“What's wrong?” Harlow asked, frightened now, trying her own door. She knew something was wrong. She had the worst feeling.
The passenger door opened. A burly man grabbed Sophia, dragging her out of the car, covering her mouth with a white handkerchief. Harlow screamed. Pushing her passenger door open, she bolted from the car straight into a wall of a man who restrained her, covering her nose and mouth with a white cloth, filled with chloroform, until she went limp against his black suit.
Chapter 13 – The Shoemaker's Son
Harlow woke up in a dark room. The smell of damp earth came thick and fast as she returned to consciousness, her cheek pressed into the cold dirt floor. She sat up quickly, making the room spin. Struggling to gather her thoughts, she tried to remember how she had fallen asleep here; it seemed a strange place to rest. Where am I? Harlow thought, getting to her feet. As she stood up, it all came flooding back; the Limo, the Jeep, Paul, crazy Paul, Sophia, Christian, poor Christian. He had tried to warn them. The room was cramped, pitch black except for the tiny light that streamed in a few yards away, shining brightly through a square gap about six feet up and escaping dimly through the spaces around the door frame. Sidling up to the door, Harlow tripped over something soft; it was a leg. She crouched down over Sophia's still form. The light fell on her head, tracing the soft outlines of her face. She shook Sophia softly, whispering, “Sophie, Sophie! Wake up!” Then it occurred to her that she might be hurting her friend. Harlow leaned over Sophia and put her ear closer to Sophia's lips, vainly trying to hear Sophia's breathing. She softly held Sophia's wrist, then failing to find a pulse began to panic and touched her fingertips to Sophia's neck. There, holding her breath as if her breathing were too loud, drowning out the soft echo of Sophia's heartbeat, she heard it. Faint like a lost child crying in a meadow, but it was there. Harlow sighed in relief.
Harlow got up and went to the door. Running her hands over it, she realised the door had no handle. She struggled against the metal frame, pushing it and running at it until her shoulder ached and finally she kicked it in anger. She peeked through the tiny glass window looking outside and saw a whole different world; crates, stacks of them in plastic wrapping, stood as tall as houses going back in rows as far as her eyes could see. Ten towers of crates were immediately visible. Something yellow wove its way though the aisles and she tilted her head trying to see it. In the distance, she could hear a strange whirring sound. A man on a forklift passed by. She banged hard on the door, mercilessly shouting, “Hey, hey help!” The whirring faded into the distance, replaced by the sounds of muffled conversation, a voice that grew louder as she shrunk back from the door. The voice, so familiar, pounded in her head: the voice of her captor, the mocking, slow, dead-sounding tone that had forced her to “Shut up.” A loud clack of feet came and she automatically crumpled back onto the ground playing dead, straining to hear with all her might.
The cell door creaked open slowly and light flooded through the skin of Harlow's eyelids. There was a pause, in which they must have studied her still form as she struggled to breathe quietly and not flinch. She considered making a mad dash for it, and in the end she resisted the urge to run, remembering that Sophia hadn't moved or made a sound. Sophia wasn't pretending.
“I told you it was nothing,” the loud baritone voice erupted through the air.
There was a slow shuffling of footsteps as they neared her still form, then rank breath and the heavy sound of breathing came, within a few inches of her face. The foetid breath came to her in waves, rippling though the air, making her nose twinge, almost wrinkling in disgust, then it was gone.
“What shall we do with her?” They walked away, slamming the cast-iron door, the sound of muffled conversation reached her ears and she dared not move.
“I told you not to hurt her. Who's the other one?”
The slow mocking tone came again; “I can get rid of them for you.”
“Victor won't like this.”
He was cut off by a loud snort that sounded like a man choking to death. Harlow realised that the choking sound was laughter.
“Victor doesn't give a damn.”
The other man retorted, “I can't question the dead. Now find out where it is.”
The sound that followed was alien, as if something had caught in his throat—half a cough and also the amusement caused by sinister thoughts. “As you wish.” The slow voice came again. “You can wait for Victor. I'm sure he'll have a lot to discuss with you. I guess that's the way you do things in your country. Or,” he said as if the word were delicious, delectable, drawing it out so that it became a low roar. “You could keep your hands clean; let me deal with them and this little problem will disappear.”
“Find out where it is, then put them in the woods, with the driver.”
Harlow's blood froze over. Oh my God, she thought her mind racing in panic.
“Look, I tell you what.” As they began to move away, the voices became fainter like whispers on the wind. “Bring it back to me and you can name your price.”
That choking sound came again.
Her insides were choked with fear, paralysing her thoughts. I should have run. Harlow opened her eyes slowly, finding the familiar darkness again. Moving slowly she got up and went to the door. She imagined Paul buried deep somewhere in a vast forest, undisturbed, six feet under, never to be found—a buried secret. Smash the window, Harlow thought. The hole was so pitifully small she couldn't possibly fit through it. Instead, she shouted, “Hey, hey,” then removed her shoe and began to bang loudly on the window. “Hey, can anybody hear me?” There was a soft groan. It was a risk, but she couldn't sit and wait for them to come. She would have lost her nerve. Wait for them. It was as pointless as waiting for death; it would come eventually and take you by surprise. She banged, then waited a while listening for footsteps as she had done before. Nothing came this time.
“What are they on lunch break?” Sophia asked.
Harlow turned around in surprise, searching for Sophia's face in the dim lighting.
“So what's the plan?” Sophia asked casually from her seat in the corner, just a few feet from where she had been lying motionless only moments before.
Harlow rushed over to her, “Are you okay?” She sat on the cool dirt floor, next to her, as Sophia nodded.
“I'm fine,” she said groggily, “My head is killing me, though. Where are we?”
“I don't know. Sophie, what's going on?” Harlow asked desperately.
Her friend remained silent. Finally, she said, “I took some money from the bookshop.”
“I don't understand,” Harlow began, “The one you used to work in? In Cartagena?”
“Yes.”
Harlow looked at her in confusion, “Why would they come all this way for that? Who are these people? How much did you take?”
Sophia covered her face with her hands as though she were very tired. “A lot,” she said, “about 80 million Euros.”
Harlow flinched, “What?”
“One day, when he was away.”
Harlow interrupted, “Who?”
“Alejandro, Alex, the guy I used to work with, Christian's cousin.”
Harlow leaned back against the dank grey wall, “I don't understand. So you worked with Alex?”
“Yes,” Sophia muttered, “Oh, poor Alex,” she mumbled in Spanish. Suddenly she turned to Harlow, “I'm sorry about all of this. It's my fault. I promise I'll get you out of here. I'll tell them where the money is, then it will all be over.”
Harlow just looked at her. “I don't think that's going to happen,” she said seriously.
“No, I can,” Sophia insisted, “If I can just talk to—oh no,” she said as if remembering something, “But Victor's coming.”
“Sophie, I don't know what—who's Victor?”
Sophia raked a hand through her hair distractedly. “It's hard to explain.”
“Try.”
Sophia sighed, “I went to live with my dad this summer. I u
sed to visit him once a year before that. When I was living with him, I asked him if I could help out at his shop, like when I was a kid. My dad didn't mind. I was happy there. It was a break from performing, something nice and normal. Hanging out with the neighbourhood kids, all the friends I knew when I was little. I was happy there, until I started to notice things.” She looked at the dirt floor.
“What things?”
“A man would come to my dad's bookshop every two weeks and ask for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. My dad went out of town for a few days and left Alejandro in charge. He was kind of a flake, you know, one of the local boys, a shoemaker's son. I think my dad felt sorry for him, especially because Christian had been such a good worker. Christian was clever. He got the scholarship, but Alejandro wasn't lucky like him. He didn't have a job or money to go to university. When Christian left for England, my dad gave Alejandro his job. He'd been working there for a year or so before I arrived. Anyway, one day Alejandro had a huge argument with his girlfriend and asked me to look after the shop for him, just for an hour. When he was gone, Victor came and asked for Alejandro. When I told Victor that Alex was ill, he asked me for eleven copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 7–14. I didn't think much of it; I just thought he was creepy. When I went to get the box from the store room, I tripped on the basement stairs and dropped the box. Books scattered everywhere. It was nothing; it seemed like nothing. I was re-packing the books into the box when I saw it. The wall underneath the stairs was fake. One of the books had fallen near it, a paper had slid underneath the wall and there was a blue light coming from underneath. I went back upstairs and gave Victor the box, same as usual. Everything seemed okay. I found a way behind the wall. There were bags and suitcases and boxes full of Euros tightly bundled together neatly, like in a bank, and two laptops. I didn't realise, but while I was in the basement Victor came back, before I had a chance to lock up.”
Harlow shook her head in dismay, “It's drug money, isn't it?”
“Ssshhh,” Sophia froze.
Sophia crawled away from Harlow, quickly sinking into the shadows in the dark corners of their cell, disappearing. Harlow was half way up, unsure where she had gone, when a large face, with a pointed nose and fleshy cheeks, loomed in the window. The lock turned quickly and he flung the door open, making her jump back in surprise, pouring light into the room. There was a swift, imperceptible look of surprise on his face as Harlow neared the door. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said.
He snorted in amusement as if she had asked for a genie. “No bathroom,” he said in a thick Russian-sounding accent.
Eastern-European, she thought, eyeing his tanned skin, no. “Please,” she insisted like a child to its mother.
He looked angry. Bringing his imposing face toward her, he edged into the room. “No bathroom.”
“Please,” Harlow said.
“Shut up!” He cried, raising an arm to hit her.
Harlow shielded her face with her hand, finally realising the full horror of her situation. His fat hand cracked into her shoulder, falling just short of her face, her body sagging in pain.
A black patent pump came crashing down on the man's head. Harlow stamped on his foot with all her might as he dropped to one knee. She saw him fall and Sophia flew past him like a bird emerging from the shadows, heading for the light of the open doorway. Harlow burst out of the open doorway and started to run straight. She turned quickly to see if Sophia was following. She was powered only by adrenaline. Sophia pulled her wrist. “This way,” she said, pulling Harlow right. “They came from the left,” Sophia whispered breathlessly, already running she headed for the sound of the forklift and the looming crates ahead. They ran under the shadow of the crates, zigzagging in between them, to confuse their pursuers. Still she expected the grunting, tortured breath to fall upon her, but it never came.
Harlow stopped to catch her breath behind a house-size stack of crates as Sophia looked frantically around her. Harlow lowered her head till it almost touched her knees. Palms pressing down hard on her thighs, she heard the distant beep of a forklift reversing and then hurried footsteps. Sophia pulled her arm. Harlow whispered, “Wait,” hurriedly pulling off her other shoe. They jogged down to the end of the crates, then stopped dead at the edge. Harlow swiped a quick glance round the side. The gaps between the stacks of crates were the size of a river, a wide-open space that exposed them to anyone who cared to look.
The aisles were empty; she ran to the next stack apprehensively with Sophia a few steps behind, then she saw it—the flash of green just barely visible around the edge of a stack of crates to her right. Harlow moved into the center of the aisle, out of the shadows. No one was around. As she neared the small green car, a strange rustling sound came to her and she saw a group of four people walking through the aisles. Harlow stopped suddenly and Sophia bumped into her wordlessly.
One man holding a clipboard was casting a critical eye over a row of cellophane-wrapped goods. He was being followed by another man who looked aimlessly around, nodding every once in a while. They were heading away from her toward two people in the distance who were crouched over something. Harlow flicked her eyes quickly at the little green car and then back at the group of workers in their blue jumpsuits. Sophia hurried past the wide aisle, with Harlow following her as quietly as she could. As Harlow passed, she heard one of the worker's radios come to life, “A.P. to the smart room,” it crackled.
Harlow ran to the green buggy sliding to a stop in front of it. She slid in quietly next to Sophia, who was looking around, feverishly muttering, “Keys, keys, keys.” Harlow found the ignition hopelessly empty, then finally a mischievous glint of silver caught her eyes from underneath the driver's seat and she could have cried with relief. “There,” she said, pointing, “Under your feet.” Sophia looked down, following her hand. Harlow, suddenly overcome with impatience, leaned down and snatched the keys from the buggy floor. Sophia started the vehicle. It hummed into life loudly. Harlow knew that their captors would now be aware of their escape.
Turning the wheel slowly to the left, Sophia edged the vehicle out of the darkened aisle, fleeing the shadow of the crates, and burst out into the open. Speeding down the aisle she found only the back of the large warehouse fast approaching her.
Harlow said, “I think we ran the wrong way. It feels like we went deeper into this dungeon.”
Sophia nodded, sweat beaded her forehead as the seconds ticked by and she hastened, clumsily, to reverse the vehicle, crashing noisily into the large stack of crates, then pulling forwards at speed. It was going about 30 M.P.H.
Someone shouted, “Hey!”
She sped past the aisle as a short man started running after them. Harlow craned her neck round to see him, “Oh no.” Sophia pressed down harder on the accelerator, whipping her head back once to see if he was gaining on them. She saw a flash of daylight to her left and yanked the wheel quickly in that direction. The little car almost toppled over. Up ahead she could see two large windows above a set of double doors that were wide open, with only an orange forklift in the way. Its owner, a man in a blue jumpsuit, was inspecting some products that had fallen from the forklift. He looked up in surprise as the buggy sped toward him.
“Stop them!” A man's voice shouted from behind.
They were a few feet away now. The scent of fresh air wafted past Harlow, mingled with the smell of something caustic that burned the hairs in her nostrils. The muscular man in the blue jumpsuit jumped over the puddle of spilt chemicals lithely and into the little green car's path. Harlow glanced at Sophia, who instinctively veered to his right, but he ran in front of the car again. The car was heading right for him, but Sophia didn't blink. Harlow could see the sweet liberty promised by the forest behind him. The car sped toward him, not caring, It's do or die, she thought, muttering, “It's him or us.” He dove out of the way at the last second, falling into the puddle as he went. There was a splash, then he screamed in pain. Harlow grimaced, Acid? The stench of h
is aftershave still hung in the air as they whizzed past, through the open doors and onto the concrete path that led to a vast car park.
There were dozens of lorries in the car park and a small white van, as well as a Bentley that seemed conspicuously out of place in the barren industrial surroundings. The sound of racing footsteps rang in their ears as the buggy sped down the pathway away from the car park.
“Where are you going?” Harlow asked with concern, “there are loads of cars there.”
Sophia didn't look at her, “Do you know how to hotwire a car?”
“No,” Harlow admitted reluctantly.
“We don't have time,” Sophia continued as Harlow looked wistfully back at the car park and the heavy bodies running from the aisles of the warehouse after them.
“Where's the damn road?” Sophia muttered in frustration as the small buggy hurtled toward the trees. They reached the canopy of trees and jumped out of the vehicle as soon as it stopped.
Sophia was already on the dirt path. She turned back to see Harlow frantically searching through the pockets of the discarded jumpsuit that had been bundled on the backseat.
“Come on, what are you doing?” Sophia said, coming back over. She pulled at Harlow's right arm.
“Wait,” Harlow insisted, pocketing a Walkie Talkie. “She said we might need this,” then threw back the chewing gum, ID card, and tissue she had found.
“There's nothing here,” Sophia pressed. She threw the keys angrily onto the driver’s seat and then noticed something on the floor of the backseat. “Wait, there's a phone here,” she said. Moving Harlow aside impatiently, she snatched the phone greedily from the floor then pulled Harlow as they ran off, “Come on.”
They ran into the woods, hearing the tramp of heavy footsteps on the dirt trail. There were more people following now.
Harlow crunched slowly through the path, stepping lightly on the twigs and stones that carpeted the ground. It had been a while since she had heard anyone following. She was exhausted from running. She had flown like an injured raven through the forest, being hit and scratched by tangled branches that blocked her way. The sun was setting slowly in the distance. The orange and pink sky worried her.
It Never Rains in Colombia Page 14
