Brotherhood and Others Page 7

  He wanted to stop the car and tell Julio and Claudio to let her go, But it was far too late for that. The gang leader shouted at her, “You hear?”

  The girl began to sob and tremble, and Robin smelled something acrid.

  “God damn!” Claudio said. “She pissed herself. God damn.”

  That only served to upset her more. Antonia Valera’s face flushed with shame. Robin felt just as shamed as he drove, unwilling to look at the girl again while Julio put a gag in her mouth and Claudio tied her wrists. Julio got out another hood and lifted it over her head. She began to squeal again and Robin couldn’t help it. He looked in the rearview one more time and found her straining and staring at him pleadingly, as if she still thought he was her regular chauffeur, as if she couldn’t understand how he’d betrayed her.

  And then her face disappeared beneath the hood, and Robin was left breathless at the wheel. “Jul—” he began.

  “No names, idiot!” Julio roared, causing the hooded girl to begin crying again. “Drive! Just drive!”

  * * *

  It was a quarter to eleven by the time Fowler drove the truck across the border at SŁubice. Because Germany and Poland were signatories of the Schengen Agreement, which abolished border controls in the European Union, they passed without interruption and proceeded toward the Polish village of Drzecin.

  “Rogue, I got something on the BMW,” the woman said in Monarch’s ear.

  “Tell me, tell me,” Monarch said. He was back in the passenger seat in the cab, looking out at drab gray buildings made drabber by the storm.

  “Vehicle was abandoned by the time the autobahn police reached it.”

  “Surprise.”

  “Yes, well, it was stolen almost a week ago in Munich. The driver of the lorry that hit the BMW said there were three men in it. All exited quickly after the crash, and ran off the autobahn south toward the village of Buckau. Lorry driver claims he never got a good look at any of them.”

  “So we’re nowhere.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “We’ve got the tracking device. There might be fingerprints.”

  “I’ll run them when you get here,” she promised.

  Ten minutes later, in the village of Starków, they turned onto a dark, puddled, and potholed backstreet then pulled into the parking lot of an old gray building and backed up to a loading dock. The second they stopped, Monarch was up and moving again, following Tatupu and one of the nurses as they wheeled DeGrave past his car and onto the dock where they were met by two thin pale men. They could have been accountants or academics were it not for the green hospital scrubs they wore.

  There was a woman with them as well, a tall, reedy redhead in jeans and a heavy wool fishing sweater. “Tracking device?” she said to Monarch by way of greeting.

  Gloria Barnett was in her late thirties, the same woman who’d been speaking to him over his satellite link since the Ellington Hotel. She’d washed out of the Agency’s clandestine training program, but as far as Monarch was concerned, Barnett was the most competent operations runner at the CIA. If he needed something, Barnett got it for himor told him where to find it.

  “Hi to you, too, Gloria,” Monarch said, handing her the evidence bag as the pale men took over from Tatupu and the nurse. Tatupu blew a kiss at Barnett and went back into the truck as the pale men wheeled the unconscious South African physicist through doors on the left side of the loading dock.

  “Where are they taking him?” Monarch wondered.

  “I didn’t ask,” she said.

  “So we’re just a delivery service?” Monarch said, not liking it.

  “A highly trained delivery service,” Barnett agreed. “Something to eat?”

  “And some dry warm clothes,” he said.

  “Already thought of that. They’re inside.”

  “Gloria, has anybody ever told you you’re the best?”

  “Why, yes, Robin,” she said,beaming.. “Nearly everyone I know.”

  Monarch grinned and followed her through a door opposite the one where they’d taken the South African, ending up in a depressing and decrepit hallway lit by weak bare lightbulbs. The pale green paint was chipped and filthy.

  “What was this place?” he asked.

  “Some Communist-era widget factory.”

  Barnett turned into a second hallway and into a large room with much better lighting. It smelled of fresh coffee. A space heater hummed. A folding table in the corner supported a tray of bread, dried meat, cheeses, and fresh fruit. Another featured two laptops and a headset. Several inflatable sleeping pads were piled in the corner along with socks, wool pants, a black turtleneck shirt, and a dark fleece top.

  Monarch grabbed the clothes, returned to the hall, stripped off his wet things, and was clambering into the dry stuff when Tatupu appeared.

  “Fowler went to fill up before the return trip,” the Samoan said.

  Much warmer now, Monarch nodded and said, “Better get something to eat, Tats, and a little sleep. We’ve got to be rolling by 0500.”

  “That’s all the time they’re giving Mr. and Mr. Pale?” Tatupu said, surprised.

  “That’s all the time we’re giving Mr. and Mr. Pale.”

  “Whatever. When this is over, I’m taking some R and R in Berlin.”

  “Which will make you what? Like an Englishman in New York?”

  He broke into a grin that seized his entire face. “I’ll be a Samoan man in Berlin,” he sang, hitting the Sting melody spot on. “‘Oh, oh, I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien, I’m a Samoan man in Berlin!”

  Laughing, they entered the room where Barnett was running a small optical device over the GPS tracker.

  “Anything?” Monarch asked, tearing off a hunk of bread and making a sandwich with roast beef and cheese.

  “Two solid prints,” she said, and gave the computer an order. The prints appeared large on the screen. “I’ll send them through, see what we get.”

  Monarch washed down the sandwich with a can of orange juice, belched, and said, “I’m going to sleep.”

  “I’ll be quiet,” Barnett promised.

  “Latrine?”

  “Take a right, end of the hall there’s a door takes you outside.”

  A moment later, Monarch stepped out the door, feeling the cold, raw wind again, but not the rain. As he relieved himself, he looked around, making out the long flank of the building and wondering where they’d taken DeGrave.

  When he got back, Tatupu was already on the floor, trying to fit his massive frame on one of the camping pads.

  Monarch got one for himself, walked by Barnett, and whispered, “What do you think they’re doing to him? DeGrave?”

  She looked up at him. “You mean, exactly?”

  He shrugged.

  She looked awayand said, “I didn’t ask the pale guys, and they didn’t offer.”

  “What I figured,” Monarch said.

  He lay down on the air mattress and drew a blanket over his shoulders. Over the years in the U.S. Special Forces, long before he was recruited to the CIA, Monarch had learned how to switch off his brain and sleep when he could. He considered it one of his most important skills because he believed that a tired mind was a vulnerable mind, and a vulnerable mind could be fooled, and a fooled mind was a dead mind.

  He shut his eyes and fell into sleep, trying not to think about how vulnerable his mind had been to Antonia Valera.

  * * *

  It had all happened so quickly. They’d pulled into a garage well away from the Villa Miserie, and the graffiti-covered overhead door lowered behind them.

  Julio got the girl from the car. She was whimpering as he led her by the elbow out the back door into a dimming light. They crossed an alley and went through a second door. Robin and Claudio followed.

  “What about the car?” Robin asked.

  “We’ll call some of the others to take it apart,” Claudio said. “Mercedes. Nice car. Nicer than the one you stole a couple of years ago.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, really?” Robin shot back. “That one may not have had a side-view mirror, but it didn’t have a piss stain on the backseat, now did it?”

  “Move,” Claudio said, acting disgusted with him, handing him his clothes. “Get the uniform off.”

  Going through that door on the other side of the street, Robin faced a steep set of stairs. Julio and Antonia Valera were already up there. He could hear them walking on the creaky wooden floor as he climbed.

  He found Julio with the girl in a windowless room lit by a single bare lightbulb. There was nothing in the room except a stained mattress, a box of canned and dried goods, and several bottles of water. The fourteen-year-old lay on her side on the mattress, sniffling beneath her hood.

  “You watch her,” Julio said. “Make sure she drinks, eats. She has to piss or take a dump, she uses the bucket down the hall. She gets no time alone. None. I want this to be simple, clean, no ’Count of Monte Cristo’ stuff going on.”

  Among other things, Julio liked to read, especially adventure stories. It had been one of the things about the gang leader that Robin had liked right away, the fact that he was interested in something beyond the Brotherhood. Claudio was like that, too. He wanted to be an artist, a painter. But now it seemed like Julio and Claudio were putting too much of the weight of the scheme on him.

  “Why do I have to watch her?” Robin demanded.

  “Because you’re the youngest,” Julio said. “And we can’t trust anyone else.”

  “Twenty-four seven?” Robin asked, incredulous.

  “We’ll spot you,” Julio said, glancing down at the girl, who seemed to be listening to them. “Use a hood yourself when she’s eating.”

  Claudio handed him the sock filled with sand. “If she gets out of control, use this. Slight tap to the back of the head is all it takes.”

  Robin took it, tossed it in with the food.

  Claudio and Julio made to leave. Robin said, “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think?” Claudio said. “Giving Papa a call.”

  And then they were gone, and Robin was alone with the girl, who began to whine again. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  But she began to whine even louder.

  “Shut up,” Robin said, getting angry. She wasn’t like a painting or a piece of jewelry, unable to speak, unable to plead, and that confused him.

  She began to struggle and whine louder still.

  Robin feared if someone happened to wander down the alley they might hear her. He looked at the sock filled with sand, hesitated, but then grabbed the hood Julio had left, pulled it on, and went over to her. He knelt down and said, “If I take off your gag, do you promise not to scream?”

  She nodded.

  “If you scream, it will go back on,” he said. He removed her hood, smelling her damp hair everywhere.

  Antonia Valera looked back at him walleyed as he worked free the gag.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Let me go,” she cried softly.

  “I can’t do that,” Robin said. “Not until your father gives us some money.”

  “He won’t do that,” she said, her lip trembling and her eyes watering.

  “Sure he will,” Robin said. “He loves you, doesn’t he?”

  “He said it,” she replied, her voice tremulous. “I heard him just last week, talking with my mother after they watched some Mel Gibson movie about a kidnapping. He said the worst thing you can do is give in and give them the money because they always ask for more.”

  “We’re not asking for more,” Robin said. “This is a one-time thing.”

  “He won’t give you the money,” she said. “So what will you do with me?”

  Robin didn’t answer because he honestly didn’t know what Julio would do.

  “How old are you?” she asked after several moments of silence.

  Robin did not answer.

  “I need some water,” she said.

  He got a bottle, sat her up, and put it in her hands. She raised the bottle and her bound wrists and gulped at the water.

  “Easy,” he said, pulling the bottle away from her. “That’s got to last. You hungry? You got to go?”

  She glared at him, but then shook her head before glancing at the stain on her skirt. “I need a wet cloth. To clean myself.”

  He flushed inside the hood, but then said, “I have to gag you again.”

  “Okay,” Antonia Valera said. “But please, no hood. I’m claustrophobic. It’s like I’m suffocating in it.”

  Robin debated, and then nodded. He fitted the gag in her mouth, got up, and made to leave the room. There was a sink across the street in the garage where the Mercedes sat, awaiting a chop crew. He glanced back at her. “Don’t move from there. If you do, the hood goes back on. Understand?”

  She looked sickened by the idea, but nodded.

  Robin went down the stairs, through the entry and out into the alley with Julio’s warning about not leaving her alone echoing in his head. He found the key to the garage in a rusty coffee can, opened the door, and went inside, hearing the last tics of the Mercedes’s engine cooling. He put on the car’s headlights, saw a few T-shirts on a bench in the corner, grabbed them, soaked them in the sink, and left.

  Locking the door and stowing the key, he dashed across the street and through the other door. He locked it behind him and bounded up the stairs. Robin stepped into the open doorway, saw the empty mattress, and cursed.

  Before he could think, the door came flying at him, striking him in the nose and knocking him off his feet. He went crashing to the floor.

  * * *

  Monarch jerked awake, blinking at the light in the safe room. Barnett was still up and working at her computer. It was two forty-five A.M. Tatupu was sprawled on his air mattress. Abbott Fowler snored under a blanket.

  Monarch knew he should try to sleep more, but he felt restless. How could he lay there in the middle of a rendition? These things had a way of getting out of control fast, didn’t they?

  Getting to his feet, he groaned. Barnett looked over at him and held her finger to her lips. He got a cup of coffee and drank it black.

  “Any hits on the prints?” he whispered.

  “Nothing yet,” she said. “I’m expanding the search.”

  He yawned, nodded, and said, “I’m going to take a walk around.”

  “Mr. and Mr. Pale were kind of down on that idea.”

  “Seems I’m always letting someone down,” Monarch replied, and left.

  Monarch was most comfortable moving, and he liked to know the terrain around any place where he stayed stationary, prowling the area so he would get a sense of how an enemy might approach him. Flipping on the switch on an LED headlamp, he set out to do just that, opening various doors on the hallway, finding them empty but for the odd piece of pipe or lumber that lay in the dust.

  At last he reached the door where he’d gone out to urinate. He stepped outside, extinguished the light. A bitter wind off the North Sea gnawed at his cheeks. Monarch shivered, thought to go back inside, but then decided to walk the perimeter of the abandoned factory.

  The darkness did not bother him. From childhood, he’d had a knack for traveling in the shadows, using his peripheral vision to find his way. Padding along parallel to the factory wall through dead matted grass and weeds that soaked his pant legs, he toed aside rusty cans and piles of trash with the ease of a prowling cat.

  The two-story factory was perhaps one hundred meters long, with a broken concrete pad out back that abutted a forested area. Looping to the building’s east side, the dead grass was tamped down here and he moved at a quicker pace, smelling the night odors of spring on the cold moist wind. Halfway back to the loading dock, Monarch spotted a thin vertical strip of light glowing through a window on the factory’s second story. He flashed on the image of the pale guys. What were they doing to DeGrave? What could they possibly do to him that woul
d cause him to talk so quickly?

  It was not his responsibility and above his pay grade, yet those questions would not stop. Monarch knew he should just return to Barnett and his team, have another cup of coffee, wait for the pale boys to do their thing, and concentrate on getting DeGrave in bed before sunrise. It’s what he would do, he decided. No use clouding the mission.

  But he’d taken no more than two steps when he heard echoing from the factory the mournful sounds of someone suffering.

  * * *

  Robin hit the floor and felt the breath blown out of him, dropped the wet rags, understanding that Antonia Valera had somehow gotten to her feet, hid behind the door, and slammed him in the face with it. He should have listened to Julio. He should never have left her alone.

  The girl wrenched the door back open. The gag was still in, and her wrists remained bound, but her ankles were free. She tried to leap over Robin, going for the stairs, but his hand shot out, snagging her by the left ankle. He thought sure she’d sprawl on her face, but she was uncannily athletic and managed to stay upright enough to twist and kick at his face.

  Robin deflected the blow, which finally upset her balance and she crashed onto her side. Still fighting for air, trying to stop her from kicking at him again, he threw himself on top of her and pinned her to the floor.

  She struggled, staring up at him, her wide hateful eyes darting all over his hoodless face as if wanting to remember every bit of it.

  “You had to do something stupid,” Robin said. “I was trying to be nice and you had to do something stupid.”

  The girl said nothing, just continued to study his face coldly. He jerked her to her feet, pushed her onto the mattress, and retied her ankles. Then he undid her wrist restraints, got her arms behind her back, and bound her again.

  He reached for the hood and she began to squeal like a wounded animal. She was claustrophobic. What did he care? She’d tried to run, hadn’t she? He grabbed the hood. She screamed so loud against her gag that her skin turned purple. Veins quivered on her neck.

  “Okay, okay,” Robin said, setting the hood down.

  Her chest still heaving, Antonia Valera began to calm. Robin looked back into the hallway, saw the wet rags, debated, and then got them. He pushed her over onto her back and said, “Open your legs.”