Dark Zone

13

By the time the aircraft landed, Lia felt more like herself. Not well, not normal, but more the person she was.

That person had been worked over fairly hard. Her head pounded and her arms and legs were so sore they felt as if they’d been put in a compactor and compressed. Her right cheek and eye felt swollen.

The two men in the airplane said nothing as the aircraft turned and came to a stop. One of them opened the door to the cabin and went down. The other looked at her expectantly. Lia steeled herself, taking a long breath before rising. She reminded herself that she must speak Putonghua; she reminded herself that she worked for a newspaper owned by a rich businessman and a military official; she reminded herself that she was Lia DeFrancesca and she would get through this.

It was dark outside, and if there was a building nearby it was unlit. Lia’s feet were bare, and the steel treads felt cold on her feet. The muscles in her legs began to cramp. Lia forced herself down onto the blacktop. She took a step and remembered her bag of clothes.

She needed the clothes — the belt that would activate her com system was in it.

I should have put the belt on.

I’m losing it.

Lia turned and started back up the steps. The attendant appeared in the lit doorway; he had her bag in his hand. She walked up and took it. As she did, the look on his face told her something was wrong.

Run!

There was nowhere to go. When Lia turned back around she found the other attendant waiting at the bottom of the steps.

“This way, miss,” he said in English.

She stared at him, confused — honestly confused at first, then realizing that she should play it that way.

“This way,” he repeated, still using English.

Lia bowed her head slightly, then in Chinese told him that she begged his pardon, but she could not understand.

He said nothing for a moment, then pointed to the left.

I am Chinese, she reminded herself.

What would she do if, not having been adopted, she’d been born in China and grown up there? What would she say? How would she act?

“Excuse me,” she said, still using Chinese, “but where am I going?”

The man pointed and started to speak, telling her in Russian that she was to walk around the aircraft as he asked.

Russian?

You’re in Russia. Of course. Russia. Just over the border probably.

Safe?

Lia walked in the direction the man pointed. There was a car there, its motor running. Two tall men in uniforms flanked the doors, snapping to attention as she approached. The car door was already open, but the interior light was not on. After she got in, the two men did so as well, one climbing in next to her.

Lia felt her pulse thumping in her neck. The man told the driver something. She thought he was speaking Russian — she knew he was speaking Russian — but she couldn’t decipher the words.

I speak Russian, she reminded herself. She’d begun studying Russian as a sophomore in high school, but for some reason the meaning of the words wouldn’t come.

Sand and grit covered the carpet on the floor. The throb in her skull increased. She wanted to do something to relieve it, but she was paralyzed.

She looked at her bag. She thought of getting dressed or at least reaching into the bag and pushing the switch on the belt that activated the communications system. But all she could do was stare at the bag as they drove.

God, am I afraid?

If it was fear, it was a kind of fear she had never known. It gnawed at her fingers and the left side of her body, the side near the Russian. She felt the swollen parts of her face sagging downward.

I am not going to cry.

The idea shocked her. She took a slow breath, narrowed her focus.

I will get through this.

Lia pulled her arms up across her chest.

What if she was a prisoner? What if the Koreans had decided somehow to sell her to the Russians? That sort of thing used to happen all the time during the Cold War.

She’d be interrogated. She needed a plan.

Her first strategy would be to stick to her cover story. She’d speak Chinese, ask for her “boss” to be called.

The Art Room would be tracking her using their locator system, which utilized satellites to pick up a special radioactive isotope embedded in her forearm.

What if her cover had been blown, though?

If that was the case, then the Russians would be very interested in her. Deep Black had helped foil a coup some months before. They would be very interested.

Did I tell the Koreans who I worked for?

The thought that she might have betrayed her country shocked her. That was the worst humiliation, she thought. The very worst.

I was a coward.

Nonsense. She hadn’t told anyone anything. She had said nothing. She had fought her attackers.

What if she’d been drugged and couldn’t remember? Bits and pieces were jumbled in her mind — she wasn’t thinking clearly and might not be remembering correctly.

She couldn’t remember anything, could she?

I am a survivor, not a coward.

What kind of mealymouthed word was that? Survivor?

Don’t second-guess yourself. Focus on what is in front of you.

The words seemed to rise from the seat behind her. The voice was hers, but the words weren’t. She knew them well and knew when she had heard them. They came from her father, her adopted father, Bill, teaching her to play the piano before an orchestra when she was in junior high.

“Focus on what is in front of you.”

“I am, Daddy. I am.”

The vehicle stopped. Lia realized there was a plane nearby — she could hear the loud rumble of an idling jet engine. The man next to her opened the door and got out. He told her in Russian to follow. She hesitated as if she hadn’t understood, then pulled the handle of the car door on her side. It didn’t open. The Russian reached his hand toward her. Her pulse quickened and her fingers began to tremble.

Lia looked at the door and realized it was locked. She reached for the lock and pulled it up. The Russian’s hand grazed her side as she did. It was a gentle touch, merely meant to encourage her, but she yelped involuntarily.

Outside of the car, a sprinkle of rain hit her face. A plane sat a few feet away. It had no lights at all, not even in the cockpit, but the three engines at its tail were rumbling. Lia saw a shadow at the rear of the plane immediately below the tail; she took a step toward it and realized a stairway folded down from below the tail.

The engines rumbled and she found herself ducking almost to the ground and she went to the plane, hands out in front of her like a chimpanzee as she climbed up the ladder.

The plane was either her way to safety or her way deeper into hell. She thought of running into the darkness beyond the aircraft, but what good would that do? She’d be found sooner or later, and by then the airplane would surely be gone, possibly taking her only chance with it.

Lia tried to relax the muscles in her shoulders and arms as she climbed into the body of the plane. It was an ancient airliner. Mildew mixed with the scent of jet fuel inside. There was no one else aboard.

The door was pushed upright from below. Lia turned, wondering if she was supposed to lock the door. There was a bar at the side; she pulled it down and there was a loud click.

A second later, the plane began to roll. Lia scrambled to get into a seat. Pain thundered through her skull as the aircraft accelerated and then lifted upward.

The cabin lights flickered on when the airplane leveled off. There were only twenty or so rows in the aircraft; Lia sat in the last.

A curtain separated the passenger compartment from the forward cabin and cockpit area. She moved up one row and then another and another, debating with herself whether to go forward into the cockpit or not. Surely the plane was being flown by someone sent to rescue her. But she remained afraid, and her thumping heart prevented her from getting up again after she reached the third row from the front.

The curtain parted. A short balding man with a thick black beard and mustache entered the passenger area, grim-faced behind his glasses.

“Fashona,” she said.

At first, the word seemed to come from someone else. Then the information flooded into her brain.

Ray Fashona. A Desk Three associate who’d worked with Lia and Tommy Karr and Charlie Dean in Russia.

Fashona!

She tried to shout it, but her voice would come only as a whisper. “Fashona!”

“Hey,” he said. He walked past her down the aisle to the back where the boarding ramp was located. She got up, and when he returned she threw her arms around him. “Fashone.”

“Come on, Lia, you know I hate being called Fashone. It’s Fashon-a,” he said. He put his hands on hers to let him go, but she wouldn’t. “Tommy started that. He thinks it’s funny. He thinks everything is funny.”

“Oh, God, Ray,” she said. “Oh, God. Thank God.”

“Yeah. Him and Rubens. He paid those Russians who picked you up a fortune to sit on their butts for the last two days in case something got messed up. They had to dump a bag of money at the airport to — supposedly. I think they probably just pocketed it.”

“Oh, God, Ray. Thank you. Thank you.”

“Look, I gotta go fly the plane. The Russians’ idea of an autopilot is a two-by-four against the yoke, you know what I mean? Come on up front with me.”

“OK.”

She released him and followed him to the cockpit, where she sat in the first officer’s seat. He fished around near the center console and came up with a headset for her.

“Better snap yourself in,” he told her. “Lot of turbulence. We’re going to land on Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. From there I don’t know what the Art Room has in mind.”

Lia leaned her head back gently against the seat, hoping that the soft cushion might ease some of the pain in her head. It didn’t.

But it was going to be OK.

“Hey, you sure you’re all right?” Fashona asked. “They said you had a tough time.”

“Yeah.”

Fashona turned and looked at her. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Well, who do I sound like?” she said sharply.

“Now you sound like yourself,” said Fashona, turning his attention back to the controls.

She closed her eyes, hoping for sleep and praying that Fashona and his aircraft weren’t a dream.