Third Time

A moment of clarity. The jagged pieces of reality that make up my perception of the world suddenly snap from disarray and everything becomes clear for just an instant. At this time, I don't do things because I want to or need to, I do them because they are the only things that could ever make sense. Afterwards I'm left in a daze and barely remember the moments just before, but while I experience them they are the temporary embodiment of a perfectly executed concept. The universe seems to be in chaos, then for that second the fog is lifted and I see the world and my life through disconnected and clairvoyant eyes. Just as quickly, the fog returns and I'm snapped back inside my head and the world continues just as before, only reeling from whatever I had just done.

Twice so far this had happened to me. The first was eight days ago, when the comfort of my existence was interrupted by the threat of violence and a fist driving toward my face. The second time was six days ago, with another interruption of my stasis when a man began firing a silenced pistol through the darkness and through the windshield of my car. Both times, the violence sucked my attention from the typical malaise of my life and into that moment of clarity. Both times, I performed actions I would never have considered before. Both times, I hurt people in ways I didn't know I would ever be capable of. Both times, I couldn't have cared less about the pain I caused.

The third time happened like this:

A solitary desk lamp fought away the night darkness in my bedroom as I stood in silence, listening to the steady thumps as my heart forced blood through my veins. Downstairs, the front door's lock was picked, the door opened. My legs and arms relaxed, then moved nimble and dedicated through my bedroom door, down the hallway, and partway down the stairs. My knees and ankles shared the tension and accepted my weight so I made no noise.

I ducked in the stairwell landing and peered from the darkness into the main floor, just as I had done years ago while my parents argued about baseball team tryouts. Through the wooden slatted banisters and down the main hallway I could see the front door, now open. One man was walking through it, one man was behind him, one man was already inside and turning into the kitchen. They crept like me, their knees crooked and steps silent. They wore uniform black body suits, black nylon harness vests around their chests, black domed helmets on their heads with tinted goggles covering their faces. They carried compact carbine submachine guns in their hands. When the sight of these peoples seemed in no way unusual to me, I realized I was again operating on autopilot.

The second man came through the door as the first disappeared into the kitchen, and the third came in as the second turned to his right into the living room. The third came straight down the hallway towards the stairs.

It wasn't a SWAT team, I thought, they weren't maneuvering in a stick formation and they were clearing rooms without cover. If it was a SWAT team, I would have just turned myself over. SWAT, a division of local Police departments, has rules to follow. They subdue people and take them into custody. They also bust through doors with rams and explosives, screaming "Police" and generally making their presence known. They weren't SWAT. That's all I needed to know.

When the third man turned toward the staircase, I sunk back into the darkness and went back up the stairs. To the left were empty bedrooms, to the right was my bathroom and my bedroom with soft yellow light seeping through the partly open door. The rest of the floor was pitch black, including my bathroom where I went, pressing myself against the back wall. I heard the soft jingle of gear dangling from a vest as the third man came up the first set of steps, turned across the landing, and started up the last set. I heard him stop at the top of the stairs, perhaps choosing a direction, and choosing right and heading toward the light of my room. I listened to my heart beat in pace with his steps, and I made sure I was breathing. My knife was still in my hand.

When the dark shape of a man passed the bathroom door, I sprang from the darkness in a single step and plunged the blade of my knife into the man's right shoulder through the back and brought my left hand around to cover the man's mouth just as he tried to scream from the pain. If I had been in a more rational place, I would have noted how the Teflon coating and unique tanto -point design let the blade slide through cloth, bone, and muscle with little resistance. With a quick tug I dragged the man backwards into the black of the bathroom. He dropped the gun from both hands and it dangled from the strap clipped to his harness and over his left shoulder. The knife still stuck into the meat of his shoulder, he wouldn't dare move his right arm, and his left was pinned by my own arm. He breathed hot and wet through his nose against my hand.

"Who are you with?" I asked as quietly and as menacingly as I could. I put a small amount of pressure on the knife, and slightly lifted my hand from his mouth.
After a few tedious groans and winces, he said, "I'm an American." His voice was younger than I expected.
That was obvious. "What's your objective?" I asked in the same voice.
Between groans and whimpers, he said, "Some guy. Whoever lives here."
"Extraction or hit?"
"What?" he said, "I don't know. Not my call."

I sighed. This guy was either an idiot or was very convincing at playing one. I pulled the knife from his shoulder, closing my hand over his mouth to muffle the inevitable shriek, then grabbed the nylon gun strap from the front, pulled it back and twisted it so it closed around the guy's neck, and then tripped the man forward, holding onto the strap so it pulled his head back as he fell to the ground and didn't move. A part of me, deep down, wondered if he was still alive, but I pushed through it.

I rolled him over and unclipped the strap from his harness, then unwrapped it from his neck and picked the gun up. In the limited light I could barely make out the shape of the gun but it seemed foreign, even for asubmachine gun. I felt around the sides for a bolt, found one, and pulled it back. The guy hitting the floor had made more noise than I expected, so the other two had probably heard it.

I started down the first set of stairs quietly, but I heard that jingling noise again. Around the corner, someone was coming up the bottom set of stairs. I stopped at the landing, waited for the jingling to stop, and swung the butt of the gun around the corner and felt it connect with a helmet or goggles, and heard what sounded like a few sacks of potatoes being dropped down the stairs. I turned the corner and followed the noise down the stairs where a man lay crumpled at the bottom. I leveled the gun and raised it to look down the rail and took the last few steps.

I found the other guy, he was in the hallway following the noise. He was looking at the guy on the floor, then saw me and lifted his gun. Mine was already on him. I took a breath and started to pull the trigger when more movement caught my eye. Four more men, dressed the same, poured through the front door. There were more than the first three; that changed things a bit.

Three small explosions sent three small bullets toward me. I ducked back to avoid them, thought about dropping down again to try my luck at shooting some people, but the odds weren't in my favor. I instead just stuck an arm out and fired off a few rounds blindly for cover, than ran back up the stairs to my room. I locked the door behind me, pulled my bookcase over to pin the door shut.

I called Amy's name, said I was me, and knocked on the closet door. She opened the door, the gun still in her white-knuckled fist. She looked a bit like a wet cat. "I called the police," she said as one long stuttered word.

"We have to get out of here," I said, setting the gun I was holding down on my desk chair. In the light now, my suspicions about the gun looking unusual were confirmed. It had unusual curves, making it look kind of like a gun from a futuristic space movie. "XM8" was printed in stylized letters on the side of the butt. I shook my head and went into the closet, grabbing all of the loaded magazines for the USP and stuffing them in my pockets.

"What's going on?" Amy asked, standing in one place and turning at her hips to follow my movement.
"I don't know," I said. "Guys, guns, shooting. Just another Friday night."

I crossed the room and looked out my window at the back of the house. There was nobody out there. I opened the window with the metal crank as wide as it would go, then I turned and stripped the sheets from the bed and started pulling the twin mattress off the frame. Amy just watched incredulously, until I asked her to help. Together we spun the mattress and slid it through my open window, it fell and landed in the grass on the ground about six feet below the window. Not too bad, I thought.

I took the pistol from Amy, switched the safety on, and somehow fit it in my pocket.

The door to my room shook, the knob wiggled. The lock didn't have a key, they'd have to bust it in. That's what they started to do. I grabbed my car keys from my desk, and threw Amy her purse, then went back to the window. It was a tiny jump, but I still hesitated.

"Land like I do," I said over the banging on the door, then I stepped up onto the window sill, and stepped downward onto nothing.

The landing came immediately. I hit the mattress with my feet, felt my ankle sting, and rolled sideways to disperse the energy. I stood up and looked up at Amy through the open window, and waved her down. She emulated my movement well enough, but made a slight huff noise when she landed. I just then remembered that I left hesubmachine gun, the "XM8" up in my room. Great.

I drew the pistol and we crossed the back of my house together, staying tight to the wall. The corner to the side of the house was clear, so we followed the wall to the side of the garage. The side garage door was still unlocked from when I took out the trash earlier in the week, so I opened it slowly and we went into the garage. Amy started to ask what I was doing, but stopped before finishing. I went around my dad's car and into the corner of the garage where the grill, the gas generator, the cans of gasoline, and the miscellaneous car stuff was. There was an older, metal gas can mostly full of gasoline. I grabbed that by the rusted handle, opened the cap and stuffed a cloth rag down it, and grabbed one of the butane lighters from next to the grill.

I hoped that the van or truck at these guys had come in wasn't blocking my car, and I got lucky. It was a black panel van, unmarked, with the back doors open. Inside were bench seats on both sides. Two men, not dressed like the others, were standing outside of it, looking at the house.

Crouching down, we crept from the side of the garage to the side of my car. I unlocked the passenger door manually with the key, and told Amy that when I said so, I would open the door and jump in and she would follow.

I lit the rag sticking from the mouth of the gas can, waited for it to start to burn, then stood up and hurled it sideways over the top of my car and toward the van. The can wobbled oddly in the air, a streak of orange light from the flame on the rag. It landed on the street just short of the van and rolled sideways beneath the van.

No explosion.

The rag had fallen from the mouth of the can as it rolled, but gasoline was now pouring freely from the hole. The two men heard the metal can hitting the pavement and turned around to investigate. Gasoline flowed in all directions from the mouth of the can, eventually spreading to where the barely-lit rag lay on the ground.

The flowing gasoline soon turned to a flowing lake of fire spreading from all sides of the van. The two men yelled and ran away from the van. As much as I wanted to stick around and watch the show, I pulled my car door open and crawled over the passenger seat and settled into the driver's seat as Amy got in and closed the door. I started the engine and backed out of the driveway, turning wildly to clear the blaze on the street, then put all of my weight on the accelerator and drove off. Behind me I saw movement around the house. As I turned onto another street, I saw a quick flash of light and heard what sounded like the gas tank of a black panel van exploding.

I wasn't wearing any shoes, I just noticed. That made me laugh.

Decisions

I found that when I slept, I didn't have to think about the many things I should have been thinking about. People didn't seem to want to blind me, shoot me, or take me into custody while I slept, either. I'd slept through the whole flight from Vienna and I was still tired when I got home, after dozing off in the shower I zombie-marched to my room and tumbled into my bed. Either the sleeping pills I bought at the airport were made of magic, or my subconscious really needed to stretch its legs.

I woke up to the sound of my doorbell. In my tired daze, I couldn't decide if it would be the FBI or the police. The clock by my bed said it was just after 3PM. I used the limited resources of my still-asleep brain to make sure I was wearing clothes -- t-shirt and shorts; that should cover it -- and walked down to the front door stiff-legged and still slightly wincing with each step on my left ankle.

Amy was at the door. Suddenly I felt better.

"You're here," she said as I pulled the door open.
"I'm everywhere," I said back, pleased with myself for thinking of it.

I moved out of the way and Amy stepped in, her school bag dangling from one hand. It felt like I hadn't seen her in a month; I was expecting her hair to be longer or a different color. She walked quickly and gracefully, as if she weren't wanted in two countries and had not a care in the world. I envied that.

I was still fuzzy from the sleep, trying to maintain a line of thought was like bobbing for apples in a vat of peanut butter. Apples and peanut butter sounded good. I pointed my feet toward the kitchen and willed myself to locomote.

From wherever Amy was, she said, "I drove by your place on the way home and I saw your car. I thought you flew in tonight."
"Yeah," I said, trying to locate some kind of caffeine delivery system in my cupboards. "Stuff happened. Had to catch an earlier fight."

"So how did the trip go?" she asked, now inside the kitchen.
I stared blankly at some small boxes in a cupboard for what felt like a long time, then turned around and looked at Amy. "Huh?"
Here brow furrowed and her lips sunk into an odd frown. "Your trip," she said again, "Austria. I believe you flew off to the Old Country to find out what was going on with our plucky Principal."
"Right," I said, holding two small cardboard boxes in my hands. One talked of herbal infusion, the other went on about English breakfast.

"I forgot about that part," I said, "it turns out all the suspicious stuff he was doing was because of all the suspicious stuff we were doing so he thought I was going to kill him. Well, not me, but his boss guys. Then an Interpol guy wanted to know why I killed some dead guy two years ago. They flayed him." I was confident that all made sense.

Amy was sitting in a tall chair at the counter now. She started to say something, blinked twice, then finally said, "What?"
I was trying to figure out how to get water hot.

Once I'd had two cups of hot tea and had moved to the couch in the living room, I told Amy about the trip. About the Marriott and the Ambassador, conning my way into the latter, then breaking my way in, the voice recorder, the bank, how the coffees tasted different than Starbucks, about a dead guy named Jens Nesimi, and about what one might call my harrowing escape from a slow-moving vehicle. The absurdity of it all made it so had to stop a few times and make sure I wasn't just making all of this up.

"What is it with you, law enforcement, and automobiles?" she asked when I was finished.
"It's a character trait, I suppose," I said. "I'm starting to fear for the Trans Am."
"So you didn't find out who Comstock is keeping an eye on you for?" she said.
"What?"
"You didn't-- what I just said."
"I thought I told you," I said, confused. "It was an integral part of the story."
"You didn't say anything."
"Oh. Weird."
"So...?"
"Marines."
"What?"
"Marines. Marines-comma-'the'."
"What Marines? All of them?"
"I don't know, all he said was, 'I figured the Marine Corps could afford it.' Or did he say 'thought'? I'm not sure; my brain was too busy exploding at the time."

"So it could just be some Marine guy. It doesn't have to be the whole Corps."
"I didn't say anything either way," I said, "I think the larger issue is the fact that somebody affiliated with the Marines is/was paying Comstock to pretend to be a school administrator just so he could watch me and keep me out of trouble; also, Comstock hired some guy named Dingan to 'bring me in' just because I stopped going to school for a day, and later I drove a car into Dingan."
"That doesn't make any sense," Amy said.
"Put that to a tune and it could be the theme song for my life."
"No, I mean... you had the fight thing on Thursday, right?"
"Last Thursday, yeah."
"And Lorton was on Saturday. So you only missed school one day, on Friday, and he freaked out and hired a nutcase to bring you in?"

I leaned my head back and thought about it. "Friday was when I came in and we did the bank account thing, and I put a hammer through his car window for a distraction. When you called and said his bank card was stolen, and then his car was vandalized, he thought it was his 'boss' people -- some Marine guys -- trying to get to him. He thought they were upset about him asking for more money, or for letting me even get in the fight."
"Ok," she said, "what are our working theories regarding why you're so special that people are paying people to watch you and to pay other people to bring you in?"
"I don't know," I said, "my money? No, that's stupid. My boyish good looks?"
"Well, boyish..."
"I don't know. Unless this is all about the fact that a kid that looks slightly like me was standing outside a guy's house in Austria the night he died."
"That doesn't seem very likely."

"So, yeah. 'I don't know' is my working theory. Is this something I should be asking the FBI guys about?"
"I don't know," she said.
I crossed my arms and said, "Well this all sucks. I'm sick of sitting around and waiting for somebody to attack me so I can acquire another hint at what's going on here. Maybe my mom would know something about this."
"When does she get home?"
"Tomorrow or Sunday," I said. "It doesn't seem like she would have anything to do with this, but I think I'm in too deep now to keep this all a secret."
"What about your dad?" Amy asked.
"Him?" I said, "I think he might be dead."
Amy sighed. "I know that. I mean, maybe this has something to do with him. He did work for the Marines, after all."
"So did yours," I said, "and nobody's chasing, shooting at, or trying to arrest you."
"You don't think this could have anything to do with your dad or what he did?"

"Of course I do, but I don't like to think about it," I said. "I was a lot happier when I thought this was all grief or denial and I was just making all of this up to get attention. If this really is the Marines behind all of this, and it's connected to my dad and his work, then this is a lot bigger than I'd thought."
"This seems like a situation where you'd ask people for information," Amy said, "You know two FBI agents. The 'I' stands for Information."
"No it doesn't."
"It-- oh, right."
"Federal Bureau of Information?" I chuckled.
"Excuse me, then," she snapped back. "There's also that guy from your dad's work. Schumer?"
"Yeah, but I--" I suddenly remembered that there was a USB drive on my kitchen table potentially full of information copied from Schumer's computer. I'd forgotten all about the thing. I thought I was delusional after I'd brought it home, and I didn't want to incriminate myself by looking at possibly classified materials.

My answers could be on that USB drive. I stood up and dashed to the kitchen. There it was, on the table. I picked it up, this innocuous little hunk of plastic. Looking at it, the fear came back. If this whole mystery was as big as I thought it was, maybe I didn't want to find the answers. Maybe there were no answers, just more questions. I was afraid I might find out something about my father that I wouldn't like, or I'd find something out that could get me killed. This area's mantra kept repeating over and over in my head. Don't ask questions. Don't ask questions.

Amy soon followed me into the kitchen and stood to my side. "What's on that?" she asked.
I closed the drive in my fist. "Nothing," I said, turning toward her. "Have you eaten yet?"

* * * *

It was nearly dark when we came back from a locally owned bar & grill-type place. Besides needing to catch up on sleep, I also had a lot of eating to make up for. I couldn't remember eating a full meal during my stay in Vienna. I missed out on a lot of sausages. I'd put on pants before we'd went out, and the USB drive was tucked in my pocket. The same pocket as my knife, which I'd fished from my suitcase. I didn't know why, but it just felt good to have it on me. If I ever came across a letter that needed opening, or a Ugandan rebel that needed opening, I liked to know I'd be covered.

It had been nice to spend an hour or so not thinking or talking about the elephant in the room or the monkey on my back. When we got back to my place, though, they went right to my mind. I sighed, knowing that I'd eventually look at the files on this USB drive, if there were any, so I might as well get it over with. Maybe it had a nice, two-paragraph story that explained everything and pointed out that this was all one big misunderstanding.

I kicked my shoes off and went straight up to my room, Amy followed without a word. I sat down at my computer and plugged the USB drive into a port on the front of the PC tower. Amy set her purse on my desk, then crossed the room and sat down on my bed. I glanced over, again trying not to freak out about the girl-on-my-bed phenomenon. She didn't ask what I was doing; probably assuming I was going to check the webcam outside Comstock's house. She looked down at my open suitcase on the floor with my clothes spewed out.

"So," she said, "did you get me anything?" She was playfully dangling her legs over the side of the bed.
Something sharp stuck into the side of my brain. Shoot. I was going to get her something but I never got around to it. Trying to think of something to say, I opened the USB drive's contents on my computer and clicked the first thing I saw, and then spun the chair sideways to look around the room.

"Umm," I started, grabbing my backpack and fishing through it. There were two passports, an envelope with anonymous Austrian bank account credentials inside, my computer, two books, and, well...

I tossed Amy a small paper book of matches. She caught it and turned it around in her hand. "The Marriott?"
I stood up and walked over to her. "The Marriott Vienna," I said, pointing at the word. "How often do you see matches from Western Europe?"
"Personally?" she asked, with a grin.
"Alright," I said, "I didn't have time to get anything. I left in a bit of a hurry."
"It's fine," she said, looking at the matches in her hand.
"No, really, I was going to get you something. Something amazing, I'm sure."
She looked up, smiling. "No, really," she said, "you didn't have to. You weren't there for sightseeing, I know."

The silence was peppered with the sound of a truck driving down the road.

"You're still supposed to buy stuff when you go to another country," I said.
"Don't worry about it," she said softly, "we can pick something out when we go somewhere together."

I noticed my heart was beating just a bit faster than normal. I sat down beside her on my bed, looking at the matches in her hand. "Like where?" I asked.
She rolled her eyes in a circle. "I don't know," she said, "I've always wanted to see Paris."

I looked at her, she looked at me. It sounded like the truck on the street wasn't moving, but that might have been my brain thumping in my ears.

There was a slight sadness in her eyes, like a painful memory that kept creeping up. The side of my hand on the bed was barely touching hers. Her other hand was holding the book of matches, spinning them around, her eyes following. She smiled, then stood up and walked over to my desk and put the matches in her purse. She glanced at my computer's monitor once, then twice. Her eyes widened a bit and her mouth opened slightly.

I thought I heard a car door opening.

"That's you," she said, still looking at the screen.
"What?" I asked, sliding off the bed and walking around the desk. A video file was playing in Media Player. It must have been the file on the USB drive I opened without paying attention. The video was black and white, taken from an awkward over-the-head angle. It showed an empty-looking room, and me sitting at a desk directly in the center of the frame. It was definitely me, wearing my clothes. I was looking at someone or something outside the frame, and occasionally looking down at a piece of paper in front of me on the desk. There was no audio.

I stepped closer to my computer and sat down in the chair, watching the video frame closely.
"When is this?" Amy asked, over my shoulder.
"I don't know," I said, "I don't remember it at all."
"Where is this from?" she asked.
"Schumer's computer," I said without taking my eyes from the screen, "from Quantico."

On the video, I continued to look back and forth from the paper in front of me to whoever was standing in front of me outside the camera frame. A few seconds later. I folded my hands on the desk, leaned my head forward, and appeared to go to sleep.

"What the hell is this?" I said.
Amy started to speak but I silenced her. A sound from downstairs had grabbed my attention. A light clicking and the sliding of metal. I thought it sounded like a lock being picked.

I stood up and stuck my head outside my bedroom door. The noise low but constant. I also still heard the sound of a truck idling outside.

Everything after that was a sharply-focused blur.

I pulled back into my room and quietly shut my door. I turned off my computer monitor and opened my closet door. I found my handgun and the filled clips, slid one into the gun's grip, and pulled the slide back, chambering a round.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked, pulling me slightly from my focus. I looked at her, standing there. I glanced at the gun, then back at her. Decisions.

I pulled her with me into the wide closet and pushed her carefully into the corner, then handed her the gun and set the other loaded clips on the shelf closest to her. "You know how to use this," I said, "it's just like the Beretta." She looked at me in a stupefied gaze. I pulled clothes from shelves and hangers and dropped them into a pile on the floor. "You can hide under these if you want," I said. I stepped backwards out of the closet and grabbed the door knob.

"You'll hear my voice when I open this door," I said. "If you don't, start shooting."
I pulled my cell phone from one pocket, my knife from the other. I handed Amy the phone, she took it with her left hand; the gun still in her right. "Call the police," I said.
"What are you doing?" she asked again, eyes wider this time.

"I don't know," I said. Her eyes were pleading as I pulled the door closed, leaving her in the closet alone with my only gun.

I stood still, in silence. I heard the knob of the front door turn slowly downstairs, and the hinges whine as the door swung freely open. I flipped the blade of my knife open, spun the handle in my hand so the blade pointed downward, and held my breath.

On TV Somewhere

Metal handcuffs were ratcheted onto my bare wrists in front of me, a spectacle that both intrigued the people in the cafe and somehow amused me to no end. As I was walked outside the place and lead down the street to where I assumed there was a car waiting, Pratt was saying something aloud to me but it wasn't registering. The hilarity of being cuffed hands-in-front and the absurdity of being taken into custody in Austria for a murder I didn't commit two years ago was monopolizing the attention capacity of my brain.

It was all very inconvenient.

It was Thursday night, my flight home left early Friday, my mom was supposed to get home late Saturday or early Sunday. If this loony Interpol guy wants to keep me for the 24 hours he's allowed to, that would royally screw up my plans. Not to mention, if this guy is touched in the head enough to decide that I was a fifteen year old super assassin based on a blurry photo and a glance at me from across the street, maybe he could find some "evidence" to connect me to the death of Princess Diana or the crash of the Hindenburg. His hand around my arm, I was still walking down the street lined on both sides with cars. The other guy Pratt was with seemed to have disappeared. Pratt was still talking, probably going on about having captured his mega super secret killer man, but I wasn't listening. I was too busy thinking.

We turned down an unlit side street and eventually stopped at a small black car, a model that I didn't recognize. Pratt pulled a back door open and kind of slid me into the backseat and slammed the door shut. The car wasn't meant to be used for police work, or at least prisoner transport. The front seat was open to the back seat. Stupid.

I couldn't take my chances with being "brought in" again. The thought of having my name, face, and fingerprints listed in Interpol databases seemed a bit disgusting at the time, and I had a plane to catch. No time for any of this garbage.

Now I just have to figure out how to get out of this without driving any cars through any people.

Pratt got into the driver's seat and turned to look out side window as the second guy, Markus approached the vehicle and got into the passenger seat. I guess he didn't feel safe riding alone with magical underage ninja hitmen . I suppose I wouldn't either. The two men spoke to each other in German for a second, then Pratt started the engine. I toyed with the handcuffs on my wrists for a second. I thought of the events of the past few days, the fight on Thursday, the Principal's office on Friday, the shooting and pepper spray on Satuday, the FBI on Sunday, new cars and Chinese food on Monday, Quantico and email hacking on Tuesday, planes and hotels on Wednesday, naked principals and Interpol agents on Thursday. It was all beginning to blur together, predicament to predicament, no explanation for anything. I wanted this all to just go away, I wanted to be a regular teenager again; a guy who doesn't know the names of any FBI or Interpol agents and doesn't have a gun in his bedroom closet.

I was beginning to dislike cars; you feel so vulnerable in them. Someone could just walk up and blast you with pepper spray through the window, and all you can do is sit there. I thought of Amy sitting next to me for all that, me telling her about "up" and "down"; "up" meant to turn away and cover her face, in case the guy...Dingan used the pepper spray. "Down", that was for if he drew the gun and started shooting. She was supposed to drop the seat recline lever and drop backwards. That would have been bad, if he'd drawn the gun and not the pepper spray. I leaned sideways to look at the driver's seat in front of me, between the seat and the door. There was a long plastic lever, just like on my old car. Looking around, the car seemed older. I'd bet the seat reclined wildly in both directions just like my Civic's.

That gave me an idea.

Pratt pulled the car into reverse and slowly began to back out from the alleyway and waited for an opening to back onto the street. I turned my foot sideways and carefully slid it in the narrow space between his seat and the door. It was tight, and something was poking into my leg, but I could feel the plastic lever with the tip of my shoe. Markus glanced back at me, then looked away. I took in a long, deep breath.

I pushed my foot upward, but it slid off of the seat lever and kicked part of the door, sounding a short thud. Both men suddenly looked to the left and Pratt said something quickly in German. I brought my foot back down and kicked upwards again, not having to worry about stealth this time. I felt the resistance of the lever as I brought it nearly straight upwards. I felt the back of the seat in front of me lose tension and slip backwards, and I brought my right leg up and slammed the seat-back forward as hard as I could with my foot. Pratt's torso heaved forward with the force of the seat folding, and I heard his face smash into the steering wheel. His foot must have slipped from the brake, because the car began to creep backwards into the traffic of the main road. Markus, in the passenger seat, screamed something and turned back toward me, reaching his left arm into his jacket. I pulled my left leg free from between the seat and door, feeling something tear my pants leg, and pushed myself backwards enough for clearance enough to bring my left leg around in one short arc to connect with Markus' neck and bring it, and his head, into the window behind him. He stopped moving.

The car, however, didn't.

The inside door handles didn't work, probably disabled for "safety". The engine was idling, the transmission in reverse, the car was still creeping into the perpendicular street the car had pulled off of. Cars were honking and swerving to avoid us. I was trapped in the back seat, watching headlights through the window as they drew closer and quicker, praying they would turn away quickly enough. My left ankle started to sting dully, it would probably bruise and swell before morning. Why was I thinking about that? I tried crawling into the front seat to open those doors but it was too cramped and they were blocked by two disabled Interpol agents.

I sank back into the rear seat as the car continued its slow reversed crawl. More honking, more screeching brakes, more near-misses. I had to get out of this stupid little foreign car.

Well, I suppose it wasn't foreign to these people. Why was I thinking about that?

I tried hitting the window nearest me with my fists, then tried clanking the handcuffs against them, but that just dug them into my skin. I laid back across the bench seat and tried kicking at the window to no effect. I adjusted my position, put my back against the opposite door and pressed against it to counterbalance my kicks against the glass. I used both feet, felt a heat in my left ankle with each impact. Two more times I kicked both feet against the glass, the second time I felt it give away slightly. One last time I heaved all my strength through my feet and slammed them through the window. The glass broke into thousands of tiny fragments adhered to a sheet of clear plastic and folded forward slightly. Safety glass. I spun on my knees and used my elbows to push the glass and plastic away from the window frame. I reached my arms out and felt for the outside door handle, felt it, and pulled at it but accomplished nothing. The door must have been locked too. Rather than try to deal with that, I just used the handle to pull myself head-first through the rather small window. When my chest was out, I spun around and pushed against the roof of the car to drag myself out the rest of the way.

The car had moved through the two lanes on one side and was now into the opposing lanes. I cleared the window and fell flatly onto the street as cars were now heading straight for me, all honking and swerving much later than I would have appreciated. I pushed myself up to my feet, both hands pressing against pieces of glass scattered on the street. I turned and ran away from the street, passing the car I'd just escaped from as it gently brought itself to a stop by backing into a car parked against the sidewalk. I heard glass breaking behind me as I awkwardly ran down the sidewalk in the direction of my hotel, slightly limping to keep weight off my left ankle and my arms swinging weirdly bound together. It was probably around 5PM, traffic was getting heavy as people got off work and the sidewalks filled with pedestrians. I had to cut through a lot of people as I ran against the foot traffic to get away. I tried to hide my handcuffed wrists inside my jacket, when I felt something light and wiry in one of the inside jackets. I stuck a hand in the pocket to see what it was, and pulled out the pair of reading glasses I'd bought as part of a disguise.

Still limp-running, I gleefully bent one of the sides of the frame and tore it from the rims and dropped the rest on the street. Left with only a thin metal strip bent at one end to curve around the ear, I stuck the broken end into the keyhole of the cuff on my left wrist with my right hand and bent it sharply to the left, turned it around, then bent it to the right. This made the frame into kind of Z-shape at the end, which I stuck back into the keyhole and fiddled around, still running, until the ratchet of the cuffs came free. The cuff wouldn't come off, but it could get tighter. I spun the strip of metal around and fiddled in the opposite direction for a few seconds until the cuff came loose and slid off of my hand. I did the same thing with other cuff, deciding I must have seen this on TV somewhere, and dropped the cuffs onto the sidewalk once the other cuff came free.

Behind me, I heard a squeal of tires and a familiar slam of metal against metal and sheets of glass turning into a dancing rain of fragments against pavement. I stopped and turned around. I couldn't see the car anymore, but assumed someone had finally crashed into it. I hoped to myself that I hadn't just killed two more people. Presuming I didn't, I still needed to get back to my hotel and collect my things as fast as possible.

I packed my clothes together quickly and threw them into my small suitcase, and shut off my laptop and slid it into my backpack. I quickly circled the room that had been my home for the last twenty-four hours and made sure I had everything, then used the menu on the TV to check out, and was outside the building within two minutes. Pratt knew where I was staying, he knew my name, and he knew about my travel plans. I had to get to the airport and get outside of the country before he recovered enough to start hunting for me again. I realized that if he'd previously just assumed I was some kind of killer, I'd just confirmed that for him. I hadn't killed him, though. At least, I really hoped I hadn't.

I got a cab and went to the airport.

My flight wasn't for more than twelve hours, but I didn't feel like sticking around that long. I'd assaulted two officers, I gathered. If Pratt didn't have any concrete reason to hold me before, he at least had assault to get me on. For that, he could get the actual police on me. My passport would be flagged. I'd be a wanted fugitive. Why, oh why, did I not think about things before I started hurting people?

I was dropped off at the departures terminal of the Vienna airport and stood on the curb, checking out all angles. It was too soon for a search to be organized, but I felt like being cautious. If I hurried, I might be able to get on a plane before the wrong people knew my name. This could follow me back home, I realized. Interpol and the US Government worked together all the time I'd heard. I started to hope Pratt was dead.

I went into the airport and found an ATM, used it to withdraw a thousand Euros, not knowing or caring how much that was in dollars. I'd need one heck of a story to justify a kid my age paying cash for a flight to America. I also needed to not be me.

There was a gift store before the security checkpoint. I went there and looked at postcards until I heard someone speaking English. Behind me, looking at shot glasses with "Austria" etched on them, were two Americans. One was about my age, maybe older; the other was in his twenties. They were joking about some stupid thing having to do with drinking. The one closest to my age was wearing an orange and blue backpack, and his blue US passport was tucked neatly in a pocket on the side. I stepped around them to get a look at his face, his hair was shorter than me, and he was a bit pudgier than me, but he was close enough. I stepped back around, bumped into his backpack, and walked away without saying anything. I heard him call me an asshole under his breath as I walked away.

In the bathroom, I looked at Ryan Trillan's passport and compared it to my own. He was eighteen, according to his birthday, and was from North Carolina. His photograph wasn't exactly a striking resemblance to mine, but to someone who looked at thousands of passports per day it might just work. Flipping through the Visa pages in the back, it looked like he'd been to Germany, Switzerland, and France, and had just arrived in Vienna. It'd probably be over an hour until he'd need his passport again and find it missing.

I went back to the ticketing area and paid cash for a flight leaving in two hours for Reagan airport in D.C., not Dulles which I'd come from. I checked my bag as Ryan Trillan, passed through security as Ryan Trillan, sat around the gate as Ryan Trillan, and boarded the plane as Ryan Trillan. I took two of the sleeping pills I'd bought from a store as Ryan Trillan, and slept for most of the flight to Reagan. I went through US customs as Ryan Trillan, turned the rest of my Euros into the money I'd grown up with, and took a cab from Reagan to Dulles to retrieve my car.

It was Friday afternoon, by my best guess and according to the clock on my car's radio, when I got to my house and went straight to my bathroom and fell asleep in the shower.

Shadow

I knew one thing for sure: this guy wasn't going to give me a straight answer about anything. Everybody I've run into in the past week has been some kind of expert in half-answers and tricky question-dodging.

Thomas Pratt, as he called himself, was sitting across from me at an old, wooden table in an old, cozy cafe in old, historic Vienna. As my brain rushed to put together the few pieces of information I had at the moment, I couldn't presently back-track my actions to remember how I'd gotten here.

He knew my name, that was enough to freak me out. Either he actually knew who I was, or he got my name from my hotel, which means that time I was sure I wasn't being followed, I was. Interpol? What do they do? Oversight and cross-communications between African and European police organizations. Drug enforcement, probably anti-terrorism stuff, bank fraud. Oh great, bank fraud! The whole thing at the bank, with the newspaper ad for magical untraceable Austrian bank accounts was all a setup -- a sting. Wait for silly Americans to come wondering in asking for bank accounts practically invented for money laundering, then tell him the only way to do so is illegally.

Wait, that doesn't make sense. For one thing, that's entrapment. Besides that, it still doesn't make sense.

And how long have I been sitting here in confused silence?

"You're trying to think of how you might know me?" Pratt finally said. I nodded, then glanced around the place; there were three other occupied tables and three people behind the counter.
"Don't worry," he continued, "you probably don't."
"So what is this?" I asked, choosing my words carefully.
"This," he said with that stupid coy grin, "is the justification of the last two years of my career."

I didn't say anything. He opened his leather jacket and pulled a thick file folder from inside and set it down in front of him with a slight dramatic slam. He opened the top cover gently, flipped through a few pages I couldn't see, then pulled out a 8"x10" photograph and slid it over to me. I bent over to look at it, it was a portrait of a man in a strong navy-blue suit. Old, maybe fifties with silver hair and a powerful brow. He didn't look American. Pratt watched my face carefully as I looked at the photograph.

"Who's this?" I asked.
"You don't know?"
I looked down at the picture again, then shook my head.
"That is Jens Nesimi, an Austrian political figurehead and former military commander. You're sure you've never seen him?"
"If he was ever in a US newspaper or on the news, I may have seen his face before, but I don't recognize him at all. I don't usually follow Austrian politics."
"Don't usually?" he asked.
"Don't ever," this was beginning to sound like an interrogation; where the investigators will try to use your words against you. I was beginning to become uncomfortable.

Pratt slid the photo back onto the stack of documents and flipped forward a few pages, producing another photograph (this one smaller) and sliding it over. The shot was less formal. It was of an ornate bedroom shot from eye-level. A large, king sized bed was center frame, draped in lush-looking green sheets and a thick comforter, slightly disrupted by a man's body hanging awkwardly off the edge of the mattress. The body was dressed in blue pajamas, the face pressed against the wood floor, its torso hanging over the edge, and the legs were under the sheets. It looked as if the man was trying to slide onto the floor but his legs were tangled by tightly tucked sheets. I recognized the photo now as a crime scene photograph. The careless use of over-powered flash gave it away.

When I looked up from the photo, Pratt slid another over. It was the same room, the same man, but taken from another angle to show the man's face. It was the guy from the first photo, Nesimi. He was certainly dead, with a pale look of hopeless consternation on the part of his face that wasn't pressed against the floor. I frowned slightly. This was probably the first real dead person I'd seen outside of a casket.

"What's this about?" I asked, pushing both pictures away.
"Nesimi died in his home two years ago, apparently in his sleep, apparently he had a heart attack, tried to get up, but died almost instantly while his wife lay beside him. Because of the high profile, I was brought on by the local police to assist in the investigation."
"Investigation? I thought it was a heart attack," I said, forgoing the utter irrelevancy of any of this to me.
"That's how it seemed, but there were things that didn't match. He was a military man, in perfect health, except for HIV."

"He had AIDS?" this went from feeling like an interrogation to feeling like gossip.
"No, not AIDS, just HIV," Pratt looked annoyed that I didn't know the distinction. "He kept it a secret, fearing that if word got out his reputation would be destroyed. The official record is that there was some blood cross-contamination during his military career, but who knows, eh? The point of all that is, he was seeing a private physician in secret every month. After Nesimi turned 40, the doctor began running blood tests and heart EKG tests every month because of the risk of heart disease. Nobody knew about this doctor or his exams except for Nesimi and his wife. The thing that made people question the heart attack theory is that Nesimi had been to his doctor that very same day, given a clean bill of health."
"Even his heart?" I asked.
"Especially his heart. According to this doctor, Nesimi was so paranoid about having heart problems that he made the doctor run a full workup every month. The type of tests that aren't even necessary every year."
"So the doctor said his heart was fine just a few hours before he had a heart attack. Could the doctor have just been faking the test results since he thought they were pointless?" this really was beginning to sound like gossip.

"I thought of that, but I checked it out. No malpractice. Though, it wasn't really likely to begin with. The reason I was brought onto the investigation was that the security system at Nesimi's home had an abnormality. He lived in a large estate inside the city with fences, security cameras, door alarms, motion sensors, all the good stuff. When the local police happened to take a look at the camera footage, they found that the cameras had all gone down for 3 minutes, 2 minutes before the coroner estimated Nesimi's death. They checked the system logs, and the gate, door, and motion alarms had all shut down at the same time too."
"So..."
"So, someone may have disabled the alarms, snuck in, and somehow poisoned Nesimi with something that mimics a heart attack."
"In 3 minutes?"
"Sure."
"And what does this have to do with me?" I was getting a bit antsy. The coffee and juice had gone through me and I needed to find and use the bathroom.
"I'm getting to that," Pratt said. He was still leaning back, calm and comfortable.
He continued, "When I was brought on, the first thing I did was have a second autopsy done. This is how they found the abacavir in his system, which is what lead me to the doctor and the fact that he'd had all the heart tests that very day, confirming my suspicion."
This was getting interesting, like some police/medical drama. "The autopsy didn't show any signs of poisoning?" I asked.
"Well, we first thought the HIV treatments were the poison, but when we found out they were prescribed, we had to do another autopsy."
"A third?"
"Yes. There was nothing in his stomach or intestines that looked like a poison, so it must have been an injection. There were no visible needle marks on the skin, so I had the body flayed to look for any fine needle injection marks--"
"Wait, flayed?"
"Yes. The skin is removed from the muscle tissue over the whole body. Skin is elastic and will hide a needle mark if the needle is thin enough and injected into a muscle, not a vein, but the muscle tissue itself is disrupted by the injection, so the only way to find an injection point is to look at the muscle, not the skin."
"That is very gross."
"Nesimi's family agreed. They'd already asked for no autopsies after the first, so I'd done two more against their wishes. They had the last one stopped when they heard about it. They'd wanted an open-casket funeral, which would be impossible with the skin removed from the body."

I nodded, feeling slightly sick.

"But they found it anyway, the needle point. In the neck, just above the shoulder. He'd been injected with something that didn't show up in the blood work. This meant whatever it was had crossed the blood-brain barrier, and the examiner told me the only way to find the poison would be to wring out the cranial fluid or the fluid inside the eyeballs."

Now I was feeling very sick.

"But we couldn't proceed, because the family had the body removed and buried. I knew the man had been murdered, injected with something that caused or mimicked a heart attack, at night while the security system was disabled. It was like a shadow assassin, the thought plagued me for weeks. I'd gone through all of Nesimi's contacts, friends, enemies, employees, and family members, and found nothing. There were no leads, and the case was closed. The family was furious at me for letting word get out about his HIV, and then having his body cut up. My career was put on hold, promotions lost, my life pretty-much ruined by this Shadow. I had to redeem myself, and answer this riddle that was driving me mad. I finally began recalling all security camera footage from any home or business within three blocks of Nesimi's home, but found nothing.

"Nothing, except one frame from the street security camera of a bank across the road from Nesimi's estate. It was a reflection off of the windshield of a car parked on the street outside the gate at Nesimi's home," Pratt trailed off and pulled another photo from the folder. It was an 8"x10" again, but flimsy as if printed on a desktop printer.

The shot was dark, and obviously had been digitally enlarged. I could see a road, and a row of cars parked against it. Beyond the cars was a tall iron-looking gate with brick columns every 10-or-so feet. At the far right of the frame, on the windshield of the car closest to the camera, was a slight reflection provided by a street lamp. The reflection was of somebody leaning against one of the brick columns somewhere outside the frame. The person was wearing black, as far as I could tell, and looking to the side, giving a slight profile of the face in the reflection. I brought the photo closer to my eyes and squinted to look at the face. It was a male, but he looked young and the reflection distorted everything. I shook my head.

Pratt handed me another flimsy photo, an enlargement of a single quadrant of the previous. The photo showed just the section of the car windshield with the reflection. I could see the guy leaning against the column, could now see that he was looking down at a wrist watch, and could clearer see the face.
It was my face.

Well, it sort of looked like my face. It was blurry, digitally enlarged, warped by the reflection, and very dark, but it looked a lot like me two years ago. It was silly, and preposterous, but still shocked me. My eyes widened and my heart picked up its pace.

"That photo was the only lead I'd developed after a 2 month investigation. A blurry reflection of a teenager's face. When I showed it to superiors and the detectives at the police department, they laughed at me. A shot of a teenager outside a man's house in the middle of the night hardly proved anything. They said it could be anybody, just some neighborhood kid walking around. But I knew it was the Shadow. I'd interviewed everybody who lived or worked within walking distance from the estate. And that posture, leaning against the gate and looking at a watch. That shot was taken about thirty seconds before the house's security system shut down. He's waiting for something, for word that the system was offline or waiting for whatever he'd done to disable it to be activated.

"That photograph haunted me. I put it up on my office wall, then on the side of my desk after I'd been demoted. I looked at it every day, knowing whoever that was had destroyed by career; but I respected him. He'd performed an almost untraceable hit. I've dealt with many assassinations, but never one so clean. Everybody I know and work with knows about that picture, they see it every time they come to my desk, know what it means to me. So when Markus, a former partner of mine happened to see you walking from that bank today, he thought he'd give me a call," he gestured to the guy he was with, the man I'd seen at the bank.

"I checked the bank, and called the hotel that Markus had followed you to. Christopher Baker. An American. I knew the Shadow had to be a foreigner, all the good assassins come from Russia or the Americas. Then I saw you for myself when you came out of the hotel, saw your face, I knew it was you. But how could I rationalize someone your age, who would have been fifteen at the time, being such a skilled killer? I can't, but here you are buying a Sparbuch account, probably to hold funds for another hit. Why else would someone like you need one?"

Ok, this guy was loopy in the head. "You think I killed some politician guy? That's insane."
He nodded. "I know it's insane, and this is why it works so well. I don't know how I'll prove it, but I will. I don't know how someone your age can do what you do, but you do it."

This was all too unbelievable. I shook my head and chuckled, I thought that I'd been caught for my visit with Comstock this morning, or worse, but this crazy guy just thinks I look like a kid who was outside someone's house two years ago the night someone died? You can't make this stuff up.

"Are you kidding me? There's billions of kids on the planet, yet you know that 'shadow' of yours is me because I kind of look like a sideways reflection taken off a camera in the dark two years ago? Do you go around to all the high schools in the country and interrogate any brown-haired kid with that nose and subtle cheekbones?"

Pratt slid the two photos back into the folder and closed it, folded his hands, and finally leaned into the table. "Do not mistake me for crazed idiot, Chris, I know that face. I know your face. You come from America, you pay for hotel rooms and plane tickets with your own money, you buy untraceable bank accounts used throughout history to launder money and to collect payment for illegal jobs. You're a minor yet you're visiting Europe by yourself on a three-day trip yet you've done no sightseeing as I can tell. I wouldn't make a mistake like this."

I sighed, feeling like I was going to be kidnapped by a lunatic obsessed with teenage boys. "You've got nothing to go on, though," I said, "they said that the photo of that kid wasn't enough to continue the case, so just finding someone who looks like him isn't going to change anything."
"True, but if I suspect you of terrorism I can hold you for at least 24 hours without charges. That will give me time enough to run your fingerprints and photograph through every Interpol database, put a hold on your passport, or track down your relatives or employers. It might even keep you from performing another of your miraculous hits if that's what you're here to do."

Suddenly this had all lost its gleeful air of ridiculousness.

Pratt stood up, motioning his friend Markus to come over. "As we suspect you of terrorist activities," Pratt began, "we're taking you into custody for questioning and examination." He pulled a set of silver handcuffs from his belt, and Markus stepped over and pulled me up by my arm.

All this, and I still really had to pee.

Not the band

Nobody chased me. Nobody tailed me. Nobody gave me a second glance.

I'm going to drive myself nuts, I told myself. It was rather confusing though; I'd found out that the whole time I thought people were after me, I was just being paranoid. But people were after me, just different people. Is it still paranoia if there really are out to get you?

I shrugged it off again. I had to stop thinking about it. I just kept walking down the narrow Vienna streets, my hands tucked in my jacket pockets to keep warm. An hour later I was back in my hotel room,dorking around on the internet . All the things I should have been thinking about kept banging on the walls of my mind, but I kept pushing it back. This made it hard to relax, but kept me from thinking myself into a fit. Being cooped up in the hotel room was starting to make me feel a bit bonkers, and time just dragged on. I had to keep myself busy, I decided, so I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the newspaper ad offering Austriansparbuch accounts.

After two rings, someone answered speaking in German. I asked if the man spoke English, he said yes.

"I'm interested in a sparbuch account," I said.
"Yes," he said in the thickest accent I'd heard since I got here, "we have available."
"And they're with Erste Bank?"
"Yes, we have them from many banks but Erste is the best common."
"They come with balances already?"
"Ehh.. balance, yes. They have 100 Euro balance in account."
"How much for the account?"
"They are 400 Euro, but have the 100 in bank already so 300 actually price."
"And the accounts, they're completely anonymous?"
"Yes. Private account, no name or addresses. Best kinds. You want through mail or pick up?"
"Are you downtown? I could meet you somewhere."
"I have someone downtown, where are you now?"

I gave him the crossroads nearest the hotel, and he told me of a cafe a few blocks away and said someone would meet me in two hours. I didn't have anything to do besides sitting and stewing over the complicated nature of my life, so I grabbed the novel I hadn't finished and walked to the cafe.

Starbucks it wasn't. Most people were drinking espresso from tiny little cups, something so pretentious that even Americans can't stand. The cafe itself was small, very old looking but decorated nicely with a long singular wooden bench wrapping around the right wall to the back, stuffed with pillows and cushions and tables tucked up against them every few feet. At the counter I tried to cut through the language barrier and get myself a latte, I ended up with something that seemed like a latte but was more bitter than I expected. I settled in at a table in the back and started to read my book.

About an hour later a man came in that looked like what the man on the phone had described, young, dark hair, dark coat. He'd warned me also that he didn't speak English. I waved at the man and he walked over. He had a Manila envelope in his hand, which he held up and said, "Euros?"

I pulled the money from my pocket and set it on the table. He sat down and started counting after handing me the envelope. In it were as a small folding booklet that reminded me of a passport, but it had the same dimensions as a credit card and a muted yellow color. The back cover of the booklet had a magnetic stripe, which meant that you probably stuck the whole thing into an ATM just like a debit card; which meant that it was probably the sparbuch itself. Inside the booklet were a few pages that looked like rules or laws, written in German, and the account number was printed at the bottom. After that were a few blank pages that looked to be meant to use as a ledger. Also in the envelope was a small piece of paper that said "SECURE CODE" and a six-digit number. Finally was a full-page document, an official-looking account summary printed and sealed by the Erste Bank. It listed the account number, the same number printed inside the sparbuch, and showed a few random transactions dated over 10 years prior, then finally a recent deposit that brought the balance to 100 Euros exactly. I looked the page over, it was printed on a laser printer on heavy stock paper with a watermark of the bank's logo. If it was fake, it was worth the 400 Euros just for the authenticity.

He said something that might pass as, "All good?" I nodded, he smiled politely and left with the money.

I put the sparbuch and the sheet with the code number in my jacket pocket, folded the rest and sat it on the bench next to me, then got back to my book. I finally finished it, and had gone through three coffees and was now on to juices and sitting in silent contemplation as the sun went down.

I noticed someone standing outside the cafe door, and it took a moment for me to recognize his face. It was the guy from outside the bank earlier in the day. He was just standing there watching the door, not looking at me. It was illegal to carry a knife over three inches in Europe so I didn't have mine on me, though I didn't know my mind went right to that. A few minutes later he was joined by another man similarly dressed. He looked through the window around the cafe until his eyes landed on me. He appeared to take in a long breath, then turned back around. I kept telling myself not to be nervous, that I was probably overreacting again, but I had done all kinds of unlawful things today, crimes both white-collar and otherwise.

I downed the last of my bottle of orange juice and just watched the both of them as they stood outside, watching cars pass on the street.

Eventually they both sauntered inside the cafe, the first guy hanging around the door and the second walking straight toward me. My legs uncrossed and I pressed both feet against the floor, and the back of my mind kept focusing on the fact that I didn't have a weapon on me. The table wasn't locked down, I bet I could throw it.

As the man walked closer, I could see that he was a bit older than the first guy. He was in his forties but still fit, and wearing a short leather jacket. The panic poking at my chest eased a small amount, but the man was indeed coming for me. He had a kind of coy smile on his face, like a man playing hide and seek with a child and obviously knowing where the kid was hiding. He sat down across from me at my table, turned the chair at an angle and leaned back in in sloppy posture. I didn't say anything.

"You speak English, don't you?" he said with the same grin. His accent was light, and definitely not German. French, maybe?
I nodded. He seemed pleased.
"I thought so," he said, "My name is Thomas Pratt." He pronounced it "Toe-mahs".
I swallowed, and thought for a second about what to say. "Chris," I decided on.
His grin pulled taught for a moment, then he continued, "I'm a lead investigator with Interpol. I've been waiting to meet you for a long time, Mr. Baker."

Sparbuch

I cut a small slit into one of the zip-ties holding Comstock's hands together so that they could be pulled apart with a bit of effort, long after I was gone.

I took the stairs down to the ground level, went out the side exit and dropped the ski mask, the recorder, and the gloves into separate trash cans as I passed them on the street. The mask went first, then I rewound the digital voice recorder and recorded myself blowing into the microphone until I'd reached the end, and took the batteries out and threw all the pieces away separately, then finally I got rid of the gloves. I knew I'd be clean, and I also knew there was no way Comstock would call the police. I walked around the Venetian streets in circles for half an hour, not looking at or seeing anything, then finally made it back to my own hotel and up to my room; where I pulled off my jacket and shirt and collapsed onto the bed, then screamed into the pillows.

I don't know what I expected. I sort of always hoped I was imagining everything, but if anything I hoped that this all had to do with Mr. Comstock and had nothing to do with me. I'd hoped he was selling government secrets and I was just somehow caught in the periphery. Instead, I was right in the middle of it. There was so much information, too much to process at one time. That guy, his name was Dingan and he was only supposed to bring me in and I'd sort of kinda accidentally killed him in self-defense. And where was he supposed to bring me into? To Comstock? He could see me any day at school. What did this have to do with the Marines? Comstock works for them? That's where he gets his money? And why is he talking to them about me? Do they think I did something illegal?

Trying to picture the Marine Corps for me was like trying to picture the wind. It was all around me, intertwined in every angle of my life. My dad worked and died for them, most of the people I know are related to a Marine of some sort, even Amy's dad was probably some kind of Special Forces guy for them. It wouldn't make sense that this would be the entire Marine Corps that Comstock was dealing with. If they wanted me for something, they could just come get me, they wouldn't have to involve school administrators, and they could have had me when I was right on the central Marine Corps base. They ran my name through the computer at the security gate, if I was really in their crosshairs, they could have had me long ago.

No, this would most likely be some small element inside the Corps. Maybe someone that knew my dad, or some rogue faction. Maybe I could ask Amy's dad, or that Schumer guy I talked to the day before in Quantico. Maybe they could help me.

Whoever I was dealing with, Comstock was afraid enough of them that he thought they might kill him. That was bad news for me. He also thought they might try to take his money. That was also bad news for me. If it is the government that's so interested in me, they'd have the resources to access and screw around with my bank account, and they'd definitely know about my money. I supposed that if Comstock thought it prudent to move all of his money to some kind of ultra-private Austrian account, perhaps I should do likewise.

Looking up Austrian banks helped take my mind off of everything else. I found what looked like a prominent bank, Erste Bank, which had a branch right on the river and not very far from me. I somehow knew that Erste means First, so if they really are the First Bank of Austria, they'd have to be old and rife with financial loopholes and rich customers who don't want their fortunes advertised to any governments.

I took a cab to the bank, expecting to find a giant stone-columned fortress with three levels of underground vaults. It was just a small little bank branch, like the sort of thing you'd see in the US between a donut store and another bank. Nevertheless, I went inside and asked for the bank manager. The teller at the main window picked up a phone and spoke to someone, then hung up and said in poor English that someone would be there in a moment. Sure enough, someone came from a row of offices just off the lobby area and walked me back to the furthest office. Inside was an old, meager man with thin hair and an expensive-looking suit. He stood up and offered his hand over his oak desk.

I sat down in a plush leather chair across from him, made sure he spoke English, and went on with it.

I explained in great detail how I was an American actor, how I'd had a few decent roles in Hollywood pictures but had just signed a contract to star in a three-part film series based on some popular children's books, that I'd be coming into a great deal of money, but was very concerned about my emancipated parents trying to get a hold of it in the courts because I was still a legal minor. I wanted to put it somewhere secure that couldn't be tracked down by investigators and the like, and I'd been suggested to try an Austrian account so I got on a plane, flew to Austria, and went to the closest bank to my hotel. It seemed more believable than, "The Marine Corps may or may not want me dead, and either way, they may want to use my money to make me dead."

The bank manager took all this in, seeming to follow my words perfectly, yet not reacting to any of my embellishments about how the movie series was going to be rubbish but was just being made to compete with the Harry Potter movies and because the studio would lose the license to the books if they didn't use it.

"The problem you'll run into here is the same one you will find in America," he told me, "you must be 18 years old to open a single-party account. You say your birthday is next month. We could start the processing now for an account and finalize it through the mail once you turn 18."

I frowned. "I've heard about these savings accounts with no identity associated with them. Just a number and a passcode. Couldn't I just open one of those?" I asked.

Now the bank manager frowned. "You mean a Sparbuch, eh... passbook account? Recent banking laws have required us to slightly modify how we process those, though there was a time when you could open such an anonymous account where whoever holds the passbook and knows the password is the legal owner of the account; no names, no mailed statements, highly transferable -- but because they made it rather easy to launder funds for illegal purposes, it's impossible to open a new account like this. Even then, you had to be an Austrian citizen to do this."

"You still have the sparbuch accounts, though?"

"Yes," he said, hesitant, "we offer anonymous and named sparbuch-type accounts, but they must be opened like any other account, with a name and proof of identity and such. If one chooses to make the account anonymous, the name is held securely in our records and statements and transactions will just refer to the account number and not the name. And, as before, one must be 18 years old for this."

It sounded like Rubino was right, modern anti-laundering laws made fully anonymous banking a thing of the past.

"You said you can't open any new totally anonymous sparbuch accounts, but there are still existing ones?" I said.
"Yes, we honor all accounts and could never close such an account because there's no way to contact the account holder."
"And you said those accounts are highly transferable?"
"Well, yes. Whoever has the 'passbook', which is now a secure bank card, and knows the account's security code is considered the account holder, so if you just gave the card to someone and told them the code, they become the new owner."
"So..." I started, "would there perhaps be any of those cards lying around that someone might know the code for?"

The manager looked nervous and rapped his fingers against the desk for a second, then said, "I know what you mean, but this is not something we or any bank can do. There are services that broker in pre-existing sparbuch accounts, or some people will just sell them outright through advertisements and such, but this can be dangerous as some are scams."
"Do you know of any services that definitely aren't scams?"

The manager darted his eyes back and forth once, then looked around the room as if making sure that nobody had snuck in, then he opened a lower desk drawer and pulled out a folded newspaper that looked a few weeks old judging by the coloring. He drew a circle around a block of text with a pen then slid the paper across the desk, saying "I'm sure I have no idea."

Circled was a classified ad that first said, "E.B. Sparbuch Accounts. Guaranteed balances." and had a phone number listed. Below that was seemingly the same thing in German. The bank manager probably had some relationship with whoever was selling these, probably supplying the accounts or getting a cut of each sold, or both. I took the paper and set it on my lap.

"One more thing," I said, "If I had such an account, could I wire money to it from a U.S. bank? And how do withdrawals and deposits work?"
"The account would come with a routing number and account number that could be used like any checking account for electronic transfers in either direction. Deposits and withdrawals can be made in person at any branch, or from any of our 24 hour ATM machines."

I thanked the man and left the bank. Outside as I waited for a cab, I slipped the newspaper page into my inner jacket pocket and as I looked around I saw a man across the street leaning against a car and looking at me. The man was early-thirties, had long black hair and a brown leather coat. At first he just glanced at me, then again, then he squinted at me as if trying to recognize my face, then he turned to look in all directions, then looked back at me as I tried to dodge his gaze by pretending to read a road sign. Across the street, the man got in the driver seat of his car and pulled a cellphone to his face, glancing at me one more time.

I reflected upon the last time somebody sat in a car and spoke on a cellphone while looking at me, and I just started walking. I thought I could feel my eyes start to burn.

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.