A noise from the tower carried to him on the breeze, the guard talking into a radio. A moment later a hidden rifle cracked and the bird disappeared, a few feathers floating in the space where it had been.
Evan’s brain was still working on what his eyes had just seen, the imprint of that bird floating in the white space, a visual memory.
A bald eagle.
In Switzerland.
Not likely.
He understood now why the tower guard had relayed word to the sniper to remove it from the picture. René could control a lot, certainly. But not nature.
Not wanting to give away what he’d seen, Evan didn’t dwell. Continuing quickly up through the trees, he berated himself for forgetting the First Commandment—Assume nothing.
He was in North America somewhere. Vermont, maybe. Alaska or Canada. René wanted him to believe he was halfway around the world on the desolate edge of the Alps, a further disincentive to escape.
But he was closer to home than that.
He remembered hearing that whip-poor-will last night, annoyed that he didn’t know what region the damn bird was indigenous to. Jack would’ve chided him for not paying better attention during wilderness-survival skills.
Really, Evan? It took a bald friggin’ eagle to pin you down on a continent?
But this was good news, too. Closer to home meant he was closer to Alison Siegler. And closer to the kid who had called.
Evan hiked to the clearing he’d made it to last time. There was no buck at the water’s edge, no loon in the half-frozen puddle. Just a porcupine feeding in a treetop, sprinkling down needles, forty pounds of quilled bowling ball.
Evan looked up the ridgeline, hoping to catch a glint from a scope to place the sniper. No such luck. Wind whipped his cheeks raw.
He thought about the perfect shot placement that had dropped the buck, two inches behind the shoulder, slightly below the midline of the body, straight through the lung to the upper heart. The tournament-worthy round to knock the bald eagle from the treetop. Even more impressively, both shots had been made from a cold bore.
He searched the ground, spotting a pinecone. He retrieved it, placed it on the flat of his palm, held out his hand, and faced upslope.
A challenge.
He waited. Waited some more.
A muzzle flashed high on the slope, and the pinecone exploded, seemingly at the same instant. Shrapnel flecked his cheeks as the supersonic crack echoed around the bowl of the valley.
Evan’s stomach had leapt into his throat at the impact, but he focused, judging the sound, gauging the distance. A high-power, major-caliber rifle was in play, 30 or bigger. Given that the shooter could take a pinecone off a flattened hand at five hundred meters, he could probably hit critical mass at three times that distance. Committing the sniper’s position to memory, Evan nodded respectfully toward him, lowered his hand, and started back toward the house.
Halfway down the slope, he became aware of a stinging in his palm. A closer examination revealed that a few splinters from the pinecone had been embedded in the skin. He picked them out with his teeth and spit them to the wind.
The guards no longer held their spot by the fire outside the barn. The wide door was rolled back slightly, and he could hear them inside. The tower guard remained alert above, watching Evan’s every move, the binoculars swiveling with him like a part of his face.
Rather than veering toward the porch, Evan continued past the chalet and into the tree line on the other side. He made his way up the southern slope a short distance, the chill razoring beneath his skin. The sun was low, the sky textured with dusk. He didn’t have much more time before the cold would drive him inside.
An outcropping of shale shaved a treeless patch on the mountainside. Evan clambered onto the rock and stood, eyeing the rise, thinking about where he’d tuck in himself if he were behind a sniper scope.
A gulley two-thirds up provided an ideal vantage of the surrounding terrain while guarding the pass. Evan hopped off the rock, found another pinecone, and returned to his position in the open.
He displayed the pinecone on his outstretched hand, held his breath, closed his eyes.
A crack.
The whistle of a round.
A wet thud behind him.
He exhaled, letting the pinecone drop. The sniper to the south was a weaker shot, a fact that Evan filed away for future use. It was a trial of one, sure, but that was all he was willing to risk. Judging by the miss, he was lucky his hand was still connected to his wrist.
His cheeks and nose felt stiff, his flesh gone to rubber. Time to get indoors. Turning back, he eyed where the bullet had blown a hole through the side of a soggy log, revealing clumps of moss and a white conical cap the size of a quail egg.
Drawing close, he knelt with his back to the sniper and pretended to tie his bootlaces. He studied the mushroom.
It grew singly out of a sack at the base of the stem. A thin skein of moss covered the cap. Evan plucked it and ran a nail across the surface, revealing pure white beneath. Amanita virosa.
Destroying angel.
Even a few drops of its juice could shut down a person’s kidneys.
He rose, palming the mushroom to hide it from the sniper. As he started down the mountainside, he pinched at the cap with a thumbnail, chopping it into tiny pieces, which he wadded in his hand.
Breaking from cover, he looked up at the tower guard peering down at him through the graying air. Holding the powdered bits in a loose fist, he walked over toward the barn and the deserted fire.
The tower was behind him now, but he could hear the skinny guard chattering into the radio. Evan neared the barn door, the crates where the narcos sat, the pot hanging over the fire.
He’d barely arrived when the door rolled open, both Dobermans charging at him. Snapping and snarling, they strained their leashes into straight lines. Two narcos spilled out after them, AK-47s raised, barking orders in Spanish.
Evan pointed to the fire, made a shivering gesture. The guards yelled some more, one of them prodding him toward the house with a gun barrel.
He gave no resistance, stumbling from being shoved. Shuddering in his layers of clothes, he hastened his pace toward the porch, dusting off his empty hands.
24
A Complex, Sticky Business
Crimea smelled like sewage, artillery shells, and boiled hot dogs. Candy strolled with Ben Jaggers along a boardwalk overlooking a rocky beach. Holding his arm through his raincoat felt like clutching a stick wrapped in cloth. A head taller than him, she wore leather pants and a bustier top. She’d teased out her blond hair voluminously, hoping to pass for a local girl. Jaggers was playing the role of a rich married guy out for a little fun, though he seemed to have forgotten to tell his face. He slouched along in a plaid button-up and brown slacks.
She felt like a Bentley being taken for a spin by the mechanic’s kid.
Girls passed by, laughing and waving lipstick-smeared cigarettes. They were magnificent creatures, as girls from this region of the world were, all fuck-you sneers and aggressive makeup. Tights wrapped their impossibly long legs, and they wore white platform boots capped with fur, trotting along with the graceful force of Clydesdales.
As they wafted by in clouds of hair spray, smoke, and knockoff Chanel No. 5, the sullen little man at Candy’s side didn’t so much as raise his head to take in the girl-power scenery. His nose twitched, his mouth pursing as if on the verge of hocking a loogie. He smelled vaguely of mothballs. A camera dangled from around his neck, bouncing off what passed for his chest.