Page 21 of What is Found
Of course, the kid wasn’t going to answer, but John could take a wild guess as to why the child had an out-the-front spring action knife. Like the more well-known balisongs, or butterfly knives, which looked cool in movies, OTF knives and switchblades, both of which were spring action, had only one purpose: to slice and dice and gut a guy. He was pretty sure that, in some countries, you couldn’t even own one.
And yet...He spotted a tiny clump of what looked like compacted dirt in the blood groove that the blade’s out-the-front spring action had jogged loose. Scraping a bit of the grit onto a fingernail, he gave the crumbs a sniff. A scent reminiscent of a rusty red wagon left out in the rain filled his nostrils.
Ohhh-kay then.No way of telling how old, but that wasdefinitelydried blood. Which meant that the blade had seen some action. ConsideringwhyMatvey’s owner might loan the child out, none of that action could be good.
Or that might have been part of the con.Get a guy who can afford to buy you into a position where he can’t fight back or resist then pull the knife, rob the guy, and book. No Afghan man in his right mind would report something like that. Seriously, what could the guy say?Yeah, see, there was this boy, and I bought him for a little…well, you know, a fella has needs…
“If it’s all the same to you, Matvey,” he said as he slid the knife into a pocket, “I’ll just hang onto this for the time being.”Like, forever.
Sitting the child down on a rock, he searched the dead guys next, starting with Matvey’s owner. Trying to roll the guy was like trying to budge a walrus, but he finally managed to tug off the man’s thick parka. He wasn’t a ghoul, but the extra jacket would come in handy. There was nothing in the parka other than a handful of bullets, but he found cash and a folding knife in a trouser pocket. From another, he fished a Soviet-made handgun, a set of amber worry beads,and a ring of keys. He left the cash and worry beads and was about to stuff the keys back into the guy’s pocket…only to pause. One key had a logo stamp that looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure, and there was no time to compare. In the end, he pocketed the keys, the folder, the handgun, and all the bullets and slung the rifle’s carry-strap over a shoulder.
The younger man was still flat on his back but not blowing air bubbles anymore, mostly because he was dead. John wished he felt bad, but he didn’t. Instead, he went through the same ritual: stripping off the parka, going through the man’s pockets. He found bullets but no keys or money, and no other weapon except a folder, which he took along with the ammo and rifle.
Back to the van: he checked on Davila and was relieved to see he was still breathing then heaped on the men’s parkas. Job one was to keep Davila warm and alive until John got them both someplace safe where he could tend to the man’s injuries.
He left Parviz for last. He didn’t know why. Maybe because the driver wasn’t just some anonymous bandit. The guy had played bad Tajik rock, for God’s sake. He kept remembering what Parviz had said about there being no work, no money. Maybe, in another life, that was an excuse for robbing people. Worked out okay for Robin Hood. (Even if he ended up a broken-down alcoholic, Errol Flynn had been just terrific.) He could’ve forgiven Parviz for wanting the money.
But not for being willing to kill us.
Parviz’s lids were at half-mast, the corneas already beginning to grow milky. The driver wasn’t wearing his parka, only a fur-lined vest that John peeled from the body. Parviz had left his keys in the ignition and had no knife, but he did have a thin wallet. To John’s immense relief, there was no movie-moment where he pulled out a crinkled photograph and so got a glimpse of Parviz, the man. All he found were three driver’s licenses: one that he thought was Tajik, and another in an Arabic-style script that Parviz had probably used in Afghanistan.
The third was Russian. Cyrillic characters in bold, English in regular font. Roman numerals. The photo was of a much-younger Parviz. No stubble, a thinner moustache. His face was a little rounder, more meat on the bone. He had no way of knowing if the license was genuine or something Parviz had gotten on the black market. But if Parvizwasinto the people-smuggling business, it paid to have an up-to-date license. According to this, Parviz’s license was good for another eight years.
He pocketed them all. Didn’t know why. Couldn’t begin to imagine how they might come in handy, only that they might.
Then he helped the kid into the passenger seat, snicked on the kid’s shoulder harness, started up the engine with the keys Parviz had left in the ignition, and got the hell out of there.
TIME TUNNEL
NOVEMBER 2023
CHAPTER 1
The hot springsseemed the best option. This being the off-season, there was less chance of meeting up with anyone else. Plus, he didn’t want to risk trundling through all those villages at night. Not only could the van’s clatter raise the dead, he had no way of knowing which village had been Parviz’s own. The last thing he needed was to be stopped by an angry relative.
For the better part of an hour, the road he’d chosen—one that climbed and bypassed all those villages—had been relatively good. Which was to say there were no more landslides and he’d not met another soul. Then, all of a sudden, he’d felt the van’s wheels suddenly spin as the engine coughed and tried to die.
Black ice.Taking his foot off the accelerator, he downshifted and let the engine slow him down before applying the emergency brake. Although thereweren’t as many potholes on this stretch, the road still consisted mostly of packed earth interrupted here and there with black slashes of asphalt, like the dots and dashes of Morse code. These were now glittery in the van’s headlights, as if dusted with sparkling sugar. Beautiful in their way but potentially deadly. Hit a bad patch at speed and he’d be doing that Thelma and Louisa swan dive off the mountain before he knew what hit him.
“Tuda.” When he flicked a glance to his right, the boy jerked his head several times to John’s left. “Tuda, Chawn, tuda,” Matvey repeated.
Left, John, left.“Okay, kid,” he said. “If you say so.”
The boy must have heard the doubt in John’s tone because he sighed, thought for a second then said,“Voda.”Grabbing a plastic bottle from the center console, the kid gave the bottle a shake.“Voda.”
Water.“Water’s that way, huh?” He couldn’t see a blessed thing and certainly nothing that looked like another road. “Are you sure?”
“Voda.”This time, the boy leaned over until he was practically in John’s lap and pumped both fists the left.“Tuda, Chawn.Voda!”
He stared so hard his eyes watered and was about to turn away and simply keep going when he spotted what the kid had seen: a dull glimmer to his left. After another few seconds, he realized he was looking at a small sign on two metal poles jutting up from the road’s edge. The sign had once been white with black Cyrillic lettering but was now crustedwith rust and pockmarked with bullet holes. Shooting the Russians after the fact seemed to be a national pastime around here. Still, the arrow leading up was clear enough. Scanning the slope, he picked out a thin slit of a cutoff winding up-mountain that he followed with his eyes until the cutoff plunged into the darkness above and he lost it. From this vantage point, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought the road leveled out.
Matvey said something else in Russian he didn’t understand and then raised his eyebrows.From the tone and the boy’s expression, he figured the kid was saying,So, nu?
“Yeah, yeah.” Feathering the clutch and accelerator until he felt the engine bite, he released the emergency brake. “Everyone’s a critic.”
CHAPTER 2
The first threeminutes on the turnoff weren’t bad. If anything, the road improved, changing abruptly from hard-pack dirt to actual asphalt. This had seen better days; the road was chewed up here and there but was still real pavement, nonetheless. Which made sense. The place would see traffic. The springs were a destination. Given that this place was so high in the mountains, though, he doubted anyone was prepared to hang out year-round, waiting for visitors who likely wouldn’t come. From what he remembered of Parviz’s map, the nearest village was well to their south.