Death by Denim (13 page)

From the hallway, I could see a cavernous room, like an elephant graveyard full of old looms, some of them with cones of thread still attached.

He led me down a narrow corridor, the fluorescent lights overhead flickering a pale, sickly light. At the end of the corridor, he stopped in front of a black metal door and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He unlocked the door and swung it wide.

“In,” he said.

I peered inside the dark room. The heavy smell was even stronger in there. “What is this place?” I asked.

“You will have answers soon enough,” he said, and pushed me through the door.

I stumbled inside and he slammed the door shut behind me. Except for a narrow sliver of light that bled in from the corridor, the room was entirely dark. I have a thing about the dark. Have had ever since Seth and I got stuck in a cave on the island and we had to literally feel our way out. Plus, there had been bats. I shuddered at the memory. I don’t like not knowing where I am or what could be sharing the space with me. Logically, I knew there were probably no bats in the room, but there could be other vermin. Vermin that at any moment could jump on me and gnaw at my fingers . . .

I closed my eyes and made myself take several deep breaths, trying to let the tension out each time I exhaled. It didn’t really work, as far as the releasing tension thing went, but it did help me to think a little more rationally. It wasn’t going to do me any good to stand around in the dark freaking out. I slid one foot forward, and then the other, feeling my way along the floor until I found the wall. With my hands still behind my back, the only way I could feel for a light switch was to run my shoulder along the wall, so that’s what I did. I started by feeling around the door first, and when that didn’t yield any results, I searched farther out.

I’d made it halfway around the room with no success when suddenly the lights flicked on and the door opened behind me. I blinked against the sudden brightness and spun around. Marlboro had returned and he was not alone.

Next to him, with thick arms folded across an even thicker chest, stood a stocky woman wearing a tight, black business suit. “
Cosa sta facendo?”
she demanded. What you are doing?

I met her stare and squared my shoulders. “Looking for the light switch.”

“It is in the hall. When we want you to have light, we will let you know.” Her words were clipped, disdainful. I wondered what Marlboro had told her. “You will come here.” She indicated a spot on the floor directly in front of her.

I crossed the room hesitantly. It’s not like I had much choice. What was I going to do? Run away? To where? The loading dock with the gunmen?

“I must search for weapons,” she informed me.

It took a full second to register what she meant. She was going to search
me
for weapons. That’s why Marlboro brought a woman. I suppose I should have been grateful for that gesture of propriety, but I backed away. “Oh. No. I don’t have any—”

“Stand still,” she ordered.

I held my breath as she patted her hands along my arms and legs, and then along my sides.

“What is this?” she asked as her stubby fingers found the envelope tucked into the waistband of my shorts.

“Travel money,” I said honestly.

She grabbed the envelope and turned it over in her hands, her face showing new interest. Her mouth twisted into a self-satisfied smile.
“Grazie,”
she said, and stuffed it inside her blouse. To Marlboro Man she proclaimed, “No weapons,” and she marched through the door.

He waited until she had gone and then gave me an exaggerated bow. “You will come with me.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Enough.” He grabbed my arm, his stench like a cloud that engulfed me. I wondered what it was in the tobacco the guy smoked that smelled so bad.

He led me back down the hallway into a huge room. I guessed it was the main section of the mill. The ceiling was probably three times as high as in the other room, crisscrossed with metal walkways above the work area. A row of windows, offices, I presumed, looked out over the workspace like skyboxes at an arena. I imagined bosses, stern as prison guards, watching from those windows, or strolling the walkways, making sure that the employees wove their quota of fabric.

From somewhere in those offices, strangely, I could hear strains of classical music. It seemed out of place in the shambles of the broken-down mill.

We rounded the corner of one of the huge loom machines to see Seth standing beside Black Eyes, presumably waiting for us. Seth looked up at me and gave me an encouraging smile, even though he had to know as well as I did that our situation wasn’t good. It was all I could do to keep from running to him. That I wouldn’t have been able to throw my arms around him didn’t matter. I would have figured something out. As it was, though, I kept my distance, giving him a polite nod. There would be time for talking—and hugging—later. At least I hoped.

Seth and I were led up a set of rickety metal stairs to the walkways above. The angle of the stairs was steep and the stairway narrow—only one person wide—so we ascended in single file. As we climbed higher, I was able to get a bird’s-eye view of the room below. Amid the machines, I could see several men and an occasional woman or two standing around, talking, watching us, working with some kind of wire—though I’m not sure what they would be doing since the mill was obviously defunct.

At the top of the stairs, Black Eyes motioned for us to stop. “You will stay here,” he said, and left us with Marlboro Man as he ambled across the walkway and tapped on one of the office doors. He cracked open the door, spoke to someone inside for a moment, and then strolled back to where we stood.

“We will wait,” he announced.

Marlboro reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled box of cigarettes and began to shake one loose.

“Idiota!”
Black Eyes spat, knocking the package from his hands. He gestured with his eyes to the area below. Marlboro clenched his jaw and bent to retrieve his scattered smokes. Some of them rolled through the little spaces between the metal flooring and tumbled to the machines below and he cursed under his breath.

“Now,” Black Eyes said to Seth and me, “you will come this way.”

He led us across the walkway to one of the office doors and rapped sharply. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door and ushered us inside.

To my surprise, a gentleman sat in the corner of the room, playing a cello. I felt like I had stumbled into a dream. The man didn’t look up, but continued playing his piece, eyes closed, swaying with the swing of his bow. The fingers of his other hand danced over the frets, pausing here and there, wavering to create vibrato. It was a beautiful performance. So why did it make me feel so uneasy? I glanced at Seth to see if he shared my apprehension and what I saw sent a slice of fear through my chest.

Seth’s face had gone completely white. Even his lips had drained of color. He stared, wide-eyed, at the man with the cello, like he knew him. Like he was terrified of him.

Finally, the music ended, the last melancholy note hanging in the air before fading away. Only then did the man look up and smile. I was wrong about Black Eyes having the creepiest smile I’d ever seen. This guy upped the creepiness factor about a thousand percent. “Hello, Aphra,” he oozed. His accent held a distinct Eastern European flavor. “So nice to finally meet you.”

“I . . . I’m afraid I don’t . . .” I looked to Seth again.

“Oh, yes. How rude. Mikhael, you haven’t introduced me to your little friend.”

At first I thought he was talking to Black Eyes, calling him Mikhael, but then I remembered—Mikhael had been Seth’s given name before his family had been forced into hiding. He told me once that he had been Seth so long that he preferred his new name to the old one. But if this man knew the old one . . . Suddenly, I felt like I needed to puke.

The cellist tsked. “I’m sorry, my dear. It appears Mikhael has forgotten his manners. I am Dominik Lucien Brezeanu, but you may have heard me called by my simpler name: The Mole.”

T
he Mole smiled his wicked smile and watched me like he was hoping for a reaction. I tried not to give him one, though I’m sure he could see the fear written on my face. I just stared at him, thinking that this distinguished-looking gentleman with his close-cropped silver hair and pale blue eyes was not at all what I had imagined when I pictured what The Mole might look like. I had imagined him as some kind of mob boss figure, wearing gold chains and smoking oversize cigars. But I guess evil is more effective if it comes wrapped in an attractive cover.

“It is a pleasant surprise to find you here,” he said. “After this morning, I had quite given up meeting you. When my . . . associates dropped in to pay a visit to young Mikhael’s family, they were rather dismayed to find that they had already left the premises. Warned off by the Agency, were you?”

He directed his question to Seth, but Seth stared straight ahead as if no one had spoken. That made The Mole chuckle. “He’s a stubborn one,” he said to me, “but we’ll soon break him of that.”

The thought of how The Mole or his minions might try to break Seth made my knees wobble. I could have crumpled to the floor right then, only I was pretty sure that would have been just what The Mole wanted. I took a cue from Seth and focused my eyes on a crack in the plaster behind The Mole’s head.

The Mole chuckled. “So much like your mother,” he said. “Pity, that.”

I couldn’t help it. My gaze snapped right back to where he was sitting.

“I didn’t realize you had accepted my invitation,” he continued, methodically loosening the strings on his cello before laying it in its case. “I’m afraid I already released the horseman.”

The room spun. The horseman . . . the fourth horseman . . . death. “What are you saying?” I asked.

“The message was quite clear,” he said. “Either she would deliver you children to me, or she would die.”

My stomach heaved. The words of the macabre message danced mockingly in my head.
Deliver the children lest he should ride.
I assumed—I think we all assumed—the note was a threat against the Mulos. It never occurred to me that if he didn’t get his way, the monster would go after my mom.

“But, I’m
here
,” I said weakly.

“Ah, yes.” He closed the cello case and fastened the latches. “But not by the specified hour. And if my sources are correct, had it been up to your mother, you would not be here at all.”

I stared at him. How could he possibly know that? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just knew that any mother with half a brain wouldn’t say, “Oh, you want me to give up my kid? Sure. Here you go.”

“She will learn,” the Mole continued. “You will all learn—you myopic capitalists with your unmitigated arrogance. You will be brought to your knees soon enough.”

“What does that have to do with my mom?”

“It has to do with your mother,” he drawled, “because she works for the most corrupt government in the world. She has pledged her allegiance to an administration of money-grubbing plutocrats who have commodified the entire culture. She supports a monopoly of global wealth and power. She forgets what your government has done to our country. How their sanctions starved our children, how—”

“Give me a break,” I muttered. “She got in your way, that’s all.”

Seth gave me a warning nudge. “Aphra . . .” he said under his breath.

“Ah, yes. You see? He is learning. He knows that it was
his
family who set us on the path that has led us here today. His parents who betrayed their fellow comrades in favor of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and an SUV. But they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, boy. My years in federal prison were the best education America had to offer.”

The Mole plucked a scarlet cashmere scarf from the side of his stool and draped it around his neck. “It’s true, I would not have chosen my own incarceration, but those years proved to be most valuable. I learned to navigate the underground, to connect with the power of international organized crime. Prison could not subdue me; it only extended my reach. Now I have comrades all over the world. Signore Labruzzo here is part of that extended family.”

Black Eyes—Labruzzo—inclined his head.

“I have your parents to thank for the wealth of connections, Mikhael. I discovered an entire world of criminals in federal prison, all looking for a little . . . direction.” He studied his impeccably manicured nails and added in a bored tone, “Despite whatever personal benefit I may have gained, however, your parents betrayed me, and traitors must be punished.”

Seth’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

The Mole, unmoved, looked to me instead. “And your mother must pay for her involvement in their corruption. Had the American government not resorted to deceitful tactics to obtain their treasonous accusations, we would not find ourselves in this situation today.”