The Crypt (12 page)

“We don’t have him. They do.”

“What do they want with Parkman?”

“I don’t know but it makes me think they want to sweat him for intimate details about you. It sounds like he would have a wealth of knowledge the way he talked about you when he sprang you from jail.”

“Are they human?”

His head shot around at her. “What kind of question is that? Of course they’re human.”

“Then they bleed and if they bleed then they die like anyone else. They only think they’re powerful because of the agency they’re assigned to.”

“Sure, you keep telling yourself that but I’ve heard these guys are the best of the best.”

“Are you trying to sell me on them?”

“No Sarah. They scare me. I haven’t seen men with this kind of power since the KGB and even those guys wear tutus and do pirouettes compared to these black operation men. I’m telling you this too so you’ll be careful. Maybe you should silently leave Hungary. Get out while you’re still a free person.”

“When you first started talking you said something about an information exchange. I’ve heard what you’ve had to say. What do you want from me?”

Her hand started going numb in that second.
No,
she screamed in her head.
Not here, not now
.

Her arm followed and a second later she slumped to the ground.

The blackout lasted all of one second. Another time Vivian had taken over her body and it had nothing to do with giving her a message. This was starting to get annoying.

She opened her eyes and looked straight ahead along the cement floor. Imre was also on the ground in front of her.

What the fuck?

She reached forward and touched his shoulder.

“Imre?” she whispered.

He didn’t respond. She moved her hand to slap his face but it brushed against something like a feather around his neck area. She reached back and felt the feather. It was attached to a steel pin that protruded from Imre’s neck.

A tranquilizer dart. Like the one I got in the hotel. Rod’s here.

Panic set in. She heard rustling, footsteps running. A light came on. Someone was coming toward her with a flashlight.

“I got both of them. They both went down, sir.”

Someone about twenty feet away was reporting in. Sarah looked up and saw another tranquilizer dart in the bush about where her head had been. Vivian had saved her by knocking her out for that brief second.

Thank you.

She leaned forward and reached inside Imre’s jacket. Feeling her way around as fast as she could Sarah grabbed both guns and yanked them out of their holsters.

With two new weapons, she rolled away and under the bench. As the shooter stepped closer he lowered his flashlight. Sarah had moved enough to avoid being caught in its beam. She was behind a small set of bushes. The shooter turned away and scanned the area while reaching for a radio clipped to his belt. While his back was to her, Sarah stood up quietly and tiptoed to stand behind a tree seven feet from the bench.

“Come in sir.”

She could hear the shooter talking. With the stealth of a predator she leaned around to get a glimpse of his face. He was hard to see in the dark as his flashlight cast him in silhouette. She assumed he was listening to another party through the use of an earpiece as he started talking again.

“Yes sir, I understand. I shot two darts. Both parties went down. The girl first. These darts would take down a horse. There’s no way she’s awake.”

There was a few second pause.

“Yes sir, copy that. But I saw what I saw. When the girl…wait, sir, I see the problem. There’s a dart in the bush behind where Sarah was sitting. She must’ve ducked down for some reason at the exact moment I fired. In the dark I must’ve missed her dropping and thought it was because of the dart.”

“Yes sir. Copy that. The girl’s the priorty. Yes sir. I’ll have my team scour the area. We’ll get her, sir. We’ll get her.”

Sarah placed both guns in her belt line and moved away from him as quietly as she could. She got twenty feet and then climbed a small fence to exit the park area.

After clearing a full city block, with no more concern for noise, she ran for her life.

Chapter 11

She made it to the block where her hotel was without being stopped. It had to be at least two in the morning. The neighborhood was quiet. She knew they would be watching the building by now. They had to have an operative staking out everywhere she went. Even if she was wrong, she had to assume the building was being watched.

Before getting any closer Sarah eased up and jumped into the darkness of an alley that cut between two buildings. She needed her passport from behind the fire extinguisher in the hall on her floor if she wanted to travel anywhere but she couldn’t just walk in and grab it. A tranquilizer dart may be waiting for her and then who knows what after that.

She would wait and watch. Eventually they would give themselves away. The building she leaned against was as old as the rest in the area but this one had cobwebs on it and garbage strewn about the alleyway.

Her hair had come loose with all the activity in the last couple hours. She tied it back into a bun again. It was a lot easier years before. She didn’t have as much hair and what she did have she used a red bandanna to cover it up and keep it out of the way. Come to think of it, everything was easier then. She didn’t have an NSA organization trailing her while wearing fedoras and she wasn’t after an international human trafficker. In those days she would get a message and save a stranger from some accident or something less challenging. Mostly anonymous stuff.

But it wasn’t so anymore. She had risen in the ranks from an unknown to one sought after. The American government wanted her and she didn’t want them. Even if she stopped listening to the messages they wouldn’t stop coming after her. This was a new problem, one that didn’t seem to have an easy solution.

And now they had Parkman.

She leaned out and scanned the street. Nothing moved. Wherever they were she couldn’t tell. This could take hours. How long could she wait? These were trained professionals. They could probably stake her place out all night in the comfort of some vehicle with a nice cup of coffee and something to read, while she stood a block away fighting off spiders and the horrid smell that was really starting to assault her nose.

She scanned around again, trying to assess the best places from which to watch the hotel. Buildings rose on either side. Maybe they were watching the front of her building from a room across the street? But if they had grabbed a room on the other side of the street they would’ve had to work quickly. Did things like that happen so fast that they could be all set up within a day? She thought not. Especially with how transient a hotel room could be. Would they go to all that trouble just to have her check out in the morning and never come to this area again?

No, they would watch the building with something more transient themselves. Like in a car or maybe they’d be in the hotel itself. They could probably rent the room across from hers. Or could they have replaced the clerk from behind the counter with one of their men?

She was starting to think of too many conspiracy theories. These were just men. They didn’t own the planet. They couldn’t just go around taking over anything and everything they wanted.

With not much else to go on and knowing she couldn’t stand there all night coming up with ways in which they perform stakeouts, Sarah stepped from the safety of the shadows and started up the block. With each step she expected a dart in the neck, but none came. She looked up at the windows of the buildings around her. Only a random light or two shone through.

The front doors to the little hotel were propped open. Light came out and lit up the sidewalk in front.

Halfway there and no one had shot her yet. Things were looking up.

A lone car turned onto the street up ahead. Sarah slowed and stepped into a recessed doorway. The car approached and then shot past her without pause.

She waited for a breath and then stepped back out onto the sidewalk. It had been a long time since she was this spooked. These guys were really getting under her skin. They were just so damn good. Her opponents in the past were often amateurs or well trained criminals. They’d never been American military types. Trained operatives.

This was out of her league.

“Come on Vivian. Where are you when I need you?” she whispered.

Sarah stepped off the sidewalk, out into the street and crossed it. When she got to the other side she leaned up against a wall and stared at the windows on the side she was just on. She could find no movement at all. Nothing untoward.

This was taking too long. What if they weren’t watching the hotel? She was wasting her time.

What was the worst they would do to her anyway? Tranquilize her, take her to their lab and wait for a message from Vivian which wouldn’t come. After a few months of tests and an exercise in patience they would release her because she wasn’t psychic.

Yeah right. They’d find something and keep her for years against her will.

Now was the time to get proactive.

She was feeling threatened. Sure fear took over, but so did action.

Entering the building was more than grabbing her passport.

She needed to make a statement.

She eased off the wall of the building and walked with purpose to the front doors of the hostel.

When she entered, she saw that the guy behind the counter was the same one she had rented her room from the morning before.

She nodded his way and he nodded back. He looked down and continued to shuffle a stack of papers on his desk.

Sarah walked through the lobby looking everywhere, taking it all in. It was a small lobby with just a couple of seats. A janitor working the night shift was moving his mop back and forth across the tile floor in the side corner. He had placed a
caution: wet floor
sign out in Hungarian, English and German.

Since when do janitors work this late? Don’t night auditors handle the lobbies of smaller hotels on their own?

Sarah headed for the stairs and hopped up the first two as fast as she could. There she stopped but continued slapping the steps with her feet as if she continued higher, each step hitting softer as she wanted to make the sounds of her ascending.

With the skill of a professional and her wits about her she waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. What a great spot for him to be. He could clean everything over and over, waiting for his prey to enter the lobby and then radio in where she was.

But Sarah refused to be taken.

It was her turn to push back. It was time to get serious.

She could hear the mop as it hit the floor. He was whispering something. From where she stood she couldn’t see him, only a corner of the front counter. She leaned out enough to watch the guy behind the counter. He’d looked up and was staring at the janitor. Sarah watched as his head turned slowly as he tracked the janitor toward the staircase.

The seconds ticked by. In absolute silence she eased one of Imre’s guns out of the back of her pants and placed it in her left hand. That wasn’t her shooting hand but she needed her right available.

The guy behind the counter was still following the janitor. His head was just about at the stairwell.

Game on.

The janitor stepped into view and half ran, half jumped up the first two stairs, almost colliding with Sarah.

Just as he appeared his whispering became coherent. The last thing Sarah heard was, “I’ve got her”.

She set the gun tip on his right eye and reached down to his crotch. Caught by surprise his eyes widened and he almost fell back down the stairs but her right hand was in place.

She clamped onto his scrotum and squeezed enough to get his attention.

Sarah leaned in close and whispered in the ear that didn’t have a wire extending from it, “No, I think I’ve got you.”

He nodded vigorously, a vein bulging on his forehead.

Barely audible, she whispered, “Kill the connection to the outside or I kill you. Your choice.”

Both his hands had already raised above his head. He slowly brought his left hand to his ear and yanked the wire out. Then he reached down and pushed a button on a small device clipped to his breast pocket. A red light blinked out.

“There. Done,” he managed through clenched teeth. “We’re alone.”

“Great,” Sarah said. “Since we’re alone, let’s head up to my room. Try anything and you know what happens. You’re a smart man. I don’t have to threaten you. No hero shit. Are we clear?”

He nodded.

“No, I need to hear it. Are we clear?”

She emphasized the last three words with a violent squeeze. His head lifted as he almost fell to his knees. To his credit the man stayed standing.

“Yes,” was the only word he said, the pitch of his voice higher then she expected.

A side of her anger made her want to just squeeze until something in her hand popped, but she controlled it. She needed to see what he knew.