Annabel Lee Read online

  His arms are going to hurt after an hour or so like that, The Mute thought absently. But he had more important concerns on his mind. He walked back to the wounded dog still lying in the woods. The animal’s tail swept the ground at the sight of him, but he no longer attempted to stand and greet him properly. The Mute could see his life was fading, and with it strength was going too.

  A choice to make, he told himself. An awful choice.

  Samuel Hill jogged over to The Mute’s side. “Come on,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”

  The Mute didn’t respond; he couldn’t take his eyes off the wounded dog.

  “Mute,” Hill said again, and this time The Mute looked up at him. There was new understanding in Samuel Hill’s eyes. “This your dog, Mute? Annabel said you helped Truck train him.”

  My dog? he thought. Yes, my dog. Raised by Truck’s voice and guided by my hand. Truck’s dog, yes. And mine.

  The Mute nodded slowly.

  “I see,” Hill said. He sighed. And then he made the awful choice.

  Samuel Hill knelt down and gently slid his hands underneath the dog’s carriage. The animal nipped at his arms weakly, but the big man ignored his feeble effort. He gave a light grunt and lifted the limp weight of the German shepherd until he held him securely in a standing embrace. The dog finally stopped fighting and let its head sag into the cleft between Hill’s chest and shoulder. The man let out a long exhale. He looked across the dog’s body and stared intently at The Mute.

  “The woman,” Samuel Hill said, and there was pain in his eyes. “My ex-wife. She is everything to me. More than everything. You understand?”

  The Mute nodded. He understood. Of course he understood.

  “If I do this for you”—he nodded toward the dog—“then promise me you’ll do everything you can to save her. To save both of them, your girl and my ex-wife. Anything and everything.”

  The Mute nodded. No one left behind, he told himself.

  He couldn’t express the gratefulness he felt at Hill’s act of sacrifice. Leaving his ex-wife’s life in another man’s hands while he tried to save an anonymous dog for no other reason than it was important to that other man. The Mute vowed not to let that act be in vain.

  Samuel Hill searched the eyes of the soldier and found what he was looking for. “All right then,” he said. “I’ll meet you all tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., in Birmingham. Denny’s, of course.” He turned and began a light jog, heading back to the rendezvous point where his car was still parked and waiting.

  See you on the other side, The Mute said to himself.

  He watched Samuel Hill disappear into the woods, and then he turned toward Truck’s old farm. He started doing math in his head.

  Twenty-four mercenaries total, he said to himself.

  Truck took out twelve during the attack on the farm. He’d eliminated five more at the rendezvous spot. Samuel Hill had saved him from one earlier in the night, and they’d found another lying dead next to the body of Samir Sadeq Hamza al-Sadr. Now they’d just dealt with three more here. That was twenty-two enemy soldiers, total, so far. He began trotting toward the south, only one thought filling his mind.

  I must kill two more men tonight.

  43

  Annabel

  “Her.” Trudi keeps her head down, but her voice refuses to submit. “Her!”

  Johannes Schmitzden backhands her again, then again, then a third time. His fingers fold into fists now, and he keeps them rainin’ on her. She tries to ball up, to protect herself, but the awkward way she’s strapped to the bedpost makes that nearly impossible. He keeps hitting her until she finally slumps to the floor.

  Her nose is bleeding now, and she’s beginning to show bruising under her right eye, a grotesque match for the work the mercenaries did on her left eye earlier. Finally Dr. Schmitzden’s work is done. He steps away from her and turns toward me. He’s breathing hard, but he looks satisfied.

  He reaches a hand in my direction, and I flinch. I seen what he just done to Trudi. Is he gonna do the same to me? But he don’t. He don’t hit me at all.

  He strokes my cheek gently.

  Like a mother caressing a child.

  He kneels down so our eyes are level. I see Trudi watching from the bunk. She’s finally stopped eggin’ him on, but I see the anger in her jaw. And the worry. He brushes a strand of hair from my face and looks deeply into my eyes.

  “It.”

  He says it tenderly, but the force of the word hits hard just the same. To this man, I’m just an experiment. A prototype. A lab rat. Nothing more. He stretches to full height and returns to his seat across from me at the table.

  “It won’t be long now,” he says to no one in particular. “Once my men have eliminated Samuel Hill and his companion, we will leave this place. We’ll return to Iraq where”—he nods in the direction of Trudi—“you will have to be a peace offering to my employer. He won’t be happy to know that you killed his nephew. But having your writhing body for revenge will do something toward appeasing him.”

  The old man’s eyes sparkle with possibilities when his gaze returns to me.

  “And, of course, having you back in our possession will keep the money flowing too.” He looks at me, and I see a kind of hungry joy flooding his eyes. Like Christmastime when there’s lots of presents under the tree.

  “There is always some kind of war going on in that part of the world,” he says, “and anyone who can perpetuate that war is valuable to certain men. Your blood will help us perpetuate any war. The vaccines we extract from it will keep the ranks of jihad fighters swelling, healing their wounded, demoralizing their enemies with endless numbers of men who keep coming back from near-death to fight again and again.”

  “It won’t work,” I say. I’m surprised my voice ain’t trembling. “Your experiments are flawed. My mother saw it. She saw it, and that’s why she wanted to leave.”

  “It will work.” Schmitzden seems to be stating a fact, not trying to convince me or anybody that what he says is true. It’s like he’s saying the sun is hot or two plus two is four. As far as he’s concerned, it ain’t even a question of faith, it’s just plain, hard fact. “Your blood, it’s different. Special.”

  “Okay, yeah.” I nod. “I know there’s something different about my blood. Maybe it’s from that stuff you mixed into my DNA. Or maybe it’s just funny blood. Everybody has different things about ’em. That don’t mean my blood makes miracles.”

  “It doesn’t understand,” he says to Trudi, daring her to contradict him again. She don’t. Not this time.

  “My mother understood,” I say. “You said yourself she was brilliant. She said it wouldn’t work. That she’d made a mistake. That it was all a mistake.”

  Schmitzden don’t respond this time. He just looks at me, like he’s trying to decide if I’m a space alien or a cow’s udder turned upside down and put on display in a carnival madhouse. He leans forward, both elbows on the table.

  “Tell me,” he says after a minute, “what else did your mother say?”

  “Lots of things,” I say. Awful things, I think.

  “These were in a book she left you, yes?”

  “Yes.” I don’t know what Dr. Schmitzden is getting at, but I don’t like the way he’s suddenly interested in what I’m saying.

  He holds out his hand. “Give me the book.”

  I’m frozen in my seat. It never occurred to me that he’d want to take the book from me. Something in me can’t let it go. It’s the only connection I have to my life. Truck’s gone. My mother was stolen from me. How can I give up the plain, black book that whispers her words in my ear?

  He slams a hand on the table, making me jump in my seat, and I see he’s pleased by my reaction.

  “Give me the book.”

  There’s a threat in his eyes. He wants me to know that he’ll beat it outta me like he just beat Trudi if I don’t give him my mother’s journal.

  “Why?”

  I’m stalling,
I know it. But I can’t think of anything else to do.

  “It will provide important perspective on the beginnings of our experiment. Perhaps she kept some thoughts to herself that I should take into account.”

  She said it wouldn’t work, moron! She said your whole experiment was bat-crazy! That God alone works true miracles, not men! I want to scream it, but instead I say, “Bitte.” Please. “I want to keep it. Bitte. I need to keep it.”

  He looks annoyed. “It wants to keep Mommy’s journal,” he mimics. Then he resumes his demand. “This book belongs to me. Anything It has belongs to me. Give me the book.”

  “I don’t know where it is.”

  He shakes his head mournfully. “You hear that, Ms. Coffey? It doesn’t remember where the book is. Do you think It wants me to hurt It?”

  “Give him the book, Annabel, honey,” Trudi says. “Give the crazy man the book. We’ll get it back from him later.”

  “I think,” Dr. Schmitzden says, “the book is here, right here in this bunker. I think if I start looking for it, I will find it. What do you think?”

  I want to look away from him, but his eyes won’t allow it.

  “Give me the book.”

  I feel walls crumbling inside me, fortresses that kept me safe, disintegrating under his gaze.

  “It’s in the drawer,” I say at last, motioning to the table in front of me. “In here.”

  He extends his hand, waiting for me to bring out the book and deliver it to him. I know it’s over. I slide open the shallow drawer on my side of the table. When I look inside there, I see Marelda Gregor’s journal, a few pens, my translation notebook, my own notebook journal.

  And a Walther PPQ semiautomatic pistol.

  A man’s gun.

  Loaded.

  Barrel aimed straight across from me. Pointing directly at the midsection of Dr. Johannes Schmitzden. Aimed at the man who is responsible for my life, and for the death of my mother. And my uncle.

  I look at Dr. Schmitzden. He’s waiting. He frowns and shakes his hand toward me, tapping the palm of his right hand with the fingers of his left. I know he won’t wait much longer before simply pushing me out of the way and taking the journal—and the gun—for himself.

  I look to Trudi. She’s watching me closely. Worried. Her right eye is almost swollen shut, but she don’t seem to notice. Give him the book, she mouths. She’s worried this old man really is gonna hurt me.

  I see one of them ghosts suddenly reappear in this room. It’s just a flash of light in the corner of my eye, but I see it clear as day. There’s a man sitting at the table. Both hands out, palms pressing down on the surface. Neither Schmitzden nor Trudi see him.

  In my head I hear a sound. It’s an animal dying, howling after me, begging me not to leave him in the muck and ash of a burned-out forest.

  Then the world collapses around me until there’s nothing but me, my mother’s book, the gun. And Dr. Johannes Schmitzden.

  I take a breath, filling myself with oxygen.

  I reach inside the drawer.

  44

  Trudi

  To Trudi’s ears, the sound of splintering wood that followed the gunshot was actually more noticeable than the gunfire itself. The carbine explosion was surprisingly crisp and quiet.

  Trudi recognized the sound of a silencer on the end of a pistol but couldn’t tell at first where it had come from. She whipped her head toward the steel door that served as entry into the bunker, half hoping, half expecting to see Samuel Hill standing there, saving the day. But there was no one there. They were alone.

  Trudi heard a second muffled explosion, accompanied by more splintering of wood, and now put things into place.

  Dr. Smith jerked backward in his chair after the first shot, a look of true surprise crossing his face. He said nothing. His hand dipped off the table and down toward his midsection. He slumped.

  The second shot appeared to hit the slumping man just below the heart. He gave a grunt, then a sigh. He toppled backward and to the left, taking the chair with him to the ground.

  Trudi heard a ringing in her ears, tried to shake it out, and finally decided to live with it.

  “Annabel,” she said. “Annabel!”

  The girl turned and looked at Trudi with blank eyes. She pulled away from the drawer, and Trudi saw the big gun she held in both her hands. It looked heavy, like the expression on Annabel’s face.

  “Is he dead?” Annabel said. Trudi tried to look past the fallen chair to glimpse the old man. He didn’t appear to be moving.

  “I think so, honey.”

  Annabel nodded and carefully placed the semiautomatic pistol on the now-wobbling table. She sank back into her chair, eyes unblinking, lost in her own world.

  “Annabel.”

  The girl looked up again. Trudi raised her bound hands as high as she could.

  “Somebody may have heard those shots.”

  Annabel stared blankly, uncomprehending at first. Then a switch flipped in her head, and she nodded. She got up from her chair and went to retrieve a knife from the kitchen supplies. When she came to Trudi, she stopped and winced at the sight of her close up. She reached gingerly toward the bruised face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Are you gonna be okay?”

  Trudi tried to smile, in spite of the electricity it sent through her face. “Of course, honey. I’ve gotten worse than this just falling out of bed.”

  Annabel seemed relieved. She reached out with a knife and cut away the zip ties that held Trudi to the wooden beam. Free at last, Trudi tried to stand, then wobbled and sat hard on the bunk bed.

  “Legs went to sleep down there on the floor,” she explained. “Poor circulation, I guess. Give me a minute.”

  Annabel nodded. “Do you think anybody heard?”

  Trudi looked down the tunnel and listened intently. She didn’t see or hear any movement.

  “I think we’re safe for now.” There was a pause. “That was a very brave thing you did, Annabel. Dr. Smith was insane and very, very dangerous.”

  “He was my father.”

  Trudi felt her jaw split, ever so slightly.

  “What?” she said at last. “What did you say?”

  “Johannes Schmitzden was my father. I read it in my mother’s journal. They . . . they came together just so they could make me. So they could have ‘an innocent’ to use in their experiments.”

  “Honey.”

  Trudi didn’t know what else to say, so she reached out her deadened and tingly arms and pulled Annabel into a hug. They didn’t say anything for a minute or two, and then Annabel finally pulled away.

  “Will I go to jail?” the child asked.

  “No,” Trudi said. “We’ll find Samuel. And The Mute. And they’ll make everything just go away.”

  Annabel nodded, trusting Trudi’s words without question.

  “I don’t want to stay in this room no more.”

  Trudi still felt pins and needles throbbing in her feet and ankles, but she stood up anyway. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Annabel recovered her mother’s journal from the table drawer and stuffed it somewhere inside her coat. Then she turned to Trudi. “What about them soldiers guarding the entrance to the tunnel?” she asked.

  Trudi looked thoughtful for a moment. She reached over to the table and hefted the heavy Walther semiautomatic. She checked the clip and then turned back to Annabel.

  “I think this’ll even things out for us.”

  She kept the gun at the ready in her right hand and reached for Annabel’s hand with her left. They began walking.

  Trudi couldn’t help herself, she started counting the round lights that dotted the dim walls of the tunnel. When she got to fourteen, she forced herself to stop counting, to stop noticing. You really are predictable, she scolded herself. Obsessive-compulsive or something. Maybe that makes you a good PI, but it also makes you vulnerable to people like Dr. Smith. And it makes you
annoying.

  It took only a few minutes before the narrow steps that led up to the outside came into view. Annabel looked pale, like she was about to have a panic attack from claustrophobia. When she saw the steps, Annabel released Trudi’s hand and started running toward them, apparently desperate to be free from her underground prison.

  “Annabel, wait!” Trudi hissed. She wanted to get a lay of the land, to gauge where the mercenaries were before they ventured aboveground. The child heard the call and slowed, then stopped, waiting at the foot of the steps. She was whitefaced and breathing hard, but she was fighting the urge to run, trusting Trudi’s voice more than her own instincts.

  Annabel turned back to face Trudi. At that exact moment, two black-clad mercenaries came tumbling down the steps, crashing into the child in a melee of shouts and screams.

  Trudi joined the shouting, raising the Walther pistol, trying to get a clean look at either of the two soldiers. One of them had apparently already been shot multiple times, body limp, head lolling in unseeing finality. It took a few seconds before Trudi understood why. Brown Head had used Blondie as a human shield, protecting himself from gunfire by forcing his comrade’s body to accept the bullets fired in his direction.

  At first Brown Head cowered behind Blondie’s dead form until he understood that the person tangled up in their mess of bodies was the girl, Annabel. With a sudden movement, he shoved his comrade’s body in the direction of Trudi and grabbed Annabel with a forearm around her neck. He raised her high until she became a new shield blocking Trudi’s aim. Annabel started kicking immediately, scratching at his arm with her hands. The soldier looked wildly down the tunnel, registering Trudi’s presence, then back at the tunnel opening above him. He decided to take his chances with Trudi.

  First he shook Annabel hard, then he tightened his grip on her neck. Trudi could see the color fading from the child’s face.

  “Tell her to settle down!” the mercenary shouted to Trudi. “Or I’ll kill her right here and now!”