by Aric Davis
Katarina powers me to the ground with a blow from her fist and then a second from her mind—/ Down /—and I drop from the force of the combination. Katarina falls near me, begins battering my face with her hands and my head with her voice, that awful rage that threatened to tear my mind in half. I fight back, lifting my hands up, trying to give her another push to send her into the void, but it is too late. One of her hands is on the side of my head, and the other drags something cool across my throat. Numbness overcomes me, numbness so that I can’t feel as much of my own death, but I can still feel my lungs begging for air and hear the screech of my ruined windpipe.
My vision comes back then—the worst time in the world for a blind girl to catch another glimpse of the world—and what I see is far worse than the broken feeling in my mind or the ragged feeling in my throat. Katarina looks like me. No, not good enough: Katarina is me, the exact vision of how I’d always pictured myself as I ran my hands over and over my face. Her eyes are milky white, now she is blind little Ora Rabban, and everything becomes clear. Why she helped me. Why I needed to run with her. Katarina has a special trick. How many times has she used it?
“More times than you can imagine,” says Katarina. “More times than you want to imagine. Hundreds of times over hundreds of years, but you might have been the sweetest person I’ve tricked.”
I struggle, grabbing for her, but she stands, then unrolls the backpack she’s been carrying and pulls out her uniform.
“Don’t worry, though. I’ll only look like you for a few years, then I’ll need to find someone else.”
Her fingers go to work on me, and the seconds feel like hours. Above me, I can feel the sunlight through the slats in the barn’s worn roof, and I know that she’s taking her time with me, doing everything methodically, and unhurried. The light is fading as she begins to strip me, but as she pulls the Nazi jacket over my head, the last of my energy is gone. She has won, and I am just one more dead Jew in a country that is full of them. As she leaves me to my last breaths, I watch her struggle from the hayloft with her lack of sight, and the last thing I see is Katarina descending the ladder, a smile on her face.
CHAPTER 73
Mrs. Martin woke with a start in a tunnel of a room. The walls were covered in medical equipment, a good deal of it hooked to her and humming, wheezing, and beeping away, all while red dots and lines flashed and flickered. A man wearing the same odd yet familiar helmet and visor worn by the men in the van passed in front of her, and everything came back. Cynthia’s father, the gun, the kidnapping, and her own trip in the van. The helmeted man passed out of her peripheral vision, and Mrs. Martin attempted to lift an arm and found that it was strapped to the bed. Attempts to move her other arm, legs, and head proved that it wasn’t just the right arm that had been restrained, and Mrs. Martin did the only thing she could think of.
Nothing happened. For the first time since she could remember, Mrs. Martin had tried to leap from her body but nothing happened. The man in the visor and helmet walked in front of her again, a camera dangling from a cord around his neck. He lifted the camera and took a picture, and Mrs. Martin tried to dive into him, an easy task at this proximity, but again nothing happened. The man looked at the back of the camera, then nodded and walked away again. I’m broken, thought Mrs. Martin, and then the door opened at the end of the trailer, and her worst fears were realized.
The raven-haired woman who walked inside was wearing a black jumpsuit and a headset and was unarmed. Mrs. Martin recognized her immediately and was gripped with terror. She had called the police but had never imagined that doing so could bring this upon her.
“Katarina, how have you been?” The woman in the jumpsuit asked the question like she was talking to an old friend, but they weren’t friends, not even close. “You remember me, right? Does the name Jessica Hockstetter ring any bells for you?”
“My name is Henrietta Martin, Miss Hockstetter, and I think you must have the wrong person. I was never called Katarina, not even when I was a child. You must have me confused with someone else—”
“Ora Rabban, I know,” said Jessica. “We’ve done this dance before, Katarina, remember?” Jessica walked over to the man wearing the helmet and took a file from the table he was working on. “Ora Rabban before—poor little Ora, who was so lucky to escape the camps, remember? My predecessor, Sam Claussen, wrote up this report, and I know old Sam would recognize you if he were still with the agency. Hell, I know I do, and we met twenty years after the war. Of course, we didn’t know then that poor little Ora was dead outside of Dachau and that you were actually Katarina Kaufman. Of course, the Mossad prefers the title you enjoyed at Dachau, don’t they?”
“Miss Hockstetter, please. You have me confused with someone else,” said Mrs. Martin. “I have never heard of Ora Rabban or this Katarina Kaufman, and you and I have never met. This is all a misunderstanding, and I will be happy to help you clear it up. You must believe me. I’m just an old woman, but the child I was watching was taken. She—”
“The sooner you cut the bullshit, the sooner we can help her,” said Jessica in a singsong voice. “I want Cynthia Robinson in safe hands as much as you do, although . . .” Jessica paused and then said, “You probably don’t really care all that much that she’s safe.” Jessica flipped open the folder, skimmed a couple of pages, and then stopped and tapped one of the loose sheets of paper. “If you’re back to your old methods—and why change what works?—then she is a TK like you, and you and Cynthia have been using your maps, haven’t you? We’ve worked with a lot of high-level telekinetics, Katarina, but no one can build a map like you. Of course, you had plenty of practice in Dachau and the other camps you were helping to make more efficient, right?”
“My name is not Katarina,” said Mrs. Martin, “and nothing that you say makes any sense. Forget all of this. Just try and find the girl, bring her to safety. She is with a pair of monsters right now, and God knows—”
“From one monster to another,” said Jessica slowly. “That’s the way I see it, and as far as I’m concerned, she’s lucky that she ran into Mr. Livingston when she did. We both know what can happen to a child under your watch.”
“I have never hurt a child in my life,” said Mrs. Martin. “Never. These are lies, all lies, and—”
“Facial recognition software has her at a 99.98999 match,” said the man in the helmet. “Still waiting on DNA, but Hartford will have something for us within the hour.”
“Lovely,” said Jessica. “Do we really need to wait for the DNA, Katarina? You and I both know who and what you are, so let’s cut to the chase. Either you’re going to help us find Cynthia, or I’m going to have you on the first plane to Israel. I don’t think they’d really want to keep you there, but I know they’d love to have you as a guest for at least a little while. Maybe long enough for a trial. That shouldn’t take long, though. Your war crimes are well documented.”
“You need to get her from those men.”
“We will, eventually,” said Jessica, “though with your help we could find her faster.”
“I’ve never had that sort of ability,” said Mrs. Martin. “I am not who you think I am, and my little parlor tricks will do us no good in finding Cynthia.”
“Well, you’re wrong about that, Katarina,” said Jessica. “We had no idea we’d manage to ensnare you in the middle of the sting we were setting up to trap Darryl and Terry, but sometimes things just work out for the best. Now that we have you, we can use your connection with Cynthia to help locate her, and you must have inadvertently drawn the men here as well. Four of you in one place is a godsend, but not likely to happen without a little prodding. Time is of the essence, of course. I’m sure wherever the three of them are moving, they’re headed there as fast as possible.”
“I cannot help you. I’m just an old, lonely widow, not this monster that you have invented.”
“The problem seems to be,” said
Jessica, “that you think there’s a chance I’m going to believe you. I assure you I don’t. I don’t need facial-recognition software or a DNA test to know that you’re Katarina Kaufman. You killed Ora Rabban once you were far enough away from the camp that you could steal her identity and attempt to defect. You hid in survivor camps for weeks, and then what happened?”
“I have no idea.”
“You were recognized,” said Jessica. “The Death Angel of Dachau was spotted by some of her former inmates. It took ten years, but eventually you were found, just like so many of the Reich runaways. Oh, they must have been overjoyed to see you carted off, Katarina. But then they would have been sick to learn that the US government wasn’t going to execute or even punish you but instead keep you comfortable and put you to work. It wasn’t a waste—you were very helpful during the Cold War, after all—but then you ran.” Jessica smiled. “You ran, and now we have you again, and if you don’t help me find Cynthia, I’ll see you in Israel by tomorrow night. This is your last chance.”
“What if I help you?” Katarina asked.
“Then you get to live a little longer,” said Jessica. “I don’t want to sugarcoat things, Katarina. You’re a monster, and the US government doesn’t need monsters nearly as much as it did forty years ago.”
“That girl isn’t going to listen to anyone but me,” said Katarina. “If you want her to be a good little angel and do your dirty work, you’re going to need me.” She smiled. “I brought them here to me, the girl and her idiot mother. And the two men, too, though I hadn’t intended to. Too bad for them, but more proof of what I can do. You need me.”
“I guess we’ll have to see about that,” said Jessica, before turning to the man in the helmet and saying, “Get her prepped for REC/RES—the sooner the better.” Jessica smiled at Katarina. “Just remember, this can end badly for you at any time. You play nice, and I will, too. If we get that girl back and you try and corrupt her, I will see that you suffer. The Jews are still hunting people like you, and they are not in the least bit sick of it. If I called Israel, they’d have agents on a plane before I hung up the phone. Are we clear?”
Katarina nodded. The time for lies was over. She was caught back in the web of the TRC.
CHAPTER 74
Cynthia woke with a start in the truck. It all came back quickly. Terry was still driving, his hands on the wheel as he hummed along with the radio, and Darryl was staring out the window across from her. All threads connecting the three of them were gone, and Cynthia was glad for that. She wanted to be sad, and she didn’t want to be happy that she was with these strange men. She wanted things that were impossible. She wanted to go back home, to Mom or Dad or her grandparents, even to Mrs. Martin. She just wanted to be with people who she knew cared about her.
Taking advantage of the moment of peace, she took stock of her situation. She had been kidnapped by two strange men, and she had no idea where they might be bringing her. She wasn’t even sure if they knew. Somehow she wasn’t scared. Learning the words “divorce” and “affair” had been a lot scarier than this. She realized she was in a dangerous place, but still she felt serene. Maybe it was the loss of her parents—a loss she hadn’t been witness to but that she could feel all the same—but Cynthia felt like nothing really mattered anymore. The same was not true for her captors, and she knew this put her at an advantage over them.
Every few songs the DJ on the radio would break into the broadcast and begin talking. These interludes tended to induce moments of under-the-breath swearing from Terry before he violently spun the dial, waited about thirty seconds, and spun it back to the music of his preferred station. Cynthia didn’t need her gift to know what was going on. The radio was talking about them, alerting people to look out for them. Cynthia glanced out the window. There didn’t seem to be much chance of them being seen. Terry was sticking to the back roads.
You’ll need to make your own luck now. The quote had been one of Dad’s, and the recollection made her sad, but the thought was no less true.
“I have to pee,” said Cynthia after spotting a gas station sign growing above the trees on the horizon. She watched as Terry and Darryl exchanged a long look. “I really do,” she said. “I’m going to wet my pants.”
“All right,” said Terry. “I’ll pull off here in a few minutes. Just hold your horses.”
Cynthia nodded and smiled thinly. She knew she couldn’t weave with either of the men, nor could she invade them completely to see what they were thinking, but she could still vibe off of them very easily, and Terry was nervous. The truck was down to a quarter tank, so there was more reason than just pee to stop, but Terry didn’t want to. He wanted to drive and drive and drive.
The gas station sign grew on the horizon and then disappeared behind a wall of timber. Cynthia did have to pee, that wasn’t a lie—and with Darryl in the car, was there a point in lying?—but she also wanted to slow them down and maybe even get noticed by someone. As the sign reappeared, Cynthia formulated a plan. Darryl told you not to bend him or Terry, so don’t. Weave like Mrs. Martin taught you.
“No funny business,” said Darryl as Terry parked the truck next to a pair of beater trucks. “I’m serious, Cynthia. We’re in a pretty interesting situation right now, and the last thing that any of us need is extra attention. Terry is going to let us off right here, you’re going to use the bathroom while he gases up the truck, and then he’s going to pick us up. I don’t want to regret not making you pee in the woods, is that clear?”
“Yes.”
And then she and Darryl slid from the truck. Cynthia could see the back of the clerk’s head as he stood behind the register. He was an old man who likely would have enjoyed Mrs. Martin’s dogs. Darryl took her around to the unisex bathroom at the back of the station. After knocking on the door and getting no response, he pulled it open for her.
“I’m going to stand right here,” said Darryl. “Do not waste any time. Just get in and get out, OK?”
Cynthia nodded again, and Darryl shut the door after her. She sat on the toilet, made her water, and then pulled up her pants before sitting back on the toilet. Cynthia took a deep breath, pictured the gas station, and then roared into the sky above it. The sight from above was not like Mrs. Martin’s North Harbor map. The map of the Sunoco was blurry at the edges, and the lines looked as though they’d been drawn by a child. Cynthia wondered at these changes and at the obvious skill that her teacher possessed, and then fired into the gas station.
Cynthia could see Terry on the other side of the counter from her, and she realized with a start that she had landed directly behind the eyes of the old clerk. Knowing that she had only seconds, Cynthia wove her own thoughts around the clerk’s, reminding him of the two fugitives on the run he’d heard about on the radio and of the little girl they had taken with them. As she left, she made sure the clerk had two fresh thoughts in his mind: he needed to call the police as soon as Terry left, and then he needed to go around to the back of the building to get a look-see.
Cynthia returned to her body just in time to hear Darryl knock on the door and say, “All right, Cynthia, Terry’s going to be pulling the truck back here.”
Cynthia stood and opened the door a few seconds later, Darryl giving her an odd look as she left the dingy washroom, likely trying to tell if she’d been up to anything. She knew he might be too busy to keep much of an eye on her for much longer, though, if the clerk did as he was told. Cynthia watched with Darryl from the corner of the building as Terry hung the gas pump up, started the truck, and began to drive back to them.
“All right, get in quick,” said Darryl as Terry slid to a stop near them. “I’ve got the heebie-jeebies.”
Cynthia didn’t blame him—she did, too—and then the clerk rounded the building and time seemed to slow. Cynthia had her foot on the truck’s running board, Darryl was waiting behind her, and Terry was sitting behind the wheel when the clerk app
eared with an enormous revolver in one hand and the cordless phone in the other.
“You come here, girl,” said the clerk, pulling up short and leveling the gun at Terry. “And you, shut off that truck. Do it quick now—the law’s coming, and I’d rather see you leave in cuffs than bags.”
Cynthia started toward the man, but Darryl grabbed her forearm and held her in place. She turned to him, a look of fury in her eyes, and then the gas station attendant was talking again.
“Yes, they’re still here,” he said into the phone. “They’re holing themselves up in the gas station, and I think their truck broke down.”
None of this made any sense to Cynthia. They weren’t “holing up” in the station, and the truck was ready to ride. But then Darryl was dragging Cynthia to the old man, who threw the phone down and then handed his keys to Darryl.
That’s when she knew that Darryl was in the man.
“Come on, Terry,” shouted Darryl, and Terry left the truck running and followed after them.
The three of them walked around the back of the gas station, where they found an aging Buick. Darryl tossed Terry the keys, and the three of them piled inside, reluctant Cynthia hopping into the backseat with Darryl. The car turned over easily, the bodywork no indication of the care taken for the parts that mattered. Terry pulled around the gas station, and Cynthia stared out of the window at the man. He’d pulled the truck into the road, and gas was leaking everywhere from the pumps. The man gave them a wave as Terry pulled onto the road, and after a short turn the man and the gas station were gone.
