4017

The narrow point of the cool, black blade pressed firmly against the mound of flesh sagging between his chin and throat. It was an awkward position for me, standing behind him, arm crooked around his neck at an odd angle just so I could hold the knife this way, but I wanted him to see it; he had to know I was serious or this might not work. He was struggling his wrists against the zip-ties binding his hands together through the back of the solid oak desk chair, but a quick elbow to the base of his neck stopped that. His breathing was sharp and stuttered, through the glove on my left hand I could feel his skin getting hotter. Once again he asked who I was, what I wanted. I pulled the tape recorder from my left pocket, made sure the playback was set to slow, pressed play, and heard a deepened, ominous version of my own voice come from the silver device. It all comes down to this.

The night before, I had no problem sleeping.

It might have been the 24 hours plus I'd been awake, or the boring flight and the mental strain of pretending to be someone else for the benefit of someone who can get you the things you need. It might also have been that I made sure not to think about what I'd probably have to do in the morning.

The idea came to me as naturally as anything else, I just asked myself how I would do it, and the answer came. Just as when I asked myself how I was going to get into his bank account, how to get his home address, how to maintain surveillance of his house, or how to get access to his hotel room, the question of how to find out who Nathan Comstock works for (besides the Fredericksburg school district), what he wants with me, and why he's fled here to Vienna, Austria was an easy question indeed. Doing it, that was the hard part.

I had to wake up earlier than I wanted to, but I had to be up at least 2 hours before him. He'd had a longer day than I, leaving the Washington D.C. airport around 6AM and not arriving here until after midnight. His room was booked for another night, and as far as I could tell, all he had to do here was drop some checks off at a bank. If I were him, I'd be sleeping in today; and that's what I bet on.

First I'd need supplies. A ski mask, plastic zip-ties, a digital voice recorder with speed control, and some leather gloves; these would be the difficult things. If they had K-Marts in downtown Vienna, I'd be set. Unfortunately, I knew it would take at least two different stores. The rest -- rubber bands, paper clips, and a thumb tack -- those I knew I could get from my hotel's business center.

I walked the rest of the way to the Ambassador Hotel once my shopping spree was done with. I didn't need any cab drivers ready to give descriptions of me if this all went downhill. I walked with my purchases in a plastic bag, then when I was near the hotel I went into a small cafe where morning patrons were sipping orange juice and coffees and speaking rapid German, and found the lone bathroom wherein I removed the voice recorder from its packaging and inserted the batteries (wearing gloves), and began recording my questions. It would be doing the talking, not me.

Comstock's door lock turned a happy green when I slid my card key into the slot. I prayed he was still sleeping, but as I opened the door a crack I could hear a shower running inside the room. Slight change of plans. If he was awake, he was unpredictable. He could have made plans already, ordered room service, or requested maid service. I gingerly pulled the door back closed and retreated back to the elevator area at the end of the hall. I picked up the small phone resting near a pad of paper and a set of pens on a long, ornate wooden table and dialed for the front desk. I explained that I was Nathan Comstock from room 4017, that I hadn't gotten much sleep last night so I'll be sleeping through the morning, so please make sure there are no phone calls or housekeeping visits.

"And what of your breakfast order set for 8:30? Would you still like that brought up?" the voice asked.

"Cancel it," I said, hanging up.

The security bar, the evolved version of the security chain, was closed on Comstock's door. Any idiot knows to shut it, so it was an expected obstacle. I opened the door as far as I could, listening for any noises but only heard the shower head running and variable splashes of water against the shower floor indicating there was a person inside. When the door stopped against the security bar, I took one of the rubber bands from my right pocket and looped it tightly around the top of the bar and tried to stretch it to reach the wall inside the room, just near the doorframe. It reached, just barely, so I stuck it to the wall with a thumbtack. The principle of these security bars, just like security chains, is that they can only be opened when the door is closed. When the door is opened as much as the bar allows, the bar is blocked by the small knob on the door, so you couldn't just reach your hand inside and open it. Security chains can simply be cut with some bolt or wire cutters, and so the security bar was invented.

But with the rubber band pulling the bar towards the wall, as I slid the door shut again the band pulled the bar away from the door on its own. Another swipe of the key and a turn of the handle, and the door was free to be opened. This is why these doors also have deadbolts, though any idiot doesn't know to lock that.

The room was rather dark with the drapes shut, but from what I could see it was a rather lushly decorated room with royal blue accents against off-white walls. A sliver of light spilled from beneath the bathroom door at the end of the room and the shower was still running. I slipped the blank ski mask I'd bought over my head, adjusted the holes so I could see, and started looking around. One of the beds wasn't made, so he must have just gotten up, ordered breakfast, and headed to the bathroom. There was a heavy oak desk at the other end of the room, on it was a soft leather bag that probably contained a laptop computer, and strewn across it was a fabric belt with large, clear plastic pockets meant to be worn under your pants to hide your valuables from muggers or pickpockets. I zipped one of the pockets opened and pulled out a white letter-size envelope, inside it were at least 30 certified bank checks, from four different banks. I wasn't sure if I should take them or not. The FBI might want them as evidence, though if they were illegally obtained I doubted they'd be much use.

I waited about eight minutes for Nathan Comstock to come out of the bathroom. When the shower stopped, I darted to the wall and ducked behind the untouched bed. Then the sink ran for a bit, then the toilet flushed, then the door finally opened. Comstock came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe, he swaggered over to the small couch near the window where his suitcase was lying open and stood over it for a moment, looking at his clothes by the light of the open bathroom door.

Good a chance as any, I thought.

I got up and crept around the beds and stood behind him as he stood next to the draped window and fished through his suitcase and picked up two white cotton socks. I felt a quick pang of guilt in my mind, but blocked it out just as quickly. This was going to hurt.

I grabbed his neck and slammed his head against the window to a muted thud, he let out a quick shriek which I ended by covering his mouth with a bundle of drapery I grabbed, then kneed him in the back sharply. So he knew I was there, now to scare him.

I pulled his body away from the window by the front of the neck and the left wrist and pushed him over to the bed so he keeled over it on his stomach, pulled my knife from my pocket, flipping it open, and then I turned his head to the side and covered his mouth while I plunged the blade of the knife into the mattress just a few inches from his widening eyes. He was still gripping the pair of white socks in his right hand, so I yanked them out and stuffed them in his mouth. So he was scared, now to make him feel vulnerable.

Nudity is about the most vulnerable a person can be, so I sliced the pathetic terrycloth belt from the robe with the knife and pulled the robe off of him by grabbing the neck and yanking downwards; his arms bent backwards wildly as they slid from the sleeves. I kept my other hand pressed firmly downward on his neck just below his wet black hair, pinning him onto the bed as he lay there wet, pink, and exposed. He probably thought he was about to be raped, so what would follow might be a bit of a relief for him.

I brought the knife to his neck and lifted him up and backed him over to the desk chair and sat him down in it, then brought his arms around behind him and tightened them inside the makeshift handcuffs I'd already made from zip-ties as I stood behind him. I was pretty sure he hadn't seen me yet. He just kept panting through his nose and making low groaning noises in his throat.

When my deepened, slowed-down voice came from the recorder held a few inches from his ear, it said, "I've been given clearance to kill you if I want to, but it isn't necessary, so if you're a good little boy -- don't make a fuss, and answer all my questions -- this might not be the last room you ever see. Understand?" I paused the recording.

Comstock groaned again, then let out a low sob. The socks still in his mouth, snot began bubbling from his nostrils with each breath. He nodded slowly.

The recording continued, "I think you know who I work for," Comstock nodded, "Our mutual employer has some concerns regarding recent behavior on your part. Particularly, why you've withdrawn all of your money and fled here. Speak." I paused it again.

I pulled the socks from his mouth. He coughed and flexed his jaw, panted from his mouth a few times, and then found his voice.

"They," he said between breaths, "or you, were already coming down on me. I thought you wanted me dead, or to punish me, so... so, I wanted to get the money somewhere where they couldn't get to it, in case you or they wanted to get to me that way." He kept panting and sobbing.

I had to be tricky with the questions. I couldn't exactly say, "Who do you work for?" when the only people who would be after him would be the people he worked for. He had to think they'd sent a hitter after him, one of their own. At the end of the series of questions I'd recorded, I included a few generic questions and remembered the timestamps for each. Since he wasn't exactly following the script, I had to fast forward and watch the time on the small LCD display.

"Why?"

"Why what? Why did I think they were coming after me?"

Silence.

"It was pretty obvious they were trying to screw with me," he said, still panting but sobbing less, "first my debit card number gets stolen, then they trash my car, and then I get an email someones trying to break into my email account. It was clear someone was trying to get to me. I figured it wasn't long before they started screwing around with my money."

Uh oh. All of those things were me. He thought that all of the stuff I was doing was his employer trying to get to him. My mind was racing now; the first thing I did was have Amy call and say his debit card was stolen so I could get into his bank account, then I broke his windshield as a distraction to get him out of his office. That all happened the day after I was in the fight, the day after he said those words. "It might be expensive." After that, all the things I did to try to figure out who he worked for, he thought it was who he worked for. He thinks his little clever request for a pay raise had set them off, just as I suspected. He was scared, but for no good reason.

It was silent for a few moments, obviously making Comstock nervous. "And there was the thing with Dingan," he said in a huff, "I tried to have him bring the kid in and he screwed it all up, now he hasn't showed up for few days and that's pissing them off." He started sobbing again, "I fucked everything up, and now they sent you to kill me. God, I shouldn't have used Dingan, that idiot. Killed a cop. That idiot."

Was he talking about me? Dingan? Was that the guy in Lorton who pepper sprayed me then tried to kill me? He tried to "bring the kid in"? He tried to blind me then kill me! He didn't spray me until I tried to fight back when he grabbed me, though, and he didn't try to shoot me until I fled and made him crash his car into a tree, probably pissed him off something mighty. If he wanted to kill me, he could have shot me in the face with bullets instead of pepper spray. Was he just trying to "bring me in"? God, that cop could have been alive in the trunk before the car crashed into a tree. What had I done? My heart began thumping harder and harder. Comstock was panicked because of my snooping, that guy Dingan and a police officer were dead because I had to make a big deal out of it and fight back. What had I done? This whole mess was my fault. I was going to be sick.

I have a guy, my principal, naked and tied up with a knife to his throat in a hotel room in Austria. All because I'd freaked him out with my ridiculous and illegal spying. How could I have done all this?

I still had no idea who was at the root of all this, though. Who was paying Comstock to look over me? Who was so bad that he would think they'd want to kill him because he (seemingly) made a mistake. The questions I'd prepared were now useless, I didn't expect the interrogation to go in this direction at all. The only thing that would be any help was part of a question I'd recorded, about why he'd asked for more money. I didn't know the timestamp, and the first half of the question wouldn't make sense, so I rewound and fast forwarded until I was somewhere that seemed right, and pressed play.

"-elieve the phrase you used was, 'it might be expensive'."

Comstock laughed weakly through his sobs, "Is that, what this about? For god's sakes, I wasn't even really serious. But come on, the kid was dangerous now and I'm supposed to let someone get away with a four-man brawl without so much as a call home? I could have been fired from the school for that, and that would have really messed them up. A little hazard pay shouldn't have been out of the question." He chuckled again.

So that was it. I got off for the fight because Comstock's real employer told him to. A suspicion was confirmed, but I still was no closer to finding out who he worked for. The rest of my questions were now worthless. I figured it was time to get out of here now, so I started cutting at the zip-tie on one hand to make it weak enough for him to eventually pull free, when Comstock spoke again through his eerie laughter.

"I mean, come on. I figured the Marine Corps would be good for it."

And then I stopped breathing.