The Gambit (54 page)

The exit nearest to our room put us out on the back side of the hotel, almost in somewhat of an alleyway. There were no cars, just one wide sidewalk. I was glad. No cars meant fewer people that could potentially recognize us. We wrapped around to the
real
street, and I saw the hotdog stand a block away. A few people passed us, but none gave us a second glance. I was extremely happy we were blending in. I stopped and leaned in to nudge Rachel before we reached the stand.

“How do you like your hotdogs?” I asked.

“All the way,” she mumbled.

“I could have made a really dirty joke with that answer,” I chuckled.

She slapped the backside of my coat and revealed a small smile. I approached the hot dog stand. There was no one else in line.

“What can I get you two?” the man asked.

“Two hot dogs all the way, please.”

“That will be 4.14, sir.”

I pulled out my billfold and handed him a ten. He handed me the change, and Rachel grabbed the two hotdogs wrapped in foil.

“Thank you,” she said.

The moment I turned around, I unwrapped it and devoured it in a matter of bites. The warm chili and chopped onions were perfect. It was sad to say, but that hotdog might have been the best meal I had in days, probably because I hadn’t eaten in so long.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” Rachel giggled.

My mouth was so full I couldn’t even answer.

We passed more people in the street. I tried to keep my head down, but I had slid my scarf down so I could eat. We neared the alleyway we had come from, and I quickly turned down it. The back entrance door was made of all glass and well-lit. I saw many people walking through our hall. They were kids, actually. They all wore basketball uniforms. I saw many parents with the children, too. It was a commotion. A commotion that made it far too risky to go right back in our hotel room. We would have to wait until it cleared out.

I stopped Rachel just a few feet shy of the entrance.

“What?” she asked. I pointed through the door. She leaned over to glance in.

“Oh. I see,” she said. I nodded. “We can just wait a few minutes out here,” I suggested. “You still have to finish your hotdog, anyway.”

She shrugged her shoulders and took another bite. I shoved my hands in my pockets and just stared at the glass door, waiting for the crowd in the hallway to thin.

Something was pulled over my head, and I couldn’t see. I heard Rachel’s hotdog splat on the ground. I was in a headlock, with a forearm pressing onto my face, covering my mouth. I could hear Rachel’s muffled screams as her mouth was covered too. I struggled to breathe. I fought and kicked, but just as quickly I was thrown chest-first onto the hood of a car. That same forearm was now pressed down into my back, to the point where I couldn’t even try to lift my body. It had to have been a man behind me. I could tell by the physical strength, but also, his body was pinned against mine. He was using every part of his body to keep me pushed against the car…and it
definitely
wasn’t the body of a female. My hands were pulled behind my back, and a moment later I felt fisherman’s rope being tied so tightly around my wrists I thought it would cut off the circulation. Rachel’s whimpers and cries continued, so I knew she was still with me. My heart pounded in my chest. Were we being arrested? What kind of cops would put a bag over the suspects’ heads? Two car doors popped open, and I was pushed inside. My body slammed into Rachel’s, but luckily we didn’t bump heads. I felt suffocated. Every breath I took felt struggled, and the air that filled the sack was already muggy and moist.

The car was moving. I had no idea where we were going.

“Did anyone see?” a male voice asked in a low tone.

“No,” a female voice muttered.

I was sitting in a chair with my arms wrapped around the back of it. I couldn’t tell where, but I knew Rachel was beside me. I could hear her breathing. The black material of the sack barely let in any light, and I still couldn’t see our kidnappers. I was angry, and my body was sore. The car ride was less than five minutes long. I tried to memorize which way we turned, like I had seen in some movies, but it didn’t work. I lost track of our direction. Too many lane changes, and too many turns. When we got out of the car, we were dragged down some steps. The only thing I could think of was a basement of some sorts. My imagination was running wild. The grimmest possibilities of what could happen to us bombarded my mind. Did some overly-patriotic serial killer kidnap us? Had they been stalking us since we arrived in Atlanta? Maybe they really
did
think we were terrorists and wanted to serve their own form of justice. I shuddered at the thought.

The sack was pulled off of my head. I glanced to my left to see Rachel looking at me in fear. The smoothness of her face was replaced with hard lines and teary eyes. I had never seen her this frightened since I met her. I quickly whipped my head around to examine where we were being held for any clues of its location. The floor was wooden and worn. I remembered hearing its creakiness when we were brought in. The concrete walls were windowless. There was a row of twin beds along the back wall, a sofa with the leather peeling off, and an old TV in the corner. I heard voices and footsteps above us. I couldn’t help but assume we were underneath some backstreet bar. The whole room had a musty smell to it. I tugged at the ropes around my wrists, but they wouldn’t budge.

“What do you want with us?” Rachel asked, her voice trembling.

I turned to face forward, and I was finally able to see our kidnappers. The man faced away from us, and there looked to be some sort of cart in front of him. The closest thing I could compare it to would be the cart a waitress delivers room service on. There was a laptop open atop it, and to the right of his body was a projector. The woman faced us. It looked like she was chewing on bubble gum, but in the dim lighting of the room, I couldn’t tell if it was that or her lip. She had black, voluminous hair that was put up in a complex-looking bun. There were long strands that hung by her ears and down to her shoulders. There was something different about her features, they weren’t like the typical American girl. She had high cheekbones, and her makeup was dark. She had a borderline gothic look.

“Natasha,” the man said. “The lights, please.”

I could have sworn I heard the faintest accent in the man’s voice. She hit the light switch, and the faint yellow lighting was replaced by the white glow of the projector. The man turned around to face us. He didn’t say a word, just glanced back and forth between me and Rachel. There was something oddly familiar about him, and it caused me to squint. His hair was jet black, just like Natasha’s, but his features were strong. His jawline was twice as manly as my own, and the look in his eyes just screamed that he had been angry for a
very
long time. Something told me I had seen his face before, but I couldn’t put my finger on where.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

In my peripheral, Rachel was shaking her head no. I had zoned out, still studying why his face looked so familiar to me. Suddenly, I realized he had asked us a question.

“No,” I answered.

He laughed and shook his head side to side. He snorted, exhaling out of his nose as he continued to chuckle.

“Good,” he said flatly. “See Natasha, your disguises have worked very well.”

She winked at him and gave him a nod. I couldn’t help but notice that incredibly faint accent every time he spoke.

“So, you don’t recognize me at all?” he asked us again.

“You look very familiar,” I blurted.

“Aha,” he said, and began to clap slowly. “Bravo, Owen.”

I was about to ask him how he knew my name. Then, I realized how stupid that question was.
Everyone
knew me.

“Did either one of you happen to see the billboard when you came into downtown?”

My stomach flopped. There was
no way
this was who I thought it was.

“Yes,” Rachel mumbled. “We all did.”

“What did it say?” he pressed. His tone became tenser. It was like he was trying to coax us into saying what he already knew.

“With one lie our freedom dies,” I repeated the dripping red words that were on the billboard earlier today. The man revealed a twisted smile.

“With
one
lie our freedom dies. All it took was
one
lie to send this country spiraling down into an oblivion so abysmal we would never be able to escape it.”

“What…what are you talking about?” Rachel asked with her breath catching.

He huffed, rolling his eyes. “You two know
exactly
what I’m talking about. You are fucking living it!” he shouted and walked over to me. He leaned over and propped his hands on his knees. His face was a mere foot away from mine. “The lie they created about
you
, Owen, was like giving oxygen to a dying flame. Now, they have a raging fire, one that will consume this whole country!”

“You know I was framed?” I muttered, with my mouth agape.

“Of course I do!” he shouted, his accent thickening with every word. “I know because I was framed, too!”

I felt the blood leave my face. I stared into his dark eyes, and his lower lip quivered.

“You’ve been on the run for a week and a half. Try two years.”

“Viktor…” The words slid out of my mouth like I was in a trance. I saw Rachel’s brown locks swing in my peripheral as she whipped her head around.

“Viktor? Are you really?” Rachel questioned. I could hear the panic in her voice.

“
Yes,
” he glanced between us. “Viktor Ivankov.”

Then, it hit me. I was sitting in front of the most elusive man the country had ever tried to catch. I struggled to loosen the ropes around my wrists, and my eyes darted around the room for an exit. Viktor and Natasha hadn’t killed us, so
why
were we still alive? What did they want? My logical mind was trying to figure it out. How did they find us? Were they watching us from the moment we got in Atlanta? So many questions. The most important of which, spawned from Viktor’s statement. He had been framed also.

Now that I knew who he was, his identity was more recognizable in his features. The face I had seen on the news for so many months. Viktor Ivankov in the flesh—right in front of me.

“Why did you kidnap us like this?” Rachel croaked. Her face was still contorted with glistening eyes.

“Because,” he began, turning back around to the laptop. “I needed to show Owen something.”

My forehead creased. “And this is how you had to bring us here?” I shouted, and shook the wooden chair by pulling at the ropes.

“I had no choice,” he replied. “It’s not like you two would have willingly hopped in the car with a terrorist and a stranger. We saw you in traffic and followed you the rest of the day. You deserve to know the truth.”

The words pierced my mind with such clarity it was indescribable.

The
truth.
My heart sped up just from the thought. I turned left to see Rachel staring at me with the same expression. She knew just as well as I did, those two words meant more to our struggle than anything else. The truth meant Rachel had a story to write. If Ian published the story, we might be able to save the election in time.

“Natasha, untie them, please.”

Without missing a beat, she walked over to us and knelt behind our chairs. After a few moments, I felt the ropes slide off my wrists. It immediately alleviated so much discomfort. I stretched my arms out, and I heard Viktor doing something on the laptop. He held out a remote, and an image projected onto the wall. He stood away from the projector so we could see. The image was in black and white, but there was something peculiar about it. It looked like a gigantic rectangle, filled with other items. In the corner, there was a timestamp.

09:54 – 01/02/2015

Viktor began clicking the remote and flipping through more images. It looked as if it were an x-ray. I noticed the timestamps became later and later in the day.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked, crossing his arms. Rachel stayed quiet. Then, the realization of what it was hit me.