Gone Cold (31 page)

Once we hit bottom, we bound through a red metal door into the parking garage.

“This way,” Ostermann said. “The concierge hid your bike near the service entrance. So you may have caught a bit of luck after all.”

A few seconds later a big blue tarp came into view.

We ran toward it and Ostermann pulled the cover free as I held on to Hailey.

I set her on the bike.

“You’ve only one helmet,” Ostermann said.

“Put it on Hailey.”

“I’d argue, but Magda always said you were pretty thick in the head, so you should be fine.”

I peeled off my jacket and helped Hailey slip into it. Then I got onto the bike.

Ostermann stared at my black T-shirt, which had a tiny hole just over my heart from Duncan MacBride’s bullet in Liverpool.

“It’s fairly cold out there,” he said.

“I’ll think warm thoughts.”

I lit the ignition.

“Speaking of warm thoughts,” he said, “mind if I call your sister?”

The machine roared to life, all five hundred horsepower.

I turned and looked at Ostermann, expecting to find a smile. But he’d been dead serious.

“All right, then,” I said.

I grinned and showed Ostermann my middle finger.

In my mirror I saw him smile as Hailey and I sped off.

Chapter 63

TWELVE YEARS AGO

I’ve read about a man named Gustavo Zapata. He lives in Tampa and works out of his home. Some papers call him a vigilante. And at first glance, I suppose, that’s what he is. He commits wrongs, in order to put things right.

This past week I resigned from the United States Marshals Service.

Sold the Georgetown home and returned most of the money to Tasha’s parents. They fought me at first. But when I mentioned donating the money to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they had a sudden change of heart. Somewhat surprisingly, they agreed that it was a brilliant idea. “Just let us do it,” Tasha’s father said to me. “You know, for tax purposes.”

Of course.

I park my Ford Explorer and step into a motor vehicle dealership in Arlington, Virginia.

A salesman immediately approaches. “How can I help you today, sir?”

“I want to trade in my SUV. Get something smaller.”

“What kind of vehicle are you looking for?” he asks.

My eye catches on a sexy black sportbike.

“Ah,” the salesman says, “the Kawasaki Ninja 500R. Great middleweight bike. Perfect for starters. A regular thoroughbred when it comes to handling.”

“I’ll take it.”

Yesterday I signed a lease on a studio apartment on Dumbarton Street in the District. It’s a tight fit, even for one person. But the lease is only for six months. By then I’m sure I’ll be more in the mood to find myself something else. Something a little bigger. A little nicer. Right now, though, I’m just too grief-stricken to do any serious looking.

The transaction for the motorcycle takes the better part of two hours.

When the deal’s finally done, the salesman offers to have the bike washed and waxed.

“Not necessary,” I tell him. “I’ll drive it off the lot as is.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Fisk. Will you at least let me fill her with gas?”

“Have at it.”

Twenty minutes later I make a right turn out of the dealership.

The bike rides smoothly. It’s nice and light, comfortable. Yet packed with plenty of power. It handles even better than I’d expected.

Only once I’m on the road do I realize why I decided on a bike. On a bike you have to concentrate on the road.
Really
concentrate, or else it’s all over. End of story. Take your mind off the road for a second and you’re done. A car, on the other hand, leaves you plenty of time to think.

Too much time, especially during a fourteen-hour ride from Arlington to Tampa.

After the summer I’ve had, I could use a little time off from thinking. Just now I’d prefer to concentrate on the endless stretch of blacktop in front of me.

According to the articles I’ve read, Gustavo Zapata is a former Army Ranger. His referrals usually come from government types. Overall, his business is very hush-hush. But I figure I can find him. If I can find fugitives in every corner of the world, I’m pretty sure I can locate one good guy residing in the center of the Sunshine State. And if I can’t, well, then I have no business considering doing what he does anyway.

Which is retrieve children who have been abducted by noncustodial parents and taken overseas to a country that doesn’t recognize U.S. custody decisions.

Apparently, thousands of American parents are placed in this distressing situation every year.

As a formal U.S. Marshal, this is something I think I’d excel at. And more important, I’d be doing some good. I’m under no illusion; I won’t be able to handle stranger abductions because they’d hit too close to home. But parental abductions are a different animal entirely. And if it’s at all possible for me to save a few mothers and fathers from going through what Tasha and I went through this summer, I at least have to give it a try.

I know my way around foreign countries.

I know how to lie low.

I know how to fight and how to fire a gun.

And perhaps best of all, as I search the globe for other parents’ missing children, perhaps one day I can find my own. Or at least locate the man who took her.

I want to know who he is.

I want to know why.

And I want to make him answer for what he’s done.

But for the next fourteen hours I’ll remove all this from my mind and concentrate on the highway.

*   *   *

After a couple of hours stopping and starting on several different roads, I finally reach exit 84A toward Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

With the Beltway and Virginia behind me and the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in front of me, I check my mirrors and steer my bike toward the exit to the interstate.

When I reach the ramp, I take a deep breath.

Lean into the turn.

Hit I-95 and accelerate.

Epilogue

A couple of years ago, at the suggestion of a sex peddler in Odessa, I read a book that described Moldova as the unhappiest place on earth.

Yet it is in a small village in this impoverished, landlocked country, where for the first time in twelve years, I truly feel happiness.

The drive from London to Moldova was an exhausting 1,600 miles and took roughly thirty hours on A4. In Belgium, I ditched the Dodge Tomahawk in favor of a somewhat more modest bike—an Italian MV Agusta F4.

We’ve been here in the former Soviet Republic four months and the weather’s finally begun to break. The villagers tell us to expect heavy showers and thunderstorms in the early summer but milder temperatures into July and August.

The best of it is that Hailey’s finally coming around. The physical symptoms of her withdrawal peaked just before we arrived, complicating things at the border—heftily raising the price of our bribes—and causing us some added difficulty as I searched for our new living arrangements.

Those first few days after we arrived were downright frightening.

Despite the frigid temperatures, Hailey was constantly sweating. Her stomach cramped so badly she was sure she was dying. Severe muscle spasms in her back and neck consistently led to horrific migraines.

The migraines made Hailey sensitive to light, so we spent much of that first week in total darkness, with her writhing in pain on a worn mattress and me running outdoors to empty alternating buckets of vomit and diarrhea.

She couldn’t (or wouldn’t) eat, and I had to beg—and sometimes even force her—to drink enough water to keep her from getting dehydrated.

One evening she was in such obvious distress that I finally broke down and risked our delicate new freedom by phoning one of the few people on the globe whom authorities might actually expect me to call.

“I will come there,” she said the moment I finished explaining the situation to her. “I will come to Moldova and help you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ana,” I told her. “You can’t leave your home and career in Warsaw to help someone you barely know and haven’t seen in nearly two years.”

“Do not be an idiot, Simon. I
do
know you; it is you who obviously does not know me. Because if you knew me at all, you would know that I cannot
not
come to Moldova to help you now that you have called.”

I knew her better than she thought. Though I could never tell her (and had trouble even admitting it to myself), it was precisely why I had called her. I needed Ana as much as anyone could need someone else. Truth is, I’d needed her ever since I last left Warsaw almost two years ago. I’d just been too goddamn stubborn—too much of a bloody
Fisk
—to concede the fact to myself. Because I hadn’t wanted to pull her away from everything she knew to join me in my desperate and melancholy world.

But now things were different, weren’t they? Hailey was once again in my arms. And my head, if not my life, was full of anticipation and promise. I finally felt as though I had something to offer the beautiful and brilliant Polish lawyer Anastazja Staszak—even as a fugitive living with a fugitive teenage daughter in a ramshackle cottage in one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe.

*   *   *

Ana arrived in Moldova twenty-eight hours later.

Following a few days under Ana’s care, Hailey’s physical symptoms started to subside. But if I’d thought we were through the worst of the withdrawal, I was wrong.

Because even then Hailey could hardly sleep. And on the rare occasions she finally dozed off, she woke minutes later in fits and starts. Howling for more gear.

“Glass, flake, some
jellies,
” she’d cry.

Something, anything to ease the anxiety and irritability and sleeplessness. A number of times, in hysterical rants, she offered sexual favors in return for a hit, and I’d have to step outside and have myself a cry. Only Ana could ever calm her and only at times when she was willing to be calmed.

But things are much better now.

In the meantime I’ve been studying Romanian, the primary language spoken in Moldova. Thus far, Ana’s gotten us by with her Russian. But I suspect that at some point, we may have to move to another part of the country, likely on short notice. And we may well end up in a village with no Russian speakers.

With her flare for languages Ana’s picking things up much more quickly than I am. And more and more frequently, she’s insisting I speak to her exclusively in Romanian. Frustrating as hell at times, but I’m trying.

Meanwhile, Ana’s English over the past couple of years has improved exponentially. Her command of the language is absolutely superb. Yet her Eastern European accent remains fully intact—and as sexy as ever.

“You may compliment my English all you want,” she tells me as I sit down at our cottage’s lone table, “but only if you do so in Romanian.”

She clearly hasn’t gotten any softer in the past two years either.

But it’s one of the many things I love about her.

*   *   *

Hailey hasn’t been very forthcoming about her experiences over the past twelve years. But I’ve read enough about the psychology of kidnap victims to know not to push her. As difficult as that may be at times.

Clearly she developed a strong emotional bond with Terry over the past decade. Whether it’s Stockholm syndrome or something else entirely, I can’t say. I
can
say that if it weren’t for Ana, I’d be having a much tougher time dealing with all this.

Ana has also gotten far more information out of Hailey than I ever would have been able to.

“There was no sexual relationship between them,” Ana has assured me. “Of that I am certain she is not lying. As awful as it may be to hear right now, she still thinks of him as her father. And it is going to take time for her to come to accept what truly happened to her.”

“Has she been to school?” I asked.

“She claims to have been home-schooled. To what extent I am not sure, but she is a very smart girl so maybe she did not need such a rigorous program in order to reach the educational level she has reached.”

“And what level is that, do you think?”

Ana shrugged but not diffidently; she was genuinely struggling with the answer.

“It is difficult to separate the emotional from the intellectual, Simon. Emotionally, she is still very much a child. Intellectually, I would say she is approaching adulthood. If she wants to go to university in a few years, she will eventually catch up, I am sure.”

I sighed. “And here I had her matriculating at Edinburgh University in the fall.”

Ana smiled warmly. “Her dreams—and yours for her—will not be out of reach for long, Simon. You just need to give her time. And space. And love. Love, most of all.”

“What happened in Dublin?” I asked. “Did she tell you?”

“At the pub, you mean?” She looked away. “Hailey thought Elijah Welker was one of Jack Noonan’s men. He had been following her since Glasgow. She thought he meant to take the money so that Noonan could kill her father. She thought that was what Noonan had wanted all along.”

I nodded. “Has she mentioned Tasha at all?”

Ana shook her head.

“I don’t know what I’ll tell her about her mother,” I said. “Over the past twelve years I’d convinced myself I was innocent in Tasha’s death. But I wasn’t. I didn’t fully realize it—or maybe
admit it to myself
is a more accurate phrase—until I was in that warehouse with Terry.”

She placed her hands on top of mine. “You cannot accept the blame, Simon. It will do no one any good. Not you and certainly not Hailey.”

I lowered my eyes to the table. “She talks about him still. Doesn’t she?”

“Terry? Yes. She talks about him more than anything else. For twelve years he lied to her, Simon. He manipulated her, kept her cut off from most of the world. In the beginning I believe he censored everything she read or watched on television. He brainwashed her. I do not think she spent most of the past twelve years in a basement. But in a way, it was like that for her. He kept her in a cage simply by keeping her in his heart, and making her believe that he was the only person alive who loved her.”