The Nowhere Man

11 No Longer the Same Place

Evan came to lying flat on his chest, his mouth open against the floorboards. He shoved himself up and leaned back against the sleigh bed, letting the ache between his temples subside.

The cart was gone. Damp spot on the floorboards where they’d been scrubbed. No sign of Chuy’s body.

Serious room service.

Two fingertips of his left hand were crusted. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. Then he went to the hearth and pretended to warm himself. His busted RoamZone had fallen through the log grate. Careful to keep his back to the hidden surveillance cameras, he managed to poke beneath the flames to knock the phone into reach. The rubber casing was scorched. Smashed-to-shit bits of Gorilla Glass turned the screen into a mosaic. Holding the phone low against his belly, he thumbed it on. Miraculously, the lights flickered as it powered up. The Gorilla Glass had protected the phone from the worst of the stomping and the fire, but he could see bits of the circuit board through the cracks. The smart screen seemed unresponsive to touch.

There’d be no dialing out.

He examined the damage, his excitement quickly fading. He was adroit with electronics, but fixing the phone was beyond his capabilities. When he was sixteen, he’d been taught by a hacker around the same age who could’ve figured something like this out in a Red Bull — fueled minute, but that’s why she’d been the teacher and he the student.

Keeping the phone hidden, he went back to the bed and surreptitiously shoved it between the mattress and box spring.

On the unmade sheets, the croissant waited, cold. His stomach announced itself. He took big bites, chewed thoughtfully, his mouth dry from the sleeping gas. In the course of his training, Evan had endured halothane vapor and methoxypropane, but given the roaring fire he guessed René had gone with something less flammable, probably a halogenated ether. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head, then crossed to the window and noted the sun’s position high in the sky. He’d been unconscious for a while. Despite the midday blaze, he knew not to be fooled; it was well-digger-ass cold out there.

Movement caught his eye below, three men jogging past the barn, disappearing into the tree line. Evan hadn’t seen them before.

Two dogs, seven guards, and Dex.

His thoughts were scrambled, fragments of plans jabbing him from all angles, opposing directives warring in his mind.

Well, then. As Jack had encoded in the Fifth Commandment, If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.

Evan went back to the bed and sat cross-legged on the unmade sheets. Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths. He slowed each exhalation, counting to four, letting the alpha brain waves kick in and drop him into a meditative state.

After five minutes, or twenty, he opened his eyes and slid off the mattress. Then he made the bed carefully. He stretched and did push-ups, sit-ups, and a quick core workout, favoring his bruised rib. His muscles felt creaky from the days he’d spent unconscious. He kept all thoughts at bay, focused only on breaking a good sweat. Then he showered and changed and returned to the spot by the window. Standing in the same place with a clearer mind meant it was no longer the same place. He reviewed what little he knew.

He now had a grasp on the time: midday.

He’d gleaned the date: October 18.

The next priority was figuring out where he was.

His gaze swept the walls low, just above the baseboards. Nothing. He moved to the built-in mahogany desk. The backing floated an inch or so off the wall, no doubt to leave room for appliance plugs. He put one eye to the dark sliver but could make out only darkness. Then he crawled into the space where a chair should be and flattened his cheek to the wall. The power outlet floated a few inches away in the gap between desk and wall.

It had only two holes, designed to fit round pins.

Clearly not built to receive an American plug.

Evan popped to his feet and headed briskly into the bathroom. After scanning the walls, he dropped onto a knee and found a wet-room outlet tucked beneath the floating granite slab housing the sinks. This one took a three-pin plug — two round, one grounding.

That was helpful, too.

He searched the bathroom for a hidden surveillance camera but found none. With the stark stone and tile, there were scant hiding places. He had to assume that the mirror was a one-way and that a pinhole camera was positioned inside the ceiling vent as in the bedroom, but he couldn’t be certain. That still left him a blind spot beneath the sink and in the corner by the toilet.

He needed to create a blind zone in the bedroom as well. Pausing in the doorway, he searched the crack in the frame, careful not to be obvious. There it was, a pencil eraser — size circle of metal nestled back in the wood like a dug-in pinworm. He walked over to the hearth and ran his fingertips across the caulking between the travertine tiles but felt nothing. The vent camera he’d spotted earlier and the bathroom doorframe unit gave them eyes on three-fourths of the bedroom. He looked for a spot that would pick up the remaining quarter.

The corner above the closet where the walls met the ceiling. He flicked a gaze quickly in that direction, noting that the point of blackness there was slightly more pronounced than in the other corners.

Solid tradecraft.

What was the best way to play this?

Evan put himself in René’s shoes and thought for a time before settling on the next step. It was a gamble, but everything was a gamble.

Back in the bathroom, he thumbed the remaining paste off the rubber toothbrush where it had been squirted between the bristles. He added a drop of water and worked it between his thumb and forefinger until it gummed up into a gooey mortar.

He smeared it over the crack in the frame outside the bathroom. That knocked out their view of half the bed and the sliding glass door. Then he worked up more paste and went to the corner of the room by the closet. Bracing his bare foot against the closet hinges, he put his back to the wall and squirmed his way up off the ground like a rock climber until he could reach the ceiling. He put his face big in the hidden camera, went for a smug smirk. A few swipes and he’d obscured the tiny lens, eliminating René’s visuals on the fireplace.

He dropped back to the floor and wiped his hands on his jeans, acting satisfied with himself. He’d left them the most essential camera, the one in the heating vent that captured half the room, including the door to the hallway. The one they’d need to discern his position before they entered the room. The one that was filming him right now, acting as though he’d just put one over on them.

If René was smart, he’d hit Evan with sleeping gas again and reposition the cameras he’d knocked out. But if he was really smart, he’d concede the ostensible defeat, let Evan believe he was surveillance-free in the room, and use the remaining camera to observe what Evan got up to when he thought no one was looking.

Head lowered, Evan paced the rustic oak planks, doing his best to construct the chessboard mentally, to anticipate René’s counter and plan several moves ahead.

A knock came at the door once again.

He was about to find out how well he was playing the game.