by JL Terra
Then she gathered up the important equipment: the dog’s leash. “Let’s go, Dauntless.” If they’d found her location, it wouldn’t take long before someone showed up.
Remy used her cell phone to send pineapple slush to everyone. They would know what that meant, even Anabeth. She wasn’t a full part of the company—that would put her at risk. Anabeth’s job was the opposite of what Remy did, all meetings and hammering out details in person. Remy did everything on her computer.
Which was now fried.
She tossed her phone onto the table and walked out with Dauntless in a heel. The only thing she had on her was a wallet with the name Rebecca Wells. Nothing could be salvaged from the electronic equipment, even if they took the time to look on the now defunct hardware. All they’d get was a nasty virus they’d chalk up to an old computer, discarded because it didn’t function anymore. And a phone no one wanted, which didn’t even connect to the internet.
Becky Wells took a taxi to the airport and bought two plane tickets to Cheyenne. The dog enjoyed in-flight pretzels almost as much as she did.
Chapter 17
Prague. 23rd December, 1941.
Sturmführer Karl Friedman dragged the peasant into the synagogue and threw him to the floor. The tumbling man stirred up dust and shifted the stale air as he landed amid a pile of books and furniture that had been destroyed and then abandoned. If Karl didn’t get what he wanted here, he would simply set fire to this place and be done with the whole ridiculous myth.
No more pleading Jews imploring their God to swoop down with vengeance upon their oppressors. As though the Germans were the villains in this tale, instead of the ones who would renew the earth as their God had done with Noah. Send a flood of destruction and wipe everything clean. Then the world would be as it should have been all along. Karl could spend the rest of his years restoring it with the many children Erika had promised him in her letter.
He was quite looking forward to that part.
The Jew spat blood onto the synagogue floor and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Karl waited while his men filed in and spread around the room. Then he said, “Where is it?”
“You cannot contain it, and you cannot control it. It is the will of God.”
“God will submit to my will, and you will watch.” Karl gripped his pistol, pointed at the man’s face. “Now tell me where it is.”
The man’s smile widened to reveal two neat rows of bloody teeth. His eyes flashed. “Upstairs.”
The attic of the synagogue? Karl strode forward and kicked him in the stomach. The man groaned. “Do you think that I am stupid?” He kicked him again. “You think to lie to me? Where is it?”
Desperation had leaked into his tone, but the hour was late and the Sturmbannführer expected results by dawn. Karl didn’t have much more time to locate the man turning Prague to chaos. Despite the tight German fist around the neck of this city, someone had been systematically destroying their ranks. Murders were happening so frequently now it was impossible to hide them from the men.
The Jew on the floor simply laughed, even while he clutched his stomach. Rage flooded through Karl’s entire body. The Sturmbannführer would execute the lot of them if they returned with only news and no body.
The man causing such uproar was no mythical beast who resided in the attic of the synagogue. No one believed that story except penitent Jews facing judgment. A final act of defiance.
As if summoning a creature no one had ever seen would save them.
However, it occurred to Karl that the man may very well reside upstairs. What better way to make him appear more legend than man? He was certainly good, disguising his murderous game within freak accidents. Only when he had taken out an entire platoon with a strange disease that killed only them, and did so within hours, did it become clear something else was at work.
It was why the Sturmbannführer had selected Karl for this mission. No one had the knowledge of medical research he had, despite the fact he was barely seventeen. This Jewish killer had to be skilled. Perhaps even some kind of medical genius, with access to diseases he used to murder German soldiers. And so the Sturmbannführer had ordered him captured. He would come in useful to their holy cleansing of this land.
Karl was determined to be the one to find him.
He glanced at one of his men. It hardly mattered who it was, only that they followed his commands. He’d executed two already for performing their duties too slowly.
“You.”
The man snapped to attention.
“Go upstairs and look.”
The man disappeared into a hallway. Minutes later they heard the thud of wood hitting the concrete floor, splintering as the aged timber met its demise.
The man screamed.
Every soldier in his unit flinched, while Karl whirled around and motioned to two more of the men. “Both of you go. Apprehend this insurrectionist.”
They raced between the peasant and Karl, rushing to do their lord’s business. He was master here, fulfilling the duties of his liege lord in the way men had done for centuries. The strong defeated the weak, and the spoils of war were given to the victor. Kingdoms expanded, and the world marched on through the years. It was a flash of realization, an epiphany Karl intended to explore in his journal that night. Perhaps when the conquest was complete, he would craft a story where a race of warriors defeated diseased peasants and rid the world of their stain. Naturally the hero would be named for him.
The two men’s boots thumped down the hall, out of sight.
“Who is he?”
The peasant said nothing.
“What is he?”
“It does not matter,” the man said through bloody teeth. “You cannot control it.”
“Tell me,” Karl asked, determined not to betray his emotions with this next question. “Do you know Hans Katzova?”
The peasant’s eyes flickered. “You ask after a Jew?”
How else was he supposed to find out what happened? Karl had scoured records and found no sign of Hans. His father had removed his mistress and their children from his life. Karl couldn’t exorcise the memory of his brother so easily. Despite the mission, he did want to know what had become of his boyhood playmate.
The peasant laughed. “One Jew among thousands. How do you know I am not this ‘Hans’ you seek?”
Karl shifted his pistol and fired at the man. The peasant cried out and clutched at his hip.
Screams met them. Whether the screams of the attacker or of the men themselves, Karl didn’t know. So he sent more men.
This medical researcher was also warrior. A fitting opponent. One whom Karl would bring to his knees. Whatever this man had learned, Karl knew more. However much this man had trained, Karl had trained more. His mind was clear, his will pure.
He had prepared for this his entire life, and it was the reason he had been sent.
“Tell me what he is.”
The peasant laughed. “It is the blood of my people, the vengeance of Yahweh. And it will spill the blood of all who harm God’s people. You will never prevail.”
It? Karl strode closer to ensure this time his aim would be true.
A rush of wind, like slippers on a wood floor, approached him from behind. The last thing Karl Friedman saw in this world was a flash of blond hair.
And the face of a child.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 18
Baltimore, MD. Wednesday, 09:07hrs EDT
Remy lifted the phone’s receiver. Her hand stalled out before it reached her ear. She replaced it. Didn’t matter how bad things got, she couldn’t break procedure and make contact with anyone. Sure, Shadrach wasn’t just anyone. But she still couldn’t defy a directive Ben put in place himself.
No contact until she told everyone it was time to come back. Remy wandered to the window and looked out over the pitted parking lot. The units of this motel were run down, and this room smelled vaguely of pot. Dauntless was
lying on the bed, sulking over the whole thing. She’d tried to show him Shadrach on a video call once, but the dog hadn’t been interested in the image of his master when the real thing was gone.
Remy slumped into a chair at the tiny, sticky table thinking about her best friend and her boss. A boss who’d been missing since last night. Probably being tortured right now. And a best friend out on a mission, whom she absolutely was not supposed to contact. What would she say to him anyway? She’d be interrupting whatever he was doing, and Shadrach wouldn’t say it was a problem. He never did.
She wanted to bang her head on the gross table just to make her head quit spinning. But how would that help? She already had a headache.
There had been an understanding between them, though non-verbal, ever since she’d been attacked. Remy had needed him, but could never voice that out loud. Shadrach had somehow known and stuck close while also giving her space when she needed it.
Now she wished he was here and not time zones away on a mission.
Remy opened the lid of the laptop she’d purchased from a Best Buy in Denver and logged on, using Microsoft and Gmail accounts she’d opened less than a day ago. Again with the rules. Ben was a stickler. But did he seriously expect them all to wait around and not even try to look for him? Remy was new to the whole protect-the-world, operational-security thing, but she didn’t think she agreed with that directive from the big guy.
Which was probably why she’d changed the security recording in the office. And he’d been right, it was just to give him a piece of what he didn’t have—what she figured maybe he thought he couldn’t have. Remy stared at the screen, not sure what she was expecting. No one knew the email address, and only she knew their backup accounts. There wasn’t much she could do except run down the only lead she had.
Ted Tiller.
Aside from him and his possible involvement with Ben’s abduction, Remy had only one other option. More of a Hail Mary, or some kind of trump card, depending on what analogy she was going to go with.
Remy lifted the receiver on the motel’s phone and called a number she’d been given a year or so ago, during a different operation.
The phone rang once and then went to voice mail. When the beep came, Remy took a breath and remembered the tone of the woman’s voice. Behind the business-cool veneer there had been a layer of raw emotion that couldn’t be disguised, no matter how hard the woman tried.
Remy said, “I know you don’t know me. We only spoke that one time, but I saw enough to know you care about him. He’s in trouble. Someone took him, and I have no idea how to find him.”
I know you love him.
She didn’t say that, but she wanted to. What she said instead was, “He needs you now. I don’t know if I can save him.”
She hung up the phone and went back to her computer. All the information she had on Ted Tiller was from the CIA. The address listed should be the parent’s and was less than five miles from this motel—which was why she’d been headed here all along.
Wherever Ben was, Remy hoped they hadn’t killed him. Though it seemed like her boss had some kind of quality that made him impervious from harm. And if that autopsy report was correct, then he was certainly capable of taking care of himself.
Still, she worried about him. Everyone had a weakness, and maybe these men wouldn’t discover what Ben’s was. Remy didn’t like being in the dark about what was going on, but she had faith in her boss. He’d proven over and over again that he could get the job done. Hopefully that was just as true when the job was saving his own life.
Fifteen minutes later she stepped out of a cab in front of an aging brown house with peeling paint and a mowed yard of more weeds than grass. Remy knocked on the door. When an elderly lady answered, she told the woman she was with a local newspaper—online edition—writing an article about the family who had lived next door. They’d gone on to do lots of good in their new neighborhood, and she wanted to write the backstory.
The lady wore a pink robe tied at the waist and flowery slippers. The house smelled like mothballs, but thankfully there were no animals that she could see. Dauntless wouldn’t like it if she came back smelling of a cat or something.
“Oh, yes, the Tillers.” The woman nodded. “What a nice young family.”
“Maybe I could ask you a few questions,” Remy said. “I would certainly be able to mention your name in the paper.”
The woman’s lined face brightened. “I’ll make tea.”
She led Remy to a folding table with a couple of pan-sized circles where the linoleum surface had been burned away. Remy pulled up a chair and the old lady poured her a lukewarm cup of something that looked like watery caramel. It didn’t taste as good as it looked.
“May I ask your name?” Remy said. “For the paper.”
The woman scooped two lumps of sugar into her tiny china cup. “Beryl Stern.”
Remy wrote that on the notepad she’d bought on the way there. “And the family who lived next door?”
“Thomas and Helen Tiller, and their boys. Eric and Ted. A nice young family.”
“What can you tell me about them?”
Beryl sipped her tea. “It sure was a tragedy what happened to them, but I never was convinced it was so out of the blue like the police said. Senseless, yes. But they seemed so shocked.” She paused for a second. “I’m not sure why I wasn’t surprised when I heard about it. I simply wasn’t, even though it really didn’t make sense.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“It was a fall night a number of years ago now. I don’t know exactly how many.”
“What makes you remember it was fall?”
“They always went on trips, every year. They’d pack up the RV and disappear for the summer. But also, every year when they got back, it was like they were at the end of their ropes. Everyone’s tired when school finally gets out for summer, I remember that with my daughter. You’re tired, you have less patience than you would normally, and you can’t wait for the break. There’s something about summer that relaxes everyone, but the Tiller’s would go off in that RV and come back so sad. Dour. Like it had been…not tragic, but certainly depressing.”
Remy nodded.
“They’d only been back two days, and the boys had taken off on their bikes. It was about an hour later that I heard the gunshot. The police said Thomas had shot Helen, but they never arrested him because he told them it was an accident. I remember all the papers. Crucified him, they did. Called him all kinds of horrible names and said he had a temper. I never believed it.
“Do you know they never once argued? Sure, tempers could be frayed. But that family…” Beryl shook her head. “I never once heard them get in a fight. Certainly never a temper from Thomas. He helped fix my back porch even when he had a fractured ankle. Like it was nothing. It was strange, though. What kind of family doesn’t argue?”
Remy nodded because she didn’t know what to say. There was only her and her father, and their relationship was professional. Two scientists who co-labored over research. Had they ever actually sat at a table and had a meal together? “And the boys?”
“Thick as thieves, those two. Always what one was doing the other got involved as well. Hardly ever saw them apart. Racing around all the time, but then after that summer trip, they’d be sitting. All the time. Nothing but sitting. It just wasn’t normal.”
The question was, even if one was a CIA agent, would the other know what he was up to? Their lives were entwined on social media, always in each other’s pictures and commenting on each other’s posts. They were also both members of a couple of secret groups she’d found. One for their old high school, and the other known only as The Brethren.
“How about after their mother was killed?”
Beryl blew a breath out of pursed wrinkly lips. “So much tragedy in the world, and then it happens next door, and it’s your neighbors who are all over the ten o’clock news.” She shook her head. “The boys changed, that’s for sure
. They’d come here after school, and I’d give them cookies, then they’d sneak home before he got there.”
Beryl paused.
“What is it?”
“It wasn’t three months later that Thomas shot himself.” She sighed. “I figure he couldn’t handle the guilt. But it destroyed the boys is what it did. Not hours after, this van turns up. The boys went with whoever it was, happy about it. The police didn’t say nothing.”
Remy didn’t bother asking for a license plate. “Is there anything you can tell me about who they were, like as a family, that might not have been reported in the news?” It was vague, an open question that was probably too open, but Remy needed to ask. Just to see if something popped in Beryl’s mind.
“Well now,” she muttered, her gaze distant. That was good. She was remembering. “You’d know about them being Jewish, I’d imagine. Every picture Thomas wore that little round cap thing on his head.”
Remy made a nonsense notation on her paper. “Anything else you can remember?”
“Helen,” Beryl said. “She always wore this necklace. It was far too big for her slender figure, but it was there every time I saw her. Chunky silver chain, but old and tarnished. Needed polishing it did, but she said it came from her family line back in the old country. Whatever that means with not being able to clean it, I don’t know. The medallion that hung from it had weird swirls on it.”
“Hebrew writing?”
Beryl scrunched up her nose.
Remy flipped to a new page in her notebook and slid it past the teapot covered in its floral cozy and the cups. “Can you draw it?”
Beryl’s hand was shaky, but she got some markings down. It looked like chicken scratch, or old shorthand that typists used. Remy took a photo of it and immediately started a Google search from the burner phone she’d bought. She thanked Beryl for her time, turned down an offer to stay for cheese sandwiches which were on the menu for lunch, and spent ten more minutes listening. She interspersed the words, “Bye,” and, “I really should be going,” in there a few times, but they were largely ignored as Beryl told a story about her husband, a Navy corpsman who’d died at Pearl Harbor.
