Mind + Body by Aaron Dunlap (free books to read TXT) 📖

The narrow point of the cold, black blade pressed firmly against the mound of flesh sagging between his chin and throat. It was an awkward position for me, standing behind him, arm crooked around his neck at an odd angle just so I could hold the knife this way, but I wanted him to see it; he had to know I was serious or this might not work. He tugged his wrists against the zip-ties binding his hands together through the back of the solid oak desk chair, but a quick elbow to the base of his neck stopped that. His breathing was sharp and stuttered; through the glove on my left hand I could feel his skin getting hotter. Once again he asked who I was, what I wanted. I pulled the voice recorder from my left pocket, made sure the playback was set to slow, pressed play, and heard a deepened, ominous version of my own voice come from the silver device. It all comes down to this.

The night before, I had no problem sleeping.

It might have been the 24-plus hours I’d been awake, or the boring flight and the mental strain of pretending to be someone else for the benefit of someone who can get you the things you need. It might also have been that I made sure not to think about what I’d probably have to do in the morning. Either way, almost as soon as my body was horizontal I was knocked out.

The idea came to me as naturally as anything else, I just asked myself how I would do it, find out what Comstock was doing here in Vienna, and the answer came. Doing it, that would be the hard part.

I had to wake up earlier than I wanted to, but I needed to be up at least two hours before him. He’d had a longer day than I, leaving the Washington D.C. airport around 6 AM and not arriving here until after midnight. His room was booked for another night, and as far as I could tell, all he had to do here was drop some checks off at a bank. If I were him, I’d be sleeping in today, and that’s what I bet on.

First I needed supplies. A ski mask, plastic zip-ties, a digital voice recorder with speed control, and leather gloves; these would be the difficult things to find in a strange city. If they had K-Marts in downtown Vienna, I’d be set. Unfortunately, I knew it would take at least two different stores. The rest — rubber bands, paper clips, and a thumbtack — those I knew I could get from my hotel’s business center.

I walked the rest of the way to the Ambassador Hotel once my shopping spree was over. I walked with my purchases in a plastic bag, then when I was near the hotel I went into a small café where morning patrons sipped orange juice and coffees and spoke rapid-fire German to each other, and found a lone bathroom in the rear where I put on the new gloves, removed the voice recorder from its packaging, inserted the batteries and began recording my questions. It would be doing the talking, not me.

Comstock’s door lock turned a happy green when I slid my card key into the slot. I prayed he was still sleeping, but as I opened the door a crack I could hear a shower running inside the room. Slight change of plans. Awake, he was unpredictable. He could have made arrangements to be somewhere, ordered room service, or requested maid service. I gingerly pulled the door closed and retreated back to the elevator area at the end of the hall. I picked up the small phone resting near a pad of paper and a set of pens on a long, ornate wooden table and dialed for the front desk. I explained that I was Nathan Comstock from room 4017, that I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night so I’ll be sleeping through the morning, so please make sure there are no phone calls or housekeeping visits.

“And what of your breakfast order set for 8:30? Would you still like that brought up?” the voice asked.

“Cancel it,” I said before hanging up.

The security bar, the evolved version of the security chain, was closed on Comstock’s door. Any idiot knows to shut it, so it was an expected obstacle. I opened the door as far as I could, listening for any noises but only heard the showerhead running and variable splashes of water against the shower floor. When the door stopped against the security bar, I took one of the rubber bands from my right pocket and looped it tightly around the top of the bar, then stretched it to reach the wall inside the room, just near the doorframe. It reached, just barely, so I stuck it to the wall with a thumbtack. The principle of these security bars, just like security chains, is that they can only be unlocked when the door is closed. When the door is opened as much as the bar allows, the small knob on the door blocks the bar from unlocking.

Thus, the rubber band. As I slid the door shut again the band pulled the bar away from the door on its own. Another swipe of the key and a turn of the handle, and the door was free to be opened. This is why these doors also have deadbolts, though many people don’t bother to lock that.

The room was rather dark with the drapes shut, but from what I could see it was a lushly decorated room with royal blue accents against off-white walls. A sliver of light spilled from beneath the bathroom door at the end of the room and the shower was still running. I slipped the black ski mask I’d bought over my head, adjusted the holes so I could see, and began to look around. One of the beds wasn’t made. There was a heavy oak desk at the other end of the room, on it was a soft leather laptop bag, and strewn across that was a fabric belt with large, clear plastic pockets meant to be worn under your pants to hide your valuables from pickpockets. I unzipped one of the pockets and pulled out a white letter-size envelope, inside it were at least 30 certified bank checks, from four different banks. I wasn’t sure if I should take them or not. The FBI might want them as evidence, though I doubt they’d be admissible if I stole them.

I waited about eight minutes for Nathan Comstock to come out of the bathroom. When the shower stopped, I darted to the wall and ducked behind the untouched bed. Then the sink ran for a bit, the toilet flushed, and the door finally opened. Comstock came out of the bathroom wearing a white bathrobe; he swaggered over to the small couch near the window where his suitcase laid open and stood over it for a moment, looking at his clothes by the light of the open bathroom door.

Good a chance as any.

I got up and crept around the beds and stopped behind him as he stood next to the draped window and fished through his suitcase and picked up two white cotton socks. I felt a quick pang of guilt in my mind, but blocked it out just as quickly. This was going to hurt.

I grabbed his neck and slammed his head against the window. A muted thud, then a quick shriek that I ended by covering his mouth with a fistful of drapery, and then I kneed him in the back sharply. He knew I was there, now to scare him.

I pulled his body away from the window by the front of his neck and his left wrist and pushed him across the room and over the edge of the bed. I pulled my knife from my pocket, flipped it open. With my other hand I rolled Comstock’s head sideways and covered his mouth just before I plunged the blade of my knife into the mattress a few inches from his bulging eyes. I took the ball of white cotton socks from his hand and stuffed it into his mouth. He was scared, now to make him feel vulnerable.

Nudity is about the most vulnerable a person can be, so I sliced the pathetic terrycloth belt from the robe with the knife and pulled the robe off of him by grabbing the neck and yanking downwards; his arms bent backwards wildly as they slid from the sleeves. I kept my other hand pressed firmly downward on his neck just below his wet black hair, pinning him onto the bed as he lay there wet, pink, and exposed. He probably thought he was about to be violated in an entirely different way from what was coming next.

I brought the knife to his neck, lifted him up and backed him over to the desk chair and sat him down in it, then brought his arms around behind him and tightened them inside the makeshift handcuffs I’d already fashioned from zip-ties. I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen me yet. He kept panting through his nose and making low groaning noises in his throat.

My deepened, slowed voice came from the recorder held a few inches from his ear.

“I’ve been given clearance to kill you if I want, but it isn’t entirely necessary, so if you’re a good little boy — don’t make a fuss, and answer all my questions — this might not be the last room you ever see. Understand?” I paused the recording.

Comstock groaned again, and then let out a low sob. The socks still in his mouth, mucous began bubbling from his nostrils with each breath. He nodded slowly.

The recording continued, “I think you know who I work for,” Comstock nodded, “Our mutual employer has some concerns regarding recent behavior on your part. Particularly, why you’ve withdrawn all of your money and fled here. Speak.” I paused it again.

I pulled the socks from his mouth. He coughed and flexed his jaw, panted a few times, and then found his voice.

“They,” he said between breaths, “or you, were already coming down on me. I thought you wanted me dead, or to punish me, so… so, I wanted to get the money somewhere where they couldn’t get to it.” He kept panting and sobbing.

I had to be tricky with the questions. I couldn’t exactly say, “Who do you work for?” when I was supposed to be working for them. He had to think they’d sent a hitter after him, one of their own. At the end of the series of questions I’d recorded, I included a few generic questions and remembered the timestamps for each. Since he wasn’t exactly following the script, I had to fast forward and watch the time on the small LCD display of the recorder.

“Why?”

“Why what? Why did I think they were coming after me?”

Silence.

“It was pretty obvious they were trying to screw with me,” he said, still panting but sobbing less. “First my debit card number gets stolen, then they trash my car, and