Read Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) Online
Authors: Joseph Badal
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, #Espionage
Zavitsanos said a silent prayer that they would find the little boy. But the more time that passed, the more discouraged he became. He knew the odds were already in favor of the kidnappers.
“We’ve been here more than three hours, Captain Danforth,” Zavitsanos said, tapping his watch. “Maybe I should take you home. You look like you need some rest.”
“No, no. I’m fine,” Bob responded. “Just a little while longer. Okay?”
Zavitsanos shrugged and walked over to a policeman pouring thick
café turkiko
from a thermos into a tin cup.
“How’s the father doing?” the officer asked.
“He’s tough – a lot tougher than I would be under similar circumstances. But being here must give him some hope.” Zavitsanos turned to walk back to Danforth.
“You know we’re wasting our time here, Inspector,” the officer said to Zavitsanos’ back.
Zavitsanos spun around. “
Ko
pane
! The last thing we need around here is that attitude.”
The officer’s face reddened. “Yes, sir.”
The Inspector walked away. Bad attitude or not, he thought, the policeman was probably right.
Janos Milatko stirred. Something off in the distance wasn’t right. Pounding. Loud. Insistent. He came awake. Three rapid knocks, followed by a pause and then two knocks spaced around a three-second pause told him all he needed to know – it was someone from his clan. Janos picked up his watch off the nightstand. Three a.m. He glanced at his wife. Still asleep.
Janos slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across the wood floor of his tiny Athens apartment. He opened the door a crack and saw his uncle, Stefan Radko, the last person he expected or wanted to see. Stefan started to push his way in but Janos put a finger to his lips and pointed out into the hall.
“What do you want, Uncle?” Janos asked, after stepping into the dimly lit hall and closing the door to a crack behind him.
“I need your help,” Stefan said. “Vanja and I have to get out of Athens.”
“I left the family life, Uncle,” Janos said. He hated that his voice quavered. “You know that. I want nothing to do with you or your schemes.”
Stefan’s smile was like a knife. “I wonder what your sweet little Greek wife would do if she found out you were
Rom
.”
Janos’ shoulders drooped.
“All you have to do is drive Vanja and me up north, just across from Petrich. I know your delivery route takes you to Thessaloniki and Kavalla in northern Greece. So you take a little detour, drop us off near the Bulgarian border. Then you can be on your way. And I will never tell a soul about being a Gypsy.” He clapped Janos on the arm so hard the young man fell back against the doorjamb.
Janos looked at Stefan’s bushy eyebrows and full mustache. They made him appear almost diabolical. He remembered stories he’d heard while growing up about his uncle. Stefan was a legend and an outcast. Some called him a Gypsy hero; others thought him the most ruthless man in all of Romany.
“I have to drive a shipment of televisions north this morning. My truck is already loaded.”
“Then let’s leave now, nephew. No point in putting off the inevitable.” Stefan raised his hand as though to slap his nephew again, but Janos flinched and ducked away.
Janos sighed. “Okay! Wait downstairs; I need to get dressed.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Stefan walked away down the hall, whistling softly, as though he didn’t have a thing to be concerned about.
“
Ma
la
ka
,” Janos cursed.
Stefan ordered his nephew to open the panel truck’s overhead door. When Janos did so, Vanja stepped out of an alcove in the adjoining building, carrying a child bundled in her arms.
“What the hell is this?” Janos exclaimed. “You said it was just you and Vanja. Whose kid is that?”
Ignoring Janos’ outburst, Stefan said to Vanja, “Take the boy into the back of the truck and lie down behind the boxes. Keep him quiet.” Vanja complied, and Stefan pulled down the overhead door and latched it in place. Then he turned toward Janos, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and pulled him to his chest. “Listen to me, you gutless prick. You are not to ask any questions.”
“Ye . . . yes, Uncle Stefan.”
“Good. Now put your ass behind the wheel and get on the road.”
By sunrise, Bob had, to no avail, helped search hundreds of vehicles.
“We’ll have a riot on our hands if we don’t speed this up,” Zavitsanos was saying to his men. “Traffic is increasing. There must be five hundred vehicles backed up now.”
“The cars are easy to search,” one of the policemen answered. “The trucks are the problem. What if we just inspect the cargo area of every third truck? That should move things along faster. Besides, who would be dumb enough to be on this road with a kidnapped child? The news of the roadblocks has been on radio and television for hours.”
Zavitsanos glared at the man. He wasn’t in the mood to make any concessions that might let the kidnappers slip through. But common sense told him the man was right. They couldn’t slow down the country’s economy. He kicked at a stone lying just off the road shoulder, propelling it against the side of one of the police cruisers. He saw despair on Bob’s face but knew he had no choice. “All right, do it. Every third truck. But if you think a driver or passenger in any truck is acting suspiciously, I want the vehicle searched.”
Zavitsanos stood off to the side, behind a police van, away from prying eyes, and feeling as though his whole body was dissolving. He watched Danforth scurry from vehicle to vehicle, a manic father wired with fear and adrenaline. Danforth was trying to look through the windows of every truck the Greek officers ignored. He frantically tried to make up the difference. What a terror! Zavitsanos thought. To lose a child. He set his jaw, narrowed his eyes, and stepped away from the vehicle. He’d help the young American as much as possible, even though every cell in his body told him the boy would never be found.
“Don’t you have a radio in this goddamn truck?” Stefan asked.
Janos pointed to a portable tape recorder on the seat between them. “I’m taking a night class in German. I listen to language tapes during my trips. I don’t need a radio.”
“Always trying to learn something new, eh, Janos? Trying to improve yourself. If you’d used your brains and worked with me, you wouldn’t be driving a fucking truck.”
Janos didn’t respond.
Suddenly, Stefan sat up in his seat and stared ahead. “Slow down,” he ordered.
Janos brought the truck’s speed down to forty kilometers an hour. “Looks like a traffic backup,” he said. “Maybe an accident.”
“Turn this thing around,” Stefan yelled.
“Where?” Janos said. “There’s a chain-link fence in the middle of the highway, in case you haven’t noticed. And there are vehicles right behind us.” He paused to look in his sideview mirror. “Including a police car.”
Stefan pulled a pistol from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and placed it on the seat under his right thigh. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. If there has been an accident, no problem. If it’s something else – like a roadblock–”
“They’re after you, aren’t they?” Janos interrupted. “They’re looking for the little boy!”
In a calm, but menacing voice, Stefan said, “You are in this thing all the way now. If we get caught, I’ll tell the police you were in on the kidnapping from the beginning. Do you really think they’ll believe a Gypsy could be innocent of anything? Stay cool and keep your mouth shut. I’ll do the talking.”
Janos sat behind the wheel, sweating, inching his truck forward. It took forty-five minutes to reach a turn in the road that allowed them to see the police cars up ahead.
“Shit!” Janos exclaimed, “It
is
a roadblock.” He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers and beat a tattoo against the floorboard with his left foot.
“We’re dead.”
As they neared the front of the line, Janos noticed the cops searched only some of the trucks – every third one. He counted back to his own truck. One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three. He was a number three.
Bob shielded his eyes against the light from the rising sun. He knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer. Lack of sleep and the emotional strain of the last twenty hours had taken a toll. His eyes burned and his head felt as though a dagger was embedded in each temple. He continued to throw himself into the vehicle searches, crawling over and around the cargo in the back of every third truck. But it drove him mad to think his son could be hidden in the windowless cargo bays of one of the trucks not being searched.
“Where are you heading?” the officer asked Janos.
“Thessa . . .” Janos began. His voice broke and Stefan finished answering.
“Thessaloniki,” Stefan said. “My nephew has lost his voice. Too much yelling at last weekend’s match between
Panathenaikos
and AEK. You young men and your football.”
Stefan laughed. The policeman just stared back.
The cop waved at Janos to get out of the truck’s cab. “Open the cargo bay,” he instructed.
Stefan gripped the pistol under his thigh, just when a second police officer, armed with an automatic rifle, stepped onto the passenger-side running board. Two other armed policemen stationed themselves in front of the vehicle.
Janos looked at his uncle for guidance. All he received in return was a granite look that sent chills up his spine. He opened the door and stepped down to the road. After walking to the rear of his truck, he unlatched the cargo door and began lifting it. We’re doomed, he thought.
Zavitsanos sat sideways on the front seat of the borrowed police cruiser, his feet planted in the road, listening to the man from headquarters speak over the radio. When the man finished, Zavitsanos released the venom he felt. “I’ve already cut back to inspecting only every third truck. We search only every fifth one, we might as well close the damn thing down.”
Then he listened for a while again.
A few seconds after headquarters stopped talking, he spat, “Yes, sir.”
Zavitsanos dropped the radio microphone onto the car seat and stood up. He looked down the line of traffic, then concentrated on the first truck in line. “
Sca
ta
!” he yelled. He slammed the car door shut and walked to the policeman standing on the truck’s passenger-side running board.
“Spiro, let this one through. We search only every fifth truck.”
“But, Inspector, we–”
“Just shut up and do what I tell you,” Zavitsanos said, turning away.
The cop stared after Zavitsanos, then glared at Stefan and spread his arms out. “You can pass through.” The cop jumped down to the street and walked to the rear of the truck where he repeated Zavitsanos’ instructions.
“Spiro, the fucking door is already open. It will only take a minute to look inside.”
“Fine,” Spiro said, “I’ll go tell Inspector Zavitsanos you disagree with his order.”
“Goddammit!” the second cop cursed. He turned on Janos and barked, “Close the door and get this thing out of here.”
Janos pulled the cargo door back down and locked it in place. He went around the side of the truck, stumbling on fear-weakened legs. He continued to the driver’s door, sweat pouring off him. After climbing behind the wheel, he started the engine, feeling as though his heart would fail as the truck idled.
“You can’t do that! We’ll miss Michael for sure,” Bob shouted. “It was bad enough to let two out of three trucks pass. We might as well go home now.”
Zavitsanos took a moment to respond. “I’m sorry, Captain Danforth,” he said.
“Goddammit, man!” Bob grabbed at the Inspector’s lapels. “This is my son you’re talking about. Michael!”
Michael rubbed his eyes with his bunched fists. He heard shouting. He looked for his mommy, but it was so dark. Someone in the corner . . . who is it? Is it Mommy? Oh, it’s the lady with the red scarf. A thin ray of light came through a crack in a wall and shined on boxes stacked to the ceiling.
I don’t like it here. I’m hungry.
Maybe the lady has something to eat.
“Michael!”
He heard his name clearly. That’s my daddy.
Then the room he was in began moving.
“No bye-bye, Daddy!” he cried.