A shattering pain shot through his right shoulder and the bullet ripped his flesh and damaged his clavicle. Sam screamed, more from shock than pain. The cold wind and the freezing rain had numbed his skin and the adrenaline of riding for his life added to his body’s survival reflex, but not feeling the pain did not trivialize the injury. Sam ducked his head down behind the horse’s neck and held on for dear life, but the blood he was losing threatened a black out. More shots clapped, but now he was aware that some of them came from ahead. Sam was disheartened at the fact that he was not outrunning them after all, but only rode the horse right into the approaching onslaught. They had ambushed him.
Now I’m fucked, he thought as his head started spinning. His shoulder and chest burned like fire and acid. The wounded quarry cringed as the snapped bone’s ragged ends wriggled inside the bruised tissue and they saw him flop around loosely on top of the rogue horse. With every gallop the limp body of their target slid gradually down the left side of his horse and they watched his arms flailing in the flash of the lightning. By the next flash of the rumbling clouds the horse was without rider and the two men chasing Sam on horseback halted their own horses to investigate. He could not have been far, having fallen seconds before.
What they did not count on was the approaching lights that came with the hail of shots fired from ahead.
“Get off my land! Schweine!” a man’s voice shouted through the pouring rain, and another gunshot flowered in orange sparks in the pitch dark. The two lights became four, then six, and the men who pursued Sam had no choice but to abandon their search. All they could do was hope that he was dead, that the shot was fatal, because they had no way of telling where they had hit him. They knew better than to continue their hunt onto the neighboring land and be discovered. They were trespassers, not only on the owner’s smallholding, but in Germany itself. What they were doing there could never be exposed; therefore they had to remain faceless. They had to be no more than phantoms here. No-one was even supposed to know that they were here, but the problem was that Sam Cleave had in his possession the camera that harbored their likeness and the small tape that captured their execution of civilians from Denmark, Czech Republic and Germany.
They retreated to the nearby hill where their captain was waiting with the dog handlers. He had been watching the whole thing through his binoculars from higher ground, under cover of an overhanging cliff face which averted the worst of the wetness and wind.
“That’s just great,” one of the two men said as they reached the makeshift base in the excavated rock. “Mueller has him now.”
“It does not matter,” the captain replied, “because the journalist is either dead or badly injured. The camera could have fallen by the wayside and Mueller would not care to look for anything in the vicinity when he collects the man in this weather.”
“So I suppose we are staying here for the night?” the other rider sighed.
“Yes!” the captain seethed, infuriated not only by the inconvenience of having to use his precious time to chase after an escaped captive, but also at the insolence of a spoiled mercenary. “We are staying here overnight. As soon as those lights return to Mueller’s house we are going back there to search for the camera. If we do not find it, Mueller and his family will come to an unfortunate end in a house fire tonight!” He lunged at the whining soldier, “And in the meantime we are staying in this cold dark cave and we are not going to make any noise or make a fire, do you understand? This is not a paid vacation; it is a mission, princess!”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied almost inaudibly with all his colleagues’ eyes on him in quiet reprimand. When the captain got pissed, they’d all be in for the high jump and they knew it. They did not need the captain to get his temper challenged in these circumstances. Since the archaeologist party found their hiding place everything just went downhill. According to the plans they were supposed to be long gone by now — the treasures catalogued, the area combed for any other ruins that might contain any relics pertaining to their scavenger hunt and a quiet and smooth retreat back across the border.
They watched from their vantage point as the beams of hunting lights bobbed up and over the bumps of the countless of small hunting paths between the border fence and Mueller’s large farm house, enclosed by tall trees and thick brush. As soon as Mueller’s party disappeared under cover of the trees in the yard, the mercenaries grouped and stole down to the open patch of land where the journalist fell from his horse.
For a long while the six scouts and shooters scanned the long growing weeds in the downpour that just would not subside. Cursing and coughing, sniffling and speculating, they crawled in the clearing, looking for the camera but they found nothing at all. He must have had it on him, tied to him, the assumed, and that meant nothing good for Mueller or Sam Cleave.
Chapter 6 — Convergence
Radu was infatuated with his loot. Hours later, after the dust had settled, the young boy sat down at one of the park ponds under a massive tree that concealed him from anyone walking by. He was small enough, but he made sure he would not be discovered easily by checking the area like a proper thief. He could feel his mother’s presence around him, but he brushed it off for now. Again he looked at the macabre playing card that was bewitching his senses and he suddenly felt a strange familiarity with it. He assumed it was because the boy on the painting was about his age, but he related to it in some hidden way.
He heard voices approaching and jumped, thrusting the card under his leg where he was sitting. Even though he was certain he had effectively fled from the people he robbed, he still felt as if he was being watched. He did not like the distinct apprehension he felt all the time since burdening himself with the possession of the card, yet he could not imagine getting rid of it. It gave off the air of something really precious, like a king’s scepter or a queen’s crown, and he knew that, if he held on to it for long enough he would find someone who would appreciate such a piece enough to buy it from him.
A couple passed him, two people so deeply in love and engorged in one another’s company that they did not pay attention to the homeless boy’s nervous demeanor. They looked at him sitting at the pond, casting stones into the water, and promptly returned their attention and affection to each other. Again Radu pulled the card out and stared at the details. Was it shimmering just a little? He blinked hard a few times to make sure the stress of running away did not fatigue him so much that he was seeing things. God knows he had seen things before, things he could never tell anyone. What he had seen since he was very small had at first troubled him, but after the death of his mother he had not really had any of those episodes again. Until now.
His hand began to shake, his fingers sweating at the touch of the magical card. At once young Radu felt his mother’s spirit vividly, more vividly than ever. His little heart pounded his chest at the foreboding feeling he was suddenly immersed in. It was almost dark and he had to find a place to sleep, yet the spell persisted and he closed his eyes to find his mother standing before him in the dark. Radu’s bottom lip quivered at the vision and he had to wipe off the saliva that was leaking from the corner of his mouth.
She just stood there in the clothing she had died in — a pink skirt down to her ankles, bare feet with a delicate golden chain hanging loosely around her ankle and a lace-up white blouse that truly stood out under her mahogany locks falling down to her waist.
“Mama,” Radu wept. He missed her so much. Until this moment he had thought that he was perfectly alright with being an independent little rebel in the steps of his father. But now that she stood before him, her throat slit and leaking onto her ample bosom just like she looked the last time he saw her, he felt shattered.