by T. J. Lebbon
He surfaced at last, treading water as he caught his breath and tried to calm himself. Nothing touched him. There was no fish in his mouth, and the depths below him were innocent.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ he shouted. His voice echoed back to him, but there was something strange about the echo. He couldn’t place it. Odd. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, and once again the echoes came … but longer.
Saying more words.
He spun around in the water and looked back the way he’d come. At first he didn’t see the movement because he was still in a part of the lake touched by sunlight, and it dazzled where it reflected from the frantic waves he was making. Then he saw the figure silhouetted up on the ridge line he’d descended from so recently, and he couldn’t believe the man had made it there so fast.
Blondie. It had to be. And he was pointing, and shouting.
Why share the kill? Chris thought, and the idea suddenly struck him hard, chilling, disbelieving.
Chris kicked himself around and started swimming again. He thrashed with his legs, kicking from the hip to provide maximum power, and heaved hard with his hands and forearms, grasping the water as far ahead as he could, shoving back at his hip. It all comes down to how well I can swim, he thought, and the fear was replaced with a strange, detached calm.
You’ve suddenly become a can-do guy, his wife had said to him a year or so ago. She’d been referring to his mid-life transformation from a fat, relatively unhealthy man to someone fit, lean, and capable. He’d learned to swim when he never thought he could, done other things that he’d never have believed possible for most people, let alone himself. His negativity had given way to a can-do attitude.
And he could do this.
He was Terri’s can-do guy, and he would never let her down.
He swam hard. Pausing to look back would waste time, slow him down, and give Blondie a motionless target. He thought of zig-zagging, but at swimming pace it would have little effect. His best bet was to put as much distance between him and his pursuer before—
The sound was strange, like a rapid, bubbling hiss. Water in his ears.
It came again, just when he was turning to the left to breathe, and this time he saw the water splashing up a few metres away.
He was within range.
What will it feel like? Will I even feel it in such cold water? Will I know I’m about to die …?
The opposite shore was getting much closer. What he’d do when he got there was something to worry about when it happened. It looked rocky, ragged, and hopefully there’d be places to hide as he dashed from rock to rock, climbing the slope towards whatever might lie beyond.
That bubbling hiss came again, much closer this time.
Chris took action without even thinking about it, taking a deep breath, pointing his head down and kicking his legs up, pulling with his arms and descending below the surface. It was frighteningly easy, as his clothes and rucksack pulled him down. He levelled out and kicked hard, breast-stroking towards what he hoped was the shore. He tried not to exhale too much – a trail of bubbles would show Blondie just where to aim his next shot.
After close on a minute he rose quickly to the surface, exhaled, drew in a huge shuddering breath, checked his direction, and submerged again.
Something struck him in the back.
It was like a hard punch or kick, similar to many he’d felt at the tumultuous start of many open water triathlons.
Shot! he thought, I’ve been shot! But he could still kick and pull, so he stayed underwater and surged on. Those cold-water impacts often felt like nothing, the cold absorbing some of the pain or damage for a while. He didn’t want to dwell on that. If the bullet had injured him, he’d know it soon enough.
He jigged to the right a little, kicked hard, held his breath for as long as he could, then surfaced again. This time there was no shot, and he risked a moment to look back the way he’d come.
All four hunters were descending the rocky slope. Even the fat one was there, lumbering downhill as if nothing and no one could stop him. Fall and break your ankle, Chris thought, but it seemed that his willing power wasn’t strong enough. Blondie was still in the lead, thinking that getting closer was better than commanding the high ground. Was he really that stupid? The closer he came to the water’s edge, the more difficult the angle.
Chris turned and started swimming hard for shore. This time he heard the gunshots, and they came from more than one rifle.
Maybe he’d made the wrong choice. He could have climbed and scrambled around the lake, at least then he’d have had some cover when they started shooting. Now he was exposed. And when he reached the lake’s edge and tried to climb out, they’d have a clearer shot at him.
But three hundred metres was a long way.
He drew close to the shore, and his dragging feet knocked against the lake bed.
Water splashed close to his right shoulder. Another bullet crashed from the rocky slope above the lake and ahead of him, scattering rock splinters across his head and into the water.
The lake edge was shallower here, and he stood, swaying a little unsteadily—
—From the swim? Hope so. Hope it’s not blood loss from a wound I can’t even feel yet—
—then starting up towards a spread of boulders. The rocks beneath his feet were slick and he slipped sideways, trying to regain his balance but falling. He landed hard and started crawling, grabbing the slippery rocks and pulling, pushing with his feet.
More gunfire. Bullets whistled and ricocheted. He stood, gasping and shouting incoherently, and ran half a dozen endless steps to a pile of rocks. He fell behind them and scurried deeper, peering through a narrow gap and back across the lake.
Safe at last, he thought, almost laughing at the futility of it all.
He was in the shadow of the mountain here, the hunters on the other side in bright sunshine, and it illuminated their frustration. Blondie paced back and forth at the lake’s edge, and for a minute Chris thought he was actually going to leap in and start swimming. The Rambo character was hunkered down catching his breath, and the other fat man was lying on his back on a flat rock. The fourth man, short, thin and bald, seemed to be taking photographs with his mobile phone.
A warm, glowing pain spread across his back. Chris shrugged off the rucksack, reached back and grasped at his shirt, squeezing it, then checking his hand. No blood. It didn’t feel that bad – more like he’d been punched hard rather than shot.
But he’d never been shot. Had no idea what it felt like.
There was a bullet hole in the rucksack, high up and to the right. He flipped it over and checked the mesh section that pressed against his back. There was no corresponding exit hole, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Then he hurriedly opened the rucksack and peered inside.
The plastic bag was holed and torn in several places, and still awash.
‘Shit!’ He tipped the bag and emptied its contents on the ground between his knees. The penknife was bent, several tools projecting at fractured angles where the bullet had struck and fragmented. The map was holed but probably salvageable, printed as it was on showerproof paper. The water bottles looked okay. A couple of gels had bitten the dust, and the GPS display screen was blank. Water swilled inside.
The phone screen was black.
Bloody perfect.
But it could have been so much worse.
He shoved everything back into the rucksack and shouldered it again. It was time to leave. Once he got up the slope and disappeared over the top, he’d have an hour or so until they managed to edge their way around the lake. By then the light would be fading, and he’d have to come up with a plan to see him through the night.
No more gunshots cracked out as he started to climb. He risked a look over his shoulder, and back across the lake the four men were watching him. Blondie stood by the water, rifle held in both hands across his stomach. The other three were sitting close together, passing something back and forth. They drank from it. A bo
ttle of whiskey, perhaps, otherwise there’d have been no need to share.
Good. Alcohol would dehydrate them, slow them down.
Chris gave them the finger. He couldn’t help it, did it instinctively, knew that if he’d thought about it for even a second he’d have held back … but it felt good, and it meant that he could smile. The smile gave him a moment of optimism in a darkening world.
Blondie shouted in rage, his voice lost in the vast wilderness, and started shooting at Chris again.
Bullets whistled and whipped. Chris hid behind rocks. It was only for thirty seconds, but every wasted bullet was one less that could hit him.
His trail shoes squelched as he started moving again. He was cold, and as he moved his soaked outfit brought on the shivers. He needed a change of clothing – the spare running trousers in the rucksack were soaked – something warm to wear on top, and some decent food.
Failing that, somewhere to dry his kit might be a distant second best.
As he topped the next rise, he paused to look back down at the lake. The hunters were scampering around it to his left, pale spots far away and below, and it was difficult to imagine that they meant him harm. He experienced a rush of wellbeing completely at odds with his situation – he could fly ahead of them forever, confident on his feet, fitter than he had ever been, and slowly they would tire and crumple and die into these hills. His tiredness was negated by adrenalin, any pain he felt was weakness leaving his body. He would triumph.
‘This can only end well,’ he said, as if to imbue the landscape with his positivity. The wide, darkening skies remained silent, and the mountains stared back in mute mockery.
Fuck them, Chris thought, suddenly feeling very small. Running again, that brief moment of optimism faded with every footstep.
The mountain slope ahead gave way to a wall of almost sheer cliffs, craggy edifices that he would not dream of tackling. That left him with a choice – veer left and head down a series of slopes into the wide valley bottom; or turn right, negotiate a difficult scramble uphill, and enter the inhospitable mountaintop domain above the cliffs, where even now a heavy mist obscured his view.
Making things easy for him would do the same for the bastards chasing him.
He chose right.
An hour later he donned the yellow showerproof jacket from his rucksack, soaked though it still was. He waited until he was sure the hunters had seen him before entering the cool mists.
Chapter Twenty-One
no ties
The more Rose had discovered about the Trail, the more she knew that she needed help.
She returned to Italy just once. She went looking for Holt, ready to present everything she’d learned to him. He was retired, she knew that. A rich man with nothing to spend his money on. A haunted soul. Someone with a red history that she had no doubt was much deeper, darker and more traumatic than the few hints he’d given her, and which he’d likely never reveal. But she thought he might help because of the children.
That’s why he’d taken time to instruct her, so he’d said. And with the Trail still active there would always be more children in danger.
Her second time entering Italy was as a different person. Not only had her name changed – she travelled under one of several noms de plume she had assumed for instances such as this, supplied to her by Holt’s contact in Switzerland – but she was also a colder, wiser woman, with a wider horizon and dark stains on her soul that she could never have imagined before. The first time she’d come to Italy she had been a grieving, confused drunk seeking oblivion. This time her quest was for the most violent revenge.
Holt was no longer in Sorrento. She visited many of the locations they had frequented the year before – restaurants and bars, parks and beaches, abandoned buildings, seafront walks, and places so far out in the wilds that they did not have a name. She spoke to barmen and hoteliers whom she’d believed had known him, but came up blank. Either they were very good actors or, more likely, he was even better at remaining unknown than she had suspected.
Her fifth day there she spent outside a busy harbour café, watching tourists living their safe, trouble-free lives, and blending into the background. She was becoming good at that. The café was one of the few places to which Holt had returned several times when the two of them were together, and though she’d never asked, she had come to believe that the small, innocuous place meant something special to him.
There was no sign of Holt. If he was in Sorrento, he had seen her and preferred not to make himself known. And that made her hope that he wasn’t there at all.
It had always been a long shot, because he’d passed that strange comment about not being quite lost enough. But at the back of her mind was the idea that he was always keeping an eye on her. Nothing had suggested this to her, other than her own troubled thoughts, yet she grasped on to the notion. She could not accept the concept that, to Holt, she had been just another lost cause.
That evening she returned to experience the café’s night-time atmosphere. She dressed in different clothing, wore her hair up instead of down, and sat at a table she’d never used before. On the waiter’s second visit to her table, she started asking him about Holt. She never mentioned him by name, instead painting the image of a mythical, shadowy figure, The Frenchman, a haunter of shadows. The man walked briskly away, and moments later someone else approached her. Uninvited, he sat in the table’s spare chair. He and the waiter must have been twins, and they both wore the same leathery mask of bad times.
‘You’re looking for The Frenchman?’ he asked in excellent English.
Rose nodded.
‘Why?’
‘I owe him money,’ she said.
‘Give it to me, I’ll pass it on to him.’ The man smiled, but it was ugly.
Rose stared him in the eye and finished her coffee.
The man’s smile dropped. He returned to the bar where his waiter brother was waiting. They whispered to each other, glancing over at her. The music and chatter in the café receded as she focused on them, her heartbeat increased, and the idea of soon seeing Holt again suddenly made her both nervous and excited. She was afraid of him, but he was the only friend she had in the world.
The waiter nodded, then scribbled something on his pad, tore off the sheet and left it on the bar. He caught her eye to make sure she’d seen, then picked up a tray and went to serve someone.
Rose stood and approached the bar. The other man stood to one side, pointedly ignoring her. When she was three feet away and could see that the paper was blank, she felt the waiter’s solid grip on her arm.
The two men dragged her out through the café’s back door.
‘No one asks about The Frenchman,’ the owner whispered, and then he turned away.
Maybe this is what I wanted, Rose thought, letting them haul her through the kitchen and out past storage shelving heaped with packed food and bags of grains and spices. Maybe danger is the only thing that will bring Holt. She let herself be taken, feigning weakness, crying out when she thought they might expect it of her.
After the first slap fell across her cheek from one twin, and the first punch from the other rocked her jaw, she stood up straight, spat blood, and held up her hand.
The two men froze, wide-eyed and afraid. Rose was glad she couldn’t see what they saw. It must be in my eyes, she thought, remembering those times that Holt had looked at her in such a way. Still, she believed that he’d never given her the full weight of his dreadful history.
Rose was still gathering the mass of her own, and she relished her complete control of that moment.
She punched the waiter in the nose with the heel of her hand, swinging her shoulder and putting her whole weight behind it. Bone crumpled, and he slumped to the ground with barely a whimper.
His brother tried to run back into the café, but she tripped him and then kicked him between the legs, dropping her other knee hard onto the side of his face as he curled up in agony.
The coolness was
there. Holt said he’d seen it in her, knew what it meant – that she was ready to be shown things and willing to change – but this was the first time Rose had really experienced it in herself. It was a calm distance that seemed to slow down time, an awareness that located her limbs, her body, her strengths. And it was a remoteness from everything that had once made her human. She still cared when bad things happened to good people, so much so that her empathy was sometimes stifling and smothering.
But she could have cheerfully slit those men’s throats.
Instead, she left along the dark alley, emerging into a bustling street rich with the scents of cooking food and the sea. The coolness remained, and in its embrace she saw how innocent everyone was. She alone walked with the knowledge of how cruel the world could be. It hung like a bubble of corruption about her.
She remained in Sorrento for two more days, and it was only when she grudgingly decided to end her search that Holt called.
She’d been moving hotels each night she was there. But when she’d given up any hope of finding Holt, and instead stayed merely to soak up more of the local atmosphere, she didn’t bother changing hotels. Two nights in one place would not matter. It was out of the way, a small private business run by an energetic family who did their best to make her feel at home. The sort of establishment used by experienced travellers, rather than the larger, more glossy hotels booked by package tour firms. It was nice. She might have come here with Adam, if they ever had a long weekend away without the kids.
The phone beside her bed rang on that final morning. Even as she answered, coughing away the familiar dregs of bad dreams, still breathing in their dark clouds, she knew who it would be.
