Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (5 page)
Read Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) Online
Authors: Joseph Badal
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, #Espionage
Bob woke bathed in sweat, barely able to get his breath. He looked at the alarm clock beside the bed. Four o’clock in the afternoon. He’d slept for less than three hours since Zavitsanos had dropped him off back at the house. He looked for Liz, but she wasn’t there. His heart leaped against his rib cage. Panic sluiced through him as he rushed from the bedroom.
He found her in Michael’s room, sitting in the rocking chair, illuminated by a ray of late afternoon sun sparkling with dust motes. Her hand moved Michael’s favorite toy – a black rocking horse. Bob knelt in front of her. “Everything’s going to be fine, Liz,” he said, knowing his voice betrayed how little confidence he had in his own words. He took her hands in his. “We’ll find Michael, I promise.”
Liz didn’t speak. She stared into space, no emotion showing, and began to hum
Rock-A-Bye Baby
.
He dropped his head into her lap. First his son, now his wife. Had he lost them both? There wasn’t much that could make him cry, but since Michael’s kidnapping he’d cried a lifetime of tears. His tears now dampened the cotton of Liz’s gown. Then he felt her hand on his head, stroking his hair.
Bob’s heart lurched with hope. She’d finally responded. He raised his head and looked at his wife.
“It’s okay, baby,” Liz said. “I’ll take care of you. You don’t need to cry. You never have to cry when Mommy’s around. You know that, don’t you, Michael?”
“Turn here,” Stefan Radko told his nephew Janos two miles from the border, pointing at a dirt road leading into a forest. About a mile up the road, he ordered Janos to stop.
“This is where we get out, nephew. I’m sure you’ll be sorry to see us go.” Stefan laughed as though he had just heard the greatest joke in the world. He slapped Janos on the shoulder. “Quite an adventure, eh boy!”
Janos slumped over the steering wheel, staring at the dashboard.
Stefan laughed again, then violently poked a finger into Janos’ arm. “You keep your fucking mouth shut, you understand?” When Janos did not respond, Stefan grabbed the young man’s arm and squeezed until Janos grunted from the pain. “Did you hear what I said?” Stefan growled.
“Yes, Uncle Stefan,” Janos whimpered.
“You’d better keep quiet. Or I’ll track you down.”
Stefan opened the truck door and jumped to the ground. He walked to the back of the vehicle, rolled up the rear door, and whispered hoarsely, “Let’s go, woman.”
A shuffling sound came from the front of the cargo area, and then Vanja peered out at him from between two rows of boxes.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“What do you care?” Stefan spat. “Let’s go.”
The sleeping boy in her arms, Vanja lowered herself to a sitting position on the back of the truck bed, then dropped carefully to the ground. Stefan made no attempt to assist her. He closed the back door and, without a word, set off on foot through the trees. The sun was now low in the sky. They would have to wait until after midnight to try to cross the border into Bulgaria.
Janos watched his passengers in the sideview mirror. He felt a chill go through him when they seemed to disappear in the dense forest. Oh, God, he thought. What have I done?
The drugs the doctor had prescribed for Liz kept her listless and mostly silent. They helped her construct a shell around herself that Bob couldn’t penetrate. Nothing he said seemed to reach her. The blank, lifeless look in her eyes scared him.
He needed to feel his family around him. He went to the hall closet and pulled out a box of home movies and a movie projector. He selected a reel he’d taken a few Sundays before and threaded it through the projector. After closing the shutters to darken the room, he flipped on the machine, and looked at the images of Liz and Michael that popped up on the living room wall. His wife and son stood in the kitchen doorway, silhouetted against early-morning sun bathing the patio and the yard beyond. The weather had been perfect – warm, but not hot. He knew how much Liz loved her mornings with Michael.
“Swing, Mommy, swing,” Michael said.
“Okay, baby,” Liz responded. “As soon as Mommy finds her sunglasses, we’ll go play on the swings.”
The next scene showed Liz and Michael facing each other, lazily swinging back and forth on the glider. White Dog lounged on the terrace, basking in the sun.
“Look at the bird in the tree, Michael,” Liz pointed. “It’s a robin.”
“Wobbin,” Michael repeated and pointed with a pudgy finger.
“Do you know that one over there?” Liz said. She pointed out a bird perched on a bush.
Michael showed a confident smile and said, “Wenn.”
“Good boy,” Liz exclaimed.
Michael began singing some indecipherable tune, hamming it up. The sound of his voice coming from the projector filled the room and Bob’s eyes brimmed with tears. He stared at his son’s image and felt an ache penetrating his entire being.
Then movement in the hallway startled Bob. Liz suddenly stumbled into the living room, frantically looking around. He stood and moved toward her. She turned to Michael’s image on the wall, staring, frozen in place. Then she rushed to the wall, her hand raised to touch Michael’s face. But she blocked the projector’s lens, obliterating her son’s image. She backed away and stared at the wall.
“Michael, it’s Mommy. I’m here, sweetheart.” Then she began to sob.
Bob reached his wife and held her until she stopped crying. “Take it easy, Liz. We’ll get our son back,” he said, stroking her face. “But I can’t do it without you.”
Liz’s eyes grew wide in the light from the projector. Bob thought he saw a brief hint of lucidity, but then she seemed to fade back to the demented vacuum she’d been occupying since Michael was kidnapped. She grabbed the front of his shirt. “What can we do?” she said, panic in her voice. “What can
I
do?”
Bob couldn’t hold her gaze. The guilt he felt over not being with his family when they needed him was already like a bleeding wound. The lost look in Liz’s eyes only made him feel worse.
“First, you have to eat something,” he said. “I need you strong and well. Then we’ll figure something out. No one’s going to keep our baby from us.”
Bob’s words seemed to bring Liz all the way back for a moment. She turned to the wall. “Look at his face, so trusting. We’ve got to find Michael before it’s too late.” Then she devolved into sobs and sank to the floor.
Bob knelt and wrapped her in his arms. “We’ll find him, honey. You can count on it,” he said. He wanted to believe what he’d said with every fiber of his body and soul.
Stefan and Vanja took turns sleeping and watching the child. They twice gave the boy milk, but the sedative they’d given him kept him asleep most of the time. At midnight, they left their hiding place in the forest, carrying the child through the trees. When they approached the border, they squatted down behind a cluster of boulders. It was almost 1:00 a.m.
“It’s cold, Stefan. How long do we have to stay here?”
“Until I damn well tell you to move,” he rasped. “Now keep your mouth shut. If the border guards hear you, we’re finished.”
Stefan timed the guards. The Greek guards walked past from right to left at fifteen minutes before the hour and, ten minutes later, walked in the other direction. Because of the dark and the distance, he couldn’t see the Bulgarian guards on the other side of the border wire. But he heard them. He saw the glow of their cigarettes. They patrolled on the half-hour, also reversing course ten minutes later.
Vanja tugged at Stefan’s sleeve. “I don’t know how much longer the boy will stay asleep,” she whispered. “We have no more pills to give him.”
“The Greeks should pass by again in fifteen minutes. We’ll cross over after that. Calm down; you’ll wake him.”
Stefan studied the obstacles they’d have to cope with when they emerged from the trees. It would be a simple matter to slip through the barbwire fence running down the middle of the deforested strip of land. The trip wires on either side of that fence were another matter. He would have to use the flashlight even though its beam might give them away. If the guards on either side changed the interval of their inspections. . ..
Radko thought about the hundreds of times he’d hidden in forests, risking his life for profit. He remembered his days as a
haidouk
, a guerrilla – a fancy name for a bandit really – during World War II, fighting the Nazis. He’d joined a Communist guerilla cell, not because of any affinity for the Communists, but because the Communist guerillas operated close to where he lived. They ambushed German military convoys and looted the vehicles and the bodies of the soldiers they killed. He’d first come in contact with the Bulgarian Intelligence Agency during that time. His relationship with the BIA had lasted ever since.
Ten minutes after the next Greek patrol passed, Stefan rose from the ground. Vanja stood and grunted with Michael’s weight in her arms.
“Stay right behind me,” Stefan ordered. He set out at a slow pace, bent over, with the flashlight beam pointed at the ground and his hand cupped around its lens. Fifteen paces, sixteen paces . . . twenty-nine paces. He froze. “See here,” he whispered to Vanja. A trip wire in the short grass gleamed under the flashlight beam.
They stepped carefully over it and proceeded as before, slowly, quietly, encountering a second trip wire just before reaching the barbed wire fence marking the border.
Stefan lifted the top strand of barbed wire and put his foot on the middle strand. Vanja put the sleeping baby on the ground and slipped through the opening Stefan made for her. Stefan picked up Michael in Greece and handed him to Vanja in Bulgaria. Then he stepped through and joined her. They were fifteen minutes beyond the border before Michael woke and started to wail.
Stefan stepped out of the shadows and walked to the guard shack outside the People’s Home for Orphans’ entrance gate. He saw a man leaning against the shack suddenly come alert, drop his cigarette, and fumble with his rifle.
Quickly moving into the cone of light coming from a flood lamp attached to the shack’s roof, Stefan raised his arms and said, “Take it easy. It’s me, Radko, to see Headmistress Vulovich. I’ve got a delivery for her.”
The man used the telephone in the guard shack to call the office in the massive stone building beyond the gate. After a short conversation on the telephone, he unlocked the tall wrought iron gate.
“She’s expecting you. Go on up.”
Stefan and Vanja followed the long gravel walkway to a stone staircase that climbed to a pair of huge double wooden doors. Michael started crying again.
“Can’t you shut him up?” Stefan growled while lifting the iron knocker on the right door panel and letting it drop.
The door opened, creaking as it moved slowly, exposing the ornate marble-floored entryway under a massive five-tiered chandelier.
“Ah, Stefan,” Katrina Vulovich said. “What have you and Vanja brought me this trip?”
“A little boy, Katrina. I brought you a little boy. I think you will be pleased.”
“Come into the light,” Katrina said. “Let me have a look at him.”
Stefan and Vanja stepped through the doorway and into the brightly lit foyer.
Katrina gasped and clasped her hands together against her chest. “He’s beautiful,” she said.
“How can you tell,” Stefan asked, “with him screaming like that?”
“You just don’t know how to handle children, Stefan. Give him to me.” Katrina took the boy from Vanja. His screams subsided into whimpers when she hugged him to her breast.
“Did you have any trouble?” Katrina asked.
“No, everything went smoothly,” Stefan lied.
“Good.” She walked over to a side table and picked up an envelope. “Here’s your fee, Stefan. Ten American one hundred-dollar bills. Your little business is going to make you rich. How many has it been?”
“Twenty-seven with this one,” Stefan said. “It’s good doing business with you, Comrade Vulovich.”
“When can I expect to see you again, Stefan?” Katrina asked.
“In less than a month.”
