“What is this?” the tall man said, eyeing the Berserker as though it was a cobra.
“A tool,” Manus said. He moved to the trunk, not turning his back, reached inside with one hand, and pulled Hamilton up. He helped the small man get his shaky legs out and onto the ground, then helped him stand.
The tall man pointed. “He is wearing a diaper?”
Manus nodded, not really understanding the question. It had been a twelve-hour drive, and Hamilton had been in the trunk. Of course he was wearing a diaper.
The tall man said something to the others. Manus couldn’t make it out and figured it was Turkish. They all started laughing.
Manus stripped the duct tape away. “Please,” Hamilton said. “Please tell me where we’re going. Tell me what’s happening.”
Manus reached into the trunk and took out a water. He uncapped it with his teeth and held the bottle until Hamilton had drained it.
One of the men was saying something in Turkish, pointing through the window at the SIG. The tall man came over and looked. “Yes, what is that on your steering wheel?” he said.
A slight breeze picked up and carried the men’s scent to him — sweat and tobacco and garlic. Manus wrinkled his nose and tossed the empty bottle in the trunk. “A tool,” he said. There was a moment of tension, and then the tall man laughed. The other two laughed also.
Manus smelled shit. He said, “You need to change his diaper.”
The laughter stopped. The tall man said, “What’s wrong with your voice? You talk funny.”
Manus said, “You need to change his diaper.”
The tall man said, “You don’t tell me what to do.”
Manus looked at Hamilton. “Please,” Hamilton was saying, and Manus realized he’d been saying it all along. “Who are you? Who are these people? What the fuck is happening?”
Manus looked at the Turks. He didn’t like them. It would have been easy to kill them. But that wasn’t what the director wanted.
He pulled Hamilton roughly around to the trunk, set the Berserker down inside it, and, keeping the Turks in view, bent Hamilton over and changed the idiot’s diaper. Manus didn’t like the way the Turks watched. Their expressions reminded him of what had happened in the juvenile prison.
“I don’t know where you’re going,” Manus said when he was finished. “My job was to deliver you.”
Hamilton’s eyes were wide, desperate. “Look, you’re American, right? Don’t leave me with these guys. Please!”
Manus didn’t know why he’d said anything. What had been the point? He picked up the Berserker and walked Hamilton to the three men. One of the Turks yanked him over by the arm.
“We are done, yes?” the tall one said.
Hamilton looked back at Manus. “Please!” he said again, and Manus realized he should have retaped his mouth.
The Turks laughed. One of them swatted Hamilton on the ass and squeezed. The other swiveled and shot an uppercut into Hamilton’s liver. Hamilton cried out and crumpled to the ground, moaning and writhing.
The tall one smiled at Manus. “Are you worried we won’t take good care of him?”
Manus said nothing. He could have taken the man’s head off with the Berserker. And dropped the other two with the Force Pro before the blood had finished jetting from the stump. But the director didn’t want that.
The tall one barked a command in Turkish. One of the others answered, then helped Hamilton to his feet. His sweat had mixed with the dust he had rolled in and it looked like he was covered in mud. The Turks didn’t seem to mind. They were eyeing Hamilton up and down. One of them said something. Manus didn’t know the words, but he knew what they meant.
“What did he say?” Manus asked, his voice once again surprising him. It didn’t matter what the man had said, so why had he asked?
“He says you have underpaid us,” the tall one said, looking at Manus. “He says this is not the money we agreed upon.”
Manus shifted the Berserker to his left hand and placed his right on his hip, inches from the butt of the Force Pro. He realized he was glad the conversation had taken this turn. He also realized he shouldn’t be. It wasn’t what the director wanted.
“I gave you what I was told to give you,” he said.
The tall man shook his head. “It isn’t enough.”
“You mean you’ve changed your mind?”
A long moment ticked by. The three Turks were tense. Manus knew they were on the verge of going for weapons. He felt his lips stretching into a grin at the prospect, his right hand feeling light, quick, the weight of the Berserker good in his left.
The grin made the men flinch, an effect Manus was accustomed to. The tall man laughed. “No, of course not. I’m only joking. Don’t Americans like to joke? Aren’t you such a funny people?”
Manus said nothing. He watched as they bundled Hamilton into the van, opening his door for cover and to regain access to the SIG as they drove off. The last thing he saw was Hamilton looking back at him, his eyes terrified, one of the men leering and holding him close with an arm around his neck.
Manus got in his car and drove off, the SIG across his lap, watchful in case the Turks decided to try to ambush him on his way back to Istanbul. After an hour, the sun long since set, he started to relax.
He hadn’t liked those men. He knew what they were going to do to Hamilton. He was concerned he’d been happy when it looked like they were going to give him a reason to kill them.
He shook his head and reminded himself that whatever the director wanted, it was more important.
The director had said he wanted him to watch that woman, too — the employee the director was worried about. It sounded like an easy enough job, and Manus would be glad to ease the director’s concerns. By watching, if no more than that was required. Or by more than watching. His job was to protect the director. That was all that mattered. It wasn’t his fault what happened to anyone who got in the way of it.
CHAPTER
7
Evie left work at five and headed back to the apartment in Columbia. Digne was on the clock for another hour, but Evie always tried to relieve her early when possible. Her time with Dash was precious — it was hard to believe he was already in fourth grade, and she was acutely aware of how fast the time was passing. Soon it would be sports, and girls, and he’d be embarrassed by his mother, and she wouldn’t even see him anymore. Okay, well, not that she wouldn’t see him anymore, but it would be different. He wouldn’t need her the way he did now, he’d be independent, he’d have so many other interests and connections. And of course that was all wonderful, but the time they had together now, the bond they shared, was so special, and when he wasn’t her little boy anymore she didn’t want to ever feel that she’d wasted a minute.
Dash had been her ex-husband’s idea — the name, not the child. The child had been unexpected, a word she preferred to accident, while she and Sean had been in their fourth year of the graduate computer science program at Cornell and their second year of dating. They’d talked casually about getting married after graduating, and when she told him she was pregnant, they just decided to speed things up a bit. Her mom moved to Ithaca to help with the baby, and they managed.
For a while, being a father seemed good for Sean. He went out less with his buddies, and, when he did go out, he came home earlier and a little less wasted. She never begrudged him his boys’ nights. He was a gregarious guy with easy good looks and a ready laugh, and his high spirits made him popular with everyone in the program. In fact, she’d been surprised when he’d first asked her out. She’d never thought of herself as especially attractive, and she’d been flattered by his attention. She realized in retrospect that for a while she’d grown dependent on that flattery, on the boost the reflected glory of his looks and popularity provided to her own self-esteem, and that her dependency had come to occlude her own clear judgment.