But his thinking proved incorrect.
She flashed two tickets in her hand. “It's all set, Jan. We have first-class tickets to New York on the five-thirty flight tomorrow.”
New York!
He'd forgotten. “I thought the dinner was Saturday.”
“It is, but I thought we could make a weekend of it. Roald won't be there, you know.”
Suddenly it was all too much. He did smile; he did do that, but evidently not with enough muster to fool her. In fact, he couldn't be sure it didn't come off as a frown, if his heart was any judge. Karen dropped the hand holding the tickets to her side, and he knew that she'd seen through his facade.
She closed the door and slid into one of the guest chairs. “Okay, Jan Jovic. What's wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
She means why is your face sagging, dummkopf
.
“Something's up,” she said, staring straight at him. “All day you've been wearing this plastic smile. I could walk in here and tell you that Martians have just landed on Peachtree Street and you'd smile and tell me how nice that was. You are as distracted as I've seen you. So what's up?”
Jan looked out the window and sighed.
Father, what am I doing? I do not want this.
He faced her again. She looked at him with her head tilted, beautiful in the morning rays that streamed through the window. Karen was a treasure. He could not imagine a woman as lovely as her. Except Helen. But that was absurd! Helen was off with another man! For that matter she might not even return. And if she did return, how could he possibly entertain thoughts of love for such a woman?
Father, I beg you! Deliver me from this madness.
“Jan, tell me.” Karen was pleading with a woman's knowing voice now. She knew something already, by intuition.
He looked into her eyes, and suddenly he wanted to cry. For her, for him, for love. For all it was said to be, love had turned him into a worm this week. His eyes stung, but he refused to cry in front of her. Not now.
“Helen's gone again,” he said.
She sat back and crossed her legs. “Sure, we agreed she would go. And that's a problem?”
“Yes. Actually it is.” He could not look at her directly.
“Jan . . . She's just one girl.” Her voice was soft and soothing. “Lost, wandering, hurt, sure. I can understand that. But our ministry goes way beyond this one person.” She leaned forward and put her open palm on the desk for his hand. He took it. “It'll be okay, I promise.”
He could not carry on any longer. He could not. “She's not just one girl, Karen.”
The room fell to a terrible silence. “And what does that mean?”
He looked into her eyes and tried to tell her. “She means more to me. She . . .”
Karen removed her hand and sat straight. “You've fallen for her, haven't you?” Her eyes misted over.
“I . . . Yes.”
“I knew it!”
“Karen, I . . .”
Now she was red. “How
dare
you?” She said it trembling and Jan recoiled. “How could you slobber all over a tramp like that?”
“I'm not slobâ”
“How dare you do this to me!”
“Karen, Iâ”
“I
love
you, you big oaf ! I've loved you for three years!” Now she had slipped into rage and he knew he'd made a very big mistake in telling her. “We're engaged, for God's sake! We went on television and promised our love in front of half the world and now you're telling me that you've fallen for the first bimbo that struts in front of you? Is that it?”
“No, Karen! That's not it! It was beyond me.”
“Oh, yes, of course. How silly of me. You couldn't help it, could you? Did she crawl up at the bottom of your bed to keep you company at night?” Tears ran from her eyes now. “And what do you suppose this means for our engagement?” she demanded.
“I had to tell you the truth.”
“What am I supposed to tell the studio? Did you even think of that before inviting this pathetic bimbo into your house? What should I tell them, Jan? Oh, yes, well Jan is no longer speaking on the martyrs. He's writing a new book; a personal guide to live-in bimbos. In fact, he's living with one now.
That
will go over huge, I can assure you! Roald will fry you!”
Jan was too stunned for clear thoughts, much less words. He only felt like curling up and dying.
I do not mean to harm you, Karen! I am so very sorry. Karen
,
please . . .
“You think you can make this movie without me? You're a fool to throw it all away!”
She suddenly stood. Her hand came across the desk and landed with a loud
smack
on his cheek. His head jerked to the side. Without saying another word Karen spun around, pulled the door open, and walked from the office.
“Karen! Please, I . . .” Nothing else came.
You love her, tell her that. You do love her! Don't you?
He heard the loud slam of the suite's front door.
For a full ten seconds Jan could not move. Nicki ran in, glared at him, and then ran out after Karen. To tell the world.
His face stung, but he barely felt it. He just sat there in a daze, looking with a blank, watery stare. Then he lowered his head to the desk and let the tears come. He was dying, he thought. Life could not be worse. Nothing, absolutely nothing could possibly feel as sickening.
But he was wrong.
“We all have some of Karadzic swimming under the surface.
We have all spit on the face of our Creator. Thinking that we have not is self-righteous arroganceâwhich is itself a form of spitting.”
The Dance of the Dead, 1959
JAN PULLED into his driveway at seven, just as dusk darkened the sky over Atlanta. Helen had been gone for one day now and his world had caved in on itself.
He'd already shut the car door when it occurred to him that he could have pulled into the garage. There was no longer anyone to sneak past. He turned and walked for the front door.
He saw the white paper pegged to his door when he rounded the corner and it made him stop. A note? His heart bolted in his chest. A note!
Jan dropped his briefcase, bounded up and ripped the paper from the tack that had been shoved into the post. It was a full sheet with faint lines, the kind found in any full-size notebook. He tilted the sheet into the moonlight and dropped his eyes to the bottom.
Helen
.
It was signed by Helen! His fingers trembled.
Help me please
.
I'm so sorry. Please come. I need you
.
The top of the west tower. Hurry, please
.
Helen
.
A drum took to Jan's chest. Dear God! Helen! He ran for the car, threw the door open, and fired the engine.
It took Jan ten minutes to reach the Towersâenough time for him to wet his steering wheel with sweat and spin through a dozen reasons why coming here was a bad idea, not the least of which was Glenn Lutz. The man had threatened Jan directly on the phone, and there was no guarantee that the note hadn't been written by him rather than Helen.
But she was almost certainly in trouble. He could have taken the note to the police, but he'd never quite lost his skepticism of the authorities, not since Bosnia. And going to the police would make this a public affair; he was quite sure he wasn't ready for that. Not with Helen.
In the end it was his heart that kept his foot on the pedal. He
wanted
to go. He had to go. Helen was there, and the thought of it made him throw reason to the wind.
Jan pulled the Cadillac under the first towering buildingâthe West Towerâ and inched to a stop in a space adjacent to the elevators. The underground structure was nearly vacant in the after hours.
A tall man dressed in black stood with his hands clasped behind his back near the elevator. Jan sat still for a moment. Maybe going to the police would have been a better idea after all. He climbed out and walked for the stranger.
The man ignored Jan until the doors had slid open and he'd stepped into the car. Then the Mafia type dropped his arms, walked in, turned around, and punched a code into a small panel. The doors slid closed.
Jan searched for the top floor button and was about to push the highest number on the panel when the man held out his hand. Message clear. The man was his escort.
A trail of sweat crept over Jan's temple. Helen hadn't arranged this. He couldn't shake the notion that he'd just stepped off a cliff. The elevator car rose past the last lighted number and jerked to a halt. It opened to a hallway and after hesitating, Jan followed the man down the passage and then to a set of massive copper doors. His host nodded and Jan pushed past them, swallowing at a knot that had risen to his throat.
He stepped into what appeared to be a plush penthouse suite, complete with a bar to his left and a dance floor to his left. But it was the large man standing next to a white pillar at the room's center that arrested his attention.
The doors shut behind him.
He was huge and pale, nearly albino in the dim light. His hair was blond, almost platinum, and his eyes were black. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and booted feet poked out from white cotton slacks. The man's lips twisted into a smile and Jan knew that this freak before him was Glenn Lutz.
“Well, well, well. The lover boy has come to force my hand,” Glenn said. He lowered his head and peered at Jan past his eyebrows. “You do realize that you are trespassing on my ground, don't you? You do realize what that means, don't you?”
Jan quickly scanned the room for Helen. She wasn't here. This was not good. Jan took an involuntary step backward.
Glenn chuckled. “You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you, Preacher? That's why you came. But we can't have that. I have a surprise for you.”
A shadow suddenly shifted to Jan's right. He'd only just begun to turn when the side of his head exploded.
A flashback.
But it wasn't feeling like a flashback. His world swam in darkness. He staggered to his right and instinctively threw out his arms for balance. And then finding it, he grabbed at his head, half expecting to feel a great hole there. His fingers felt a full head of hair, wet above his left ear, but intact.
The pain struck him as he tried to straighten, a deep ache that throbbed over his skull. He'd been hit on the head. Then a blow landed on the other side.
Thirty years of life in Bosnia roared to the surface. He was a writer and lecturer, but he was a survivor first, albeit a survivor who hadn't practiced surviving for a long time. Either way, his mind knew the drill well.
He staggered back two steps, groping for consciousness, blind to the world from that last blow. He nearly fainted then. If he didn't move quickly he might not move again. Jan gathered every last reserve of strength and he rushed straight forward, right past his attackers and out onto the floor. Grunts of objection sounded behind him and he lumbered forward, like a bull struck by a sledge.
He couldn't fightânot in this stateâthat much screamed through his mind. But it was all that screamed through his mind, because the rest of it had shut down, cowering from those two cracks to the head. He could not see; he could only run. The condition proved unfortunate.
Jan had covered less than ten yards when his knees smacked into a piece of furniture. He cried out and pitched headfirst onto a cushioned object. A couch. His head swam and he rolled off, landing on his side with a dull
thump
that took his breath away.
They were on him then, like two hyenas pouncing for the kill. Hands jerked him to his knees and held him still. It was as if they carefully lined up the last blow;
one, two, three . . . Crack!
It landed on the crown of his skull, and he collapsed in a sea of black.
TWILIGHT LAPPED the edges of Jan's mind, tempting him to awaken, but he thought he would sleep a while longer. An annoying bell had crashed through his ears one too many times already, like a huge mallet swung for a gong.
The sound invaded his dead sleep relentlessly and he rolled . . .
But that was where the gong show ended. Because he couldn't roll.
His eye cracked and he saw nothing but black. A monster pounded on his skull, sending shafts of pain right down his spine. He tried to lift his head, but it refused to budge. Slowly his focus returned.
He knew then that he wasn't in his bed. He lay on his side in a corner, with his back to a wall. He was naked except for his underwear. Dark stains ran down his belly and dyed his white briefs red. Blood.
He'd been beaten badly by those two shadows. Jan tried to lift his head again, and this time it came up for a full second before falling back down to the carpet with a dull thump. He paid for the effort with a spike through the brain, and he clenched his eyes against the pain.
He was still in the nightclub, he'd seen that much. Mirrored walls and a dark dance floor. Colored lights cast eerie hues of red and green and yellow across the black carpet.
A voice sounded to his left. “He's waking, sir.”
Hands grabbed his arm and pulled him into a sitting position. He wavered there for a moment and then lifted his head. This time he got it all the way up and rested it on the wall behind him. A figure stood by the bar to his right, replacing a phone in its cradle. The man had a bandage around his shoulder. Jan hadn't done that, had he? Not that he could remember.
The black-suited man seated himself in a folding chair and looked at him without expression. Jan's reflection stared back at him from the mirrored wall. Blood ran in long fingers down his neck and chest from red-matted hair.
What are you doing here, Jan? And where in the devil are you?
He answered his own question.
You are in a place owned by Glenn Lutz because Helen asked you to come.
A door to his left smacked open and he turned only his eyes, favoring his aching head. It was Glenn. The man seemed to glide more than walk. His hands hung huge with thick fingers that curled like stubby roots. Jan looked into his eyes. They were nothing more than black holes, he thought. A chill spiked down his spine. The man was smiling and his crooked teeth looked too large for his mouth.