The Crypt

by Saul, Jonas

  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.

  Slowly, staring into his eyes, she released his sack and stepped back, Imre’s gun about an inch from his eye the whole time.

  “Move.”

  He started up the stairs on wobbly knees. Good to his word, they made it to the third floor without him trying to be a hero.

  Sarah saw that the fire extinguisher was exactly where it sat earlier. She reached behind it and snatched her passport back placing it in her front pocket. It might get bent in there but at least she knew she’d never lose it.

  The man was informed. He knew what room was hers. He’d walked to the door and stopped in front.

  “We going in?” he asked.

  “Open the door.”

  He didn’t ask for the key nor did he use one. Even though when Sarah left last she’d locked it, her door was unlocked now.

  From
what she could see the room was a mess. They stepped in and Sarah ordered him to go stand in the corner.

  Never taking her eyes off him in case he pulled a weapon, she took quick glances around. The room had been ransacked. They’d been looking for something. Maybe notes from Vivian. Or her passport so she’d be stuck here and then the only option would be to go to the American embassy for help. That must’ve been their plan as they could easily snatch her there.

  Sarah knew that asking what they had been looking for would be pointless. But she couldn’t help herself.

  “What happened here?”

  He stood five feet away from her. His breathing was more under control, the veins in his forehead gone back down. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well now, that’s no kind of answer.”

  Sarah flipped the gun to her right hand and clicked off the safety. Then she aimed the weapon down to his right leg below the knee and fired.

  His leg shot back with the impact of the bullet and smacked into the wall behind him. He instantly fell to the floor and curled up in the fetal position trying to grab at his wound.

  Sarah stepped forward and with both hands on the weapon leaned over him.

  “Hands up or the next bullet is between the eyes,” she ordered.

  He complied. She couldn’t take the risk he would pull a weapon out of some hidden place.

  “Where is Parkman?” she asked.

  He lay on the floor, bleeding from the hole in his leg and panting in and out in a rapid gesture, yet defiance was written all over his face.

  “You know, I don’t want to do this. But you leave me no option. What you ass whores don’t get is that loyalty is stronger than a paycheck. You do this for a living. I do this to live. Parkman saved my neck more than once. I intend on saving his and I will do it at any cost, making me loyal to him as he was to me. I owe him.” She stopped and leaned down on one knee, placing the end of the gun on the bridge of the guy’s nose. “Think of me as a psychopath. You’re nothing to me other than an obstacle. I don’t even see a human before me. After I kill you I will feel no guilt. Actually there’s something oddly pleasurable about that. Your side will have one less fighter thereby evening the odds for me a little more. Killing you makes it a point for my side. One to nothing.”

  He shook his hands back and forth. She was getting through to him. “Wait, wait. We have Parkman.”

  “I know that. Tell me something I don’t know, like a location.”

  “There is no location.”

  “Talking in riddles doesn’t make you any less dead.”

  “We don’t have offices here in Hungary. All we use are three Escalades. Anyone we take in to question is usually placed in the middle Escalade. Find the vehicles and you find Parkman.”

  “Why did you take him in the first place and not me? When I was with Imre your team decided to tranquilize me. I mean, when is the best time to kidnap someone?”

  “Parkman was forced to talk. He told us what we needed to know about you. Kill me if you want, but they will never stop. Now that we have proof of your abilities, you are property of the United States government and you will be treated as such.”

  She pushed on the barrel of the gun, ramming it into the guy’s nose. His head leaned back to avoid the pressure. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. Her anger was really starting to burst through the dam she had walled it in.

  “I’m seriously getting sick and tired of people saying that I am property of the American government. I’m not and never will be. What did your people do to get Parkman to talk?”

  “That wasn’t my doing. I’m part of the surveillance team, that’s it.”

  Her legs were starting to cramp. Sarah stood back up. In the time she had been down talking to the guy she hadn’t noticed how white his face had gotten. A glance to the side showed his leg wound was bleeding profusely.

  “Before you lose too much blood and die in this dirty hostel, tell me one last thing. Where will I find these Escalades?”

  “I never know. They’re always on the move. We’re a roving force. We monitor through the use of electronics and continuously drive to the next target. It makes less of a target of us too.”

  Sarah leaned back down and snatched the device out of his breast pocket, the earpiece cord coming with it.

  “Not anymore. You’re in my sights now.” She took a step back toward the door. “You guys made a mistake.”

  She paused at the door and looked into the hallway. Luckily no one was around. Maybe the gun going off sounded like a firecracker to the hotel’s tenants or maybe it was just filled with heavy sleepers.

  “Your mistake was coming after me,” Sarah said and slipped out of the room. She ran down the hallway and down the stairs as fast as she could, the gun still in her hand.

  She reached the lobby without incident. The front desk guy wasn’t there. The area was too quiet.

  She guessed the only reason the hotel wasn’t being stormed was because the janitor had radioed in that he had her and was following her up to her room. After the gun shot, if anyone had called the local police, the fedora wearing government men would have told them they were on the scene and to not respond to that call. Which meant that the government men would be attempting to get in touch with their guy who was without a radio, lying upstairs bleeding.

  That gave her no more than a few moments time to clear the area before they stormed the hostel wondering what happened to their man. But since no one could’ve predicted where she would turn up, the roving Escalades could be anywhere. Either way she looked at it, they weren’t there right at that moment but they would be seriously soon.

  She ran up and jumped over the front counter, landing on the other side easily.

  She lifted her weapon and opened the door to the back room.

  The night auditor guy was sitting in a chair with a coffee in his hand, a television on in front of him.

  “Why did you have the janitor doing the floors? That wasn’t cool.”

  The clerk raised his hands at the sight of the gun, the coffee cup balanced perfectly. “Bocsánat, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. The guy came in earlier and paid me to do the floors. I was told that when he leaves the lobby I was to spend the next half an hour in here on a break. That’s it.”

  “How much did they pay you?”

  “Five hundred American dollars. That’s good money.”

  “Okay, not your fault. But I need something and I’m not going to pay for it.”

  His hands still raised, no coffee spilling yet, he said, “Take what you want.”

  “I need a knife. A good knife, nothing dull.”

  He pointed to the side bureau. “In the drawer over there. I have fork and knife for when I eat on duty.”

  Sarah moved a few steps to the side and pulled open the top drawer. All she saw were papers and notepads.

  “The other one to the right.”

  She shut the drawer and moved to the right. This one held eating utensils, napkins and paper plates.

  She grabbed the steak knife and stepped back to the door.

  “I’m checking out now. You won’t see me again. Actually it would be better for you if you didn’t see me at all. Do you understand? All you did was take the money and let a stranger mop your floor.”

  He was nodding his head. “I understand.” A little coffee slipped over the edge of the raised cup as his hands began shaking.

  Sarah turned, walked out of the back room, hopped over the counter again and then hustled over to the front windows. Nothing was happening out front yet. The Escalades hadn’t shown up to rescue their man.

  Won’t they be surprised when they see what I’ve got planned for them?

  Sarah ran from the front and headed to find another exit in the back. She wanted to be ready when the cavalry showed up. She had two guns on her now and a steak knife and she knew exactly what she was going to do.

  Chapter 12

  Sarah exited the side door and stepped o
ut into the warm Budapest night. It was around three in the morning, which left only six days until “the crypt”.

  She silently wished she could talk to Vivian about these things in a more detailed manner. Knowing that something ends at the crypt in so many days doesn’t give her a lot of details to work with. What ends, and why is Vivian sorry about it? Where is this crypt and how will she get there? Vivian had said it had something to do with “vampires”. How could that be? She would have to do some research on the Internet if she could ever find the time.