The Other Son (48 page)

Lothar sat there, thoughts rolling around his head.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Lothar didn't answer, instead he said:

“I played football a few weeks back. I was studying for a math exam. I had just started texting with a girl in school. We were about to go out soon. I had bought tickets to a football game, then we would go out for Asian food and I would walk her home. I was happy. Life was normal. Everything was good….”

“That's in the past.” Mikhail's words were a cold statement.

“Am I doomed to this, then? Being part of something that…”

“It doesn't matter, Lothar. Let it go.”

Lothar was quiet. Mikhail continued:

“Did you hear what I said about your father?”

“Yes,” Lothar said after a brief pause.

“Are you going to take that with you?”

Lothar thought a moment.

“I don't know,” he said.

Mikhail studied Lothar.

The hotel-room phone rang, cutting through the silence. Just once. It meant it was time to go.

“My dad will come and get me, eventually,” Lothar said.

“Good. Hold on to that.”

“What about you, Mikhail? Will you come and get me?”

“You just said your dad will be doing that.”

Mikhail looked hard at the boy.

“Goodbye, Lothar Guzman,” he said, then left the hotel room.

Mikhail walked through
the lobby and out into the dark evening. It had just stopped raining. The air was heavy with moisture.

He felt depressed. He'd rather be angry. But anger didn't seem to want to appear, just sorrow and emptiness….He liked Lothar, and didn't like what was happening.

Mikhail walked a few blocks, got in a taxi that drove him to the appointed meeting place, and was dropped off at a little square in the slum district. There was a smell of food, garbage, and exhaust fumes. A spiderweb of electricity cables above him. And everywhere the sound of cars, mopeds, people, dogs, and music, together creating a jumble of impressions. But Mikhail couldn't shake off his sadness.

Shit…

A gleaming drug dealer's SUV stopped abruptly in front of him.

Mikhail got in the backseat. It was cool and quiet.

Alfonse grinned at him.

“This is like a reunion, a Trasten reunion.” He laughed unpleasantly.

Jens was waiting at a bus stop on a busy street in the eastern part of the city. People drove like idiots here; the mopeds and motorbikes appeared to have no fear of death.

A large silver Cadillac stopped at the bus stop. Jens opened the back door. Albert was sitting in the backseat, and Jens got in. Albert was suntanned, and his hair had grown.

“Jens?!” Albert practically shouted his name. “Mom?” he went on, fear and anxiety flashing across his face.

“She's fine, Albert, don't worry.”

Jens held Albert tight, as if he didn't dare let go of him.

“You're going home to her now….”

Albert relaxed, and Jens could feel his body trembling. As if the struggle to hold his fears and anxieties at bay was finally at an end. The dam had burst. But there were no tears; his body just shook as if he were frozen right down to the marrow.

Jens held Albert tighter.

“What's going on?”

The car pulled out into traffic.

Albert was worried, he looked around as if he was searching for something.

“Everything's OK, Albert,” Jens said quietly.

Albert was different, he was stressed and anxious. Foreclosed and distant. Jens had expected something else. Perhaps an angrier Albert. But this was a boy torn by inner turmoil. Shocked, confused…broken.

“Are we going home?” Albert asked.

“No…not yet. You're going to Prague. You'll be living there for a while.”

“And Mom's there?”

“Yes, she's safe, don't worry.

But Albert was no longer listening. A new thought had just struck him.

“How did you get me out?”

The Cadillac was thundering along the two-way street, forcing its way through, bullying, running traffic lights. Jens let go of Albert, reached for his seat belt, pulled it across him, and fastened it.

“Does it make any difference?”

“Yes, it makes a difference,”Albert said.

“Albert. We're on our way out of here now. You're going home to your mom, that's all that matters.”

The driver blew his horn, then accelerated.

“I heard them talking about it,” Albert said.

“Who? Talking about what?”

“That I was going to be exchanged for someone.”

Jens said nothing, and Albert turned toward him.

“Lothar?” Albert asked.

Jens was staring in front of him.

“Yes…”

“Did anyone think to ask me about this?”

“No.”

“I want to stay here,” he said.

Jens turned toward him in his seat.

“Listen to me now, Albert.”

Albert's eyes wavered.

“Your mom's been hurt.”

Albert froze.

“She was stabbed,” Jens went on.

Albert struggled to say something. Eventually he said, “How is she?”

“OK, under the circumstances.”

A thousand thoughts.

“Who stabbed her?”

“Aron Geisler,” Jens replied.

A look of surprise. “Aron? Why?”

“We don't know yet…but that doesn't matter. We're all being hunted, Albert, tracked down and searched for. There's no space to accommodate your individual wishes. You're going to your mom, that's what's going to happen. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Albert seemed lost in thought.

“Do you understand what I'm saying?” Jens repeated.

“Yes,” he replied.

“If it's any consolation to you, I'm going to be staying here with Lothar,” Jens said quietly.

“Staying?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I'm part of the deal. But that's nothing for you to worry about.”

Albert lowered his head, as if he were ashamed.

“I don't know what to say,” he whispered after a while.

“You don't have to say anything. And don't feel guilty. This is just the way things have turned out.”

It was raining
as the car turned into the military airfield and drove out onto the apron. A 737 bearing the insignia of the Colombian Air Force on its tail was waiting with its engines running, a movable flight of stairs leading up to the rear entrance.

Another Cadillac pulled in ahead of them. Jens watched it as it stopped. He saw Mikhail get out in the rain and walk toward them.

“Come on,” he said to Albert. “Let's get you out of here.”

Jens helped Albert out from the SUV, the driver waited outside with Albert's wheelchair.

Mikhail and Albert shook hands. Then the three of them headed toward the plane.

“What are you going to do after this, Mikhail?” Jens asked.

“After this?”

“When you get back. Are you going to leave Prague?”

“No, I'll stay for a while.”

“Why?”

“Various reasons.”

“Give me one.”

Mikhail glanced at Jens, then said, “I don't think Lothar should have to live in this country with these people. Nor you, Jens.”

He fished out a piece of paper.

“You can contact me via this website,” he went on, and tucked the note into Jens's pocket.

The two men carried Albert up the steps in his wheelchair. When they reached the top they put Albert down inside the door of the plane.

Jens held out his hand to Albert, who took it.

“Look after yourself, and your mom,” Jens said, then turned around, gave Mikhail a pat on the shoulder, then jogged down the steps and over to the car, where Alfonse was waiting.

Mikhail rolled Albert
into the plane. The rear section was open cargo space, with seven rows of old first-class seats from the '80s toward the front.

He helped Albert into one of the seats.

A pilot came out from the cockpit in a green Air Force uniform. He folded Albert's wheelchair away.

“We'll be landing in Prague. While we're taxiing, we'll have to put the boy into a wooden crate in the hold. It's marked as a diplomatic consignment. You,” he said, pointing at Mikhail, “will leave with us. You'll have time to peel off once we're through.”

Jens watched the 737 as it headed toward the runway. The flashing of the navigation lights cast a harsh glow through the rain-drenched car windows.

Then the howl of the engines, and the plane accelerated along the wet runway, took off steeply, and banked away from him into the darkness.

Albert, on his way to Sophie…

“The address of the hotel?” Alfonse said beside him in the backseat.

Jens felt an urge to break Alfonse's neck, strangle the driver, then take Lothar and run.

But Alfonse had a pistol in his hand, and the driver had one on his lap, in full view.

It would have to wait.

Alfonse went with
Jens up to the hotel room, his pistol swinging from his hand.

Jens released Lothar's handcuffs and picked up his case, and the three of them left the room.

Once they had been driving through the countryside for a while, Jens turned to Lothar.

“I'll be staying here with you.”

Lothar didn't understand at first.

“I'm going to be working for these people. I'll have to do quite a bit of traveling, but I'll come back to you as quickly and as often as I can.”

Lothar seemed absorbed in a particular thought, then relaxed and lightened up.

“OK,” he whispered.

Their new home.
A prison. The drugs castle in the jungle appeared as they emerged from driving through the dense forest.

They looked at the animals in their enclosures, the tennis courts, swimming pools, waterfalls, and the helicopter pad, all lit up in the evening.