The Crypt (8 page)

And now she had another message and she completely just danced around the Great Market Hall and fucked the goose on it.

“Damn!” she slapped the wall beside the exit door. People had been coming in. Two doors were wide open when she exclaimed. People in the street looked her way. Sarah looked at them.

A red three-wheeled vehicle sat parked at an odd angle on the sidewalk just outside the door. On the side of the vehicle it said in English
Street Coffee
. It looked like a miniature UPS truck but red and the back door lifted straight up above the rear of the small truck displaying the menu and prices of this mobile coffee shop. There was one wheel in the front of the vehicle and two in the rear. It was an Italian model. An automobile they call an
Ape
and it was red.

She couldn’t believe it. A vehicle had been the furthest thing from her mind when looking for a red Ape. She had thought gorilla. Couldn’t Vivian be more specific?

Four men stood around it with coffee cups in their hands. The seller of the coffee was off to the side wearing an apron and tending to a machine of some kind.

The doors closed in front of her. Three of the men turned away and starting talking again.

Sarah didn’t waver. She stared long enough to see that the man who was staring back at her was Armond Stuart.

There could be no doubt. He was the same height, about the same weight and build but his face was slightly different and his hair had been chopped to a military buzz cut. There was a new scar that traversed the side of his jaw. His nose looked different but it was his eyes that told her she’d found the right man.

She’d looked into those eyes before. She’d seen the evil in them and now she watched as they widened. He was just realizing who she was.

The moment had come. Her stomach turned as adrenaline secreted throughout her body. She hadn’t moved. Her hand still rested on the wall. She leaned in closer, resting her shoulder against the brick. Her right hand had to remain free and clear. The gun was close. In under two seconds Armond could have a bullet in either eye, his brain nothing but mashed squash.

The three men around him were dressed in suits. Not the American government kind. More of a professional bodyguard kind. Armond wasn’t playing games anymore. He was getting more serious about staying alive as probably hundreds of people, including many police forces, were hunting him.

Armond’s mouth moved. He whispered something to his men. Just like a slow-motion scene in a movie, all three men turned toward her very slowly.

Hungarians hustled by, bags in their arms, opening and closing the doors as Sarah and the four men watched each other, neither one making a move.

Her hatred for him continually screamed at her to attack. Her rational side explained the futility of it. If she were to draw her weapon and begin shooting, Armond’s bodyguards would do the same. Could she survive such an assault? How many witnesses would there be? Was this one man her end goal? Kill him and she could die too? Was that all that mattered? Vivian had said something about seeing his new face. Maybe that was all this was supposed to be?

Maybe, but no, she didn’t want to die nor did she want to spend the rest of her life in a Hungarian prison for murder. Armond would have stolen the life of another girl if that happened.

In the half a minute they stared at each other Sarah realized that today was not a good day to kill him.

She eased off the wall and slowly stepped through the door toward them. They all continued to stare at her. Two of the guards reached inside their jackets, no doubt to caress the butts of their weapons.

She stopped about seven feet from the foursome. It felt like the world stopped around them as the tension rose.

She stared at him as hard as she could, memorizing every facial expression, every dimple, every eye movement.

“You’re looking good, Sarah,” Armond said.

She didn’t respond. The two brutes lifted their arms out in unison, both holding a small compact piece.

“Can’t fight your own battles?” Sarah asked.

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he said while shaking his head back and forth. “You are one seriously hard person to kill. I swear, if the world experienced nuclear war, you and the cockroaches would survive along with those scorpions and beetles or whatever the fuck. But now things have changed.”

“How so?”

She felt her anger rising past controllability. Her mind raced across possible scenarios.
Draw their fire. Shoot in self-defense
.
Kill Armond and walk away after an investigation. Try to execute the guards too. Vermin needed to die. That’s my job
.

“For many reasons. You’ve seen my face. The time and money I spent on it has now been wasted. Also, you’re in Hungary. That tells me that you’ve traveled a long way to hunt me down. You’re becoming a nuisance. You and Vivian have to go. And I’ve now realized something else.”

“What’s that?”

She stood in the mid-afternoon sun, listening to her sister’s murderer and with the control of a thousand men, refrained from diving for his throat and strangling him to a fucking bloody pulp. She had no idea where her self-control came from, only that she despised rules. The rules that stopped her. Even though she knew he was a psychopath and he was responsible for many ruined lives, she couldn’t throttle him to a mass of blood and skin.

“I’ve realized that nothing I do will ever stop you. I cannot continue my business until you’re dead. You’re like a fucking Jack-in-the-box. You keep popping up. How did you know where to find me? Vivian? Of course,
how
could you know without her? And since I can’t stop her because she’s already dead, I have to kill you. Oh, and by the way, I know your sister is dead because I killed her myself. But, we both know that.”

She knew he was goading her to make a move. Taunting her like a carrot to a horse. Her fingers twitched. One bullet. It would be done. She was tough. She could handle prison.

One bullet.

In the second she decided to kill him, she reached back for her weapon.

Her hand was behind her back, gripping the butt of the police gun she’d stolen two nights ago. She lifted it out of her pants. In that second, the two guards who already had weapons in their hands lifted theirs up to aim at Sarah.

She didn’t care. This was it. The end. This was her mission after all.

She pulled the gun free and went to bring it around.

Then her hand went instantly numb.

A blackout was coming.

“No!” she shouted.

Her arm went numb. The gun fell from her grasp and hit the pavement. She met the concrete a second later.

Then it was over. The blackout lasted two seconds.

She looked up. Both guards had lowered their weapons. Perceiving no threat they had decided to not fire.

“Well done Sarah. You really know how to scare people. What was that? Why did you fall? Got brain cancer or something? Epileptic?”

She grabbed the gun that lay on the ground beside her and stood up, jamming the weapon back in her pants. It was obvious that Vivian didn’t want her to shoot anyone today. Vivian had taken control of her body at the exact moment she had planned on using the weapon thereby telling her not to. There was no written message to receive. Only one of body language.

It also told Sarah something else. Vivian had control of her body and could exact that control at any time. That kind of power over her wasn’t good for Sarah. Using her for messages was one thing. Taking her body over to stop her from doing something was another thing altogether.

“There will be another day. You and I will have our moment,” Sarah said.

“I’m sure we will.”

Someone grabbed her arm from behind.

Sarah instantly turned, clamped her left hand on the person’s wrist and used her right to grab the elbow. In the second before she rammed the person’s elbow straight up, breaking it in half, she realized that the person was Parkman.

“Let’s go. We’re finished here.”

He pulled her away. She went willingly.

“What were you doing? I saw you from thirty feet away. You reached for your gun and then fell down. I thought they’d shot you. What the hell were you doing?”

“Vivian interrupted me.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“The same thing happens when she gives me a message. My hands go numb and then I fall. When I reached for my gun, she did that.”

“To stop you?”

Sarah nodded her head as she turned around and looked behind her. Armond and his bodyguards had disappeared.

“Who were all those men in suits?” Parkman asked.

“They’re his bodyguards.”

“No, I didn’t mean the three guys standing with Armond. I was talking about the ten men standing beside three black Cadillac Escalades across the street. When you reached for your weapon and then fell, all ten of those men pulled out some kind of weapon of their own and took up position around Armond and his men. Before the bodyguards even lifted their guns, these men had them in their sights. A major gun battle came within one second of happening. The only thing that saved everyone’s life was when Armond’s guards dropped their weapons. The ten men in suits lowered theirs and stepped back.”

Sarah was stunned. She turned around again. No one was in sight. No men in suits. No Armond. No bodyguards. No Escalades. Only regular people shopping for fruit and vegetables.

“Do you know who they were?” Parkman prodded. “It was weird. They all wore beige fedoras.”

“Those men are with the American government. I think you and I need to talk, Parkman. I’m in some kind of trouble.”

Chapter 7

Parkman got Sarah back to the Hotel Erzsebet where he’d rented the room for another night. It was already going on 3:15pm.

“We can’t stay here,” Sarah said.

“Why not?” Parkman asked. He was in the act of unpacking something from his small suitcase, a toothpick in his mouth again. “They think we’re leaving today. In the morning we can go to the airport. This evening both of us can give Imre a statement of what happened at the Market Hall. Let him and his men hunt Armond down. He’s connected. Imre can get our description out to other agencies.”

“You’ve used a credit card to reserve this room. Everyone will know where we are, including Armond. The Hungarian authorities have asked us to leave the country by today. When we don’t leave they will want to know why. Sure we can surrender a statement but they’re going to want to know how we knew where Armond was in the first place. They may think it suspicious considering they already think that it’s my sole purpose in being here. Therefore, in order to figure this all out and stay under the radar we need to get out of here. No surprises. By staying here we could be the ones surprised and you know I hate that.”

“Okay, where do you suggest we go?”

“I’ve rented a room several blocks from here.”

Parkman looked at her. “When did you do that?”

“This morning. So I could do this,” she said as she used both hands to wave past her braided hair.

Parkman turned back to his suitcase and started moving things around to pack the rest of his belongings.

“Okay. You’re right. We leave in five minutes. We should go out the back door and catch a cab behind the building or on another street. No doubt someone is already watching the front.”

Sarah turned away and used the adjoining door to access her room.

“There’s something else that disturbs me about this morning,” she shouted through the open door.

“What’s that?” Parkman replied.

“If those American government men found me so easily that they could position themselves where they did in such an advantageous place, where were the Hungarian authorities? You and I were there because of Vivian’s note. Armond and his men were there as Vivian said they would be. But no cops were present. Only the Sophia Project people. Why no cops?”

Parkman stepped into the doorframe. “Sophia Project?”

“We’ll talk more about it on the way. But answer me that. Why no cops? You’re a cop. Is there an American government agency that could have the kind of power to supersede another country’s police force? Or are these government men just that good? Because if they are, and if they followed me to that street behind the Market, then they are
really
good. And I mean really good. That kind of good unsettles me.”

Parkman stepped closer. “They scared me too and I’ve been a cop a long time. But don’t worry. We’ll look into this and find out what their mandate is. America’s a free country. It isn’t State run. We never bought into the Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx left his stamp in other parts of the world. Not in America. So you’re a free girl right now. You really have nothing to worry about.”

Sarah grabbed her bags, set them on the floor by the door and looked up at Parkman.

“I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re wrong here. These men are powerful. The last thing the guy said to me was that I was now property of the United States Government. That was why they were there this morning. They can’t afford to have me killed. They need me for something. I think they want to do tests on me. They’re watching. They won’t let this go.”