Rick Mofina - They Disappeared

Joost hung up. He had little time to think before two men entered the editorial department, scanned the empty desks, then filled the doorway to his office. One nodded to his nameplate.

“You are Joost Smit?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Sergeant Peter Linden and my partner is Sergeant Jan de Groot. We’re with the criminal intelligence division.”

A ping of uneasiness sounded in the back of Joost’s mind. Their accents were off.

De Groot shut his office door and proceeded to close all the window shades. At this point Joost thought it wise to cooperate. He stood to greet them.

“Yes, how can I help you?” He extended his hand.

Linden shook it, the glint of a gold filling flashed when he attempted a smile that seemed more like the scowl of a man void of human qualities.

“We have some routine inquiries.”

Then de Groot, the larger of the two men, shook Joost’s hand. Pain shot through it as if he’d been pricked as de Groot nearly crushed it in his.

Blood oozed from a small, deep puncture in the palm of Joost’s hand. Horror blossomed on his face. Gripping his wounded hand he sank into his chair, watching de Groot casually collapse the tiny needlepoint on his large ring.

Joost was aware that he’d been injected with poison.

“Comrade Smit,” Linden mocked him. “You’re aware who we are and why we’re here.”

Linden set a small vial with clear liquid and a packaged hypodermic needle on Joost’s desk out of Joost’s reach.

“Without this antidote,” Linden said, “you will die in twenty-five to thirty-five minutes, a heart attack at the desk, so common with men your age.”

Joost’s right hand was getting numb, sweat formed on his upper lip.

“The FSB in Moscow has been working very hard and that hard work led us to Yuri Kripovanosk in Istanbul,” Linden said. “Let me show you the excellent work of our team there.”

Linden reached into his pocket for his cell phone and played a short video recording. Yuri was in a darkened room, naked, bound to a table. A man with bolt cutters was amputating his toes. Linden adjusted the volume so Joost could hear Yuri’s screams.

“The toes, the fingers, then his cock. You know the drill. Old school but effective, right, Smit?” Linden’s gold crown flashed when he grinned. “He cooperated, which brings us to you.”

Joost swallowed.

“We have learned of a plot to assassinate our president in New York during the General Assembly of the United Nations. You will tell us about this plot and Russian security will defeat it our way, hopefully avoiding the complication or the embarrassment of involving the Americans.”

The numbness in Joost’s hand was shooting along his arm.

“I know nothing of any plot.”

“This is not the time to lie,” Linden said. “Yuri arranged for you to deliver an item containing something critical to this plot. What is it and where is it?”

Joost’s shoulder began throbbing.

He glanced at the antidote, then searched around his office, coming to a snapshot of a staff Christmas party, finding Aleena, smiling, innocent. If he gave her up, they would find her and kill her.

“Yuri was mis-mis-mistaken.”

Linden said nothing as de Groot began rummaging through files, the schedules, staff lists. Minutes passed as Linden tapped the antidote vial with the frequency of a ticking clock.

Painful spears of lightning shot through Joost’s brain.

His body had turned to stone. He saw de Groot drawing his face to a corkboard of upcoming editions and the small harmless note Joost had written on the look-ahead list: “Aleena in NYC for feature.”

Aleena’s full name was in the magazine. Her desk was a few feet away.

The room began spinning for Joost and he smelled bread.

Warm and fresh.

He was a boy again in his father’s bakery in Saint Petersburg. The happiest time of his life, helping box the pies, the tarts, and bag the bread. His Dutch father had big hands and he kneaded the dough like a master. His Russian mother smelled of sugar and cream when she hugged him against her apron.

Before he died Joost embraced the memory of how the ovens kept him so warm through the coldest winters.

Somewhere in New York City

Cole woke in darkness.

His heart was beating fast because today they were going to get away.

But he didn’t move a muscle.

Ever since they’d found the handcuff keys he prayed that the guard wouldn’t realize that he’d dropped them. Chances were good they would not be missed, because ever since Cole and his mom were taken, the guards had only used the keys once to release Cole’s mom when they took her away.

Cole and his mother had held off acting on their discovery.

“We have to wait for the right time,” she had whispered.

Buoyed by the hope of escape Sarah decided they must make their move when their captors were at their weakest.

In the predawn.

“We’ll do it before sunrise,” Sarah had told Cole last night before urging him to get some sleep.

Now he was wide-awake, his heart racing as he checked on his mother lying on her mattress near him.

Sarah was awake, too, keeping vigil of the men far across the old factory floor where the scene was akin to a military encampment.

Snoring and coughing echoed in the still air.

Most of them were asleep in cots, or in sleeping bags on air mattresses. In the ambient light she saw a couple of them at the tables working at computers, talking softly on cell phones or to each other. The various tiny lights of their equipment winked and light reflected off the metal of equipment peeking from tarps.

Sarah studied their guard.

He was wearing a holstered gun.

He was in a padded high-back office chair some ten feet away where he’d spent much of last night in a lip-smacking feast of spicy-smelling food from a plate on his lap.

Now, his chin was on his chest and he was snoring.

Sarah gathered her chain and inched closer to the guard.

The luminescent digits of his watch showed 3:39 a.m.

The guard was out cold.

Sarah glanced toward the others in the distant darkness.

Now, she thought, we have to do this now.

Sarah moved to Cole, who retrieved the keys from their hiding spot.

When he tried the first one in his mother’s cuffs, it didn’t work. Neither did the second key. He glanced fearfully at her. She bit her lip, checked to make sure the guard was still sleeping, then tried the key in Cole’s cuff.

It clicked open.

She gasped, clasped her hands over his cuffs, then freed Cole from the chain. She closed his open dangling handcuff around his wrist so it would not make a sound. He now had two cuffs closed on one wrist.

“Heavy,” Cole said, testing the weight.

The metal against metal made a little noise but not too much.

“Okay, honey, are you ready?”

Fear flooded Sarah’s voice as she fought to stay calm for Cole.

“I think so.”

“Remember what we talked about?”

“Yes.”

“Each time I went to the bathroom I loosened the cover of the air shaft,” she said. “I’m pretty sure it leads to the next room.”

Cole nodded.

“Pull it off and find your way out of here. Just get out and tell the first person you see who you are and to call 9-1-1 and send police.”

“I’m scared to leave you, Mom.”

“I know but you have to be brave. I want you to get out and be safe.”

Sarah took Cole’s face into her trembling hands.

She couldn’t believe any of this, couldn’t believe all that had happened, that she was now pulling her son so tight to her that he nearly cried out.

Am I making a mistake to send him off like this? What if something happens? What if I never see him again? I’ve already lost Lee Ann. I could not bear to lose him. But it’s his only chance to get free, to be safe.