The Stepping Maze

by Kevin Tumlinson

  She began pulling open desk drawers, twisting to grab them with her aching hands and yanking them until they caught on unseen stops within the desk. She had hoped they could be dumped onto the floor, but no luck. She’d have to do this the hard way.

  She turned her back to the drawers and began feeling her way through the contents, blindly groping, turning to look if she felt something that had any promise.

  She had little luck until she pulled open the middle drawer—a tray filled with drafting pencils and plastic templates.

  None of this was useful, but as she stooped to peer into the darkened recess of the drawer, she caught a glimpse of something silver and shiny.

  She couldn’t reach it with her hands bound. It lay tantalizingly out of reach, obscured by a disheveled pile of business cards and crumpled invoices.

  She looked around the trailer again, frantically searching, and spotted an empty cardboard tube. It had once held a rolled-up survey map or some other document but had been tossed, empty, to one end of the trailer.

  She went to it, turning to face away, and then braced herself against the wall of the trailer, sliding back down to a sitting position. She wriggled over to the tube, scooching until it was in the gap between her lower back and the wall, and fumbled with her fingers until she managed to grasp it. Her prize in hand, she once again pushed against the wall, sliding back up to her feet.

  She took the tube with her to the desk drawer and used it to fish around, prodding and turning it to shuffle things out of the way. It was a tedious process, and took time.

  Her torso was twisted into an awkward and painful position, but she was able to see over her shoulder well enough to guide the tube. After a moment she smiled as a glint of chrome made its appearance.

  She dragged it forward, inch by inch, until it was visible and within reach.

  A pair of toenail clippers.

  She dropped the tube onto the desktop, just in case she needed it again, and leaned backwards to fish the clippers out of the drawer.

  She turned and sat on the edge of the desk. The last thing she needed was to drop these things on the floor and have to work out how to retrieve them. This way, if they fell, she could pick them up off of the desktop.

  She fumbled with them, opening them up and working to align them to the wire around her wrists. It wasn’t easy. The wire was thicker than the gap in the clippers, and she had to settle for slowly chewing away at her restraints. The process was agonizingly slow, and at times quite painful. It took patience and concentration. She could feel sweat breaking on her forehead, rolling down her cheek, soaking into the gag.

  She first cut through the rubber insulation and could feel the twisted threads of metal wire inside. She started on these now.

  Her hands cramped several times, and occasionally a strand of wire stabbed at her fingers, causing her to wince. She dropped the clippers once, and she mumbled a muffled curse as she fumbled to pick them up again, to reposition, to start over.

  With the gag still in her mouth, she felt a rising dryness and thirst. It was distracting, at first, but she eventually learned to balance it with the work of her hands. One pain distracted from the other, back and forth, over and over, and she made progress.

  Feeling the ragged wire with the tip of her fingers, she believed she was getting close. She might have it severed soon. She felt a thrill of hope. With her hands free ...

  From outside the trailer, there was a sudden, loud rumble. It started at a distance but was growing persistently closer.

  A motorcycle.

  The man who had brought her here had driven a van, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t switch vehicles. It could be him.

  Her time could be running out.

  She closed her eyes and bit down on the gag. She pictured the wire, imagining it as split nearly to the breaking point. A few strands left, that was all. She could do this. She cut, the strands of wire stabbing into her cuticles and fingertips. She pushed and cut. She pulled. She cut.

  The motorcycle engine stopped. It was close.

  How far away had the van parked, when she’d been brought here? There was that pad of concrete. Then the gravel. Then the short set of wooden steps. The hasp on the door. She couldn’t calculate the time she had left, she had to trust it was enough.

  She cut again, and tugged, pulling her wrists apart as hard as she could.

  The wire snapped.

  The door opened.

  GOVERNMENT-SEALED APARTMENT

  Kotler looked around, taking in the space that, until this moment, he’d only seen in photographs.

  Evidence markers had been removed, and a large portion of the room had been cleared—bagged and tagged and taken back to Liz’s lab at Historic Crimes. There was very little here for Kotler to look into. Liz’s team had been incredibly thorough and organized, as he would have expected.

  “Anything?” Denzel asked.

  Kotler shook his head. “I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here, I just wanted to get a better idea of the place. Our mystery figure led us here.” He turned to face Denzel, who was standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets. “Why?”

  Denzel looked around and shook his head. “We found a photo of this place, in the Black Chamber. It shows the manuscript, right where we found it. It’s a fair bet that whoever is behind this relied on what they found in the Black Chamber, to lay a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow.”

  “Riddles and puzzles,” Kotler said quietly.

  “They knew what was here, anyway. Or had a pretty good idea.”

  Kotler nodded. “And they gave us a clue.”

  “The stepping maze,” Denzel said.

  Kotler stepped deeper into the room, turning and taking it in. This space had been sealed by government order before he’d even been born. His great-grandfather may have done some of his work here. This space could well be tied to the birth of the NSA—one of the most powerful clandestine organizations in history.

  Part of him mourned that it had been disturbed before he’d gotten here, that he hadn’t had the opportunity to see it as it had been found. But he knew that was silly. This was no different than the dig site he’d tended in Egypt, when Denzel had come to retrieve him. The work had been done here, properly and in an organized way. He could reference Liz’s notes on this site, as well as those from her team. It was only a petty sort of FOMO—fear of missing out—that made him regret that he hadn’t seen it all with his own eyes.

  Why had the government sealed this space?

  That was an easy question, now that he thought about it. If this really were part of the origin of the NSA, the documents in this room would have been highly classified, sensitive material at the time. It was an archive of cryptology. Secrets about secrets, and the government, in its usual schizophrenic methodology, would want to both keep it and bury it.

  As the decades had gone by, the contents of this room would have become a little less relevant. The need for secrecy would be less necessary.

  But there still had to be something here. Something that the mysterious figure behind the scenes wanted.

  And just like that, it clicked.

  “Roland,” Kotler said, turning to his partner, smiling, the answer now obvious.

  He paused.

  He recognized the man immediately. He was hard to forget. Over six-foot-tall, broad shoulders, powerful arms. Even with a balaclava masking his face, there was little doubt that this was the man who had abducted Ludlum.

  And at the moment he had one arm around Denzel’s throat and a weapon trained on Kotler.

  13

  GOVERNMENT-SEALED APARTMENT

  “Dr. Kotler,” the man said quietly.

  Kotler raised his hands, slowly. No sudden movements. He was in the middle of the room, with nowhere to duck or hide. The gunman would have a clear shot.

  Denzel was held firm, his face blazing red, gripping at the man’s arm. The gunman seemed entirely unfazed by it. Nothing Denzel did seemed to bothe
r the man in the least.

  Kotler worried that his friend couldn’t breathe.

  “Please,” he said. “Can you … can you let him breathe? Please?”

  The man showed no outward signs of movement but must have relaxed his grip on Denzel’s neck. The agent slumped slightly, his chest heaving, his hands still gripping at the gunman’s powerful arm.

  “Dr. Kotler, we still have Dr. Ludlum. The clock is still ticking. There isn’t much time left.”

  “Who are you?” Kotler asked, not really expecting an answer. He was buying time, trying to figure out what to do.

  “Return to FBI headquarters. Retrieve the manuscript and the decoded message it contains.”

  Kotler nodded. He’d been right. He’d only just put it together a moment earlier, but now it was obvious. The person orchestrating all of this had tagged the manuscript as a clue, having spotted it in the photograph from the Black Chamber. They had been unable to get to it, thanks to the government seal. But an agent of the FBI, properly motivated, could reach it. Especially if that agent’s partner had some personal connection to it—if his name were on the cover, for example.

  “What do you want with it?” Kotler asked, still stalling, still hoping.

  The gunman shifted and now turned his weapon to Denzel’s head.

  “Ok!” Kotler said, bringing his hands down, palms forward, pleading. “Alright, I’ll get it. Please … just don’t hurt him.”

  He kept the gun to Denzel’s head, unmoving, and Kotler watched his partner’s face go red again, the struggle renewed.

  Kotler yelled but didn’t dare move.

  It took a moment, but Denzel finally stopped struggling. He slumped, and the man let him fall to the floor. He stepped back then, the gun dropping to his side.

  “We will know when you have it. You will receive instructions on where to send it. You have thirty minutes.”

  At that, he raised the gun and fired.

  Kotler ducked, covering his head and diving to the floor. The sound of the shot rang in his ears, but once he realized he hadn’t been hit, he looked up.

  The man was gone. Denzel lay unconscious on the floor.

  He scrambled to his feet and checked Denzel’s pulse. Strong. Steady. He was unconscious, and he’d have a hell of a headache later, but he was alive.

  Kotler checked his watch.

  Thirty minutes.

  No time to wait and no time to waste. He rifled through Denzel’s coat pocket, then stood and raced into the corridor, down the stairs and out into the street. He found Denzel’s sedan parked in front of the building. He had the keys in his hand, and in seconds he was in the driver’s seat and speeding toward FBI headquarters.

  14

  SURVEY TRAILER

  Ludlum stood, aching and bleeding hands clutched into fists at her side, gag still in her mouth. She squared off with the man in the doorway.

  He was wearing a motorcycle helmet and riding leathers. He hesitated, seeing her there, and his hand shot into his leather jacket, emerging with a gun.

  She ran forward, a muffled scream in her throat, and leapt at the man, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and using her grip and momentum as leverage. She brought her knees up driving them into the man’s chest and ribs. The gun flew to one side, bouncing from one of the cabinets and falling to the floor of the trailer.

  There was a muffled cry from inside the helmet as the man stumbled backward through the door, tipping from the top step and going down to the concrete walkway, hard.

  He was stunned, but Ludlum wasn’t much better off. The ordeal of the past several hours had taken a toll, and though her adrenaline was up, she was still feeling the effects of a minor concussion. Her head was pounding, and she was breathing heavily. Sweat soaked her whole body.

  The man groaned beneath her, and then made a move. He reached up, taking her arm in an iron grip, and then rolled, trying to pin her to the ground.

  Her knees were already up, after slamming into him, and she was able to keep some leverage even as she was forced onto her back.

  Ludlum had spent the past ten years attending kickboxing classes two to three times per week. The key to defense was distance, which she’d lost in this case. But the advantage of hundreds of hours of kicks to heavy bags, coaches, and opponents was an abundance of leg strength.

  She pulled her knees closer to her chest, his weight now pinning them in place, and then jack-kicked upward, driving her feet into the man’s solar plexus.

  He grunted as he rose into the air, and she twisted to send him tilting to her left as she rolled to the right.

  His grip on her arm was firm, but the combination of impact and movement allowed her to pull free.

  The two of them were still on the ground, each crouched and staring at each other. Ludlum felt gravel cutting painfully into her palms and knees but held her position.

  The man was in a similar pose, and with the polished motorcycle helmet and the riding leathers, he looked like a supernatural creature poised to leap.

  Ludlum considered her options, her mind racing. She had trained to defend herself, had put in hundreds of hours of practice, but this was different. This was real life and real death on the line. The adrenaline coursed through her. She got angry.

  The man was rising to his feet, and she might have done the same, but she knew it would wick away any advantage she had. Staying low would make attacking her an awkward proposition, but there was also the helmet to consider. It protected his head, so his lower body was her best target. But it also restricted his vision, and staying low would make things more challenging for him.

  She bit down on the gag again, wishing she had a moment to pull it free. It was restricting her breathing, forcing her to inhale and exhale through her nose in noisy rasps.

  She ignored it.

  She squeezed her hands, taking up fistfuls of gravel.

  She rushed forward.

  The man had only just regained his feet when she hit him, and this time she was aiming to do as much damage as possible. She shoved her hands up and under the faceplate of the helmet, pushing past the chin strap and into the gap where the man’s face would be. It was an awkward move, binding her hands and putting her at a disadvantage. But with her hands over his face, she opened her grip and let gravel fall.

  The man jerked, turning his head and twisting his upper body. She could hear coughing and sputtering as gravel and dirt fell into his mouth and nose. All of his effort was suddenly concentrated on clearing the debris so he could breathe and see.

  Ludlum took advantage of the move to pull her hands free and roll to the side. She couldn’t waste this chance. She had to end this, now.

  She looked around frantically, hoping to find anything she could use as a weapon.

  On the ground, the man clawed at the strap of his helmet.

  She only had a moment.

  There, next to the trailer, was a broken survey tripod. One leg had been sheared off somehow, and it lay on its side, in the weeds. She raced to it, picked it up, hefted it. The weight wasn’t much, as it was made of aluminum, but it was sturdy. The two remaining legs had sharp stakes at their tips, meant to stabilize the tripod on soft ground.

  She looked up to see that the man had removed the helmet, and was brushing gravel from his eyes, spitting it out of his mouth. He took off one of his gloves and wiped at his eyes, blinking.

  She raced forward

  He saw her. His eyes were hard. Angry. And then wide. Shocked.

  She plunged into him, driving the sharpened points of the tripod legs into his stomach, tilting, driving upward.

  He let out a strange, gurgling noise, between a grunt and a cry. He reached out, gripped her forearms, tried to push her back.

  Blood and gore spewed over their hands, coating them, making everything slick and slippery. His hands clutched and flailed a few times, and there was more noise from his throat. Gurgling. Sputtering. Wheezing.

  Silence.

  He slumped, fal
ling forward. Ludlum shifted the tripod, turning it, dropping the man’s body off to one side.

  She collapsed to the ground, then scrambled, crawling away until she was leaning against the wooden steps of the trailer. She sobbed, then tore at the gag, reaching behind her head, struggling to untie it and finally casting it away.

  The sobs were audible now, and she breathed heavy, ragged breaths, trying to calm down, trying to get a grip.

  This wasn’t the same man who had brought her here.

  That meant she wasn’t yet safe.

  She rose to her feet and moved cautiously to the body on the ground. The tripod protruded absurdly from his stomach. He was still. She checked his pulse.

  Dead.

  She needed to get out of here.

  Ludlum searched his pockets until she found the keys to the motorcycle. She glanced at the helmet, laying off to the side. Revulsion shivered through her.

  She couldn’t have her face in the same space his had occupied. She couldn’t breathe air reflected back to her from that faceplate, knowing that his own breath had been doing so just moments ago.

  It felt intimate and grotesque. A macabre kiss from a man who had tried to kill her.

  She left it laying in the gravel, like an alien skull staring up into the sky. She limped to the motorcycle, parked under a corrugated metal carport, on the same pad of concrete where she had arrived.

  It was a nice bike. A vintage Indian that someone, presumably the man, had restored. It had the look of something cared for, and for a strange instant Ludlum felt a spike of regret. She had killed someone. She’d taken a life. It went against who she believed she was, and it made her sick. She wanted to vomit.

  She took several breaths, calmed herself, let the feeling of nausea pass.

  She climbed on the bike, started the engine, gave it some throttle. The roar of it was loud, almost obnoxious. It was somehow comforting. A feeling of power in a moment where she’d felt at her weakest. A reminder that she was powerful, too.

  She looked at the man one last time and felt rage well up again. She rolled forward, brought up the kickstand, and then gave the bike some throttle.