At the Drop of a Hat

by Denise Hamilton

  The soldiers shoved Bashkim and screamed questions at him, ignoring her. Jane took several steps away. Nobody noticed. She drifted around one truck, moved along the tarp to the other, then froze in disbelief.

  In the cab, hunched over a laptop, sat Paul. Another embassy guy with a crew cut that she remembered from a Tirana dinner party leaned against the door, peering intently at Paul’s screen, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Jane checked her first impulse to dash over and throw herself, sobbing, into Paul’s arms. Instead, she ran through all the possible reasons her lover might be sitting in this desolate mountain pass with a passel of Albanian soldiers, and why he hadn’t told her he was coming or offered her a ride himself. The answers she came up with made her shrink back into the shade of the tarp. But it was too late.

  Sensing her presence, Paul looked up. “Jane,” he said. “Oh my God. What are you doing here?”

  Like it was a big surprise. She thought back on the argument at the restaurant. Paul announcing in a loud voice that he couldn’t allow the embassy courier to drive her to Macedonia. His look of near gloating—she now realized—when Bashkim had offered a ride.

  “You planned this,” Jane said. “You set him up.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Paul said, but his voice was as hollow as his eyes.

  He glanced over her shoulder, and grim satisfaction spread across his face. She turned and saw the soldiers unloading boxes from the trunk of Bashkim’s car. They had found the machine gun, too. Over to the side of the road, Bashkim lay spread-eagle on the ground. One of the soldiers kicked him as he passed and the prone man gave a strangled cry.

  “Stop it, you bastard, we need him for questioning,” the crew-cut man called.

  Paul cursed and jumped out of the cab. He walked toward the soldier and in the moments that followed, Jane saw a different man than the one she had known. His bearing, even the tenor of his voice, changed. He was self-assured, in charge, bristling with power. The soldier cowered as Paul dressed him down in perfect-sounding Albanian.

  Jane listened, astounded. Paul had told her he was hopeless with languages. Now this stranger walked back to her and said, “I’m sorry, Jane. But you were never in danger. We were tracking you with the global positioning device.” He nodded smartly at the cell phone, which she still clutched impotently in her hand. “Led us right to the safe house.”

  Realization bore down like an oncoming train that would smash her into a thousand pieces. She had been the decoy. A nicely turned-out Western woman. Each side had used her. Something did break in her then. But to her surprise, when she examined the sharp and deadly pieces, she found that they had their own terrifying beauty and usefulness.

  “What did Bashkim do?” she asked, willing her voice not to tremble.

  “Our pal over there is one of the biggest smugglers in Tirana. Remember when the country rioted and looted the armories? He’s been trading machine guns to al-Qaeda for Afghani heroin. We’ve been watching him for months.”

  “We? Since when does the embassy track smugglers?”

  “The embassy works hand in hand with Interpol.”

  “You’re not some lowly attaché, are you, Paul?”

  He ran his hands through his hair and looked away. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  She felt that sanity was a thin membrane, stretching ever tighter. If she moved even a fraction, it would snap and she’d slip under. Yet she had to know one thing.

  “Did you plan this? I mean, from the beginning? Because I thought…it felt…”

  She shook her head, blinking back tears. She had been played for a fool.

  A shadow crossed Paul’s face.

  He licked his lips. “I never meant…” he began.

  He didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Two cars came roaring down the highway from the east, machine guns blazing. As she threw herself to the ground, Jane thought she recognized the vehicles that had peeled past the roadblock. Had they also been in the convoy that had trailed them from Tirana? Gunfire erupting around her, Jane clutched her head and crawled on her belly toward the nearest truck, expecting at any second to be hit and feel no more. Reaching the undercarriage, she rolled beneath it and listened to the shouts, the guns, then the groans of dying men. She prayed no bullets would pierce the gas tank.

  After what seemed like hours, the shooting stopped. For a long time, there was silence. In the distance, a bird screamed, the exultant cry of a carrion feeder that spies dinner. Then she heard footsteps. She cowered and curled herself into a ball, wishing she might disappear. A shadow fell on the highway, and she saw a polished leather shoe.

  “Come out,” said an Albanian-accented voice in English. Bashkim.

  She didn’t answer.

  “If you don’t come out, I’ll shoot you.”

  Still she stayed silent, wondering if he was bluffing. She heard the crack of his knees as he squatted. A hand with a gun appeared, angling to and fro, then settling its muzzle blessedly far from where she lay. Jane held her breath as he pulled the trigger. One of the truck’s tires exploded with a loud pop and began to deflate. She gave an involuntary scream.

  “I knew it.” His voice was triumphant. “Last chance, Jane. Next time I aim for your voice.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Don’t shoot.”

  She crawled out and they stared at one another.

  “Please,” she said. “I didn’t know it was a setup.”

  Bashkim’s lips pursed. He looked at where Paul’s body lay, eyes staring glassily at the sky. Near his head was a pool of blood. All around her were other crumpled bodies. One of the cars that had shot at them lay on its side, smashed and burning. She looked for the other.

  “It went over the edge,” Bashkim said. “They couldn’t have survived.”

  “Wh-who were they?”

  Bashkim grimaced.

  “My bodyguards. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to travel in Albania?”

  “Jesus,” she said, seized with an uncontrollable bout of shivering.

  Bashkim stared at her, and Jane thought he might be trying to decide whether to kill her now or later. They both knew she’d seen too much to live.

  “He betrayed me, too, you know,” Jane said.

  He examined her indifferently. “So I heard.”

  He walked to where her cell phone had fallen and smashed it with his heel, grinding it into the asphalt like a cockroach.

  “Don’t kill me,” Jane said. “I’ll help you. I’ve got an American passport, money.”

  “Yes,” Bashkim nodded. “With your passport, we’ll breeze through.”

  He prodded her with the gun, back to the Mercedes. All the tires had been shot out, and smoke was rising from under the hood. She wondered if it might catch fire while they stood there. The trunk stood open, white powder seeping out of bullet-riddled boxes.

  More boxes were scattered along the road, next to Bashkim’s machine gun, which had been reduced to twisted metal. Bashkim told her to empty her backpack and hand over her passport and wallet, which he put in his pocket. Then he made her tear open the boxes and fill her backpack with the sacks of white powder. Pulling an old rucksack from his trunk, he ordered her to fill that, too. Then, he loaded her up like a pack mule and marched her off the highway, into the rocky countryside to a dirt trail pounded hard by animals.

  “The border’s about ten miles away. We’ll have to stay off the road.”

  They set off, moving like ghosts through the denuded landscape.

  “Let’s stop here and rest a moment,” he said when they reached a rock outcropping. His tone deliberate and unsettling. Bashkim eased himself down. He stared at her and she looked away, thinking about escape and when she might make a break for it. She needed cover. Bashkim stood up, laid the gun on a rock. He walked toward her as she scrambled to her feet. Suddenly he flung himself at her, knocking her to the ground. Jane tried to wriggle free but he was strong and his weight pinned her. She saw the look in his eyes. Perhaps t
he day’s events had awakened something atavistic in him. Perhaps it had always been there. But she knew she was of no consequence to him anymore. He was going to kill her once they crossed, so it didn’t matter what else he did in the meantime.

  “Get off me,” she panted.

  He shoved a hand down her pants and tugged.

  “Fucking get off.”

  “Fucking. Yes, that’s what all you American girls like. I knew it the first time I saw you.”

  “You’re wrong. Get off.”

  She tried to brace one hand against the dirt so she could twist aside and knee him. Instead, her fingers glanced off a large rock. She groped for it. It grazed the edges of her fingertips, just out of reach. Bashkim unzipped his fly.

  Jane squirmed backward and flexed her fingers toward the rock. Her fingers nudged it, slid along the rough, granular edges, searching for where it might taper, afford a grip. There. Her hand closed tightly.

  Bashkim tore at her underwear and rose up, wedging her legs open with his knee. A bloodlust burned in her. She’d get only one chance. The rock was in the air. Jane shoved her knee into his groin and screamed as she brought the rock down hard against the base of his skull.

  He gasped, then was still. She rolled the inert body off of her, scrabbled up. Bashkim was unconscious. Bleeding. She looked at him and felt only a mounting need to zip up her jeans and flee.

  She still held the rock, now slick with blood. Forcing her fingers to relinquish it took awhile. Jane panted shallowly, and the enormity of everything that had happened overwhelmed her. Leaning over a thornbush, she retched, cursing her weakness. She had to get to the border before night fell, stranding her. Already, the temperature was dropping. She knew the road below led to the frontier, but she had to stay out of sight. Prodding Bashkim’s body with her hiking boot, she pulled out her passport, her money and his wallet. She also took a small black notebook with notations in Albanian and Arabic. Lastly she got the gun. She had never touched one before, but she knew they had safeties. She clicked it on and off a few times to familiarize herself with how it worked, then shoved the gun into her waistband. The cold metal felt reassuring against her skin. For two hours she marched uphill, crouching behind rocks whenever she heard a car. She didn’t dare stop, terrified that her legs might lock up for good.

  In the long gaps between vehicles, Jane kept her mind rigidly focused on the moment she’d hand the guard her passport and slip across to safety. She didn’t see the olive-green truck that said STALIN until she was right above it, in full view of the road. The truck was parked and the young men from earlier were arrayed around, eating. Jane froze, then instinct kicked in and she darted off. With any luck they wouldn’t follow. Instead, she heard excited voices, then the truck wheezing into reverse as it began backing up to a spot where it could turn off the highway and come after her.

  Jane ran, adrenaline powering a burst of speed, her breath coming in great gulps of despair. She’d never outrace them. But she couldn’t let them catch her. She’d seen the sporting look in their eyes, knew how the game would end. She had to hide before they came into view and hope they’d barrel past, consumed by the chase. She folded herself behind an insubstantial rock, praying the afternoon shadows would conceal her, and watched the truck bounce by just twenty feet away, ribald laughter erupting from within. Slipping from bush to rock, she followed them, until the truck turned and headed back to the road, figuring she had doubled back and they’d catch up with her before passport control. That meant she’d have to go cross-country. She was so weary but she forced herself to keep going. Another half mile and she reached the saddle between two summits. Below her stretched the water, dark and gloomy. Lake Ohrid. On the other side of the lake was Macedonia, and freedom.

  She scanned the shore, looking for a boat, anything to carry her across. It was too far to swim. In the blue dusk, she made out a solitary figure mending a net. She heard the roar of the truck, the shouts of the Albanian men, and knew they had spotted her once more. But they’d have to follow the road’s hairpin curves down to the lake, whereas she could plunge straight down the mountain. The lake stretched for miles, most of it unguarded. It was her only hope. She ran, dislodging avalanches of pebbles and dirt, sliding on her ass and once somersaulting head over heels to plow the ground with outstretched arms before righting herself and continuing her descent.

  She could see the figure on the shore now. It was an old man. She felt the steel against her skin and knew she’d kill him if she had to. He watched her. As she drew closer, she saw a head of white hair, blackened teeth, a map of brown wrinkles. His face betrayed no surprise, as if deranged Western women tumbled down the mountain every day.

  “Please,” she said, sliding to a halt before him, scraped and bleeding. “You must take me across.” She gestured to the other side of the lake. “I can pay. Valuta.” She pulled out Bashkim’s wallet, thrust greenbacks and euros and Albanian dinars at him.

  “For you.”

  To her surprise, the fisherman shoved the money back at her. She panicked, screaming at him in fragments of four languages. Ignoring her, he shuffled to a bush and pulled out a rowboat that lay hidden underneath. An ancient, frayed rope lay curled inside. He began dragging it to the lake and she ran to help him, thanking him in every language she knew.

  “But we must hurry,” she said, looking over her shoulder to pantomime running and pursuers.

  “Ska problema,” the old man said. “No problem.”

  “Besa?” she asked. The besa was a solemn promise, or oath, handed down from feudal times. Albanians would die before violating a besa. But did the old ways still hold?

  The Albanian side of the great lake was moving into twilight. The few houses clinging to the slopes had never known electricity. Across the water, the Yugoslav coastline sparkled in warm, inviting twinkles of red and yellow.

  She helped him push off and scrambled in.

  They were about a hundred yards out when the truck came bouncing across the side of the mountain, the men angry as a swarm of bees. Several had already loosened their clothing. They ran to the water’s edge and waded in, firing. She and the old man ducked, bullets sizzling past, skimming the water. The old man grunted and kept rowing, the ropy muscles of his arms straining against his skin.

  Jane had the gun ready, just in case, but the fisherman seemed oblivious to her, lulled by the repetitive strokes, the plash of the oars in water. The cries and shouts grew distant, then ceased altogether. The wind kicked up and she shivered. They were suspended in nothingness, floating between worlds. Then the lights began to draw nearer. She watched in greedy hunger as the resort hotels and vacation homes appeared in the twilit murk. Then she heard a scritch as the rowboat hit the pebbly bottom.

  “Bravo Yugoslavia,” the fisherman said. Again she tried to press money on him but he waved it away, then placed his hand over his heart. The besa fulfilled.

  The old man helped her clamber into the icy, thigh-deep water. She waved goodbye and stepped onto the shingle, legs like jelly, and watched the rowboat already easing back into the inky depths. Then she hiked up to the nearest hotel, got herself a room and ordered cvapcici and rice from room service.

  The knock, when it came, startled her.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  When a Slavic voice answered, she cracked the door and saw a waiter with a tray. She opened the door wider for the food and out stepped two men in windbreakers. Before Jane could slam the door shut, one of them had his foot inside. The other passed the waiter a bill. “Thanks. You can go now,” the man said in American English.

  They came inside and closed the door.

  “You did very well, Jane,” the first man said. “We were watching from this side, in case anyone made it across. You understand, of course, why we couldn’t risk an incident in international waters.”

  “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

  “It’s safe to stop running now. Paul was online with us, right before the connecti
on went dead. Why don’t you tell us the whole story.”

  He turned to his companion. “Nick, please relieve Jane of her burden. It must have been so heavy. Where is it, Jane?”

  But she had left the bags of white powder behind on a desolate Albanian mountainside, next to what she feared was a corpse. How could they be so stupid to think she’d cross an international border with millions of dollars’ of heroin stuffed into a backpack?

  Jane fingered the gun at her side and considered her options. She was a sensible girl. Not one of those high-strung ones that fell apart at the drop of a hat.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” she said evenly. “And I’m the only one who can fill you in. But first I need a square meal and a shower. Then we can cross back over and I’ll show you where the drugs are. There’s also a notebook that may interest you. Once we take care of business, I’d like one of you gentlemen to drive me to Skopje. There’s a conference I really don’t want to miss. But I’ll be graduating soon. And I can’t see myself teaching Balkan literature in some U.S. backwater the rest of my life. So I think we should talk about a job. I understand you have an opening in Tirana.”

  * * * * *

  Author Biography

  Denise Hamilton is a Fulbright scholar and Los Angeles Times reporter who turned to crime and thriller writing after her two children were born. Her bestselling Eve Diamond series has been shortlisted for the Edgar, Anthony, Willa Cather and Britain’s prestigious Dagger awards. Her book Last Lullaby was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2004. Visit her at denisehamilton.com.

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