The Darkness Gathers: A Novel

by Lisa Unger

  “Remind me again why we’re doing this?” Jeffrey asked, walking into the room and startling her from her thoughts.

  “We’re looking for Tatiana Quinn,” she answered, keeping her eyes lowered.

  “That’s why we’re going to Albania?”

  “Detective Ignacio said to go where the money led. The money is in Albania, so is American Equities, so is Sasa Fitore … so that’s where we’re going.”

  She walked back and forth between the closet and the bed, shoving clothes into two backpacks. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. She moved stiffly but quickly, as if she was in a hurry to go someplace she didn’t want to be. She hadn’t looked at him since she’d received the news about Jed McIntyre. Her face was pale, her eyes unreachable.

  “So how do you want to play this?” he asked, more anger in his tone than he had intended. “Do you just want to pretend this isn’t happening? Or are we going to pretend that it isn’t having an effect on you, that you’re too tough to care that the man who murdered your mother is on the loose and somewhere close by.”

  “Jeffrey …”

  “What? I’m serious. I just want to know how I’m supposed to act.”

  “Jesus, give me a second to process it. I don’t know how to feel,” she snapped, shoving a sweater hard into one of the bags. “I never thought I’d have to deal with this. I thought he was going to be locked away forever. That’s why I kept all those letters. Every month, it was like confirmation that he was locked away, that he could never reach me, that my nightmares were just that … nightmares. I need a little time to figure out how to handle this. Would you feel better if I broke down in your arms and begged you to protect me? You know me better than that, don’t you?”

  He lowered his head. She was right, of course. He was angry with her for not reacting in a way that would allow him to comfort her.

  “I’m sorry, Lydia. I guess I just don’t know what to do. I only want to fix this somehow.”

  She sat down next to him. “You don’t have to fix everything, Jeffrey. We’re a team. We’ll handle this together. When we get back.”

  “It seems weird to be rushing off when we know Jed McIntyre is running around New York City.”

  “The farther away the better. Besides, if Jacob is right, and Nathan Quinn arranged Jed McIntyre’s release to keep us from going to Albania, I’m certainly not willing to comply. Besides, what are we going to do? Wait around for Jed to come after me? There’s no reason not to go.”

  He shuddered to hear her use his first name so casually, like he was an acquaintance they met for the occasional cocktail. It implied an intimacy in her mind, communicated that Jed McIntyre was in her thoughts more than he knew.

  “Flawless logic, as usual.”

  “In the meantime, why don’t you call one of your secret Rambo contacts and see if they can’t get a handle on him?”

  “What secret Rambo contacts?” he asked with a smile that managed to be at once innocent and sly.

  chapter twenty-nine

  “How do we know we can even trust this guy?” asked Jeffrey as they followed the rail-thin, shabbily dressed man through the nearly empty Rinas airport. Like most of the buildings in Albania, it had suffered from the 1997 riots and looting; it was run-down and filthy, reeking of urine. There were more people armed and in ragtag uniforms than there were travelers. They stood about smoking, machine guns draped casually over their shoulders. She wondered what laws they were willing to enforce with those guns in a relative state of anarchy.

  “We definitely can’t trust him,” said Lydia. “But he’ll have to do. There’s no other way to get around.”

  Their guide had been the youngest of a crowd of men waiting at the baggage claim with signs that read DRIVER or GUIDE. His startling blue eyes and riot of red freckles gave him the look of innocence, and there was a sparkle there that communicated a depth and resourcefulness that appealed to Lydia. Lydia picked him on instinct from the throng of men vying for their American dollars.

  “Can you take us to Vlorë?”

  He’d looked temporarily taken aback. “Very far,” he said. “Very dangerous.”

  “You take us there, stay with us, and then bring us back. We’ll pay you in American dollars … fifty dollars a day.”

  Lydia knew that this was more than many Albanians saw in a month. His attitude changed considerably.

  “Of course, of course … Vlorë beautiful place. This way, please.” They followed him out of doors that were held open with garbage cans overflowing with rubbish. Lydia was surprised to see him open the door of a Mercedes sedan that looked in reasonable shape and get into the driver’s seat. She remembered something she had read about most drivers in Albania having learned to operate a motor vehicle only since 1991; it had been illegal during Communist rule, and, as a result, there was now a high incidence of spectacular car wrecks. She said a silent prayer as their driver spun away from the terminal and roared out of the airport.

  “What’s your name?” asked Lydia, looking in vain for a seat belt and finding frayed stubs where they should have been. Inexplicably, the seat belts had been cut out of the car.

  “Gabriel is my name, miss,” he said. Then he added, “My English is good.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m Lydia, and this is Jeffrey.”

  “Why do you come here? To Albania?”

  “I’m a writer. I’m doing an article.”

  “Oh,” he said, impressed. “You write about Albania. Maybe someone will come to help us.”

  “I hope so,” she said, and meant it.

  It was dark, and the countryside between Tirana, Albania’s capital, and Vlorë passed by in the shadow of clouds drifting in front of the moon, occasionally revealing abandoned villages, burned-out cars and tractors by the side of the road, and piles of garbage. Twice, Lydia heard the unmistakable sound of automatic-weapon fire. Albania looked like other Third World countries she had seen, but without the energy, without the hustle, as if it had given up. The road was less a road than it was a mass of churned gravel and dirt, and seemed to hinder rather than facilitate their forward progress. According to the map she had, Vlorë was a little more than sixty miles from the airport, but she figured it would take two or maybe three hours to get there because of the bad condition of the road. After major delays in New York, a seemingly endless layover in Zurich, not to mention the slow line for a visa stamp upon arriving at Rinas airport, they were on their way to Vlorë significantly later than Lydia had hoped. The ride that stretched before them now seemed nothing short of interminable.

  She wondered what would happen to them if the car broke down. That was the thing that always made Lydia the most uneasy about the Third World—the what ifs. In the United States, if something broke down or you found yourself in trouble, help was just a phone call away—police, hospitals, AAA. Here, if you got a flat tire or got into an accident, you were out of luck. She wondered what it must be like to live like that, always on the edge of disaster, no formal network of people and organizations created for the sole purpose of saving your ass. She hoped they wouldn’t have to find out.

  “The Communists never repaired the roads,” said Gabriel in an apologetic tone. “They did not like for people to travel. They had helicopters. I am lucky to have this car. It’s very strong.”

  “Where did you get it?” Jeffrey asked.

  “After the Communists left, things were better for a while. We voted; there was a democracy. New things came from the West—cars, computers, televisions. But then after the collapse and the riots, things got very bad. Worse than communism. There was no fuel for cars, so people left them by the road. I found this one. When we got gasoline again, I became a taxi driver.”

  Lydia thought of what Marianna had said about Americans being like children, thinking Santa Claus leaves presents under the tree. The concept of the government collapsing, the country descending into chaos and anarchy, not being able to buy gasoline would be inconceivable to most people in t
he United States. It was amazing that half a day on an airplane had transported them to another universe.

  Jeffrey held Lydia against him with one strong arm, bracing himself against being thrown around the car with the other. She occasionally slipped into a troubled doze, in spite of the totally worn-out shock absorbers and the rough ride. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed as they rode in silence.

  “It is good we are here,” the driver said finally, pointing ahead to the lights of a city on the horizon. “Soon we run out of gas.”

  Since the collapse of the tentative economy in 1997 and the resultant riots and chaos, Albania, from all accounts, was a disaster area. Hermetically sealed from the rest of the world since 1944, then enduring the fall of communism, the rush of Western capitalism, and the subsequent crash, the country and its people had been devastated. What Lydia saw as they pulled into Vlorë was a city in ruin, barely functional. It was a city of ancient greatness and its past grandeur still echoed in its battered streets and uneven buildings, with their shot-out windows, angry graffiti, and bloody doorways. A dilapidated mosque with a crumbling minaret sagged on its frame; an old woman struggled up the remains of a sidewalk, a donkey trailing behind her. Lydia could smell the stench of an open sewer.

  “I think you missed your calling,” said Jeffrey. “You should have been a travel agent.”

  “Do you know somewhere we can stay?” she asked the driver, ignoring Jeffrey.

  “Yes, yes. I will take you to the best hotel in Vlorë.”

  Lydia couldn’t imagine what that meant.

  The hotel lobby was dark except for the light coming from several candles placed throughout the space; a thin woman with limp blond hair sat behind the counter, staring at them without much interest as they entered. Gabriel approached her and said a few words to her in Albanian. She narrowed her eyes at him and answered in a dull monotone. Gabriel turned to Lydia and Jeffrey.

  “There’s no electricity for three days. No hot water.”

  “Why not?”

  “There was a car accident. Someone crashed into one of the power lines. No one knows when there will be electricity again.”

  Some men sat around a table near a bar in the corner of the lobby, drinking what Lydia thought must be raki, the national drink—a kind of poor man’s grappa. They were shabbily dressed, except for one young man who wore wire-rimmed glasses, a Western-style shirt, tailored pants, and what looked to be expensive shoes, from what Lydia could see in the dim light. They stared at Lydia and Jeffrey with a kind of suspicious, although not malicious, interest.

  “It’s fine,” Lydia said to Gabriel, knowing that they were not going to find any place better and not wanting to drive around the city trying. “Get yourself a room, as well. We’ll pay.”

  “No, no. My brother lives here. I will go to stay with him and come back for you in the morning.”

  Lydia nodded and he handed her a key. He held on to it for a second, and when she looked up at him, he said quietly, “Lock the door before you sleep and keep all your valuables in your pockets. You are never safe here.”

  “Thank you,” she said, discreetly handing him five ten-dollar bills folded in half.

  Lydia felt as though they had stepped back in time as the woman, dressed in what looked like a peasant costume—long, heavy woolen skirt and tunic covered by a soiled white apron—her hair in a loose bun, with strands escaping and glowing in the candlelight like spiderwebs, led them up a hallway by candlelight. She opened the door for Lydia and Jeffrey and Lydia handed her the fifteen dollars for the cost of the room—a fee she knew was exorbitantly inflated because they were Westerners. The woman left the candle with them and walked back down the hall without a word.

  Lydia was glad they only had a candle for light, not wanting to examine the room too closely. A double bed sagged like a hammock in the middle of the room. A wooden chair looked sad and rickety beside a window where the moonlight shone through. The adjoining bathroom, a five-star luxury in a place like this, was passably clean, if she tried to ignore the faint odor.

  “This is nice,” said Jeffrey, sinking into the bed, not even bothering to take his clothes off.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “We only have a couple of hours to find that pickup spot.”

  As medieval as their hotel had seemed, the Paradiso was as modern a nightclub as could be found in any major city in the world. As Lydia and Jeffrey had struck out onto the rutted streets, its neon sign had been like a beacon in the darkened city. Loud music was leaking out the door, which was guarded by two burly men with shaved heads and gold chains. A white SUV-cum-stretch limousine was parked out front. Women who were clearly prostitutes paraded up and down the block, passing in front of the crumbling, graffiti-riven concrete wall next to the club. They seemed extremely young to Lydia. One with bleach-blond hair and a hot pink Lycra dress had barely developed breasts and hips, but she blew a kiss to Jeffrey.

  A twenty-dollar bill got Lydia and Jeffrey through the door. “Americans?” asked one of the beefy bouncers. Lydia nodded and the man smiled enthusiastically. “Welcome!”

  The bar was lined with American and European brands of liquor and cigarettes. Lydia wasn’t surprised that those companies had wasted no time in getting their products into the depressed country; with the First World becoming so health-conscious, they were always looking for new markets that cared more for escapist pleasure than long life. A heavy techno beat dominated the large space, which was crowded with people and filled with smoke. The dance floor heaved with bodies. Jeffrey ordered two straight Stolis from the bar, and they found a corner where they could watch the show.

  On a stage above the dance floor, cheaply, scantily clad women gyrated listlessly. Occasionally, two or three of them would walk down a narrow flight of stairs on the side of the stage and move into the crowd, which was comprised almost entirely of men. More girls replaced them on the stage. Lydia then noticed that those who walked into the crowd would pair up with one of the men and disappear into the back of the club. After they had watched this ritual a number of times, Lydia and Jeffrey followed.

  They trailed a thin young girl whose badly dyed black hair revealed at least an inch of sandy blond roots and a man so heavy that the floorboards creaked audibly beneath his feet and the back of whose head had three chins. He wore the most hideous-possible powder blue polyester suit. The dandruff on his shoulders glowed in the hallway’s black light. Lydia tried to imagine a dollar figure that would make it all right to have physical contact with him, couldn’t come up with one, and cringed as the man placed a heavily ringed hand on the girl’s fragile neck. The hallway was narrow and seemed to go on forever before the couple disappeared ahead of them.

  Lydia and Jeffrey were stopped by another bouncer at the velvet curtain through which the couple had passed. Lydia couldn’t be sure whether it was a different man from the one at door or not, for they all looked so similar with their shaved heads and gold chains. But his attitude was far less welcoming. “Private,” he growled. When Lydia handed him a fifty-dollar bill, he nodded to another bouncer, and they found themselves flanked and about to be escorted from the club.

  Like a guardian angel, Gabriel appeared from behind one of the curtains and said a few magic words in Albanian, and the men seemed to relax. “They are my friends,” he said in English. And then he looked at Lydia and Jeffrey. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He led them away behind the curtain to a quiet table.

  “Why have you come here?” he asked when they were seated, leaning in close to them. His breath was rank, and Lydia noticed that his teeth were brown and crooked. The face that had seemed sweet and boyish, peppered with freckles, was more hard-edged and tired, older than she had thought.

  “Just looking for a good time,” Lydia answered, not sure how well they could trust him.

  “That’s ‘bullshit’—isn’t that what the Americans say?” he said, curling his mouth into some
expression halfway between smile and sneer.

  She looked around and noted with slight distaste the couple they had followed into the lounge. The girl was engaged in a lackluster lap dance, her hands caressing her companion’s fat head, her eyes dull and staring off into the distance. Several other couples were engaged in the same activity. And Lydia noted that there was yet another velvet-curtained doorway at the far end of the room. She didn’t have to wonder what happened if the men elected to be escorted through that doorway. Apparently at the Paradiso, there were levels of debauchery, pleasure for every budget.

  “Why do you care what we’re doing here?” asked Jeffrey.

  “Maybe I can help you,” he answered with a nonchalant shrug.

  “Why would you want to help us?”

  He flipped a Marlboro from a soft pack he removed from his pocket. He held the pack out to Lydia and she took one, ignoring a scowl from Jeffrey. Gabriel lighted it for her with the flourish of a silver Zippo. “I like your American dollars,” he answered easily.

  Lydia regarded him for second, trying to weigh what they had to lose by trusting him versus what he could tell them or show them that they might not be able to find out on their own. She decided the gamble might be worth the risk.

  “Who owns this place?” she asked.

  “The same people who own everything. The Mafia, as you call them. Not the Italians … the Albanian mob. They control the country now. There is no government here anymore. Even those in power are only puppets of the mob,” he said. He had a peculiar way about him, at once grandiose and insecure, as though he were pretending to be a man he wasn’t and lived in fear of being discovered.

  “These women, where do they come from?”

  “From the villages, mostly. They are simple, you know, not smart,” he said, tapping his temple. “They think that they will have jobs as waitresses in the city, make money for their families. But then they become prostitutes.”