Mind + Body, Aaron Dunlap [smart books to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Aaron Dunlap
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Book online «Mind + Body, Aaron Dunlap [smart books to read TXT] 📗». Author Aaron Dunlap
Well, it sort of looked like my face. It was blurry, digitally enlarged, warped by the reflection, and very dark, but it looked a lot like me two years ago. It was silly, and preposterous, but still shocked me. My eyes widened and my heart picked up its pace.
“That photo was the only lead I’d developed after a 2 month investigation. A blurry reflection of a teenager’s face. When I showed it to superiors and the detectives at the police department, they laughed at me. A shot of a teenager outside a man’s house in the middle of the night hardly proved anything. They said it could be anybody, just some neighborhood kid walking around. But I knew it was the shadow. I’d interviewed everybody who lived or worked within walking distance from the estate. And that posture, leaning against the gate and looking at a watch. That shot was taken about thirty seconds before the house’s security system shut down. He’s waiting for something, for word that the system was offline or waiting for whatever he’d done to disable it to be activated.
“That photograph haunted me. I put it up on my office wall, then on the side of my desk after I’d been demoted out of my own office. I looked at it every day, knowing whoever that was had destroyed my career, but somehow I respected him. He’d performed an almost untraceable hit. I’ve dealt with assassinations, but never one so clean. Everybody I know and work with knows about that picture, they see it every time they come to my desk. So when Markus, a former partner of mine happened to see you walking from that bank today, he thought he’d give me a call.” He gestured to the guy he was with, the man I’d seen at the bank.
“I checked the bank, and called the hotel that Markus had followed you to. Christopher Baker. An American. I knew the shadow had to be a foreigner; all the good assassins come from Russia or the Americas. Then I saw you for myself when you came out of the hotel, saw your face, I knew it was you. But how could I rationalize someone your age, who would have been fifteen at the time, being such a skilled killer? I can’t, but here you are buying a sparbuch account, probably to hold funds for another hit. Why else would someone like you need one?”
Okay, this guy was loopy in the head. “You think I killed your politician guy? That’s insane.”
He nodded. “I know it’s insane, and this is why it works so well. I don’t know how I’ll prove it, but I will. I don’t know how someone your age can do what you did, but you did it.”
This was all too unbelievable. I shook my head and chuckled. I thought that I’d been caught for my visit with Comstock this morning, or worse, but this crazy guy just thinks I look like a kid who was outside someone’s house two years ago the night someone died? You can’t make this stuff up.
“Are you kidding me? There are billions of kids on the planet, yet you know that ‘shadow’ of yours is me because I kind of look like a sideways reflection taken off a camera in the dark two years ago? Do you go around to all the high schools in the country and interrogate any brown-haired kid with this nose and subtle cheekbones?”
Pratt slid the two photos back into the folder and closed it, folded his hands, and finally leaned into the table. “Do not mistake me for a crazed idiot, Chris, I know that face. I know your face. You come from America, you pay for hotel rooms and plane tickets with your own money, and you buy untraceable bank accounts used throughout history to launder money and to collect payment for illegal jobs. You’re a minor and you’re visiting Europe by yourself on a three-day trip yet you’ve done no sightseeing as I can tell. I wouldn’t make a mistake like this.”
I sighed, feeling like I was going to be kidnapped by a lunatic obsessed with teenage boys. “You’ve got nothing to go on, though,” I said. “They said that the photo of that kid wasn’t enough to continue the case, so just finding someone who looks like him isn’t going to change anything.”
“True, but if I suspect you of terrorism I can hold you for at least 24 hours without charges. That will give me time enough to run your fingerprints and photograph through every Interpol database, put a hold on your passport, and track down your relatives or employers. It might even keep you from performing another of your miraculous hits if that’s what you’re here to do.”
Suddenly this had all lost its gleeful air of ridiculousness.
Pratt stood up, motioning his friend Markus to come over. “As we suspect you of terrorist activities,” Pratt began, “we’re taking you into custody for questioning and examination.” He pulled a set of silver handcuffs from his belt, and Markus stepped over and pulled me up by my arm.
All this, and I still really had to pee.
Metal handcuffs were ratcheted onto my bare wrists behind my back, a spectacle that both intrigued the people in the café and somehow amused me to no end. As I was walked outside the place and lead down the street to where I assumed a car was waiting, Pratt said something aloud to me but it didn’t register. The absurdity of being taken into custody in Austria for a murder I didn’t commit two years ago were monopolizing the attention capacity of my brain.
It was all very inconvenient.
Tonight was Thursday; my flight home leaves early Friday, my mom is supposed to get home late Saturday or early Sunday. If this loony Interpol guy wants to keep me for the 24 hours he’s allowed to, that will royally screw up my plans. Not to mention, if this guy is touched in the head enough to decide that I was a fifteen-year-old super assassin based on a blurry photo and a glance at me from across the street, maybe he could find some “evidence” to connect me to the death of Princess Diana or the crash of the Hindenburg. His hand around my arm, I continued walking down the street lined on both sides with cars. The other guy Pratt was with seemed to have disappeared. Pratt was still talking, probably going on about having captured his mega super secret killer man, but I wasn’t listening. I was too busy thinking.
We turned down an unlit side street and eventually stopped at a small black car, a model that I didn’t recognize. Pratt pulled a back door open and kind of slid me into the backseat and slammed the door shut. The car wasn’t meant to be used for police work, or at least prisoner transport. The front seat was open to the back seat with no divider. Stupid.
I couldn’t take my chances with being “brought in” again. The thought of having my name, face, and fingerprints listed in Interpol databases seemed a bit disgusting at the time, and I had a plane to catch. No time for any of this garbage.
Now I just had to figure out how to get out of this without driving any cars through someone.
Pratt got into the driver’s seat and turned to look out the side window as the second guy, Markus, approached the vehicle and got into the passenger seat. I guess he didn’t feel safe riding alone with magical underage ninja hitmen. I suppose I wouldn’t either. The two men spoke to each other in German for a second, and then Pratt started the engine. I toyed with the handcuffs on my wrists for a second. I thought of the events of the past few days, the fight on Thursday, and the principal’s office on Friday, the shooting and pepper spray on Saturday, the FBI on Sunday, new cars and Chinese food on Monday, Quantico and e-mail hacking on Tuesday, planes and hotels on Wednesday, naked principals and Interpol agents on Thursday. It was all beginning to blur together, predicament to predicament, no explanation for anything. I wanted this all to go away, I wanted to be a regular teenager again; a guy who doesn’t know the names of any FBI or Interpol agents and doesn’t have a gun in his bedroom closet.
I was beginning to dislike cars; you feel so vulnerable in them. Someone could just walk up and blast you with pepper spray through the window, and all you can do is sit there. I thought of Amy sitting next to me for all that, me telling her about “up” and “down”; “up” meant to turn away and cover her face, in case the guy… Dingan used the pepper spray. “Down,” that was for if he drew the gun and started shooting. She was supposed to drop the seat recline lever and drop backwards. That would have been bad, if he’d drawn the gun and not the pepper spray. I leaned sideways to look at the driver’s seat in front of me. Between the seat and the door, there was a long plastic lever, just like on my old car. Looking around, the car seemed older. I’d bet the seat reclined wildly in both directions just like my Civic’s.
That gave me an idea.
Pratt pulled the car into reverse and slowly began to back out from the alleyway and waited for an opening to back onto the street. I turned my foot sideways and carefully slid it in the narrow space between his seat and the door. It was tight, and something was poking into my leg, but I could feel the plastic lever with the tip of my foot. Markus glanced back at me, and then looked away. I took in a long, deep breath.
I pushed my foot upward, but it slid off of the seat lever and kicked part of the door, sounding a short thud. Both men suddenly looked to the left and Pratt said something quickly in German. I brought my foot back down and kicked upwards again, not having to worry about stealth this time. I felt the resistance of the lever as I brought it nearly straight upwards. I felt the back of the seat in front of me lose tension and slip backwards, and I brought my right leg up and slammed the seatback forward as hard as I could with my foot.
Pratt’s torso heaved forward with the seatback. I heard his face smash into the steering wheel. His foot must have slipped from the brake, because the car began to creep backwards into the traffic of the main road. Markus, in the passenger seat, screamed something and turned back toward me, reaching his left arm into his jacket. I pulled my left leg free from between the seat and door, feeling something tear my pants leg, and pushed myself backwards enough for clearance enough to bring my left leg around in one short arc to connect with Markus’ neck and bring it, and his head, into the window behind him. He stopped moving.
The car, however, didn’t.
The inside door handles didn’t work, probably disabled for “safety.” The engine idled; the transmission in reverse, the car crept into the perpendicular street the car had pulled off of. Cars honked and swerved to avoid us. I was trapped in the back seat, watching headlights through the window as they drew closer and quicker, praying they would turn away quickly enough. My left ankle started to sting dully, it will probably bruise and swell before morning. I tried crawling into the front seat to open those doors but it was too cramped and they
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