Authors: Steve N. Lee
Tags: #Action Suspense Thriller
“I miss him every day.”
Tess nodded. “So you’ve raised Cat all these years on your own? You must love her too.”
“Of course, but what—”
“Over her lifetime, a woman is many things, not least a lover and a mother. But she’s never the two at the same time. It’s as if she has a switch she can flip when she needs to be one or the other, but the switch won’t let her be both at the same time.” Tess shrugged. “I have a switch.”
“What do you mean?”
Tess toyed with her bottle of juice. “I was like you once – just a normal person living a normal life.”
“What happened?”
Tess hung her head and stared at the floor, trying to block out the images of blood. So much blood. She heaved a breath. Some things were too personal to share, too painful to even think about, let alone talk about.
“What always happens – life happened. It would be nice to go back to being normal one day, but...”
If that day ever came, Tess knew exactly where she would go and exactly what she would do there. Other than seeing justice done in Manhattan, it was the last dream to which she still clung. However, deep down, she doubted she’d live long enough for it to become a reality, but it was a pleasant distraction from the darkness that engulfed so much of her life.
“Anyway, in the meantime,” Tess said, “I have a switch I can flip. It lets me do the things I do and still look in the mirror without wanting to slit my wrists.”
“But why do you do them? Why don’t you go and find that life now?”
Tess turned and stared into Elena’s eyes. “And who’d save Cat? Who’d save all the other innocent people who are abused by monsters everywhere I go?”
“Tess, you can’t change the whole world.”
“No. But I can change tiny bits of it and then sleep soundly at night knowing I have.”
Elena stared at Tess with such sadness in her eyes. She cupped Tess’s hands. “Oh, Tess, that’s not living.”
“So what should I do? Dream of kids and malls and job promotions? Or of saving Cat?”
It was an impossible question to answer.
Tears welled in Elena’s eyes. Tess doubted they were for Cat, this time. Now the lady saw Tess’s dilemma – she had the choice either to help people in desperate need or to live a normal life, but not both.
Over the speaker system, a woman announced something in Polish.
“This is our flight,” Elena said.
They ambled toward the gate.
“So that’s why you travel,” asked Elena, “why you have your armor? So you can help people?”
“Kind of.” She’d had to check her backpack containing her armor to avoid being detained when they went through the security check, but she never went anywhere without it. Even with all her years of training, the simple truth was she was physically smaller and weaker than the average man. Her armor was a wonderful equalizer. And then some.
“But don’t you get afraid?” asked Elena.
Tess snickered. It was a ridiculous question, but she couldn’t blame Elena for thinking she might be superhuman. “Of course I do. Only a fool would say they didn’t. The secret is in knowing how to use that fear to help you, instead of letting it paralyze you.”
“You can do that?”
“You can if you’ve got four months to spend on an ashram in India.”
“And that’s where you learned about your switch?”
“No, that was five months on a mountain in China.”
Tess had spent the best part of a year learning to use her mind with the same disciplined fluidity with which she used her body. But it still wasn’t easy. Strangely, inner calmness required tremendous struggle.
Puffing out her cheeks, Elena blew out a breath. “Is there nothing you haven’t done?”
Standing behind a bald man in a dark suit talking Polish on his phone, they joined a line of people waiting at the gate as airline staff checked boarding passes one by one.
Tess rubbed her chin. She didn’t want to build up her friend’s hopes, but… “You know, some of the meditation and self-hypnosis techniques I’ve learned can help with illnesses.”
Elena forced a smile. Tess knew what she was thinking.
“Twenty years ago,” Tess said, “Western doctors thought alternative medicine was complete bull. Now it’s practiced in half the hospitals in the US. You might be surprised at what my methods can do.”
Elena waved a hand at Tess. “Thank you, but I doubt anything can help now.”
“So why are you going to England? I thought it was for some kind of special treatment.”
“Compared to the Romanian health service, any treatment is special treatment. Unless you’ve got the money to bribe the doctors to get what you need, of course.”
“What?” Tess said, stunned. “You have to bribe your doctors?”
“It’s not their fault. They have to bribe their management to get promotions. And it’s not like they get paid a lot to start with.”
“So doctors aren’t valued?”
“Catalina was paid around two hundred dollars per month. Is that valued?” Elena said.
“Whoa, Cat is a doctor?”
“Didn’t I say?”
“No,” said Tess. “Jesus, two hundred bucks a month?” She shook her head. “Hell.”
“That’s why we were going to England.”
“So it’s not to get you treatment?”
“Making Cat believe it was was the only way I could convince her to go. You see, no matter how grown-up they are, you always want the best for your children, and I wanted her to have the life she deserved.”
Tess hung her head. When she looked up, she said, “So there’s really nothing they can do?”
Elena smiled the saddest smile Tess had ever seen.
Parents sacrificed for their children. Constantly. Tess witnessed it everywhere she went. Children never appreciated just how much until they grew up and had kids of their own. But to leave your home, and all your friends and relatives, to die in a strange country so you could try to give your child a better future… Man, that was one hell of an act of love.
Tess and Elena both showed their boarding passes at the gate and were ushered into the cream-colored air bridge. Its floor gave slightly as Tess walked on it.
Tess never accepted defeat – she would not let Elena either. “You know, my techniques really might help.”
“Maybe for some things.”
“You’ve seen what I can do. That’s not just a physical thing, you know – there’s a huge mental aspect. I couldn’t do what I do without training my mind as much as I’ve trained my body.”
They rounded a bend in the air bridge and the open aircraft door came into sight.
Elena grabbed Tess’s arm. “Can your techniques do anything for a fear of flying?”
“You don’t like flying?”
Elena shot her a sideways glance.
“So what do you usually do? Take sedatives?”
“Usually? Do you think I’d be doing this if Cat’s life didn’t depend on it?”
As they neared the doorway, Elena glared at the plane, her face even more drawn than usual. “Oh, God… Oh, God.”
Tess put her arm around her. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
As she stepped over the threshold into the plane, Elena muttered in Romanian and gripped Tess’s arm, sinking her fingernails into the flesh.
Tottering down the aisle between the seats, Elena said, “Oh God, Cat will never believe I’ve done this.”
Tess guided her into her seat. The easiest way to help Elena was to distract her. Sitting beside her, she took out her phone.
“I’m going to take a photo for you to show Cat that you managed to get on a plane.”
“Then you better take it quick,” Elena said, “because we haven’t taken off yet and that door is still open.”
Tess laughed, though the look on Elena’s face suggested it wasn’t a joke.
Tess held her phone up and took a selfie of them both, then showed it to Elena.
Elena cracked a smile as feeble as she was. “But Cat still won’t believe it.”
“I could teach you a meditation technique to take your mind off flying, if you like,” Tess said.
Patting Tess’s arm, Elena said, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather just shut my eyes and try to sleep through the whole thing.”
Tess could help Elena. And not just with the flight. When this was over and they had Cat back, she’d teach Elena some of the techniques she’d mastered and make sure Cat forced her to practice them. They wouldn’t cure her, but they would make what time she had left more pleasant. And might even extend it.
With her eyes still shut, Elena said, “It’s very freeing, you know, knowing what’s going to kill you and roughly when it’s going to do it. I’m lucky in a way. I bet there’s no one else on this plane who knows what’s in store for them, but I bet every single one worries about it from time to time. We all get so wound up about life, about what to do, what not to do, about what might happen, what might not happen, and yet, ninety-nine percent of it doesn’t truly matter one scrap.”
Without looking, Elena patted Tess’s thigh. “Thank you, Tess. I never imagined anyone would care so much about a complete stranger to do what you’re doing.”
“You’re welcome.”
Could someone with a terminal illness be lucky? Maybe. Elena was right – it would be very freeing.
Tess fastened her belt and sank back into her seat. It was only a short flight, but it would be nearly an hour in which she could meditate to recharge her batteries. She closed her eyes, but couldn’t settle – the conversation they’d had at the gate about how she did what she did clawed at her, like a child picking at a scab.
Tess wasn’t a killer. In just the same way that breastfeeding a child or banging a guy couldn’t define her, so neither could ending someone. A single word could never encompass what she brought to the world. Let alone what she had to sacrifice to do it.
No, she wasn’t a killer. She was a woman doing what was right for no other reason than because she could. A woman with a switch. A woman who made the world a better place.
But in Gdansk, when she flipped that switch again, how many people would die?
Speeding through Gdansk in the back of a taxi, Tess twisted her bulletproof vest back into position, it having ridden up under her clothes. She’d put it on in the airport restroom, once her backpack had finally appeared on the luggage carousel. In a little over an hour, the ship would sail to God knew where, and any chance of finding Cat would be lost forever.
Twisting her left forearm guard into place, she peered out of her taxi window.
A cream-and-red tram rattled past down the middle of the road heading into the center of Gdansk. They passed a gas station and more scrub land came into view. In the distance, silhouetted by the moon, massive cranes reared into the night sky like the skeletons of giant dinosaurs.
She’d have liked to have toured Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity. The struggle of a group of people fighting for the oppressed resonated with her. That movement had helped to free Poland from the communist dictatorship of Moscow and sparked the end of the Eastern Bloc. She’d never have impact on a global scale like that, but by helping people like Elena, she changed the world in her own way.
The taxi stopped at the main entrance to Gdansk’s smallest port. Did the traffickers believe a small port would attract less scrutiny than a big one? If they did and they were right, that could help in the rescue too – security might not be so tight.
Tess clambered out of the taxi.
If she had been alone, she’d have sneaked into the port, just a shadow lost in the darkness. But she couldn’t. Elena could never scale a wall or worm her way under a wire fence.
Tess had thought about leaving her in a nearby café or hotel. Somewhere safe. But if Cat and the other women weren’t being guarded, maybe Elena could simply explain things to the crew and get the job done without Tess having to strike a single blow. It was a nice idea. And there was a chance it might actually happen. But Tess wouldn’t be removing her bulletproof vest anytime soon.
A security barrier blocked the road. They sauntered over to a small, one-story white building with a red roof, light coming from its road-facing window. A big-nosed guard slid open part of the window and peered out from behind a computer monitor.
He and Elena chatted in Polish.
The conversation ended abruptly, when he shook his head and looked back to his monitor while sliding the window shut again.
Tess stuck a roll of notes in the gap to stop the window shutting. With the rest of Michal’s money, her emergency stash, and the extra five hundred dollars she’d withdrawn in Krakow airport, she had just shy of a thousand bucks. Not a vast sum. In the West. In the East? The average worker had to toil for months to get such an amount.
The guard looked up to check what was blocking his window. His gaze jumped from Elena to Tess to the money, then back to the monitor.
Without taking his gaze from the monitor, the guard snatched the money and then shut the window.
Elena looked at Tess. Tess shooed her on into to the port.
They scurried in.
Elena pointed to her right. “He said it’s docked over there.”