He took Gobi inside and shut the door in my face.
27. “99 Problems” — Jay-Z
Which was very uncool.
I wandered restlessly around the gym, checking out all the black iron and chrome and not really seeing any of it, thinking of all the things that had gone wrong so far and waiting for the guy to come back out. When he didn’t, I went back to the other door leading back downstairs, but the handle wouldn’t budge. Apparently on top of everything else, I was now locked inside the biggest, most lethal workout room in the universe.
My empty stomach swung open its vaults with a growl that wasn’t so much hunger as an overall complaint about conditions in general. Sometime in the middle of the night I’d gnawed on some strangely shaped Bavarian chocolate cookie that came in a purple plastic egg, and chased it down with two cans of some sticky-sweet German energy drink, but when was the last time I’d eaten real food?
My thoughts circled back to the three of them, locked up wherever they were, and I felt a little ashamed for thinking of myself and my problems. I hoped they were at least giving them bathroom breaks. Annie in particular used to get weird whenever she had to hold it, like on long trips in the car.
Thinking about that, the three of them but Annie especially, I felt a piercing blade of anger at Armitage and what he’d done. What kind of scumbag does something like that to a little girl? For twenty-four hours, I’d equated George Armitage with a record deal and rock superstardom. Now all that was gone forever-it had never really existed in the first place-and I was glad he was dead.
Unless his being dead was going to cost my family their lives.
Except, that technique hadn’t been working any better lately then it ever had. Instead, I found myself gazing at the locked rack of machine guns, pistols, and rifles, row upon row of them gleaming like the black grin of war itself.
That was when the door opened and the guy came back out.
“Perhaps we should start with introductions.” He was wiping his hands off with a towel, flexing his fingers, making big, muscular-looking fists, the kind that seemed to come with double the normal number of knuckles and veins. “I know who you are, but you do not know me. My name is not Kaya. I do not know who this Kaya is.”
“No offense,” I said, “but I really don’t care much about the whole meet and greet right now. The only reason I’m even here with Gobi now is that she thought maybe we could find-”
“Your family,” the man said, “yes. You are referring to Phillip and Julie Stormaire and your twelve-year-old sister, Annie, last known residence, one-fifteen Cedar Terrace, East Norwalk, Connecticut, whereabouts currently unknown.”
“How did you know that?”
“She told me.”
“Gobi?”
“Zusane.”
I nodded. Zusane had been Gobi’s given name before she’d taken on the name of her dead sister, Gobija, and smuggled herself into New York to take revenge on a soulless human cancer named Santamaria. It all felt like so long ago that it could have happened to a completely different guy.
“I am Erich Schoeneweiss.” He reached into his pocket and took out the key that I’d found in Gobi’s bag, then began turning it over in his hand. “You should know that bringing Zusane here was the most dangerous thing you could have done.” He glanced up at me. “You probably also saved her life.”
“You can thank me later.”
“I am making inquiries now as to the whereabouts of your family. They may yield something useful, or they may not. We will know soon.”
“How soon?”
“An hour, perhaps two.”
“And then what?”
“That is your decision,” he said, and I noticed for the first time how colorless his eyes were, an almost silvery gray-white, like the ice that hardens on top of old snow, the kind that can cut your ankle if you step through it the wrong way. “All I ask is that if you do choose to notify the authorities, please use discretion regarding my own involvement.”
“Don’t mention your name,” I nodded. “I get it.” I looked at him. “Why did you say that bringing Gobi here is the most dangerous thing I could have done?”
Erich hesitated as if weighing his words carefully. Before he could formulate an answer, the door behind us swung open and Gobi stepped out.
Right away I couldn’t believe how much better she looked. She was wearing a plain white flannel nightgown and slippers, with her hair wrapped up in a towel. The color had returned to her cheeks, and her eyes looked clear and bright, totally alert and oriented to her surroundings.
After walking over to Erich, she leaned in, took his hand, and murmured something to him in German. He smiled and answered back, squeezing her fingers. Then she looked to me.
“Thank you, Perry.”
“Sure,” I said stiffly. “I mean, you know, whatever. I found the key in your bag, and I didn’t know what else to do, so…”
“You did the right thing.” Gobi looked across the gymnasium and stretched up on her toes. “I spent three years in this room,” she said, “getting ready for my trip to United States.”
“You trained here?” I turned to Erich. “With him?”
She glanced up at him, and Erich nodded with that same cool, expressionless look in his eyes. “In this country,” he said, “every male must serve in the armed forces. After my father got out, he started this… hotel. We operated it together until his death, and I took over by myself. It is not really a hotel.”
“Gee, really?” I eyed the rows of machine guns mounted on the walls. “I was just going to ask about the minibar.”
Erich smiled politely. “There is a saying in certain intelligence community circles. ‘Herr Schoeneweiss runs a hotel in Zermatt that never has any guests.’ However, we do offer accommodations to special clients on a private basis.”
“Special clients?”
“Not everything that I teach here is strictly legal. In fact, some of it is very illegal. There is a soundproof firing and demolition range in the basement. Intelligence, survival, evasion and interrogation tactics, wiretapping and surveillance. The only thing I do not give instruction on is-”
“Driving?”
Erich raised one eyebrow, surprised for the first time. “How did you know?”
“Lucky guess.” I was thinking of Broadway, down by Union Square, the smoking-rubber smell of the Jaguar’s tires as I’d made the turn onto Fourteenth Street with Gobi next to me, calculating distances. “I’ve done a bit of that myself.”
Erich finally let me back into his living quarters, where I caught a shower and changed into an anonymous pair of slightly too-big jeans and black long-sleeved T-shirt that nonetheless felt great compared to the uber-stylish Euro-suit I’d been wearing since Venice. When I came out, he was in the kitchen, dicing garlic while Gobi made a fruit salad. I stood there while she speed-chopped pineapple, mango, and cantaloupe. It was like watching some high-octane mashup of black ops and the Food Network.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Spinach frittata.”
