by Lex Lander
‘Steady me, sweetheart,’ I called over to Lizzy, and she crawled across and hooked on to my belt to counterbalance the weight of the boy while I hauled him back inside.
‘You okay?’ I asked as I set him down, and he jiggled his head, grinning the exaggerated grin of a circus clown in his relief.
‘Everybody all right?’ I yelled at the kids. ‘Tout le monde ça va?’
A scattering of ‘yesses’ and ‘ouis’ from the ones who understood reassured me. No response from Rafe. His head was lolling against the window, and he appeared to be out cold. The chopper gave an almost human groan and slipped sidelong. The branches that were supporting us snapped and our descent continued. Luckily for all of us the surrounding foliage continued to act as a brake. We sank to earth in a succession of jolts, the airframe distorting, setting up a creaking and a screeching as it carved a swathe through the foliage. A window on the underside popped out of its socket and Lizzy almost followed it, only saving herself by catching hold of a stray seat belt. Her back thudded into the cabin floor wrenching a yell from her lips. A final complaint of twisted metalwork before we hit the ground with a teeth-rattling crunch in the company of sundry amputated branches and a deluge of pine needles.
The biggest risk now was fire. Cirrus of smoke were already tricking into the cabin from apertures in the roof.
‘Get out – quick!’ I chucked the smaller boy out through the popped window. Lizzy, the black-haired girl, the skinny boy and two girls of about ten, scrambled out under their own steam. This left only the smallest girl, five or six maybe, big brown tearful eyes and streaks of snot under her nose. I lifted her and passed her through the window to Lizzy. The smoke was spreading. A last look round. The Korth was lying on what now served as the floor. I gathered it up and shoved it in the holster. It might yet be needed. I hauled myself through the popped window, and slid down the roof to the bliss of terra firma.
‘The pilot’s still in there,’ the skinny boy pointed out.
He almost but not quite made me feel bad. I still went back and tried to drag him out, until I realised he was dead. By then the smoke was as thick as a London fog. Coughing my lungs out, I scrambled through the same open window.
Through the curdling smoke flames were licking. If the fuel tank went up we could get caught in the blast.
‘Come on, kids,’ I gasped between splutters. ‘Let’s move it.’
With me backpacking the youngest girl for speed, we put distance between ourselves and the wrecked chopper. We had covered about fifty meters when a double boom ripped through the forest behind us. A shockwave of heat propelled me forward to squeals from my terrified passenger. Everyone gave up running and turned to view the spectacle. The ugly black bug was blazing nicely, flames licking at the trees around it. It was going to be a job for the local fire brigade.
‘Hey look!’ the skinny boy called, pointing. ‘There’s a car.’
We all looked away from the wrecked chopper. Through the trees a glint of pale blue metal. By chance we had come down a stone’s throw from where I had parked the Aston. Never was a sight more welcome. The rain had stopped, which was also welcome.
‘That’s your car, isn’t it?’ Lizzy said to me.
‘How do you think I got here?’ I urged on my little band of escapees. ‘Come on. We’re going to travel in style.’
With the rising crackle of flames in our ears we trotted over to the car. I unloaded my human cargo.
‘Grazie, signor,’ she said with a shy smile as I set her down, and it was almost the last thing she ever said. A whipcrack report preceded a bullet that passed over her head to gouge a hole in a tree trunk two feet away. Startled, she staggered backwards and went down with a bump. I belly flopped beside her, hollering to the other kids to do likewise. The Korth was already in my fist.
A baseball-capped man of ursine build was weaving through the trees towards us, a machine pistol in hand. He fired again while still on the move, a wild, unaimed burst. Not used to guns then. But with a machine pistol even novices can hit people by accident, and I had seven kids to worry about. Still I held my fire. He was an elusive target, appearing and disappearing between tree trunks. I was as likely to hit timber as flesh. More shots chewed up the ground by my foot, causing a minor eruption of pine needles. I double-gripped the Korth, picked a space between two trees and as he filled it, I let go the five rounds that were left in the chamber. Really fast. I couldn’t tell how many struck flesh, but one at least ripped open his neck. Blood burst from the wound like water from a hose. Still he came on, a dead man running, until his legs wobbled and he went down, suddenly like a struck tenpin. A couple of the girls squealed, a token reaction to the blood and the violence of it. What with their time in captivity and today’s events, these kids were getting an education in nastiness to remember.
‘Open the car, Alan,’ Lizzy urged, quicker thinking than me as usual. I fumbled for the key fob and she pulled the passenger door open. The kids needed no invitation to pile in. The rear of an Aston DBS is not exactly spacious but somehow five of them squeezed into it, with Lizzy up front and the little Italian girl on her knee.
Away to my left the blaze was taking serious hold of the forest, casting a lurid orange light between the trees. I reversed the Aston to the main trail. Nobody else showed up looking for a fight. Not even Mrs Annika de Bruin.
As we approached a sign marking the boundary line of the town of Couvin, a fire engine blundered by in the other direction, siren ululating. I steered on the roadside verge and screwed my neck round to scan across seven wide-eyed faces.
‘Who understands English?’ I asked. Three hands went up including Lizzy’s. ‘Et francais?’ Two hands, one of which was the skinny boy.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Raoul.’
‘Okay, Raoul. You may not appreciate it but I’ve just saved you from a nasty fate. Now I need a favour from you?’
He shrugged, nodded, grinned. He had a bruise on his cheekbone and a gashed lip, legacies of the crash.
‘D’accord, monsieur.’
‘This is the deal: I drop you off at the police, you explain to them what happened. The only thing is … I don`t want you to mention me, not in detail.’
Again the shrug and the grin.
‘You can tell them exactly what happened, just give them a fake description. Tell them I had brown hair with a beard and was wearing a blue suit. Oh, and my car was a Mercedes. Can you manage that?’
‘No problem,’ he said. Then, curiosity piqued, ‘Are you a gangster?’
‘No, mon petit, I’m with the good guys. It’s just that I have to go someplace, and I don’t want to get mixed up in a lot of police merde.’
‘I bet you’re a spy,’ the other boy said, eyes sparkling.
I laughed, ruffled his hair. ‘You could say that. Used to be, anyhow.’ I pointed at Lizzy. ‘And she’s with me. She’s the reason I came.’
All eyes now swivelled to Lizzy. Being in cahoots with the likes of me automatically boosted her status, and possibly made me more respectable. If anything could.
The pact made, we drove on in search of a police station. In small towns in Belgium they’re usually easy to locate. This one was just off a square in the town centre, Belgian flag languishing on a pole over the entrance. On the other side of the square, out of sight of the police station, I stopped again.
‘Journey over,’ I announced. ‘This is where we say goodbye.’
Lizzy dismounted and tilted her seat forward to let the others out. She had a hug and a kiss for them all, the little Italian girl clinging to her hand throughout.
I raised my hand in farewell. ‘Be good.’
The Italian girl broke away from Lizzy and came crawling over the passenger seat towards me. She embraced me around the neck, and attached her puckered lips to my cheek. I was so moved I didn’t immediately notice the transference of snot.
‘Ciao, signor,’ she whispered, and her shy smile meant almost as much to me as
Lizzy’s.
Lizzy retrieved her, handed her over to the black-haired girl, and got in beside me. The six of them stood along the curb in a forlorn line, ready to wave us off. A dumpy woman with two loaded shopping bags trundled past, giving them a curious stare.
‘Bye-bye, au revoir.’ Lizzy’s farewell gestures involved both arms, bunched fingers, and blown kisses.
The return drive to Andorra was as quick as the outward journey. Not much of it stuck in my memory. Desultory conversation between us, mostly trite stuff about the weather, this and that passing scenery, the idiocies of other road users. No mention of her ordeal. That was reserved for later. Periodically we quit the highway to relieve ourselves, or to eat, or to stretch our legs; on one occasion to sleep. I drove like an automaton. It rained most of the way, even snowed a bit near Reims.
Only when we entered the driveway of my house in Andorra in the small hours did my semi-trancelike state dissipate, and reality intrude: the reality of being home, with Lizzy restored to me, a job well done. Fatigue hit me. With a mumbled ‘Good night’ to Lizzy I took off to my bed.
It was mid-afternoon and raining hard when I awoke. I hadn’t drawn the drapes. The sky was a vista of gloom weighing on the countryside, the landscape reminiscent of Belgium but more mountainous. Lizzy was already up. She had lit the fire in the living room, and when I descended, showered but still in my bathrobe, it was a place of warmth and flickering flames and shadows that gave life to inanimate walls. It had also, incredibly, become home again.
‘You’re up,’ she greeted me, a note of censure in the words. She was in an armchair, legs tucked under her, a book open in her lap.
‘As you see.’
She made a humph in her throat and returned to her book. Or pretended to.
I brewed coffee and cranked up the iPod. With Bach’s Violinkonzerte No. 1 wafting through the house, I went to sprawl on the long couch, coffee cup in hand. Some of it slopped on my white bathrobe. Lizzy abandoned her reading and came to curl at my feet like a cat. We talked. Night settled on the house. We talked some more. By a roundabout route we eventually came to her experiences in the verminous clutches of Rik de Bruin.
‘Thank God you showed up when you did,’ she said. ‘We would have been out in the Bay of Biscay by now.’
‘Biscay? How come?’
‘That helicopter was supposed to transfer us to somewhere on the coast to be picked up by a boat.’
‘I see.’ I considered this. Decided it wasn’t to my liking. ‘So my giving Rik the kiss of death didn’t put them out of business.’
‘Oh, that was you, was it?’ A wan smile flickered, on-off. ‘It upset the applecart right enough. First we knew about it was when she came to the house a couple of days ago and told Christiaan to organise the transfer. “It’s finished here,” she said. “Rik’s dead.” She didn’t seem upset at all.’
I grunted. ‘You mean de Bruin’s wife?’
‘Yeah. Annika. I hated her. We all hated her.’
Her jean-sheathed legs became restless. Inside her, a mess of conflict. I waited for it to ebb. Pushing her wouldn’t help.
‘Alan … I do want to tell you about it. Every bit of it.’
‘No need, sweetheart. Better to wipe it from your memory, hey? Treat it like a bad dream.’
Her laugh was wistful.
‘If only people’s memories were like computers.’ She toyed with my hand; her fingers were trembling.
‘I want to tell you,’ she repeated. ‘I must.’
No secrets. The pact still held good. I stroked the tawny tumble of hair. In the background the orchestra was bringing Violinkonzerte No. I to a soulful climax. For a moment I was lulled into believing we could go on from here together. Inseparable.
Moments by definition pass quickly. Castles fall to earth. The cocoon of make-believe goes pop.
I smiled at her from inches away, but the smile that bounced back was not quite Lizzy as was. Traces of sorrow and cynicism had replaced the destroyed innocence. Her looks had not escaped unimpaired. Lines like cobwebs under her eyes and nose, and bracketing the corners of her mouth. Lines that had no right to be there, in a sixteen-year old face. It said much for her strength of character that she could smile at all.
A log collapsed in the grate with a puff of sparks. The music was finished and but for the spitting of the fire all was quiet.
Lizzy began her story, commencing with her abduction. I listened without interruption, carried on stroking her hair, a gesture that was supposed to say I’m here and you’re safe and nothing has changed between us. Would that it were true.
By any yardstick her story was horrific. The blood in my veins turned to liquid ice as the full extent of her debasement was unveiled. Although partly conditioned in advance by that movie at Lady Marcia’s, hearing it from Lizzy’s own lips was a greater obscenity by far. I tried not to visualise the number and variety of men (and beasts) who had used her body, let alone the atrocities, human and mechanical, practiced on her. Not, it transpired, by Rik de Bruin, but by his wife, Annika. I had to be dispassionate. Act, indeed think, as if the entire episode had never taken place. Just as I had advised her to do.
It was long in the telling and when it was done she wept for almost as long again. Sobbed out her misery and her suffering into my bathrobe, and with such intensity that my own eyes prickled in empathy. By and by I gave her my handkerchief, and she mopped and blew, and reduced her distress to a snuffle.
‘I’ve made you all soggy,’ she said, patting the damp patch on my robe.
‘I’ll never wash it again.’
She laughed shakily. ‘I do so love you.’
My mouth opened, closed again. I hugged her, letting my actions speak for my emotions.
‘Lizzy, my sweet, I want to ask you a few questions. About … what you just told me. Do you mind?’
‘Not now, not any more. It’s all out of my system. Well, apart from …’ Her voice tailed off.
It wasn’t hard to guess what wasn’t out of her system.
‘The drugs?’ I hazarded. Her eyes widened. ‘I know all about it. We’ll get you cured, no matter how much it costs.’
She looked worried, as if I were about to withhold her supplies. ‘I have to have it, you know. Every day.’
I nodded and kept the distaste battened down.
‘More than once a day,’ she persisted.
‘Have you, er … got some with you?’
Now she avoided my eyes. She wasn’t so far hooked as to feel no shame. Her ‘yes’ was barely audible.
It explained her vitality. She was on a high. Later, when the drug’s effects wore off, her behaviour might change for the worse. She might become irrational, even violent. In that eventuality, I supposed she would stoke up with more of the stuff. Tomorrow I would seek medical advice.
But that was tomorrow. Today I had a need which overrode all other considerations.
‘About Rik de Bruin’s wife … Annika. You say she was responsible for most of what was done to you.’
‘Yeah. She’s bisexual. And she likes hurting people. I’ve still got the scars.’ She shuddered violently.
‘Did you ever try to escape?’
She became pensive. ‘I was going to. One girl did. They brought her back and … and punished her. We heard her screaming. We never saw her again. Supposed to be an object lesson to the rest of us. It sure put me off the idea.’
I swallowed. ‘Where did the other kids come from?’
‘All over. Annika preferred blonde girls, but they came in all shapes and colours.’
The picture was still unclear.
‘Let me get this straight; are you saying de Bruin had girls kidnapped just because … well, because Annika had the hots for them?’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t just that.’
It couldn’t have been just that. It was beyond credible that Rik de Bruin had done it for his wife’s personal gratification.
‘Tell me.’ I rose from the couch and chuc
ked a couple of logs on the fire, gave the bellows a few strokes. Lizzy stayed on the floor, legs drawn up, chin resting on knees. Her gaze was far away. I flopped down beside her.
‘She and Rik are really just pimps, I supposed you’d call them. They procure young girls and boys for customers overseas, rich Arabs mostly. The girls who were there with me were all abducted for the Middle East meat market. That was Rik’s name for it. I was in a different category, you might even say I was privileged.’
‘How so?’
‘It seems that the Arab I told you about, you remember, the big shot in Abu Dhabi who offered to pay Mummy for me? Mummy gave him the heave-ho, as you know. So he contacted Rik and Annika and hired them to abduct me.’
‘No shit? So how come you weren’t sent to Abu Dhabi?’
She hugged herself, rocking back and forth.
‘That’s how the business works. They exploit you for the Internet and DVD market before shipping you off to Arab-land. Often for months. You get to become a movie star. When they decide you’ve served your purpose, earned your keep, whatever, they … they clean you up and off you go. I was lucky. Annika took a particular shine to me, so I got her personal attention. And I do not mean she showered me with love.’
‘Did Rik know about that, you and Annika, I mean?’
‘Did he know?’ Her laugh was shrill. ‘Jesus, Alan, he was in on it. I’ve lost count of the times we made up a threesome.’
What I had so far learned from Lizzy did not best please me. She had just blown apart my assumption that in removing Rik de Bruin I had removed the supremo of the organization. If she had read the situation correctly, he and his wife were very much a team.