Thriller (39 page)

tugged her toward the house. Oniony gusts of sweat, overlaid

with a yeasty smell, came from her. When Jane glanced back, the

men were clustered around the car trunk.

Inside, Jane was plied with tea, orangeade, cookies and raki,

a potent and raw grape brandy. When they walked back out half

an hour later, she noticed that the car sat higher. The men were

examining a stack of boxes, and she thought she saw the glint

of sun on metal. Then Bashkim stepped in front of her, blocking the view, and they left. Her mind afloat from drinking raki

on an empty stomach, Jane leaned back in her seat. She told herself to stay vigilant, but instead dozed off, waking an hour later

with a sour taste in her mouth, acid in her stomach.

They were in the mountains now, the tall, fierce peaks that

dominate Albania, leaving only a sliver of arable land. It was afternoon. Just ahead, a bridge spanned a deep chasm. As they shot

onto it, Jane looked and saw white water rushing down. She remembered Paul saying that the bridge was near the border. Then

for a while the road would skirt Lake Ohrid, a deep body of still

water that formed a natural border between Macedonia and Albania. Coming off the bridge, Bashkim executed a sickening

curve around a precipice without a guardrail. Hundreds of yards

below, Jane saw the rusting skeletons of cars that had misjudged

the turn. Jets of saliva shot into her mouth and she thought she

might be sick.

They were on a straightaway when Jane saw an accident ahead

and a man waving a white shirt tied to a pole. Bashkim swore

and slowed. As they drew closer, Jane saw it wasn’t an accident

but two Albanian army trucks, blocking the road. A pimplyfaced soldier with a rifle waved them over to the side. Bashkim

stared ahead with a fixed intensity. The car surged forward, and

Jane thought he meant to gun the accelerator and try to blast

through.

At the last possible second, he hit the brake. The cars behind him

careened into a ditch, bumping along on a cloud of dust and then

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accelerating past the roadblock. Jane wondered if the authorities

might give chase, but they seemed supremely uninterested.

A soldier walked up to Bashkim, rifle pointed at his head,

barking orders in Albanian. Jane saw the restaurateur’s knee

tremble but his voice stayed calm. She heard the words

Amerikane
and
Skopje
. More soldiers came, ordered them out of

the car. Jane felt unreal, stiff and jerky with fear. She’d heard

about Albanian bandits who set up roadblocks and robbed Westerners of cars, clothes and even shoes, leaving them stranded in

their underwear. In years past, tractor-trailer trucks had convoyed to the Yugoslav border without stopping. Jane thought

about offering the soldiers money.

She pulled out the cell phone, thinking she’d call Paul at the

U.S. embassy in Tirana. “Help,” she’d say. “We’ve been stopped

at a roadblock by Albanian soldiers and I think we’re in trouble.

Now aren’t you sorry you didn’t let me ride with the courier?”

The soldiers shoved Bashkim and screamed questions at him,

ignoring her. Jane took several steps away. Nobody noticed. She

drifted around one truck, moved along the tarp to the other, then

froze in disbelief.

In the cab, hunched over a laptop, sat Paul. Another embassy

guy with a crew cut that she remembered from a Tirana dinner

party leaned against the door, peering intently at Paul’s screen,

a cell phone pressed to his ear. Jane checked her first impulse to

dash over and throw herself, sobbing, into Paul’s arms. Instead,

she ran through all the possible reasons her lover might be sitting in this desolate mountain pass with a passel of Albanian soldiers, and why he hadn’t told her he was coming or offered her

a ride himself. The answers she came up with made her shrink

back into the shade of the tarp. But it was too late.

Sensing her presence, Paul looked up. “Jane,” he said. “Oh my

God. What are you doing here?”

Like it was a big surprise. She thought back on the argument

at the restaurant. Paul announcing in a loud voice that he

couldn’t allow the embassy courier to drive her to Macedonia.

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His look of near gloating—she now realized—when Bashkim had

offered a ride.

“You planned this,” Jane said. “You set him up.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Paul said, but his voice was as hollow as

his eyes.

He glanced over her shoulder, and grim satisfaction spread

across his face. She turned and saw the soldiers unloading boxes

from the trunk of Bashkim’s car. They had found the machine

gun, too. Over to the side of the road, Bashkim lay spread-eagle

on the ground. One of the soldiers kicked him as he passed and

the prone man gave a strangled cry.

“Stop it, you bastard, we need him for questioning,” the crewcut man called.

Paul cursed and jumped out of the cab. He walked toward the

soldier and in the moments that followed, Jane saw a different

man than the one she had known. His bearing, even the tenor

of his voice, changed. He was self-assured, in charge, bristling

with power. The soldier cowered as Paul dressed him down in

perfect-sounding Albanian.

Jane listened, astounded. Paul had told her he was hopeless

with languages. Now this stranger walked back to her and said,

“I’m sorry, Jane. But you were never in danger. We were tracking you with the global positioning device.” He nodded smartly

at the cell phone, which she still clutched impotently in her

hand. “Led us right to the safe house.”

Realization bore down like an oncoming train that would

smash her into a thousand pieces. She had been the decoy. A

nicely turned-out Western woman. Each side had used her.

Something did break in her then. But to her surprise, when she

examined the sharp and deadly pieces, she found that they had

their own terrifying beauty and usefulness.

“What did Bashkim do?” she asked, willing her voice not to

tremble.

“Our pal over there is one of the biggest smugglers in Tirana.

Remember when the country rioted and looted the armories?

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He’s been trading machine guns to al-Qaeda for Afghani heroin.

We’ve been watching him for months.”

“We? Since when does the embassy track smugglers?”

“The embassy works hand in hand with Interpol.”

“You’re not some lowly attaché, are you, Paul?”

He ran his hands through his hair and looked away. He didn’t

say anything. He didn’t have to.

She felt that sanity was a thin membrane, stretching ever

tighter. If she moved even a fraction, it would snap and she’d slip

under. Yet she had to know one thing.

“Did you plan this? I mean, from the beginning? Because I

thought…it felt…”

She shook her head, blinking back tears. She had been played

for a fool.

A shadow crossed Paul’s face.

He licked his lips. “I never meant…” he began.

He didn’t get a chance to finish.

Two cars came roaring down the highway from the east, machine

guns blazing. As she threw herself to the ground, Jane thought she

recognized the vehicles that had peeled past the roadblock. Had

they also been in the convoy that had trailed them from Tirana?

Gunfire erupting around her, Jane clutched her head and crawled

on her belly toward the nearest truck, expecting at any second to

be hit and feel no more. Reaching the undercarriage, she rolled beneath it and listened to the shouts, the guns, then the groans of

dying men. She prayed no bullets would pierce the gas tank.

After what seemed like hours, the shooting stopped. For a long

time, there was silence. In the distance, a bird screamed, the exultant cry of a carrion feeder that spies dinner. Then she heard

footsteps. She cowered and curled herself into a ball, wishing she

might disappear. A shadow fell on the highway, and she saw a

polished leather shoe.

“Come out,” said an Albanian-accented voice in English.

Bashkim.

She didn’t answer.

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“If you don’t come out, I’ll shoot you.”

Still she stayed silent, wondering if he was bluffing. She heard

the crack of his knees as he squatted. A hand with a gun appeared, angling to and fro, then settling its muzzle blessedly far

from where she lay. Jane held her breath as he pulled the trigger.

One of the truck’s tires exploded with a loud pop and began to

deflate. She gave an involuntary scream.

“I knew it.” His voice was triumphant. “Last chance, Jane.

Next time I aim for your voice.”

“Okay,” she said. “Don’t shoot.”

She crawled out and they stared at one another.

“Please,” she said. “I didn’t know it was a setup.”

Bashkim’s lips pursed. He looked at where Paul’s body lay, eyes

staring glassily at the sky. Near his head was a pool of blood. All

around her were other crumpled bodies. One of the cars that had

shot at them lay on its side, smashed and burning. She looked

for the other.

“It went over the edge,” Bashkim said. “They couldn’t have

survived.”

“Wh-who were they?”

Bashkim grimaced.

“My bodyguards. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to travel in

Albania?”

“Jesus,” she said, seized with an uncontrollable bout of

shivering.

Bashkim stared at her, and Jane thought he might be trying to

decide whether to kill her now or later. They both knew she’d

seen too much to live.

“He betrayed me, too, you know,” Jane said.

He examined her indifferently. “So I heard.”

He walked to where her cell phone had fallen and smashed it

with his heel, grinding it into the asphalt like a cockroach.

“Don’t kill me,” Jane said. “I’ll help you. I’ve got an American

passport, money.”

“Yes,” Bashkim nodded. “With your passport, we’ll breeze

through.”

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He prodded her with the gun, back to the Mercedes. All the

tires had been shot out, and smoke was rising from under the

hood. She wondered if it might catch fire while they stood there.

The trunk stood open, white powder seeping out of bullet-riddled boxes.

More boxes were scattered along the road, next to Bashkim’s

machine gun, which had been reduced to twisted metal. Bashkim

told her to empty her backpack and hand over her passport and

wallet, which he put in his pocket. Then he made her tear open

the boxes and fill her backpack with the sacks of white powder.

Pulling an old rucksack from his trunk, he ordered her to fill that,

too. Then, he loaded her up like a pack mule and marched her

off the highway, into the rocky countryside to a dirt trail pounded

hard by animals.

“The border’s about ten miles away. We’ll have to stay off

the road.”

They set off, moving like ghosts through the denuded landscape.

“Let’s stop here and rest a moment,” he said when they reached

a rock outcropping. His tone deliberate and unsettling. Bashkim

eased himself down. He stared at her and she looked away, thinking about escape and when she might make a break for it. She

needed cover. Bashkim stood up, laid the gun on a rock. He

walked toward her as she scrambled to her feet. Suddenly he

flung himself at her, knocking her to the ground. Jane tried to

wriggle free but he was strong and his weight pinned her. She

saw the look in his eyes. Perhaps the day’s events had awakened

something atavistic in him. Perhaps it had always been there. But

she knew she was of no consequence to him anymore. He was

going to kill her once they crossed, so it didn’t matter what else

he did in the meantime.

“Get off me,” she panted.

He shoved a hand down her pants and tugged.

“Fucking get off.”

“Fucking. Yes, that’s what all you American girls like. I knew

it the first time I saw you.”

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“You’re wrong. Get off.”

She tried to brace one hand against the dirt so she could twist

aside and knee him. Instead, her fingers glanced off a large rock.

She groped for it. It grazed the edges of her fingertips, just out

of reach. Bashkim unzipped his fly.

Jane squirmed backward and flexed her fingers toward the

rock. Her fingers nudged it, slid along the rough, granular edges,

searching for where it might taper, afford a grip. There. Her hand

closed tightly.

Bashkim tore at her underwear and rose up, wedging her legs

open with his knee. A bloodlust burned in her. She’d get only

one chance. The rock was in the air. Jane shoved her knee into

his groin and screamed as she brought the rock down hard

against the base of his skull.

He gasped, then was still. She rolled the inert body off of her,

scrabbled up. Bashkim was unconscious. Bleeding. She looked

at him and felt only a mounting need to zip up her jeans and flee.

She still held the rock, now slick with blood. Forcing her fingers to relinquish it took awhile. Jane panted shallowly, and the

enormity of everything that had happened overwhelmed her.

Leaning over a thornbush, she retched, cursing her weakness. She

had to get to the border before night fell, stranding her. Already,

the temperature was dropping. She knew the road below led to