by Saul, Jonas
She studied her new look in the mirror. With the hair so vastly changed from the old layered blond that fell past her shoulders to two brown braids that resembled a young Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie, Sarah was confident that no one would recognize her. At least not at first look.
She applied eyeliner and eyeshadow to her eyes, adding a small black line on the outside of each eye to make them appear longer and thinner. After the mascara she stood back and stared again.
Perfect. No one will recognize me.
She stepped back into the room and checked the time. Just after twelve noon. She grabbed her passport and the gun, checked that its safety was on and left the room. A few doors down from her room she stopped at the fire extinguisher that sat embedded in a recess in the wall. With a glance both ways to make sure no one was watching, Sarah reached in behind the extinguisher and set her passport completely out of sight. Unless there was a fire in the building in the next twenty four hours no one would find her passport.
After a lunch of french fries and a Coke, (they’d offered mayonnaise for the fries but she declined), Sarah started for the Great Market Hall to meet Armond Stuart by “the red Ape”.
She’d been there before. In the first four weeks of living in downtown Budapest with no contact from Vivian and nothing to do, she had explored the area. She’d been to the castle district, the Citadel, rode their buses and shopped in some of the walking streets. She’d learned that Saint Stephen founded Hungary in the year 1000 AD and that the Parliament buildings were some of the prettiest structures made by mankind.
In that time she had ridden the tram to the Great Market Hall a couple of times. The market held over two hundred stalls - she had ambled through and had lunch there, enjoying goulash the way it was supposed to be prepared.
But today was different.
Today she was armed. Armond Stuart would be there. She would find him by “the red Ape”, whatever that meant. No doubt Parkman would show as he’d read the note too. He’d asked what the hell a “red Ape” was but she had no idea. He’d be pissed that she didn’t tell him where she was going this morning. She knew it wasn’t fair. After all he’d done she should have at least left him a note.
Would the Sophia Project guys be there? Is that where they’d try to apprehend her? Could they really exercise that kind of power? Even in a foreign country?
She shook the thought off, as it only served to unsettle her. She needed to concentrate. She needed to stay focused and not worry about men in business suits, fedora hats and globs of gel in their hair. They’d come when they came and she would deal with it then.
The sun beat down on her as she walked. Another cloudless day in lovely Budapest, Hungary. And another body murdered.
Armond Stuart, I’m coming for you.
But could she do it? Would she do it? Back to that debate. Was it murder when he was just standing there? How about when he was just standing there in the Mormon Temple a few months back? Would it have been murder then? His female victims were being held captive. Armond was waiting for the right price before he’d sell those innocent teenage girls into sex slavery. He shot Sarah that day. Why can’t she just shoot him back? Make it even. She’d be the better shot. Once Armond was dead no more little girls could be kidnapped, shipped overseas and sold to horny old men.
Once Armond was dead the world would be a better place.
Besides, it was her duty. If she wasn’t supposed to do it then why would Vivian send her to the Great Market Hall? Why tell her where Armond would be in the first place? Why not abandon this and start saving people’s lives again? If she wasn’t supposed to kill Armond, then why was she here?
She got close to the front doors, looked in the reflection of a large window, saw nothing of interest and then entered the Hall.
For a Thursday the market was busy. She edged to the side of the hall and began walking the length of the tables. People shouted back and forth in Hungarian. Young and old bustled about carrying their items and searching for more, always looking for a better deal. The smell of food assailed her nose.
What a place to hold a murder. There would be too many witnesses. Sarah knew she would have to follow Armond outside and wait for the right opportunity.
In the meantime she had to stay on the lookout for too many things. First she had to find a gorilla. The note said that Armond would be by “the red Ape” at 2:12pm. She also had to watch for Parkman. If he saw her first, he would be the only one who could easily see through her new look. He’d studied her for years. He would know the curve of her face, her gait as she walked. Although he was the only cop she trusted, he was also the one who would try to stop her if she got the chance to execute the vermin. Keeping him at a distance around 2:12pm today was better for the both of them.
The only other people to watch for would be the American government men and the Hungarian police, although no one could predict where she’d be this afternoon. It was unlikely anyone other than Parkman would show.
Unless he woke up, saw she was gone and called in the police to help find her. Or told them where she’d be at 2:12pm today?
He wouldn’t do that, she assured herself. Not Parkman. Not after all they’d been through? Never.
Sarah had walked to the middle of the Market Hall and seen no Ape of any kind, let alone a red one.
She continued on. Maybe it was at a booth? Or along another section.
Wherever it was, Sarah knew that “the red Ape” was here. Vivian wouldn’t send her on a wild goose chase.
A clock on the wall said it was getting close to 2:00pm. She was running out of time.
Another check behind her. No one seemed to be following or monitoring her in any way. Everything was going perfectly. She just had to find the Ape.
In five minutes she’d reached the end of the hall. There had been no ape. She turned around and began half-running up and down the side aisles looking at all the signs on the various shops, searching for anything resembling an ape.
Nothing.
Maybe it was upstairs?
She took the closest staircase and ran up. A quick three minute scan revealed no apes.
She was out of time and out of luck.
She ran back downstairs and looked for a clock. She found one by the exit to Pipa utca.
2:14pm.
He was gone.
I fucked up. Somehow I missed the fucking red Ape.
Nothing pissed her off more than getting a message from Vivian and then not executing it properly. She’d done it before. Four years ago when she started getting the dark visions she’d screwed up a message about the north face. It ended up getting her kidnapped and almost killed. Last year she’d gotten a message of exactly where Armond Stuart was. When she nabbed him he identified himself as a retired police officer named Jack Tate. It was true. He used to be a cop. His name was Jack Tate then. She believed him and he led her into his trap and almost killed her again.
And now she had another message and she completely just danced around the Great Market Hall and fucked the goose on it.
“Damn!” she slapped the wall beside the exit door. People had been coming in. Two doors were wide open when she exclaimed. People in the street looked her way. Sarah looked at them.
A red three-wheeled vehicle sat parked at an odd angle on the sidewalk just outside the door. On the side of the vehicle it said in English Street Coffee. It looked like a miniature UPS truck but red and the back door lifted straight up above the rear of the small truck displaying the menu and prices of this mobile coffee shop. There was one wheel in the front of the vehicle and two in the rear. It was an Italian model. An automobile they call an Ape and it was red.
She couldn’t believe it. A vehicle had been the furthest thing from her mind when looking for a red Ape. She had thought gorilla. Couldn’t Vivian be more specific?
Four men stood around it with coffee cups in their hands. The seller of the coffee was off to the side wearing an apron and tending to a mac
hine of some kind.
The doors closed in front of her. Three of the men turned away and starting talking again.
Sarah didn’t waver. She stared long enough to see that the man who was staring back at her was Armond Stuart.
There could be no doubt. He was the same height, about the same weight and build but his face was slightly different and his hair had been chopped to a military buzz cut. There was a new scar that traversed the side of his jaw. His nose looked different but it was his eyes that told her she’d found the right man.
She’d looked into those eyes before. She’d seen the evil in them and now she watched as they widened. He was just realizing who she was.
The moment had come. Her stomach turned as adrenaline secreted throughout her body. She hadn’t moved. Her hand still rested on the wall. She leaned in closer, resting her shoulder against the brick. Her right hand had to remain free and clear. The gun was close. In under two seconds Armond could have a bullet in either eye, his brain nothing but mashed squash.
The three men around him were dressed in suits. Not the American government kind. More of a professional bodyguard kind. Armond wasn’t playing games anymore. He was getting more serious about staying alive as probably hundreds of people, including many police forces, were hunting him.
Armond’s mouth moved. He whispered something to his men. Just like a slow-motion scene in a movie, all three men turned toward her very slowly.
Hungarians hustled by, bags in their arms, opening and closing the doors as Sarah and the four men watched each other, neither one making a move.
Her hatred for him continually screamed at her to attack. Her rational side explained the futility of it. If she were to draw her weapon and begin shooting, Armond’s bodyguards would do the same. Could she survive such an assault? How many witnesses would there be? Was this one man her end goal? Kill him and she could die too? Was that all that mattered? Vivian had said something about seeing his new face. Maybe that was all this was supposed to be?
Maybe, but no, she didn’t want to die nor did she want to spend the rest of her life in a Hungarian prison for murder. Armond would have stolen the life of another girl if that happened.
In the half a minute they stared at each other Sarah realized that today was not a good day to kill him.
She eased off the wall and slowly stepped through the door toward them. They all continued to stare at her. Two of the guards reached inside their jackets, no doubt to caress the butts of their weapons.
She stopped about seven feet from the foursome. It felt like the world stopped around them as the tension rose.
She stared at him as hard as she could, memorizing every facial expression, every dimple, every eye movement.
“You’re looking good, Sarah,” Armond said.
She didn’t respond. The two brutes lifted their arms out in unison, both holding a small compact piece.
“Can’t fight your own battles?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he said while shaking his head back and forth. “You are one seriously hard person to kill. I swear, if the world experienced nuclear war, you and the cockroaches would survive along with those scorpions and beetles or whatever the fuck. But now things have changed.”
“How so?”
She felt her anger rising past controllability. Her mind raced across possible scenarios. Draw their fire. Shoot in self-defense. Kill Armond and walk away after an investigation. Try to execute the guards too. Vermin needed to die. That’s my job.
“For many reasons. You’ve seen my face. The time and money I spent on it has now been wasted. Also, you’re in Hungary. That tells me that you’ve traveled a long way to hunt me down. You’re becoming a nuisance. You and Vivian have to go. And I’ve now realized something else.”
“What’s that?”
She stood in the mid-afternoon sun, listening to her sister’s murderer and with the control of a thousand men, refrained from diving for his throat and strangling him to a fucking bloody pulp. She had no idea where her self-control came from, only that she despised rules. The rules that stopped her. Even though she knew he was a psychopath and he was responsible for many ruined lives, she couldn’t throttle him to a mass of blood and skin.
“I’ve realized that nothing I do will ever stop you. I cannot continue my business until you’re dead. You’re like a fucking Jack-in-the-box. You keep popping up. How did you know where to find me? Vivian? Of course, how could you know without her? And since I can’t stop her because she’s already dead, I have to kill you. Oh, and by the way, I know your sister is dead because I killed her myself. But, we both know that.”
She knew he was goading her to make a move. Taunting her like a carrot to a horse. Her fingers twitched. One bullet. It would be done. She was tough. She could handle prison.
One bullet.
In the second she decided to kill him, she reached back for her weapon.
Her hand was behind her back, gripping the butt of the police gun she’d stolen two nights ago. She lifted it out of her pants. In that second, the two guards who already had weapons in their hands lifted theirs up to aim at Sarah.
She didn’t care. This was it. The end. This was her mission after all.
She pulled the gun free and went to bring it around.
Then her hand went instantly numb.
A blackout was coming.
“No!” she shouted.
Her arm went numb. The gun fell from her grasp and hit the pavement. She met the concrete a second later.
Then it was over. The blackout lasted two seconds.
She looked up. Both guards had lowered their weapons. Perceiving no threat they had decided to not fire.
“Well done Sarah. You really know how to scare people. What was that? Why did you fall? Got brain cancer or something? Epileptic?”
She grabbed the gun that lay on the ground beside her and stood up, jamming the weapon back in her pants. It was obvious that Vivian didn’t want her to shoot anyone today. Vivian had taken control of her body at the exact moment she had planned on using the weapon thereby telling her not to. There was no written message to receive. Only one of body language.
It also told Sarah something else. Vivian had control of her body and could exact that control at any time. That kind of power over her wasn’t good for Sarah. Using her for messages was one thing. Taking her body over to stop her from doing something was another thing altogether.
“There will be another day. You and I will have our moment,” Sarah said.
“I’m sure we will.”
Someone grabbed her arm from behind.
Sarah instantly turned, clamped her left hand on the person’s wrist and used her right to grab the elbow. In the second before she rammed the person’s elbow straight up, breaking it in half, she realized that the person was Parkman.
“Let’s go. We’re finished here.”
He pulled her away. She went willingly.
“What were you doing? I saw you from thirty feet away. You reached for your gun and then fell down. I thought they’d shot you. What the hell were you doing?”
“Vivian interrupted me.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“The same thing happens when she gives me a message. My hands go numb and then I fall. When I reached for my gun, she did that.”
“To stop you?”
Sarah nodded her head as she turned around and looked behind her. Armond and his bodyguards had disappeared.
“Who were all those men in suits?” Parkman asked.
“They’re his bodyguards.”
“No, I didn’t mean the three guys standing with Armond. I was talking about the ten men standing beside three black Cadillac Escalades across the street. When you reached for your weapon and then fell, all ten of those men pulled out some kind of weapon of their own and took up position around Armond and his men. Before the bodyguards even lifted their guns, these men had them in their sights. A major gun battle came within one
second of happening. The only thing that saved everyone’s life was when Armond’s guards dropped their weapons. The ten men in suits lowered theirs and stepped back.”
Sarah was stunned. She turned around again. No one was in sight. No men in suits. No Armond. No bodyguards. No Escalades. Only regular people shopping for fruit and vegetables.
“Do you know who they were?” Parkman prodded. “It was weird. They all wore beige fedoras.”
“Those men are with the American government. I think you and I need to talk, Parkman. I’m in some kind of trouble.”
Chapter 7
