The Shield of Darius (30 page)

A burst of acceleration shot the Volvo to the far end of the guard rail where Falen spun hard right, stopping the car with its nose hanging precariously over the steep bank. Though the road was just beginning the down slope of the hill, the bank still dropped sharply beneath the bumper into deep water.

If the gas did its job, he had only ten minutes to work before Sager would regain consciousness. Reaching across the seat, he unrolled the passenger window beside Sager’s head, unrolled his own window and jumped from the car. The action pulled the tubing from his nose and he quickly removed the oxygen bottle from beneath the seat, wrapped the plastic tubing around it, and un-taped the electronic switch. Tossing them on the ground beside him, he reached into the back seat and found his travel bag, stretched beneath the steering column and twisted the gas canister and clamp from the underside of the dash. As he pulled back, he looped the seat belt up over the shoulders of his unconscious passenger and released it back into the retraction reel.

Falen gathered his loose equipment into the travel bag and with the transmission in neutral, started the Volvo and pushed his shoulder into the open window frame of the driver’s door, easing the car over the edge of the embankment. It started slowly, gaining momentum as it half rolled, half slid down the shale slope and plunged into the lake. Its engine coughed and hissed, then sputtered into silence. When half submerged the car seemed to stop, floating momentarily as water, still icy from spring runoff, poured into the compartment. Then it was gone, bubbling a final gasping breath and sliding silently beneath the silver surface.

Falen watched for a few moments through the hazy twilight until satisfied that the car had settled deep into the water. He carefully checked the spot where the Volvo left the pavement to insure nothing was on the ground, then crossed the road to the scarred tree. The bicycle was where he had left it and he carried it back to the roadway, clipped the bag to the carrier behind the seat, and peddled silently toward Lhati. No lose ends, he thought, filling the miles back to the inn with images of Kate Sager.

THIRTY-THREE

His hurried breath, gulped as he saw Falen insert the nose tubes and felt the gas release against his leg, had contained enough of the anesthetic to slow Ben’s mind to the edge of consciousness. But as Falen steered the car to the precipice, he had reached across and rolled down the passenger window too quickly, releasing the gas and blowing cool clean air into Ben’s starving lungs. Ben heard the car grinding down the slate embankment, groping through the drugged haziness for what the sound meant.

As the car hit the water, the engine drowned in a chugging, hissing spray of steam and showered Ben’s face through the open window, slapping him fully awake. Water poured onto him from both sides, numbing his legs and hips and he threw himself backward over the seat away from the surging flood. Pressed against the rear seat, Ben watched the water rise, then slow and gradually stop as the trapped air equalized the pressure.

He inched upward and peered through the rear window of the sinking car, seeing above him on the bank the shadowy figure of his executioner. He prayed that the Volvo’s weight would carry it beneath the surface, but it hesitated, shifting unsteadily as the water lifted its air filled trunk. Then the lake gulped loudly and swallowed the car.

As the Volvo sank deeper into the dark water, Ben fought the urge to plunge for an open window and struggle back to light and air. But he knew the shadow watched, and he waited with seconds seeming like minutes, until he could no longer stand the crushing closeness of the flooding compartment. He stripped away his jacket and shoes and tied the laces together, looping them over his shoulders. The water was now chest deep and continued to rise slowly as air bubbled through seams along the doors. The remaining air was thick and damp with his own breath.

As the water reached his neck and rose above the door seams, it trapped a final bubble and he sucked in the remaining oxygen, then plunged downward. With legs already dulled to aching posts, Ben groped for the open driver’s window and twisted through it. His body moved as if running in a dream, thick and sluggish, and he strained upward toward a faint, distant light. The shoes around his neck dragged at him, leaden weights against the mechanical thrusts of his legs. But his arms would not move upward to strip away the shoes and he dared not bend, afraid that he would lose the light and never see it again.

His lungs screamed for air. He had let the car slip too deep into the lake before he escaped. When he knew he was drowning, that he could no longer force motion from his deadened limbs, the water parted across his face and he felt the warming touch of night air across his cheeks. Like a newborn, he blinked blindly up into the half-light of the Finnish summer night and gasped life back into his air-starved body.

Though only thirty feet from shore, Ben could not force himself to swim and rolled heavily onto his back, inching his nose and mouth above the water. Focusing his strength into his right shoulder, he threw his arm up and over his head, wind-milling the water and hauling himself backward. The motion floated his left arm upward and he shifted the energy surge, throwing the left arm over, then the right in a slow laboring backstroke. He felt a pull in the stitched opening in his side but the water numbed any pain and he threw the left arm up and over again.

His head ground into the loose rock of the bank and he rolled onto his stomach, flailing and clawing at the shale slope. Half pulling, half rolling from the water, he clung against the steepness of the bank like a rock climber pressed against a cliff face and let the warmer air lift the numbing chill from his muscles. When able to move, he crawled along the water’s edge to the trees and brush that marked the end of the cutaway. Grasping the first branch that came within reach, he dragged himself hand-over-hand, bush-by-bush to the road and rolled onto the flat surface, drawing additional warmth from the stored energy of the black asphalt.

For five minutes he sprawled on the roadway without moving, testing each limb for its ability to answer mental commands and wondering what had happened to Falen. He must have had another car parked in the trees farther along the road. When feeling returned to all but his toes, Ben struggled to his feet and hopped slowly up and down, pumping blood back into his extremities. No traffic moved on the forest road and he stared in both directions, then instinctively turned back toward Kouvola, struggling up the hill from which he had plunged into the lake.

As he reached the top, Ben sat to pull on the water-soaked shoes and tried to give reason to his instinct. Though he knew he was closer to the station where he had met Falen than to Lahti, he sensed without knowing why that the man had not turned back, but gone on toward the larger city.  He remembered too what looked like a vending machine in the Kouvola station that held Nokia phones. He had thought fleetingly about asking to purchase one to call Kate, but had again remembered the Russian’s warning. One of those phones might now be his link to help that would not take him to the police, or put his picture in tomorrow’s paper. He was dead, and until he figured out how to deal with Falen, he had to stay that way.

They had exited the station parking area in the Volvo at 12:55, a fact noticed only because the clock on the dash seemed unusually bright when they first started the engine, but dimmed when Falen turned on the headlights. Ben had also noticed the clock just before Falen directed his attention toward the lake. 1:06. Eleven minutes. He hadn’t seen the speedometer, but the road was narrow and snaked through forest that pressed close against the pavement. He guessed Falen hadn’t exceeded a hundred kilometers an hour – just under sixty. He had probably averaged closer to fifty. That would put Kouvola less than nine miles away and it was probably 1:30. At three miles an hour, a steady walk for a man in his condition, he could reach the station by five.

He made it by 4:40, walking the final thirty minutes into the city in a light rain and arriving at the station shivering and exhausted. The streets and station of the Finnish town were deserted, but a platform clock gave him the time. To his great relief, the vending machine holding the phones provided instructions in Finnish, Russian and English and he found a pre-paid option for 40 Euros and fumbled in his pocket for the money Ushokov had given him. Again to his relief, he hadn’t lost it in the lake.

The phone’s instruction booklet was also in three languages and he sat on a bench beside the station building and called the activation number, entering the 15 digit identification code. Within seconds the lighted display showed that he had 200 pre-paid minutes and thirty days in which to use them. Thumbing through the multi-lingual owner’s guide, he found instructions for reaching an operator and punched in the numbers, holding his breath until a male voice answered in Finnish.

“Do you speak English?” Ben asked.

“A little. Yes.”

“I would like to call the United States.”

“Thank you. Please wait while I connect you to an international operator.” The phone clicked unnervingly and Ben feared he had lost his connection.

A woman answered, speaking flawless English.

“You would like to make an international call?”

“Yes. Can I call collect overseas?”

“Call collect?”

“Yes. Reverse the charges.”

“Do you have the number and name of the party to whom you wish to speak?”

Ben recited Peter Koka’s number from memory and gave the woman his uncle’s name.

“Do you wish to speak only to Mr. Koka?” she asked.

“He lives alone. If anyone answers, it will be him…. And could you stay on the line until I get an answer? This is something of an emergency….”

“I will need to see if the party accepts charges for the call,” the operator reminded him. “May I have your name?”

“Yes. It’s….” Ben paused for a moment. If Falen were to learn he had escaped the Volvo and came after him again, there must be no footprints.

“Tell him I am calling from the RPA,” he said. “Tell him an RPA representative is calling.”

“One moment, sir.”

He heard the phone ring distantly four times, then the clear rasping voice of his uncle.

“I have an overseas call from a gentleman who says he represents the RPA. He would like to reverse the charges. Will you accept?”

There was a momentary silence and Ben smothered the urge to call out to Peter through the phone.

“Of course,” Koka said.

“Go ahead, sir. Is there anything else you will need?”

“No. Thank you very much for your help.” The operator left the line.

“Uncle Peter. This is Ben.”

There was another silence.

“Ben?”

“Ben Sager.”

“I…am I hearing this right? This is Ben?”

“In the flesh, more or less, “Ben laughed with nervous relief. “I’m in a heck of a spot and need your help.”

For the next twenty minutes, Ben talked while Peter Koka listened. When he’d finished the account of his abduction, escape and betrayal by Falen, his uncle spoke pointedly.

“Do you have money?”

“The Russians gave me about a hundred Finnish Euros. I spent forty for this phone but I think the rest will keep me for a few days if I can find a cheap place to stay.”

“Where are you – exactly?”

“A city called Kouvola. East of Lhati.”

“Find a place, and call me in exactly twelve hours to let me know where you are. I’ll have something worked out by then.”

“Isn’t it night there? That doesn’t give you much time.”

“The people I need to call don’t care what time it is. Twelve hours will be enough.”

“I can’t come back to the States under my own name. Some people are pretty anxious to make sure no one learns there were Americans in those buildings.”

“I realize that. Have you talked to anyone else?”

“No. I knew you could help and called you first. I’d like you to call Kate. Tell her I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”

“I don’t think that’s wise. They may be watching her. Wait until I find out what’s going on.”

Ben looked again at the large platform clock. “It’s five-thirty in the morning here. I’ll call at six this evening. Thanks, Uncle Pete.”

“You called the right person,” the old man said, and the line clicked dead.

By the time Ben hung up the phone, the station platform was beginning to stir and a station attendant directed him to a hostel a short walk from the station where he could get a room for 20 Euros. Because of the rain, the young woman behind the reception counter was not overly concerned about his damp and wrinkled clothing but was surprised that he had no luggage.

“I stayed at the station until things opened, and left my bag there while I looked for a place to stay. I didn’t want to be carrying it around in the rain. I’ll pick it up later,” he told her.

She showed him to a small room on the second floor and directed him to the common bath at the end of the hall. He took a long, warm shower, hung his clothing beside the gas heater, plugged his phone in to charge, and set the clock radio on the side table for 4:30. Ben didn’t remember another thing until the radio burst forth with Finnish music.

At 6:00 p.m. he placed another collect call to his uncle.

“I’ll have documents and money to you by tomorrow,” Koka said. “Don’t move until the courier gets there, and don’t call anyone. There are complications here. I’ll send instructions with your documents. Will your money hold out?”

“I don’t need to pay the balance for the room until I leave. And what I have should take care of today and tomorrow.”

“I’ll send you plenty. Don’t go anywhere you don’t need to.”

“You say there are complications. Does Falen know I survived?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But there is still a lot I don’t know about your situation. It has a wrinkle I need to work out before we know what to do with you.”

“Pete – I need to know what’s happening.”

“You will Ben – as soon as I’m sure it won’t make things worse for you.”