The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (38 page)

The money she’d taken from Logan was enough to get a cab to the port, and from there to buy a one-way ferry ticket to Montevideo, the capital of neighboring Uruguay. The trip was only a three-hour skip over the water, but money to pay for a ticket was useless without documents for travel, and as such, the trip would predictably be a whole lot longer.

When Munroe stepped outside, the Russian was still in his car by the curb where she’d parked. He’d switched to the driver’s seat but turned off the engine, and was now staring out the windshield. It had been fewer than ten minutes since Munroe had rushed inside, but to a man who had, by his own interpretation of events, narrowly escaped a violent act, ten minutes were ten lifetimes, and she would have expected him to have used that time to put as much distance between himself and the hostel as possible. And then maybe down a stiff drink.

The man didn’t have the look of a trauma victim, and other than that he still sat where she’d left him, he didn’t appear to be in shock. Munroe cursed inwardly and made a slow, cautious return to the car. There wasn’t time to waste, but the Russian was there, and as she was at fault for bringing him to this point, she couldn’t just walk away.

Munroe rapped knuckles on the passenger window, and the man turned as if he’d been waiting for her and was happy she’d come back.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Are you in trouble?”

His questions weren’t what she’d expected, but she wouldn’t turn down an opportunity. “I could use a ride,” she said.

He reached to open the passenger door, and she slid inside.

“We Russians must stick together,” he said, and Munroe, following the path of least resistance, simply grinned. Her nonverbal response was neither acknowledgment nor contradiction, and he would read from the look whatever pleased him. Ambiguity was so much easier than truth and the exhaustive amount of time it would take to explain
that she’d never even been to Russia, that she had a gift for languages, that the only reason he mistook her for one of his own was because in her second year of college she’d spent four months dating a boy from St. Petersburg.

Better just to grin.

The man turned the ignition key and Munroe asked for the Buquebus terminal, the lower end of the port, south of the commercial shipping docks, where the ferry lines to Uruguay were found. The Russian seemed familiar enough with the location and the route. He pulled directly into traffic, asked no help with directions, and drove the first several minutes in silence.

“If you’re in trouble, maybe I can help,” the Russian said, “so far from home, we must ally.”

“It’s been a bad morning, that’s all,” she said. “I’ve friends to meet up with and once I find them, everything will be well.”

“You’re certain?” the man said.

Munroe nodded, and he said nothing more.

The port abutted the wide, busy avenues of Puerto Madero, as if the city had decided to end things by jumping into the chocolate-toned water and then at the last minute would rather tiptoe in, adding a few more buildings before the very end.

The Buquebus terminal, with its modern glass design and Jetway-style boarding, which ran from the second floor down to where the ships would dock, seemed more like an airport than a ferry transport.

Munroe asked that the Russian drive beyond the parking area, with its policemen and security, just a little farther down the branching road, and so he continued beyond the terminal and ticket office, stopping as requested along a rusted fence that separated the docks from city traffic.

She offered to pay for the ride, and he refused.

With a good-bye full of unasked questions, and a reassuring handshake on her part, he pulled away from the curb, and she remained rooted, watching as the vehicle shrank away and then blended with traffic to vanish completely.

Munroe turned from the road to the fence and headed farther back, to the run-down end of the wharf, where the buildings were old, the security lax, and where fewer pedestrians mingled. There she found a spot to hop the wires in order to gain access to where the employees gathered: a place where she could sit and observe without being noticed while cars lined up and the baggage men with their little tractors and trailing carts made ready for the next departure.

The ferry to Montevideo was scheduled to leave in an hour, and one way or the other, she would be on it. The issue wasn’t ticketing per se, it was getting identification to purchase the ticket—and then proceeding through the appropriate immigration procedures—as if her face, messed up as it was, wouldn’t create unnecessary complications.

Up top, through the glass, she could see the shadows of passengers as they gathered and prepared for embarkation, but they held no interest to her. Passports were only as good as their original holder, and as such had the possibility of bringing the bearer unforeseen trouble. Ideally, she would swipe a national identification card; this was all that an Argentine would need to cross into Uruguay. No questions. No suspicions. Simply an open door to the country across the border.

With emotionless calculation she studied those mingling about the dockside, judging the quality of each, passing them over in turn. This was that dangerous place where the predator overrode empathy, where, like the Russian with his car, solving need and want blurred the boundaries between right and wrong, and the uninvolved suffered on behalf of those to blame.

Munroe stood and slipped closer to the work area, watching, waiting, searching out opportunity amid the bustle of dockside readiness. Suppliers, dockworkers, and the occasional crew member came and went, and Munroe tracked them with dispassionate interest.

It took twenty minutes to spot the mark. He was part of the ferry staff, early thirties at best, and both his body language and the menial tasks he performed pointed toward his being low man on the totem pole. Unlike any member of the crew, he wouldn’t be overly missed if he failed to show up for embarkation, and better still, his position as a
Buquebus employee would not only solve the issue of documentation but also eliminate the need for ticketing and much of the immigration and border protocol that went with the journey.

The ferry was in the final stages of preparing to set out, the stream of passengers that had been steadily boarding over the past ten minutes began to ebb slightly, and the target had already made several trips over the service gangplank and back, carrying an assortment of boxes on board.

Munroe loitered, waiting until he’d moved most of them, timing each trip in and out until, with only one load left, he was swallowed by the interior of the ship.

Much could be assessed from a person’s walk, from their build, and the level at which they observed their surroundings, but appearances were often deceiving. The sweetest old lady might think nothing of sticking you with a shiv, and as such, taking on an unknown opponent, no matter how docile and defeated he might appear, always carried an element of risk.

On the man’s return, as he prepared to lift the final box, Munroe casually approached from behind, across the dock, amid the commotion, as if she rightfully belonged there. At the periphery of her awareness remained a counterweight to the savage, the ever present caution that there was no point to eradicating evil if in the end she would only replicate it.

She took the knife to the side of his lower back, tip pointed upward, far enough through his clothes that he would feel the thrust of it. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, “and I don’t want to steal from you.”

He tensed, let go of the box, and straightened. His breathing shifted, and it wasn’t a rapid pant of fear. His were the slow and measured movements of a man who had been down this path before, a man who understood the leverage he held in this crowded area.

With her free arm wrapped around his waist, she steered him back the way she’d come, under the upper floor, toward the staff door along
the outside of the ticket building wall. She wanted him off the wharf and into privacy as quickly as possible.

“Walk with me and listen to my proposal,” she said.

The man did as she asked, moved with her for the moment, acquiesced, perhaps to put her off her guard, because several paces forward he drove his elbow into her side so hard that it knocked the knife from her hand.

I
t was speed that saved her, was always speed that saved her. Munroe drove a responsive fist to his kidney and a boot into the back of his opposite knee. Followed him down when he stumbled. Scooped the knife and pulled him upward, all in the time it would have taken for him to trip and catch his balance.

Those mingling along the dock were none the wiser.

He had spoken, and she’d replied, hers the stronger message of the two. She forced calm against anger. There was no reason to fault him for trying, she would have reacted the same way, and the only thing he’d done to deserve this treatment was having been in the right place at the wrong time.

“I swear I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “But if you force my hand I’ll have no choice, you understand?”

He nodded, and at her nudge they continued across the way, to the end of the building and the inconspicuous door from which staff had filtered in, but over the last thirty minutes, mostly out.

The small interior was limited to a narrow hall and two small rooms branching off on either side. The clutter of papers and the smell of stale coffee and food spilled beyond the open doors into the walkway. The hallway continued to a closed door that could be only a bathroom or a utility closet, and from there turned a sharp right toward the remainder of the building. Munroe walked him to the dead-end door.

“Open it,” she said, and then followed close behind into the one-stall bathroom, locked the door, and motioned him to the toilet. It had no lid, no seat, and in order to keep from sliding into the water, he had to straddle it, legs held wide.

“I need your jacket and identification,” she said. “I can either take what I want by force, which will be painful for you and messy for me, or you can give them to me in exchange for what money I have on me—not a lot, but more than what it will take to replace your ID. Either way I’m going to tie you up and leave you here. If you fight me, I’ll do it because I have no choice. If you give me what I want, it will be so that when you are found, your story, whatever you decide to tell, will be believable.”

The man stared at her, his jaw working back and forth in what she read as anger or deep thought, probably both.

“How much money?” he said finally.

Blade in her right hand, eyes always on him, guarding against any movement, she reached with her left into a pocket and pulled out two-thirds of what she’d taken from Logan. She dropped it into his outstretched hand, and in response he reached for his back pocket.

She said, “Stop.”

He put both hands up. “My wallet,” he said, and she nodded.

The man pulled out his ID card and held it toward her.

“Drop it on the floor,” she said. He did as she asked, then shrugged out of his overshirt and theatrically dropped it on top of the ID. He raised his eyebrows in a look of “Now what?”

She wanted his T-shirt, and he peeled it off to reveal a well-toned torso underneath. She placed a boot on his groin, shoved dangerously downward, and reached for the shirt.

“Don’t move,” she said.

With the knife, she slit the material, one ribbon after the next, then pushed his head between his knees. Boot to his neck, she secured his wrists behind his back, then tied a gag between his lips. Certain he couldn’t easily free himself, she ordered him to stand.

She loosened the buckle of his pants. A look of horror crossed his
face and he began to crawfish backward, a blinded, crazed attempt to escape when there was no escape.

Munroe’s laugh was spontaneous and she shook her head. “Calm down,” she said, “I’m just making sure you remain secure.” Never mind the explanation that she was female.

His eyes remained wide, but he stopped struggling. Hands to his shoulders, she moved him back into a seated position, and with his pants around his ankles, she secured his feet, one to the other, with strips she’d taken from his shirt, the improvised bonds running behind the toilet from one foot, back again to the other. Once she was gone, he would struggle, but the restraints would hold until after the ferry departed, and that was all she needed.

She slipped into his work shirt. Picked up the ID. Slid out of the bathroom and shut the door.

Munroe moved back onto the dock and next to the ship, shouldered the remaining box still there on the ground and, five minutes from start to finish, carried it into the belly of the ship.

Only after she was on board, out of the light and out of the fight, did she realize the severity of her shaking. She’d gone from adrenaline rush to adrenaline dump, to adrenaline rush twice over, and was beyond spent. She needed food. Needed a place where she could lay low for the length of the trip.

She was on the ship’s lower level, the hollow space where vehicles were stowed for the duration of the trip and where the air was foul with fumes and machinery. The last of the luggage trolleys had returned to the dock, passengers who’d driven the vehicles on board were sent upstairs, and only a few crew members remained below.

Munroe slipped between the cars. On a ledge, next to life vests, was a small container, like a lunch box, temporarily set aside, and without breaking stride or letting go of the load she carried, Munroe picked it up and continued on, beside the vehicles to a windowless door.

The interior was dark and small, an empty storage area.

She slipped inside, dumped the box onto the floor, sat on it, and
shoveled food from the lunch container into her mouth faster than she could chew, gorging on it as if she were starving, craving protein when there were only vegetables and potatoes and a flavor that said meat, although there was none to be had.

The food was sufficient to slow the shaking, but not nearly enough to satiate the craving for sustenance. Munroe slit open the box, found it filled with an assortment of packaged desserts, and although she knew that she would later pay the price for dumping sugar into a system that badly needed nutrition, she opened and ate several.