by Chris Ward
‘This is ridiculous!’
‘A joke!’
‘I want a refund!’
She held up a hand. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about anything right now. When we get back to the hotel we’ll have a meeting about everything. Those that want to head back to Bucharest can go, while those who wish to stay can stay. I’ll talk to the tour operator—’
The shouting from the back was so loud Jennie could barely hear herself even through the microphone. She hadn’t even noticed that the bus had pulled out of the line and executed a tight U-turn, and was now headed back down the road, past a line of queuing cars. All she could feel was the wave of anger rushing at her from the back of the bus, as powerful as one of Brian’s closed fists as it swung towards her out of the dark.
Tears filling her eyes, she dropped the microphone and slumped back into her seat. Cowering against the window, she sobbed into her hands as behind her the chorus of hatred slowly dampened down.
9
Something in the woods
The bus pulled off the road and came to a stop outside a small roadside restaurant. Jun, who had been dozing for the last couple of hours, jerked awake and looked around him, expecting to see Heigel. Instead of a quaint little town, beyond the weed-choked gravel car park was just forest in all directions. He was beginning to wonder what the source of the hold-up was when he noticed a police roadblock had been set up a little further up the road. A police officer had wandered over and was talking to the bus driver. Behind him, a couple of other tourists were conversing in worried tones, but their words were lost on him.
As the police officer wandered off, the bus driver stood up and walked a few steps up the aisle. The small group of passengers listened as he spoke, and when he had finished a collective groan went up. Jun, who didn’t understand Romanian, turned to the couple in the seat behind him, and said in English, ‘What’s happening?’
The man frowned, but the woman smiled. ‘He say there is a murder in Heigel,’ she said, her elocution just good enough for Jun to understand. ‘All vehicles out are looked at, only residents can go in. Are you a resident?’
‘No. I’m a tourist.’
‘Then sorry, you can’t go in. The bus is going back now.’
‘I really need to go to Heigel.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Jun frowned. Most of his stuff was in a suitcase in the hold under the bus, but his personal items and laptop were in a small rucksack beside him.
The driver had got off the bus and was smoking a cigarette. Jun got up and walked down to the front. As he climbed down he pointed at the rest stop, then at his groin, and said in English: ‘Toilet?’
The driver grunted, nodded, and held up a hand with five fingers outstretched. Five minutes.
It was all Jun would need.
With his rucksack slung over his shoulder, he ambled slowly towards the rest stop, not wanting to attract attention. Away to his right, the police roadblock was visible, a couple of officers patrolling back and forth. He walked almost up to the front entrance of the quiet rest stop, where there seemed to be no customers, and looked around for a toilet sign. A word he couldn’t understand with an arrow alongside it pointed around the side of the building, so Jun went that way. He found himself facing a tiny wooden shack, the stench of which marked its purpose from several metres away.
Beyond it was forest.
He glanced back over his shoulder towards the bus, but it was mostly out of sight. He couldn’t see the driver, and the police roadblock was also hidden. They might not bother coming after him, but it wasn’t worth the risk that they might have dogs. Jun hefted his bag back over his shoulder, skirted around the toilet and jogged into the forest.
Immediately the trees closed in, and he felt his claustrophobia starting to rise. He wiped a sheen of sweat off his face and hurried on, skipping between the trees, leaping over protruding roots and pushing aside low-hanging branches. The forests in Europe were far different to those in Japan, which were dominated by species of pine and cedar. Here they were all ancient gnarled hardwoods, oaks and chestnuts and birches and alders, their branches pressed in against each other as they battled for the light far above. The ground below was uneven, endless gullies and bowls and mounds filled with vegetation that made hasty passage treacherous. The pill Jun had taken on the bus was still keeping him strong, but eventually it would wear off. He had others, but he wanted to save them. He had a feeling he was going to need them over the coming days.
He had been going for only a few minutes when he heard shouting behind him. He didn’t stop, just ducked his head and tried to quicken his pace, hoping they would give up. The forest had sloped gently downwards into a valley and then flattened out, so someone further back up the hill might have seen him.
His main fear was dogs, but would they really waste their time on a crazy tourist? Surely they had better things to concentrate their manpower on.
Sure enough, after a few minutes of increasingly fainter shouts, they stopped altogether. Jun had been trying to veer to the right, hoping that he would eventually come to the road dissecting through the forest, but as the only other sign of human activity faded behind him, he suddenly realised how poorly thought out his plan was. He didn’t even know how far he was from Heigel. It could be fifty miles or more, though thick forest. Already the gloom was setting in as evening approached. Under the thick canopy the light would go a couple of hours before sunset, so he had two hours at most left to find a road or somewhere to hide out until morning.
And there were beasts in the woods, if the forums were to be believed. Several wolves had been killed and now an old woman was dead.
Jun suddenly realised how foolish he had been. In Japan there was a dense forest surrounding Mount Fuji, where every year several dozen people went to die. It was known as “suicide forest”, but while many of those who entered it had a plan, many others just wandered until they were lost and died of exposure, letting nature take the uncertainty out of the decision.
‘You’re a fool, Jun,’ he muttered to himself.
As if to emphasise his opinion, a sudden screeching birdcall cut through the gentle rustling of the forest like a blaring alarm. Jun dropped to the ground, instinctively pulling his hands over his head. He crawled up against an outcrop of moss-covered rock and cowered in the shadows, hardly daring to breathe. The screeching came once more, further away, and then stillness descended over the forest again.
Jun lay crouched against the cold mossy rock for several minutes. Finally he lifted his head, eyes scanning the undergrowth, but there was no sign of anything except a few insects and a couple of small birds.
He knew from his research that the only major aerial predator in the area was the Romanian Black Eagle, recently removed from the United Nations protected list due to an increase in numbers. He had spent countless hours watching video footage of it on the Internet, and he would know the sound of its call immediately.
Something else had made that screeching sound. Something that sounded far bigger and more terrifying, perhaps something large enough to gut a wolf or kill an old woman.
Jun got up and hurried on, clambering over fallen branches and pushing undergrowth out of his face. Whatever it was, he really didn’t want to be out here in the forest with it after darkness fell.
Kurou stared at the computer screen in the darkened little room in the castle he had assumed as his new home.
After several years of hiding away from the world, selling his considerable skills to the highest bidders and manipulating whatever shadowy contracts he was offered into ways to pursue his own needs, he was finally ready to do something for himself once again.
The untidy office room, stacked high with boxes of files and study books on business and trading and many other finance-based activities that Kurou excelled in, were in stark contrast to the cold stone corridors of most of the rest of the castle, particularly those areas reserved for guided tours. He had assumed Grigore Alb
escu’s rooms for himself, and this had been Albescu’s office. It had been simple enough to crack the man’s passwords and assume control of his considerable financial affairs, but what Kurou wanted was a little more difficult: live cooperation. He needed Albescu to write his goddamn name on a goddamn piece of paper. Then everything would work out, and no one else—well, unless the fancy took him—would need to die.
A rock sat on the desk beside him, its grey surface glittering from myriad grains of microscopic bits of glass that had once been part of some reflective surface or other. Grigore Albescu had been a vain motherfucker, and Kurou didn’t much like the sight of mirrors. The floor around him was littered with shards of broken glass, and every time Kurou spotted one large enough to be capable of making a reflection, the stone came a-crashing down.
The big hood he had used his twisted, claw-like hands to sew together did well to shadow him when he was out in public, but in private he was happy enough to show his face, providing he didn’t have to see it. People said you got used to everything over time, but that was a lie. No one spouting such a fountain of utter untruth had ever had to walk around with a face like his.
Oh, for the chance to change places for a while….
His fingers rattled over one of the keyboards he had brought with him. Half of the letters had already worn away through over-use, but he had brought several spares. In front of him four monitors were set up in a rough semi-circle. One showed a military satellite GPS view of Heigel. He had hacked into a US spy satellite and now had up-to-date knowledge of everything that was going on around him, delayed only by a few seconds. With a few clicks he could zoom in on one of the police roadblocks, or spy on people walking down the street. There was no sound of course, but the power of the zoom was so great that the satellite could actually make out lip movements, and another program he had wired up relayed a patchy translation of the spoken Romanian into his native Chinese. The technology was still primitive, and rarely more than a few coherent words came through in each conversation, but it was better than nothing. In fact two of his current contracts were to produce a better version for one major national government, and a way of blocking it for another.
It was enough to entertain him, though. The trees and the clouds tended to render it ineffective, but when a man dressed in green overalls had gone to talk to a reporter standing near the police crime scene, he had learned they were talking about vampires, something that cheered him up no end. Kurou considered nothing more entertaining than sending people off on a wild goose chase.
One of his other screens was a live feed from the neck camera of one of his beloved eagles. The beautiful thing was currently roosting, providing warmth to a clutch of grey, speckled eggs which would eventually hatch into lovely little chicks. From the way the mother would regularly shift her body to peer down at the eggs below, Kurou could feel the warmth of her love for her young. It was delightful, and made him sigh with contentment every time.
His own mother had sold him to an English businessman for the price of a bus ticket to Beijing, depending on the rate of inflation. On a good month it would have got her all the way to Hong Kong.
The fourth screen was split into several open pages, each one a forum site of some kind, where Kurou was either a browser or a regular member. One of the most interesting was a conspiracy theorist site called Monster Hunter, where people would post supposed sightings of legendary creatures. He had taken the liberty to throw out a fair bit of speculation about himself, the vanished genetic engineering mastermind who had once created a group of cybernetic bears that had escaped their cages and run amok in a snowed-in Japanese study camp. Two national governments were currently hunting for the ghost of Crow, a man they had paradoxically no evidence to support the existence of, and a bucketload of evidence to support the existence of, all at the same time. He had reported sightings and posted grainy, interpretable photographs of a rather unusual-looking man in as far off locations as Brazil, Alaska, and South Africa, just to spread the betting a little.
He quite enjoyed the idea of being hunted, but the thought of being captured was rather more sobering. He had hidden his trail well, and had always believed that no one was intelligent enough to get a tab on him until it was too late. However, rather unexpectedly, someone had. Someone had been reading between the lines, looking for clues that weren’t clues, and establishing a line of thought that had brought him closer to Kurou than anyone had been in quite some time.
Kurou had used the same methods to figure out who it was, checking the locations of each log in, the IP address of the stranger’s computer, and eventually tracing him right back to Japan.
It was a young man called Jun Matsumoto. They had engaged in a brief stint of fisticuffs once, and it seemed Jun was keen to chew on a brick of resentment. Kurou sighed. Why did people have to bear grudges? It was so counter-productive, yet at the same time he understood why some people felt a powerful urge for revenge.
He had a bone to pick with young Mr. Matsumoto himself. After all, the virtuous, self-righteous bastard was responsible for the destruction of Kurou’s life’s work.
Matsumoto seemed intent on gatecrashing Kurou’s little party, in which case it would only be polite to arrange a very special welcome for him.
On the live stream of the eagle, the mother had taken to flight in search of food. Kurou watched with rapt delight as she dove deep into a field below and snared an unsuspecting rabbit in her razor sharp talons.
As she returned with it to her nest, Kurou laughed and cheered with excitement as she slowly tore it up, piece by bloody piece.
10
Words over dinner
Naotoshi had taken to standing on a chair for extra emphasis, and Jennie winced at every wild gesticulation. The absolute last thing she needed was for the old goat to fall and injure himself, but she was considering changing her career path anyway. There was only so much a tour guide could take.
‘Through a mixture of incompetence and bad fortune, our holiday—for many of us maybe the only holiday of our lives—has been ruined. They want to ship us off back to Bucharest and try to get out of everything by offering us a bunch of poxy unimportant historical sights in exchange—’
‘And we’ll be offering a partial refund….’ Jenny started to say, only for Naotoshi to silence her with a sweep of his hand.
‘—and I say are we just going to put up with this? Or are we going to stand our ground?’
The small crowd muttered and mumbled amongst themselves. On the stage, Naotoshi, still standing on his chair, towered above Jennie sitting beside him, while the police chief sat beside her, one leg crossed over the other, looking bored and confused.
‘Can we hurry up with this?’ he asked. ‘I have other places to be.’
Jennie stood up and called for attention. The police chief stood up beside her and she translated his words as he spoke.
‘It appears there is a murderer on the loose in Heigel. He could be long gone by now, or he could have just embarked on a terror campaign designed to ruin the image of the town. We don’t have much information yet, but waiting around for him to strike again is a really bad idea.’
There were murmurs of concern. Naotoshi had sat back down on his chair, but eyed Jennie with that same familiar suspicion as if every word she said was a lie.
‘We are working hard to catch the perpetrator, but it would be safer if you did as we advise and head back to Bucharest. The town has been quarantined, so everyone who chooses to leave must be screened and provide a forwarding address in the event that we might need to speak to you further down the line. And if you do decide, against our better judgment, to stay, we must warn you that if the situation worsens you may not be allowed out. This might be your only chance for some time.’
As the police chief sat down, Jennie pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and read out a memo that her tour company had faxed through to the hotel. ‘“We are sorry about the disruptions to your vacation. Rest assured that we w
ill do everything in our power to compensate you, either with alternative sights of interest or with a partial refund. It is the policy of Bright Star Tours to provide the best vacations and customer service available, but we strongly advise you to listen to your experienced tour guide. Again, you have our deepest apologies for any upset caused.”’
She put down the piece of paper and took a deep breath. As always, her tour company’s response was hollow, leaving it up to the messenger to take all the flak. ‘Dinner will be in half an hour,’ she said. ‘Afterwards, please assemble back here where we will need a final decision on who stays and who leaves. A mini-bus will come after dinner to take anyone who wants to go back to Bucharest. We are still hoping to organise a special tour of the castle grounds tomorrow, but there’s no guarantee….’
Disgruntled but momentarily satisfied, the guests departed, heading back to their rooms to get changed before dinner. The supposed tour of the castle grounds wasn’t sanctioned by the tour company, but was something private she had arranged with the police chief and Ludvic, the forest ranger. With a police escort, they would be allowed to walk across the castle bridge as far as the portcullis, to at least take a few photos. While there were gardens within that might constitute “grounds” she had purposefully been vague. It might buy her a little time to get the old folk to cooperate.
Five members of the party had so far requested a return to Bucharest, including one of the young couples. Of course, Naotoshi had assumed leadership of the refusing faction, and while they were prepared to negotiate, Jennie feared she could lose them to an outright mutiny if both parties couldn’t find some middle ground. Part of her felt an intense frustration, that the police hadn’t just outright requested that they leave, or that the tour company offer them a full refund and tough luck on missing out on the scheduled tour stops, while another part felt bound by her duty to provide the best service she could, when all she really wanted to do was get on that mini-bus and get the hell out of Heigel.
