Set Free
By Anthony Bidulka
Copyright © 2016 by Anthony Bidulka
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Kelly Nichols
Edited by Roxanne Alcorn, BCAI, Word Superb
Also by the author
The Adam Saint Books:
The Women of Skawa Island
When the Saints Go Marching In
The Russell Quant Mysteries:
Amuse Bouche
Flight of Aquavit
Tapas on the Ramblas
Stain of the Berry
Sundowner Ubuntu
Aloha, Candy Hearts
Date With a Sheesha
Dos Equis
Acknowledgments
For me, Set Free represents embracing new opportunities, turning dark into light, seizing control, and reasserting my love for the craft of writing. None of this would have been possible without the support of numerous people, friends, family and colleagues, too numerous to mention by name even though I would dearly love to. Thank you.
Certain specific aspects of this book would have been lesser than without the help of these people: Roxanne Alcorn, Kelly Nichols, Mary Clark, Rhonda Sage, Neil Plakcy and, most of all, Herb McFaull. I also want to say thank you to the great many people who participated in an online poll several months ago, voting on a title for this book. I valued your input and exuberant interest. Although the winning title was Book of Lies, I hope that once you read this book you’ll see why I settled on Set Free.
As always, I am indebted to booksellers, book reviewers, supportive media and most of all, my readers. You have made life as a writer more rewarding than I could have ever imagined.
Dedication
For Herb
Table of Contents
PART I
Chapter 1
Excerpt from the novel Set Free, by Jaspar Wills, bestselling author of In The Middle.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
PART II
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Six months later
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
PART III
Chapter 45
Excerpt from the novel Truth Be Told, by Jaspar Wills.
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Eleven Months Earlier
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Book Club Addendum
PART I
Chapter 1
Excerpt from the novel Set Free, by Jaspar Wills, bestselling author of In The Middle.
I would have packed less if I knew I was going to die.
Travel-worn, I waited for my ride, carry-on and small, battered suitcase at my feet. The atmosphere was chaotic, the air stifling. Marrakech airport is not the kind of place you loiter for long. Not unlike an ant hill, if you aren’t scurrying about, you either need assistance or you’re dead. You either haul ass or someone is going to do it for you. Familiar with the drill, I gamely accepted being harassed by an endless parade of locals, all of them anxious to do something for me—anything at all—for a hastily negotiated, wildly inflated price.
After failing to see my name—or anything vaguely resembling it—on any of the placards being waved in the air by a throng of waiting chauffeurs-for-hire, I settled on a reasonable wait time. Forty minutes seemed just right. It was long enough to give the driver I’d arranged for a chance to show up if he’d been unexpectedly delayed, but short enough for me to maintain a semblance of patience. If he never showed, half an hour was a bit on the chintzy side, whereas three-quarters of an hour was playing the fool.
At minute forty-one I gave up. No one was coming to meet me. I grabbed my luggage and headed for the exit.
“I can help with your hotel.” The voice belonged to a pleasant-looking young man, Arabic. At first he’d tried French, but quickly converted to near-flawless English when he saw the dumb look on my face. He was wearing a typical costume for Moroccan men: lightweight white djellaba, with a matching pillbox-style hat (I’m guessing he wouldn’t have appreciated the description) and a pair of well-worn black leather babouche slippers.
I pulled out a slip of paper on which I’d written the name and address of my riad and handed it to him.
“Yes,” he said with a confident nod, at the same time reaching down for my suitcase. “Riad Hadika Maria. Derb Zemrane Hart Soura. I know it. Come with me.” He carried the bag instead of using the rollers.
It happened that easily. Nothing about the man—a boy really—hinted that something wasn’t quite right.
The things I love most about visiting new places—the mystery, the unfamiliarity—are the very same things that can make it exceedingly dangerous. Everything you trust about the world is suddenly in question. How was I to know I wasn’t being taken to my hotel? How was I to know that, instead, I was simply being taken?
Chapter 2
I’d left home at 8:00 p.m. By 6:30 the next morning I was in London. From there, Air Portugal took me to Lisbon, then Marrakech. In less than twenty-four hours, I’d left behind one world and begun my adventure in another. My plan was to be in Morocco for sixteen days: ten for work, the rest pleasure. I didn’t know about the other plan. The one made by someone else. The one that would bring my life to an end.
The official languages of Morocco are Arabic and Berber. Oh shit, right? The unofficial third language is French. Better—sort of.
Despite my life as a traveler, I’m a steadfast, uni-linguist American who figures I’ll somehow get by. And usually I do. In preparation for the trip, I’d boned up on as many key francophone expressions as I could stuff into my head and loaded my iPhone with a killer translation app. I’d done this kind of thing before. From Amsterdam to Zanzibar, I’ve proven to be exceptionally skilled at combining phrase book jargon, a friendly smile, and hand gestures to get me pretty much anything I want.
Landing in Menara Airport that day was a happy reminder of why my love affair with travel had endured. It’s the heady rush of finding yourself somewhere completely new. The dizzying unfamiliarity. The euphoria of being on foreign soil. It’s like voluntarily ingesting a mind-altering, body-shuddering elixir you can never get enough of.
That first step off an aircraft is beyond thrilling to me. I may as well be a space traveler making first contact with an alien planet. My brain sizzles with stimulation. Accomplishment and heady delight overcome me before I’ve even had a single experience. It’s as if I’ve won first place in the g
ame of life, and my prize is about to reveal itself.
I dutifully made my way through customs and security, surrendered to the aggressive jostling of the luggage carousel hordes, and finally inched my way into the arrivals area. Every fiber of my being was thrumming with anticipation. Not until that very moment did I allow myself to acknowledge the truth. I’d grown desperately thirsty over my lengthy, self-imposed dry spell without travel. Even with all that had happened back home, everything I’d left behind, I had to admit something: I was over-the-moon, idiot-grinning happy.
Huh.
Happy.
I’d forgotten about happy.
Given my extensive experience, people often seek my guidance on travel to foreign destinations. The best piece of advice I can give is this: slow down, stay in the moment, bask. By far, the easier choice is to become overwhelmed. But why waste energy trying to escape the unknown? Embrace it.
As I pushed my way through the swarming airport, pretty much every sense jumped into hyper drive. Smell was the first to detonate. Must and dry mold. Spice. The tannic scent of unrelenting heat. The pungency of travelers thrown together from every corner of the world, mixed into a heady stew of humanity. The unmistakable fragrance of ancient civilization, of a place where lives have been lived—some well, some not-so-well—for centuries. Of generations briefly colliding, then moving on, one disappearing to make room for the next, each bound by fate and circumstance to leave behind a residue, like motes of dust from a beaten carpet.
The sights, sounds, even the way the air tasted on my tongue, was a tonic. Discovering old ways of life inspires new life within me. In an instant, I’d gone from being a passenger on a commercial aircraft to an explorer navigating a grand adventure in a mysterious land.
The icing on the cake? No one knew who I was. In recent years, anonymity had become a rare luxury. Here, in Morocco, I was awash in it. I could finally revel in the simple pleasure of being left alone.
As a boy, I’d been fascinated by ant farms, doggedly intent on constructing one of my own. Several ill-fated attempts later, I mastered the craft, using an extra-large mason jar. There are two key elements to remember when creating an ant colony. First, it’s a good idea to place a soda can in the center of the jar. The can acts as an obstruction so the ants don't dig their tunnels in the middle and lamentably out of sight. Second, while holes in the jar’s lid are important, it’s vital they be smaller than the actual ants.
On mother’s orders, I kept the glass-sided realm in my bedroom. I spent countless hours mesmerized by the deceptively haphazard, seemingly disorganized miniature world moving at triple speed. Marrakech airport was just like that: a million scrambling bodies, each intent on their own purpose and oblivious to yours. If you weren’t careful, the tide would grab on, swallow you whole, and take you places you didn’t want to go.
I knew where I wanted to go. A moderately-priced B&B I’d found on Expedia called Riad Hadika Maria. It was very near the Medina, the walled old part of the city where I’d planned to spend most of my time. Before I’d left home I’d arranged for an airport pickup. Not that I’m incapable of navigating my own way around a strange city—I was simply following the second piece of advice I give would-be travelers. How do you guarantee a positive start to your trip? Have the first big decision—getting to your hotel—already taken care of. A bit of what I like to call “peace-of-mind insurance.”
But, as we all know, insurance doesn’t always pay off.
The plan was a good one. After all, where better to find an American hostage than an airport? And as far as someone to grab, I was a pretty fine choice. Alone. Traveling light. Even though I’m a big guy in good shape, I generally give off a non-threatening vibe. And I’m easily engaged, a trait I’ve had to cultivate because of what I do. If given the choice, I prefer blending into the background, but that hadn’t been possible for me in a long while.
I’d studied a simple map of Marrakech, mainly the zone immediately surrounding the Medina. I’d thought myself generally acquainted with the area, yet within five minutes of leaving the airport, I barely knew up from down.
I like maps. Simple, old-fashioned, impossible-to-refold paper maps. The kind with a North-South indicator, red and black squiggles for roads, green blotches for forests, blue ones for water. They provide a sense of familiarity with a place without stealing away the thrill of being there for the first time. Nowadays, online maps can show you your neighbor’s backyard swimming pool, the location of every Starbucks within walking distance, and pretty much every bump in the road between here and there. I can see how these kinds of maps, with their absurdly high level of detail and information, offer comfort and introduce ease—but for me, they destroy the ecstasy of discovery and surprise.
“How far to the hotel?” I asked the driver in what I felt was a conversational tone.
Despite his earlier affability, once we were in the car—him and my suitcase in the front seat, me in the rear—the young man who’d solicited me in the airport had fallen into determined silence.
“Not far,” he finally mumbled.
“How long will it take to get there?”
“Not long.”
Approaching an impressive structure of red brick and stone, I tried again. “What’s that place?”
Silence. I guessed he wasn’t into playing tour guide.
I waited several seconds before making another attempt. “Are those the walls of Jemaa el-Fna?” I thought I’d win him over with my worldly knowledge of local landmarks.
“Be quiet.”
And there it was.
Only two words. But they told me plenty.
I was in danger.
Chapter 3
When I was a child, my parents were not the type to issue dire warnings. They never said, “Don’t answer the door if you’re home alone,” or “Don’t get into cars with strangers.” They were more the type to suggest, “When you meet someone new, say hello and introduce yourself. Ask questions. Don’t just talk about yourself.” To them, the world was a friendly place.
Parents aren’t always right.
By the time I wised up to the fact that my driver and I were not bound to become best buddies and I was in a dangerous situation, it was too late. I demanded he stop the car and let me out. He disagreed with the suggestion, a point made abundantly clear when he used his free hand to point a gun at my face. I guess I should have asked a few more questions when we first met.
“Sit back,” he ordered.
Our eyes met in the rear-view mirror. I’d like to say his were malevolent and oozing with murderous intent. But they weren’t. They were just eyes. Dark. Moist. One noticeably larger than the other. I wondered what he saw when he looked at mine. Surprise? Anger? Fear?
The gun was sufficient motivation to do as he asked.
Nothing about my life to that point had prepared me for this moment, unless you count having watched too many action movies. In no way was I a tough guy. Not in a beat-their-brains-out, knock-them-down, blow-them-up, or any other kind of way. Even if I’d had a gun, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. The only fights I’d ever been in were with my wife, Jenn, and those always turned out the same way: with me flat on my back, in a headlock, in about three seconds tops. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Don’t let the movies fool you about how easy it is to be a hero. Or worse, give you unreasonable expectations for your significant other’s performance in dire circumstances. Most of us, no matter how many hours we’ve clocked pumping iron at the gym, mastering tai chi, or watching UFC, would be at a loss sitting on the cracked leather back seat of a stinking hot car barreling down an unfamiliar street in an African city with a pistol kissing their face. Fodor's definitely doesn’t cover this.
I wasn’t a complete idiot about what was happening in this part of the world. I’d done my research. One needn’t look too far back in history to find reasons to practice caution. Scores of unhappy Moroccan rebels had taken part in Arab Spring revoluti
ons. Activists were regularly staging mass protests calling for government reform and constitutional amendments to control the powers of the king. In 2011, seventeen people—mainly foreigners—were killed in a bomb attack on a Marrakech cafe.
And the problems extended far beyond local and continental politics. There’d been plenty of tension between this country and mine. As recently as 2013, Morocco canceled joint military exercises with the United States when Washington decided to back the UN’s call to monitor human rights in Western Sahara. Instead of seeing the move as supporting its people, Morocco saw it as an attack on its sovereignty. Apparently they don’t like that kind of stuff around here.
Sitting back, trying to calm my nerves and figure out what the hell to do, I stared out the window. A blur of traffic swept across a backdrop of earthen-hued buildings hunkered low beneath sun-bleached sky. Despite my best efforts, fear began to take hold, menacing, snarling, clawing. In the past, whenever I’d been scared, either I knew it was coming—like on a roller coaster or visiting a haunted house on Hallowe’en—or it appeared suddenly. This fear was different. It began as a pinprick, somewhere in the back of my head, then grew like an exotic flowering tea bud, blooming as it steeped, suddenly expanding to many times its original size, invading my brain until it consumed me. Only when I was fully diseased with dread did it carry out its merciless endgame, communicating the very real possibility that I might soon be dead.
The rumors of what happens in the moments before you die proved untrue for me. I didn’t see my life passing before my eyes. I saw faces. A procession of the people I cared for most. My mother. My father. My brother James. His quirky, funny wife. My twin nieces for whom the word precocious was invented. I began to concern myself with how worried they’d be when they first heard the news that I’d never arrived at my hotel. That would only be the beginning. Mom would cry…
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