critical seconds before another opportunity appeared. Keeping his steps light, he jogged onto the crosswalk.

  Though Reiser didn’t twitch, Dehler looked back.

  Daeng immediately went into just-another-freezing-pedestrian mode, scrunching up his shoulders and tilting his face down so that his jacket obscured as much of his features as possible.

&n
bsp; Unlike Nate and Jar, he’d never had a close encounter with Dehler. It was possible she’d seen him in Jakarta the night she killed Liz, but it would have been from a distance and at night.

  As her gaze passed over him, Nate’s voice crackled in his ear. “Daeng, where are you?”

  Not able to verbally answer, he raised a hand to his check and rubbed a finger across the mic attached to the collar of his jacket.

  “Is that you?”

  He rubbed again.

  “You have eyes on Dehler?”

  A better question would have been does she have eyes on him, he thought as he rubbed once more.

  “Hang on. I’ll be right there. Jar, give me a location on Daeng’s phone.”

  Dehler twisted back around, making no indication she’d marked Daeng as a threat. He prayed that was the case, but was experienced enough to know her nonreaction didn’t mean she hadn’t made him.

  When he reached the sidewalk, he slowed to let several people get between them, and then followed the assassin and her colleagues down the block.

  Half a minute later, Jar reported Daeng’s position over the comm.

  “Daeng, I’m going to need a minute before I can get to you,” Nate said. “You okay with that?”

  While Daeng probably could have given a verbal response, he thought it better not to take the chance. He rubbed again.

  “No trouble?”

  He rubbed twice this time.

  “All right. Don’t lose them. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Daeng rubbed again.

  Ahead, the others turned onto a new street, in the direction of the river. The moment they were out of sight, he double-timed it, and slowed again when he reached the corner. As he made the turn, he expected to see Dehler and company not far down the block, but the only people ahead were an older couple and a young guy with a dog.

  Daeng fought the urge to stop and look around, and instead maintained his casual pace while letting his gaze wander as a normal pedestrian’s might.

  Dehler, Reiser, and Morgan weren’t anywhere.

  The only place they could have gone was into one of the buildings he’d just passed. He was about to glance over his shoulder when the hard barrel of a gun pressed against his spine, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Shhh,” a voice behind him said.

  A hand ripped his comm mic from his collar and grabbed the receiver in his ear.

  Dehler moved in front of him and smiled. “You will follow me.”

  “I’d rather stay here,” Daeng replied.

  Her smiled turned ever so slightly annoyed. “Of course you would.”

  When her gaze flicked over his shoulder, Daeng ducked to the left, trying to twist away from the gun at his back, but he was too late. He never saw what slammed into the side of his head.

  As he fell to the ground, his consciousness slipping away, his gaze caught sight of a small sign on a nearby building that read:

  SCHNEIDEREI VOGEL

  “WHICH WAY?” NATE asked as he turned down the street where Jar had guided him.

  No answer.

  “Jar! Which way?”

  “Give me a second.”

  “We don’t have a second!”

  “I-I-I lost his phone.”

  “What?”

  “The signal is gone.”

  “Then tell me the last place it had one!”

  A pause. “North for thirteen meters, then west for six.”

  Thirteen meters put him in the middle of the block. “I’m in front of a building. Are you saying he’s inside?”

  “He must be.”

  He looked up. “There are five floors. Which one?”

  Dead air.

  “Jar, I need to know which one!”

  “And that is exactly what I am trying to figure out,” she shot back. “The ground floor…I think.”

  Nate tried opening the front door, but it was locked. He looked through the windows that bracketed the entrance, and saw a lobby with mailboxes on one wall and a staircase leading upward on the opposite side. Though some of the other buildings he’d passed had businesses on the ground floor, this one appeared to be fully residential.

  He examined the lock. It was designed to keep out the unmotivated, but a true security device it was not. He didn’t even need his picks. A good, old-fashioned slip of a credit card between the strike plate and the latch did the trick.

  The lobby led into a hallway that ran all the way to the back of the building. There were several doors along it, most with apartment numbers on them. Nate briefly stopped in front of each but heard nothing in any of them. At the end of the hall was a door marked BUILDING SERVICES and an exit he assumed led outside.

  “You’re almost on top of it,” Jar said.

  “Straight ahead?”

  “Maybe three meters, and then to the left.”

  The building services door.

  He crept up and put his ear against it. Quiet like the others.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  He used his picks to unlock it, then pulled out his gun and eased the door open. It turned out, his caution was unnecessary. The only things inside were shelves filled with cleaning products.

  “You’re standing right where the signal went out,” Jar said.

  Nate looked at the shelves beside him, but there was nothing of interest on them. He got down on his knees and scooted his fingers underneath the bottom shelf until they knocked into something. He eased the object out.

  “I found a SIM card. I think someone wanted us to think he came here.”

  “Wait a minute.” A quiet moment, then Jar muttered something in Thai.

  “What?” Nate asked.

  “I think you’re in the wrong building.”

  “Where am I supposed to be?” he asked as he exited the room.

  “I believe the one we want is half a block down from you.”

  “I don’t understand. Why there?”

  “It is where the nearest Vogel is located.”

  He took off down the hallway toward the front of the building. “You couldn’t have told me that before?!”

  “You wanted to know where Daeng’s phone was last.”

  Nate grimaced. Orlando would have automatically given him the additional information at the same time, but Jar was much more literal. She’d done exactly what he’d requested. “You’re right. Sorry. In the future, though, if something like that comes up, it’s okay to pass it on.”

  “I will remember that.”

  He flew through the front door and turned down the sidewalk. “Okay, which building is it?”

  “Four ahead.”

  He counted them off as he ran by, and slowed right before he reached the final one.

  Like the building he’d just checked, the front door led into a lobby. He was about to enter when he noticed a small, unassuming sign off to the side, above a basement entrance.

  SCHNEIDEREI VOGEL

  Vogel’s Tailor Shop.

  He snuck down the stairs and tested the door. Locked, and not with some flimsy mechanism. The door was equipped with two high-security deadbolts, and not only that, it appeared to be made of reinforced steel. Overkill for a tiny tailoring business.

  Vogel’s was definitely not your typical alteration destination.

  He pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing. He took a step back. Picking the lock would take some time. Best to get a picture of the entire place first, see if there was a rear exit, or some way to access the space from the interior of the building.

  He headed back up the steps. “Jar, bring the car over here and park somewhere nearby. I need you to watch and make sure no one leaves through the front.”

  “Drive?”

  “Just try not to hit anyone.”

  “That is not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny.”

  “That is not funny, either.”

  Nate entered the ground floor of the building
and checked the stairwell. Street level was as far as it went down. There didn’t appear to be any other way to reach the basement from inside. He continued to the back of the building, where he found an exit. As he stepped outside, he caught sight of the back of a white Mercedes van turning out of the rear parking area into an alleyway.

  He sprinted after it, not sure if it had anything to do with Dehler, but wanting to check. He was under no illusion he could stop the van. His hope was to get close enough to make out the license plate number, or, at the very least, note something distinctive about the vehicle. But as he rushed around the bend onto the access road, he saw he was too late. The Mercedes was speeding down the narrow road, already several buildings away.

  Nate kept running, on the thin chance the van would have to stop before turning out of the alley and allow him to catch up. But that, too, turned out to be a pipe dream. The van barely slowed as it turned onto the road and sped out of sight.

  “Dammit!”

  He headed back, trying to convince himself the van had nothing to do with Dehler or Reiser or Daeng. But the smoldering fire in the pit of his stomach said otherwise.

  When he reached the building again, he saw there was indeed a rear entrance to the basement. Like the door in front, it had two deadbolts, but when he gave the doorknob a gentle twist, he discovered it was unlocked.

  He used an old mop handle he found in the alley to push the door open in case it was booby-trapped, but nothing exploded or shot out the opening.

  A quick search of the shop revealed it was deserted. He did find one item of interest—Daeng’s SIM-less phone.

  “Jar, are you here yet?” Nate asked.

  “Trying to park. Give me a minute.”

  “Just grab our things and leave it where it is,” he said. Though he didn’t think Dehler knew yet what he’d been driving, it was something she could learn from Daeng. “We need to find a new ride.”

  NATE DROVE THEIR newly appropriated Audi in the general direction he thought the Mercedes had gone, but it became clear within the first five minutes that even if he had guessed right, he and Jar were too far behind to catch up.

  “We need to try traffic cams,” he said, pulling into an empty spot at the side of the road.