by Eddy Will
The flashlight snapped on again, the beam pulling twisted brush from the black before releasing the image back into the night. The man was looking for her. What other reason could there be? Why would anyone sneak around the forest in the dead of night?
But a bigger question screamed in Anna’s terrified mind: how did he get so close? How did he end up within a hundred feet from her hiding place? She had been moving at a brisk pace all day. How could be know to look for her here of all the places in the vast forest. It made no sense, it could not be. And yet he was here. It was as if the man knew exactly where to look.
His slow pace moved him closer to her tree. He stopped again. Only fifty feet separated him from her tree. Anna clenched her knife. If he stayed on course he would bump into the tree trunk she had climbed earlier. Anna now wished she had not hidden in a tree. She was trapped. She could not run, could not fight. She was helpless. If he saw her it was over. A primal fear gripped her heart. She clamped her hand around the hilt of the knife to stop from shaking. It did not help.
The flashlight lit up again, bouncing off her tree trunk before moving in an arc to the right. The man moved again, slowly, softly. As if he knew he was close. How could be know? A baseball hat covered much of his face, but it was not Remington. Remington was taller and bulkier. This man was slender and shorter. He had to be a tracker, Anna thought. She was not surprised. How else would a city dweller like Remington track his prey? But that did not explain how the tracker had found her. Anna was convinced he knew he was close. He just had not seen her. Yet. But he knew exactly where to look.
The tracker stopped and looked back in the direction from which he had come. The flashlight lit up again for a brief moment. The man dropped to one knee and dug through his jacket pocket, his eyes searching the darkness for signs of his target. A bright light flashed on, illuminating the tracker’s chest and face. His hands cupped the light source, but Anna looked straight down from her perch and had a clear view. It was a backlit screen, his index finger moving over the screen for a moment. His head moved close to the screen. The bright red dot in the center of the screen threatened to burn a hole in Anna’s eyes. She knew what he was looking at.
It was the screen of a GPS locating device and the red dot in the center was her. Anna had used such devices herself when hiking or climbing remote areas.
Anna bit her lip to control the rage that was boiling inside her. The sons of bitches had planted a transmitter on her. And, of course, that too made sense. Why risk looking for the prey for days, maybe weeks, without success, when modern technology can control the kill time to suit the client’s schedule.
It all made sense in an instant. The generous and sportsman-like four-hour head start had been a farce, created for dramatic effect. They always knew exactly where she was, no matter how fast she ran or how often she changed directions. They would never have to search or track. Her location was never unknown. And, of course, that made sense too. She was not meant to win, she was not meant to live. It was all about the kill, the hunt was merely foreplay and should not be all consuming.
The tracker studied the bright display cupped in his hand and reset the screen a number of times.
Had she been more accomplished at archery, he would be an easy target. But she had no margin of error. Her arrow would have to not only find its target, it would have to immobilize him long enough for her to climb from her perch and complete the job. That was something she did not look forward to. And if she missed, the arrow would alert him to the danger and he would spot her in an instant. Anna silently sat up on the thick limb and set an arrow into the bow. Her cold fingers hurt when she pulled back the bowstring and the thin Kevlar line dug into her flesh. She straightened her back and took careful aim at the crouching tracker below. She estimated the distance to be thirty feet. Forcing her breath into a slow and steady rhythm she focused on the man below, forcing the dark world around her to recede from her senses, filling up her body and mind with the hunched man below. Should the tracker look up, she would have one shot. One chance would decide whether she lived or died tonight.
The tracker stood and turned slowly in all directions. Anna read his confusion. His technology told him he had arrived, but his senses found nothing. Anna imagined the battle in the tracker’s mind between what he didn’t see and what the device told him he should see. Could he trust the GPS tracking device? The tracker was not convinced.
‘Don’t look up,’ Anna prayed, but there was a part in her soul that dared him to raise his eyes and discover her. She pointed the arrow at him from high up. And with every second that passed, she hoped more that he would look up. She grew more confident that she would not miss her target. After a long moment the man moved, briefly lighting up the ground in front with his flashlight. He moved away from the tree, carefully inspecting brush some twenty yards away. The possibility that his prey was hiding in a tree did not occur to him, for his focus was on low-lying thick brush. Anna followed the tracker with the tip of her arrow, keeping still and quiet on the thick limb. The man circled the tree, stalking through the dark almost silently, only the occasional twig or leaf forcing a sound from his footstep. The tracker was good, Anna thought. He was nearly quiet, moving slowly and methodically through the darkness.
It took maybe an hour before he gave up. The stalking silence was abruptly replaced with the steady and fast moving steps that did not care where they stepped. He had abandoned the GPS tracking system that showed his prey as a bright red dot and must have figured the system to be faulty. His senses had been unable to locate the woman, who according to his technology was only yards away. It had not occurred to him that the technology was accurate, but his abilities were lacking. Anna was grateful for his arrogance. She sat silently, unmoving, for a long time after the footsteps had disappeared into the distance.
As time passed, she relaxed and her mind now free from the intense focus of survival worked on the question of ‘where’. Somewhere on her body or in her gear a transmitter gave away her position, sending her location to an electronic tracking system at the lodge. Now the row of computer screens in the control room made sense too. Someone was sitting in that room right now, staring at a digital map and the red dot on a screen. And when the dot had stopped moving several hours earlier, a tracker had been dispatched to get an eyes-on on the target. The tracker would communicate by radio, that the tracking system was faulty, for the target was not at the location.
But as soon as Anna would move again, the trackers would see the movement and come looking. In absence of a moving red dot, the tracker would return at daylight and investigate again. And maybe he would have help. Dogs would find her quickly, their sensitive noses picking up her scent even high up in a tree.
The thought of a transmitter planted on her made Anna shudder. Another violation in a scenario filled with violations. She had to find the digital bug that gave away her every move. She made a mental list of where to look at first dawn. She would not have much time to locate the transmitter. The tracker would be back shortly after daylight, she was sure, but moving with the bug was worse. It would at once confirm the system was not faulty and allow Remington and his trackers to close in on her.
It was a safe bet that Remington was not far behind the tracker. Maybe an hour or two, fast asleep in a comfortable tent, while his tracker was sent out in the dead of night to locate the prey.
Another thought crashed into Anna’s mind. She would never outrun Remington. Even if she found the tracking transmitter, she could not know what other support Remington might receive. Dogs, racing through the woods at a far quicker pace than any human ever could, yelping and barking, their noses picking up Anna’s scent and running her down, pinning her until Remington showed up for the kill.
She was probably right on schedule: she had a head start, Remington would experience the hunt for the rest of the day, then a dinner in the wild, sleep in a tent and sometime during the next day, preferably toward the end of that day, Remington would be
brought face to face with his kill, blissfully unaware of how rigged the hunt had been from the start and blissfully proud of his superior skills in the field. Maybe Diana would add another day, weather permitting, and assuming the hunt was going well and the client was in good spirits.
Anna’s heart pounded in her throat again. Tomorrow might be the last day of her life. She settled down on the branch staring at the dense canopy above, stars twinkling at her through tiny gaps in the foliage. The rain had stopped, the clouds blown away by a steady breeze that rustled through the leaves.
Chapter 41
London, England, August 4, 2012, 7:36 AM
Maria’s face was peaceful, almost innocent and Styx caught a glimpse of the little girl her lover once had been. She was pretty like an angel, Styx thought, in stark difference to the tension her face carried when awake. The punk girl wished she knew the woman without the secrets that marked her face. How would Maria be? Styx gently ran her finger along Maria’s cheek bone to her chin. What happened to the child, once innocent and care-free? Whatever it was, it had ruined the woman in bed with Styx. It made Styx sad. Sad for Maria and sad for herself. And she wondered when someone might look at her sleeping face and ask the same question. It would not happen to her, she decided, she would not allow it.
Styx gently crawled out from under the covers, careful not to disturb the sleeping Maria, and tip-toed to the bathroom. She stood barefoot on the cold tile floor and stared at her reflection in the large mirror. And suddenly she was tired of the hair dyed brightly red. It was not who she was. Who was she trying to be? What was wrong with being just herself? She was not fooling anyone, she thought.
“You are a fake,” she said to her reflection in the glass. She went to Maria’s living room, the bottle of wine still on the coffee table, and retrieved the phone from her coat pocket. Plopping down in the deep, soft cushion of the couch, she checked for messages. There was one.
‘The Anarchist’s Tea House, 9:00am.’
Four words and a time, no name, no address, no hello. She knew the place. More an artsy coffee shop than a tea house in Hammersmith, a funky café which stayed open till the wee hours of the night, frequented by artists and lost souls living on the fringe. Musicians played their music and poets read their poems to an uncritical and distracted audience, but mostly people stopped by to talk to friends and fellow artists or sit in corners working on their writing.
Styx became nervous. What had she set in motion? Had she over-reacted? Not so, she reminded herself. The fact that the American mountain climber had jumped on the next plane to fly to England was proof enough. Jack Storm was serious about something and so was Maria. Styx had to do the right thing, she told herself, or she would indeed be in danger of losing herself and someone else might rightly wonder in time what happened to the little girl Styx.
She erased the message from her phone and got dressed. Maria turned in bed, but did not wake. Styx kissed her on the forehead and quietly left the bedroom, closing the door. She put on her coat and stood for a long time looking around the living room. Would she ever be back? She had a feeling she would not.
Styx stepped outside into a dense and chilly early morning fog. Walking down the small street toward King’s Road she kept an eye out for her shadowing companions. Several blocks along, she abruptly stopped at a crosswalk and glanced back. She did not see the woman dressed in black or the skinny man. She kept an eye for other suspects: changing directions frequently, glancing back, scanning the crowd for a sudden move, a quick lowering of a head, a clumsy turn of the body. It had not been hard to spot the skinny man or the woman, and so she felt confident she could spot another. She reached South Kensington Underground Station and had not identified a tail. Was it possible that Maria had called of the surveillance? Possible, Styx thought, but unlikely. Maria had not had time to cancel the shadows. The woman in black had followed Styx to Maria’s house and the two had been together for the rest of the night. Styx would have known had Maria left the bed. She loitered in the lobby of South Kensington Tube station, busying herself with a ticket dispensing machine, while scanning every person entering the station. A steady stream of people flowed in on their way to work or school, rushing in and continuing on their way to the platforms. No one slowed upon seeing Styx by the ticket machines and found a pretext to linger.
Satisfied, she hurried to the westbound platform of the District Line and using the time while waiting for the train to screech into the station, she studied the faces of her fellow passengers, searching for the quick glance or the out of place activity. She still found nothing. Styx suddenly felt free. She had her life back.
She hopped on the next train, almost enjoying the ride. Hammersmith was only a couple of stops away and The Anarchist’s Tea House a short walk from there. A busy morning crowd buzzed in the café, a long line of bleary eyed patrons lining up for their caffeine fix. Newspapers flowed over the small round tables, early birds scanning the pages for news.
Styx stood in the door for a moment, her eyes searching the crowd for Jack Storm. She compared the mental image from the internet website with the faces in the Tea House and quickly found the man sitting at a table with his back to the wall, facing the door. A cup of coffee on the table, he was reading a book. To his right a large woman ate a bagel, crumbs falling on the paper bag serving as a makeshift plate. No one sat at the table to Jack Storm’s left, but a set of keys and a tall coffee cup indicated the owner to be close.
She took a breath and worked her way through the crowd to Jack’s table. She stood over him, her hands stuffed into her coat pocket.
“Hello,” she said. Jack briefly looked up, studying the woman, then returned his attention to the book in his hands.
“Sit at the table next to mine. The coffee is for you. The keys are mine,” he said, without looking up.
Styx was stunned. She had not known what to expect, but this was not part of what she had not expected.
“Ok,” she mumbled, “nice to meet you too,” she said and sat as she was told. She sipped from the coffee cup and winced. “I hate black coffee.”
“Sorry,” Jack said without looking up, engrossed in the book.
“Now what happens?” she said.
“Get sugar or cream or whatever you need,” Jack said, again without taking his face out of the book.
Styx rose and headed for the counter. She poured a healthy shoot of cream into the cup and emptied the sugar dispenser. As she stirred the pile of sugar at the bottom of the cup, she snuck glances at the man who was Jack Storm. He was good looking, in an outdoor sort of way: his face tanned, his shoulders broad and strong. And he looked to be tall, she thought. But most importantly he had an honest energy. She did not get a bad feeling from the American. She returned to her table and sat, doing what Jack was doing with her: ignoring him.
“Now what do we do?” she finally said, feeling foolish.
“We wait,” Jack said.
Two minutes later, Sergey Tarpov entered the Tea House and joined the line at the counter.
“You have been followed,” Jack said. Tarpov had been checking on who might follow the mysterious punkgirl999, and should he enter the Tea House, as he did, it meant he had picked up a tail.
“Damn,” Styx said, her eyes instinctively darting to the entrance. “I was so sure I had not spotted anyone. How can you be sure?”
“I am sure,” Jack said, trusting in Tarpov’s abilities. “Keep your eyes on the newspaper and tell me briefly how you can help,” he said, his eyes never leaving the book in his hands.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she said, her voice suddenly tense.
“You don’t. But I just traveled half way around the world to meet you. I need help. My wife has been kidnapped off a mountain in Peru and I need to find her. She is in trouble. You offered help, so here I am. Can you help?” he said, the words spoken quickly and calmly.
“Alright, I guess,” she said. “I am, shall we say involved, with Maria Koshkova. I ove
rheard a phone conversation in which Maria wanted one Jack Storm to be, I think she used the word ‘handled’. I googled your name and could not figure out the connection Maria might have with you. You live in such different worlds and it made no sense why she would even know you. Then she had a phone call in which a man named Todd Ashley had been ‘taken care of’,” she said, her fingers making air quotes, “and soon after that I found a photo on her cell phone of a man lying in a pool of blood, which was Todd Ashley, I guess. I don’t know what Maria is involved in, but I could not sit idly and so I emailed you. Since then Maria has had me followed, there is even a guy outside my house. I don’t know what it means, but I know that I am scared,” she said, also speaking quickly, forcing herself not to look at Jack at the table next to hers. “Does that help?”
Jack sat silently, digesting the new information.
“I think that Maria Koshkova is involved with my wife’s disappearance. It looks as if she had hired Todd Ashley to take my wife, who in turn hired a team to snatch her, while making it look like an accident. Two of my friends died in the avalanche, but Anna’s body was not found. I was supposed to be on the same climb, but ended up not going. And I think, Ashley was trying to finish the job, but regardless of the outcome Koshkova had considered him a liability and had him killed. Everything leads to Maria Koshkova and I need to find out if she knows where my wife is. Your girlfriend is the key, so I need your help,” Jack said.
Now it was Styx’s turn to sit quietly. She stared at the newspaper in front her, but would not even remember the headline. Her mind raced. It was decision time. Her fear of Maria was very real and so were the men and women shadowing her, but would she be able to betray her lover? And Jack was right, Maria was the key. The connection between Maria and Ashley and between Ashley and the men who took Anna Jaeger was coming into focus, but the other side of the equations remained a complete mystery.
