Valley of Thracians (19 page)

Chapter
38

“Where’s my package?”

Nikolov stares at me with a burning
intensity, his eyes drilling into me like bullets going for the quick kill of
an execution. He raises one hand as if to slap me but then retracts it to
caress his greasy scalp instead. I am standing empty-handed next to his desk,
trying to look as innocent as possible. Despite his seething anger, I’m
determined to achieve my goal.

“Give me my passport, and I’ll give you
your package,” I respond, my voice cracking and revealing my uncertainty at
making this demand. Yet I know I cannot back down. This is my one chance to
retrieve my passport.

Nikolov barks into his phone, and in a
minute, the bulky security guard appears, as big and loathsome as ever. The two
of them converse in words that are guttural and threatening. And then they turn
to me.

“My dear American, I am giving you one last
chance to comply with my request,” Nikolov snarls, his mouth wide with flashes
of gold-coated teeth. “I really believe you want to end our dealings on a
pleasant note, do you not?”

I don’t move a muscle. I hold out my
hand to receive a passport that has not yet been produced nor offered to me.

Nikolov hisses a throaty command. Before
I know what is happening, the guard is dragging me from the office and down a
corridor, away from the crowded lobby and into the bowels of the hotel.

“Where are we going?” I ask, but the
muscleman is silent. We go down a set of stairs, and then another, into a long,
dark passageway. I hear machines rumbling in the nearby rooms. The basement
walls are gray, smudged with the shadows of swinging lightbulbs. There is no
one around to witness the spectacle of a confused and protesting American being
led unwillingly into a subterranean realm of menace.

We pass the hotel laundry room. For a
split second I see uniformed employees bent over the mouths of huge washing
machines, half hidden behind the steam of industrial-size clothes presses.
Should I call out for help? What would I say? How can I explain my predicament?

And then we arrive at an uninviting
windowless room at the end of the corridor. A door slams shut behind us, and I
am alone with the muscle-endowed guard. There are no furnishings in the room. I
retreat to the corner and spin around to face him. What can I say to protest my
innocence? How can I convince the guard if I haven’t made my point with
Nikolov? Surely it’s clear to both of them that the moment they hand over my
passport I will reveal to them the location of the bag.

I smile at the guard, as if none of this
disturbs me in the least, but my legs are wobbly. My smile vanishes when I
notice that he is wielding a thick, wooden stick. What is it called?
A baton?
Why am I thinking about the name of the weapon this
guy is carrying when I should be concerned—very much concerned—for my life!

He swings the baton back and forth,
slapping it lightly against his leg. His efforts to intimidate me are working.
The message doesn’t need to be stated in words. Either I tell him where the
Adidas bag
is,
or I am going to be beaten to a pulp.

“You make no good with Nikolov,” he
snarls, enjoying his role of confronting someone who cannot fight back. “You do
no good thing.”

I am not one to stand up to threats,
stated or implied, and I cave immediately. “It’s in the lobby,” I say, quite
truthfully, but this anguish-filled statement clearly doesn’t strike a chord
with the guard.

He lifts the baton and smacks it hard
against my shoulder. The last of my fortitude crumbles at the blow. My knees
buckle. I feel myself begin to topple forward. Intense pain shoots through me.

“The lobby,” I repeat, over and over,
but each time my voice is getting weaker. The blows are coming faster now, one
to the upper arm, another lands on the back of my hand.

It’s in the lobby, I say, but I don’t
know if I am still capable of saying these words aloud.

A final blow, more powerful than the
rest, strikes me on the right side of my head. Everything goes black.

Chapter
39

A rifle shot cracks the silence of the
morning, reverberating between the trees and echoing back from the
shadow-cloaked mountain slopes beyond. Another shot rings across the valley,
and then another. They sound quite close.

I drop to my knees, taking cover behind
an outcrop of rock. My breaths are labored. I wheeze as I fight to recoup my
strength after a mad dash through the woods. I check to make sure that my
backpack is strapped tightly to my shoulder. My precious laptop is my gateway
to civilization, and I can’t afford to damage it.

I hadn’t expected to be hunted down like
an animal on my escape from the cabin, just a few days after my encounter with
the bear. Without knowing that I had been attacked, Katya informed me that a
local farmer had been mauled by the beast, leading the villagers to launch a
hunting party to track it down. My wounds from running into the bear have
mostly healed. The parallel scars on my leg are still warm to the touch, but at
least I no longer have a fever. I discarded the blood-stained jeans in the
woods before Katya had a chance to see them. Compared to what I’ve gone through
on my road to recovery, the bear attack was a minor distraction.

From my vantage point behind the rocks,
I see the hunters approaching. There are three of them, tall, skinny men
camouflaged in green and black and wearing caps with droopy ear flaps. Each of
them bears a shotgun. I have no doubt that these men are trigger-happy, ready
to fire at the slightest provocation. They advance steadily, regarding their
surroundings with the fever of the hunt in their eyes.

After such a long time of living on my
own in the mountains, I have no desire to confront villagers of any kind—and
certainly not hunters—on my final departure from the cabin. I will have enough
explaining to do when I reach the
mehana
and make contact with my
family. Everyone will question where I’ve been all this time, how I’ve
survived. I don’t need to reveal this information to complete strangers as
well.

I have no regrets leaving Katya without
saying good-bye or offering an explanation. I will remain forever grateful for
what she has done to save me. It was Katya who rescued my battered body at the
hotel, who took me to a local doctor to treat my most serious wounds, and who
transported me back across the country to the remote cabin in the mountains.
Katya singlehandedly nursed me back to health, ensuring that my physical
injuries would heal. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be alive today.

She has indeed been kind to me, but on
the other hand, her actions have also prolonged my isolation and suffering.

 
Katya has kept me prisoner in the cabin all
this time, under the spell of the addictive narcotics that she prepared
specifically for this sinister purpose. She told me repeatedly that everything
she did was for my own good, insisting that she was acting to protect me from
the inherent dangers awaiting me if I left. Somehow I find this all quite hard
to believe now that I have recovered my memory. Why did she act this way? Her
motives remain a mystery to me, but I don’t have the luxury of time to think
about them.

Before the hunters have a chance to
notice me, I dash into the woods, making my way through the bushes and
overgrowth into darkened areas not visible from the path. I will wait here
until I am sure the men are gone.

And then more shots ring out.

I hear excited shouts, not far from
where I am standing. I fear they have spotted me, possibly mistaking me for the
wayward bear. A muscle in my clawed leg is cramping; there is no way I can
outrun these men. And these local hunters know the forest better than I do. I
am about to give up, to raise my hands and reveal myself. But instead of
announcing my presence, a survival instinct takes control over my actions, and
I scurry deeper into the woods.

Finding a thick bed of tall wild grass,
I ease myself to the ground. I lie down, partially hidden from view. Hopefully
my horizontal position will not be visible if the hunters gaze in this
direction from a distance. My heart beats loudly, a regular hammering that I
fear will serve as a beacon to draw the men toward my hiding spot. After a few
moments, my breathing eases into a slower, more relaxed pace. Lying prone on
the moist mountain soil among the weeds, I await my fate.

One of the men comes close. I hear his
steps, his heavy boots trampling on the ground cover with little regard for the
twigs and vegetation crunching in his wake. His breathing is shallow and even.
He stops suddenly, maybe just a meter or two from where I lie in the grass.
With all the time in the world, he takes in his surroundings. There is no bear
here, I whisper to myself, wishing that he would come to the same conclusion
and leave me alone.

Then the man does something that, if nothing
else,
proves that he has absolutely no idea I’m lying
in the brush near his feet. He unzip his pants and
lets
loose with a steady stream of urine that splatters on the ground, just inches
from my head. I smell the acidic urine, which momentarily masks the reek of the
hunter himself. The flow seems to go on forever, and then it slows to a tinkle
until it stops altogether.

“
Haide
,” one of the
hunters
calls from afar, and the man zips up his pants and
leaves, trampling the weeds as he hurries to rejoin his friends.

I remain on the ground for many minutes,
grateful for a summer breeze that whips through the pines and beats the wild
grass into waves of submission. The hunters must be gone by now; I haven’t
heard their voices or movements for some time. Yet I fear that if I get up it
will lead to my discovery, so I continue to hug the earth as if it alone can
protect me.

The sun has crossed the sky and is
beginning its descent behind the distant peaks when I finally rise, brush off
my clothing, and head back toward the path. Luckily, I haven’t strayed too far
off course. Soon I am on the dirt trail leading to the village. Eager to reach
the first signs of civilization before darkness falls, I quicken my pace.

The same mustached man is on duty behind
the counter of the
mehana
. I order a coffee, knowing that I will have to
budget my purchases with the limited money I’ve stolen from Katya’s purse. I
sit down at a table and take out my laptop, firing up its power to reconnect
with my life.

The thick black coffee is served just as
my Internet connection is established. Where do I start? There is email to
check, family members to notify. The first thing is to just give a shout out
that I’m alive. I need to provide my loved ones with an indication of my
location, somewhere in the wilds of northwestern Bulgaria.

I launch Skype and search among my
contacts to see who is online. My grandfather! His icon is green, indicating
that he is available. He can help me. Even before I have a chance to type in a
greeting, the chat box opens mysteriously on its own.

“Scott, are you there?”

I stare at these words and smile. My
long ordeal is about to end.

Part
Three: The Fortress

Chapter
40

“Scott?”

Again she called his name, but she knew
he was gone. There was no laptop on the table, and the wardrobe doors were
open, both signs that he had hastily packed his clothes. She ran to peek in the
outhouse but only flies disturbed the foulness of that enclosed putrid hole.
Back inside, she circled the two rooms repeatedly, as if it was possible to
miss him in a corner or under the cot. The cabin was empty, drained of its
inhabitant and its purpose.

On her last visit, she had had a
premonition that he would leave, but she had failed to take any precautions to
prevent it. At the time, she sensed that he had searched through her purse, and
when she returned to her village, she realized she was missing some money. Now
that piece fit into place as well.

For a moment, Katya didn’t know what to
think. It was as if someone had punched her in the stomach, sapping her
strength. Her mission in life had vanished into thin air. After everything she
had done for Scott, after the many months of unwavering devotion and the long
nights of caring attention, he had departed without notice from the sanctuary
she had created for
him .
He had left no farewell
message, not even the simplest thank you. Scott was gone from the cabin, no
longer under her protection.

And that is what frightened her. Again
and again she had warned him that his life would be in danger if he left the
cabin, and that warning reflected a true threat. She had done everything
possible to protect him, and now he was on his own. If Boris or Vlady saw
Scott, there was no telling what would happen. Vlady was a man who always got
what he wanted. As for Boris, it didn’t matter that her brother was confined to
a wheelchair. He was powerful and cruel, and Scott stood no chance of resisting
him.

How could he be gone? As thoughts of
Scott’s predicament filled her mind, she unconsciously drew her left hand
toward her stomach, as if she had suffered a physical blow there. Slowly she
moved her right hand on top of the other, and long fingernails sought the soft
skin of her wrist. She dug in, tears forming in her eyes as the nails
penetrated and drew their first blood.

Where would he go? Katya wondered,
wincing at the self-inflicted pain. And how much did he know? She was sure that
Scott must still be confused, not focused enough to make calculated decisions
about what to do. The pills she had concocted and forced him to swallow on each
of her visits were the type that would leave his mind in a cloudy state. She
had selected the chemical composition carefully to ensure that the homemade
medication would impair Scott’s memory and his grasp of reality, with the
accompanying severe headaches as their only perceivable side effect. Could
there have been a mistake in the formula? No, she was too good a pharmacologist
to err when choosing the ingredients for the drug she prepared. There was only
one explanation for this, Katya realized. Scott had secretly stopped taking the
pills. He was free of the narcotic addiction that had confined him to the
cabin. And that meant he must already remember—and know—everything.

 
With a clear mind, Scott would recall
transporting the Thracian artifact from Boris’s backyard to the hotel in Varna,
where Nikolov was to pay good money for its delivery. Katya had accompanied
Scott on that fateful bus ride, yet had stupidly allowed him to enter the hotel
on his own. She could still picture him lugging the Adidas gym bag into the
lobby. She would never forget that image, as it was the last she had of Scott
before he was injured.

Still unsolved was what had happened to
the bag Scott was holding. The location of the precious object packaged within
remained a mystery. Unless Nikolov was playing games with them, which seemed
unlikely, he had never received the ancient artifact. Nikolov had threatened
Boris and Vlady enough over the past few years to make it clear that the
delivery mission had not been executed as planned. No, if Nikolov had obtained
the artifact, it would have signaled a conclusion to their deal, with no need
for the subsequent violence.

All this meant that Scott had hidden the
bag somewhere before his fateful meeting with Nikolov, but the only place he
had been out of her sight was in the hotel lobby. It didn’t make sense. Now
that Scott was free, his impaired memory restored, it was obvious to Katya that
Scott would seek to recover the priceless treasure.

If this was clear to her, Vlady and
Boris would realize it as well. And that was why Scott was in danger. If he was
spotted, he would be harmed. Boris and his partner would torture Scott until he
revealed the artifact’s location. She had no way to warn Scott about what they
were capable of doing.

Scott’s recovery and escape from the
cabin overwhelmed her. She couldn’t search for him by herself; she needed
assistance. There was only one person with whom Katya could share her concerns,
but that meant breaking the realm of secrecy in which she had safeguarded
Scott’s existence. It was time to take that person into her confidence and come
clean. That was the only way she could ensure Scott’s safety.

Katya wiped the blood from her wrist,
not sure when she had cut herself there. She left the cabin, standing outside
and taking a long moment to regard the remote mountain valley that had served
her well. She walked down the dirt path until she came to her car. She unlocked
the door of the rusty Lada, squeezed into the front seat and sat behind the
wheel. She pulled the ignition key out of her purse and prepared to start the
motor. But before she did this, she inhaled deeply.

Yes, it was still there, lingering in
the closed confinement as it had for years. The slight trace of a smell—tobacco
mixed with Old Spice aftershave—tantalized her nostrils and awakened old
memories. It was barely perceivable, but it was there. This scent was all that
she had, all that was left. Trapped in the torn upholstery and stained
dashboard, the scent was a poignant reminder of Hristo, her beloved husband.

Hristo had smoked as he drove and never
bothered to empty the ashtrays afterward. This was a chore Katya took upon
herself because she couldn’t stand to see the ashes falling to the floorboard.
Once, when they stopped for a quick roadside meal, Hristo dropped his lit
cigarette onto the passenger-side cushion. When they returned to the vehicle, a
small fire was ablaze on the front seat. Quickly doused, the flames led to
uneasy laughter and unfulfilled promises from Hristo to be more careful in the
future. The cushion cover was replaced, but the edge of the dashboard was still
scarred as a memorial to Hristo’s occasional carelessness.

They enjoyed taking long road trips in
the Russian-made vehicle, with its light blue panels and tight cabin. They
drove the width of Bulgaria, from the mountains in the northwest to the
seacoast near Burgas. One weekend they camped on the rugged Black Sea
shoreline, flicking stones into the surf at sunset and making love repeatedly
on the uncomfortable backseat. They drove south to the Turkish border, stopping
for a laughter-filled lunch of sea bass and chips in a tattered Sozopol
fishermen’s restaurant. They drove to the ancient city of Nessebar, its
cobblestone streets and thirteenth-century churches helping grant it UNESCO
recognition as an official World Heritage Site. And they drove along the coast
to the resort hotels of Sunny
Beach,
they parked the
rusty car outside a rented room while they concentrated on their lovemaking for
hours.

They made frequent trips to Hristo’s
hometown of Stara Zagora in the center of the country. Hristo was a slow
driver, never minding that his car was passed by speeding Mercedes and BMWs.
For him, driving on the narrow roads was a pleasure, to be savored like a fine
wine and not to be finished too quickly. In Katya’s mind, she could see her
husband pat the car’s roof almost lovingly after it successfully delivered them
to their destination. They were childless, to Katya’s dismay, but for Hristo,
the Lada was the third member of their family.

This car was Hristo, Katya thought. The
faint odors of tobacco and Old Spice were all that she had left of him.

She sighed, putting aside her memories
and trying to forget what had happened later, and started her drive to the
village. She hoped to see Scott walking along the mountain path or resting in
the village square, but realized that if he had secretly planned his escape
from the cabin, he would be taking care not to be visible. Where would he go?
She needed to find Scott before he was harmed.

Three men were walking along the path,
heading towards the village. She steered the car around them, and as she
passed, she noticed they were carrying rifles. She slowed to a stop and rolled
down her window.

“
Zdravete
,” she said.

“
Dobre den
,”
came
a chorused reply.

“Were you hunting in the woods?” she
asked as she turned off the motor.

“Yes, hunting!” one of the men
responded, laughing.

“We were looking for a bear, a big
bear,” another said.

“But there were no bears,” the third man
said, spitting a wad of tobacco to the ground. “Perhaps we should do our
hunting in the Sofia zoo.”

“Did you happen to see a young American
man? He’s tall and thin, and speaks some Bulgarian.”

“Was he hunting the bear as well?” The
three of them laughed as if this was the funniest joke they had heard all day.

“He would have been carrying a backpack
and a laptop.”

“Ah, a laptop,” the first man said.
“There is good Internet connection in these woods.”

The Internet! That would be the first
thing Scott would want. His first destination in the village was clear to her
now. Katya thanked the men and restarted the ignition.

The mustached bartender in the
mehana
was sharpening a kitchen knife, honing it repeatedly in alternating
directions on a small whetstone. Slivers of lemon were piled on the counter,
ready for someone to slip them into a cocktail. Except for the bartender, the
pub was empty; its chairs were arranged at straight angles to each table so
that they all lined up perfectly with the entranceway. Some of the tables bore
the remnants of meals and drinks consumed by recent visitors. Cleanup duties
weren’t the bartender’s strong point. Katya approached the man and coughed to
catch his attention.

“Katya!” he exclaimed with recognition.
“
Kak si
?”

“
Dobre sum
,” she replied, a smile
lighting up her face as she conversed with her primary-school classmate. “How
are you, Ivaylo?”

“I’m also good. How’s your mother
doing?”

“Not so well,” Katya replied truthfully.
“She’s bedridden and is pretty apathetic to my efforts to care for her.”

“Your mother is a good woman. I remember
when we were growing up together, how your mother always went out of her way to
make sure I had enough food to eat, that I was dressed warmly. I’m sorry that
she is ill.”

“Getting old is part of life,” Katya
sighed.

“So, what can I get you?”

“Actually, I’m looking for someone, and
I wonder if he might have come in here today.”

“Yes?”

“An American man, in
his mid-twenties.
He’s tall and thin, and he would have
been carrying his laptop looking for an Internet connection.”

“Yes?”

“So, did he come in here?”

“Why are you asking?” Ivaylo cast an
inquisitive glance at her, wiping the bar counter as he spoke. “Is there
something between you and this American?”

Enough already! Katya thought. She had
gone to primary school with Ivaylo and was aware of his childhood crush on her.
Ivaylo was a good friend of Boris, the two of them had been teammates on the
school football team, but in his awkward teenage years, Ivaylo preferred to
hang around her incessantly. Although she denied the definition, Ivaylo
considered her his girlfriend and had naturally assumed that the two of them
would end up together, even holding onto this fantasy when she left the village
to pursue academic studies. Despite being married now, residing upstairs with a
wife and children in a crowded apartment, Ivaylo constantly flirted with Katya
whenever she popped into the pub. She didn’t need that.

 
“He’s a friend, and I think he might be lost,”
she replied, afraid to reveal too much information.

“There was a foreigner in here this
afternoon, but I can’t say for sure if he was an American. We spoke in English,
but I’m not an expert in determining people’s nationalities.”

“That must be him. Did he have a
computer?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“You’re not exactly a fountain of
information, Ivaylo. Did your foreign visitor happen to mention which direction
he was heading?”

“He asked me about bus schedules,” the
bartender admitted, not offended by Katya’s curt remarks. “I told him about the
morning bus that runs to Sofia. I told him it passes through Montana, and that
seemed to interest him.”