Chapter 4
"Jesus Christ, patrols are swarming this goddamned train like a beehive!" Hank stormed through the narrow door of the sleeping compartment number 2 and locked it fast behind him, his thick fingers working deftly, fingers that had itched on many gun triggers, fingers that in their thirty-four years had cracked many safes. "Those bastards have been on our tail since Turkey and by God, three fuckin' hours away from Amsterdam and the sonofabitches catch up." A distraught hulk of a man, he sank down on the cot, smoking furiously at a strong-smelling cigarette, the tiny room that was to become their prison in the hours to come blue with smoke while his comrades scattered around him: Lisa, Theo, and Gunnar, three heroin smugglers with whom he'd run heroin from the Golden Triangle around Cambodia to Amsterdam for the past four years.
Gunnar braced his military boot up on the porcelain basin in the corner, hunching his body into a contorting posture, that made his short, stocky German frame appear even more compact. He spit into the sink, a look of disgust on his pock-marked face. "Shit. They've been searchin' every goddamned passenger and piece of luggage. The only way we'll get to Amsterdam is in handcuffs."
Lisa, who'd been leaning against the wall, moved to stand in front of the door. She was quickest to respond rationally. 'Time to make a choice. Either we dump the shit, we jump the train, or we take a hostage and bargain our way out." She was a lean, dark haired woman, pretty, too, had she showed more concern over grooming. One by one, she surveyed the faces of her comrades, her dark penetrating eyes reading their minds, searching for signs of weakness. She knew them all well. They'd been through hell and back together in the four years they'd been runners-'astronauts', as those in the underworld call them-for a Chinese headed syndicate in Amsterdam.
The four of them had met in Amsterdam years back when they'd hung out around the Paradisio where heroin was easy to buy, if one knew the right people. With no work and too many occasional arrests, the habit became too expensive to support and payoffs began to take on the character of favors, leading finally to the ultimate-working for Ti Wong.
"Choice? You call that a choice?" Theo, a lean, fair-complexioned Swede of thirty-two years rasped sarcastically, his eyes squinting with emotion. The still burning ashes of his cigarette crumbled as he stubbed out the end of it on the heel of his shoe and tossed it in the toilet bowl with an angry gesture of defeat, which in Lisa's eyes registered as fear. She'd seen enough of it in the past four years to smell it. "You know what Ti Wong did to Christine for fuckin' up."
The room fell silent, save for the maddening drip of the leaky faucet in the corner basin. Their minds were horrifyingly vivid with the memory of an Amsterdam girl found nailed to a door, razor blade cuts lacing her body in cross-hatchings that oozed blood till she bled to death. She had ratted, gone to the police and given names after being arrested on a smuggling charge. Ti Wong's men had busted her out of prison and killed her. Christine had been one of Lisa's closest friends.
Which was why this was to be Lisa's, Gunnar's, Theo's, and Hank's last run. Christine had wanted out but wasn't quick enough to leave. This was it: the final run, the big one before they ran separate ways, trying to save their necks from the scrupulous Chinese madman whose control of Amsterdam's drug world was undisputed, even by the police who tracked him night and day like dogs after the fox. And like the fox, he managed to disappear into a hole right under their noses.
Hank scratched his thick black beard, then stroked it thoughtfully. "Hostage . . . we need a hostage."
"But we can't hold the whole damned train hostage, you idiot! You have any idea how many cars are on this thing?" Gunnar drew a stick of chewing gum from his pocket and stuck the wad in his mouth. When he was nervous he chewed gum; perhaps that's why his teeth were half rotted. "We need one person . . . somebody that means something, not just some dumpy Dutch dude."
A Mona Lisa smile etched Lisa's sallow face. "I think I know who. I followed her from the dining car. In fact, our ticket to freedom is sleeping next door to us.. . she's the only one sleeping on this car except for us."
Hank looked up from the spot on the wall where his eyes had been focusing unblinking as camera lens. "And she's got to have money, if it's that sexy looking blonde bitch. Christ, judging from the way she dressed, her daddy probably owns Manhattan Island."
Gunnar snapped a bubble from the wad of chewing gum. "Pretty damned nice ass on her, too."
Everybody looked grim, and especially Hank, the realist of the bunch, also the leader when times got rocky, like now. He drew out a train schedule from his work shirt pocket and followed it with his finger, reading aloud. "Okay, we stop in Den Haag. That's where we cut loose. Gunnar, you used to be a brakeman, you get your ass workin' on disconnecting this train car, and Lisa, you keep him covered. Theo keeps an eye on the police while I kidnap the girl."
The ammunition was checked, watches synchronized. Tension was heavy in the room.
It was a terrifying dream. She was on the north elevator of the Eiffel Tower headed for the third level when it broke, the elevator carriage plunging with sickening speed to the deathly ground below, when Janice was suddenly awakened by the screech of iron that sounded as if it had come from directly under her train car. Bewildered and shaking with fright, she bolted up in bed, her yellow satin robe gaping open in the front, letting her full, creamy breasts and their strawberry nipples quiver in the cool air. Heavy footsteps running past her door pounded threateningly in her delicate ears and in the dark she heard the gut tearing sound of someone working at the lock of the door to her sleeping compartment.
"Who-who's there?" she called out in a voice that echoed with the same fear that scorched her body. "Please, get away from my door . . . I.. . "
Suddenly the door burst open and in the dark all that Janice Quincy could see of her assailant was the evil, wide, white grin of his smile. Then his hand shot out, and he grabbed her brutally by the shoulder, pinning her back down on the cot. "Don't try anything," he warned, slapping her. He drew a small bottle from his pocket and uncorked it under Janice's nose. She struggled, trying desperately to free herself from the evil smelling fumes that she breathed, making her eyes water, causing her to cough and gag. She felt dizzy and the world around her whirled; the man's face-what little she could see of it-went blurred and fuzzy, and then everything fell dark again.
It was still dark when Janice awoke and she had no idea where she was. She only knew that she was lying on a narrow cot in what seemed to be a small room, terribly stuffy it was, with only a tiny window to let in the growing pink of the rising sun. Her head ached and her mouth was bone dry; her stomach churned and when she tried to turn over she found she had no strength to do so.
What had happened to her? Time was a complete blank. How long had she been in this room, she wondered. The effort of thinking exhausted her, as well as the fear she felt in her constricted throat, and she fell asleep again.
Later that evening when she awoke, she made out a shadowy figure standing by the bed. A shiver and chill shuddering through her lithe body, she discovered that she was naked. Her yellow satin robe had disappeared, as had her blue linen dress that she'd hung on the door's hook the night before.
Where were her clothes? Who took them, and why?
A cry of pure terror welled up in Janice's throat, only to be strangled there. That filthy evil man who broke into her room must have taken them, clawing at her body as he removed it.
Oh, God! He must have touched her poor, defenseless body, forced her to submit to lewd, indecent acts. Oh, dear God, no! Janice clenched her teeth, holding back her screams of fear and horror that wracked her body like a fever.
And what would happen to her now? Was she to be attacked, assaulted, her helpless virginity plundered and invaded by this figure in the room? Raped? She shuddered, and with no control left at all, she began to scream wildly. "No! Don't touch me! Please don't touch me."
The figure moved, and Janice cringed and flung her arm over her face as she waited for his obscene touch on her trembling body. Then she heard someone coming through the door. Janice peeped through her fingers just as someone turned on the light overhead. In the illumination she saw a man whom she instantly recognized as one of the filthy brutes in the dining car last night. And the other was a woman.
The man's voice was loud and sudden. "Lisa, for Chrissakes, keep her quiet. They'll think we're torturing her!" he barked.
"She's hysterical, Gunnar. What can I do?"
"Rough her up a little bit."
"But we agreed not to hurt her, remember? One rap is enough."
"Do anything, just shut her up!" Gunnar scratched his crotch. "I know something I'd like to put in her mouth to keep her quiet."
Janice writhed in shame at the obscene joking, struggling to cover herself with the skimpy sheet to hide her bare shoulders. God, how foul this man was! Base, depraved man who would rape a woman as casually as they would smoke a cigarette. She thought of Charles, fine decent Charles, and she sobbed.
Gunnar's eyes roved over her sheet covered body, and Janice shrank back as if they had actually touched her. She winced as Gunnar nudged Lisa with his elbow and asked, "You suppose she's got an old man to suck that high class twat of hers?"
Lisa whirled on him. "Cut the clowning," she rasped in a shrill voice.
"But I was kinda hopin'. . . "
"We don't touch her, remember?" Lisa walked over and leaned against the sink in the corner. "What's goin' on out there? The patrol's here, no doubt."
Gunnar shook his head. "You got that right! Looks like World War II all over again. It's gonna be tough." Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed, and Gunnar jumped to his feet and stormed from the cabin.
Lisa walked slowly over to the bed. "Scared?" she asked Janice.
Janice turned her face to the wall. "How can he talk like that!" she wailed. "He's so crude and vulgar-and oh, God!"
"Sure he's crude and vulgar," admitted Lisa, "but he's never had a lot of money like you." She sat down on Janice's bed. "Anyway," she went on, "he probably won't bother you. We've got enough trouble on our hands without adding rape to our rap."
Janice sat up on the bed, "Who are you?" she demanded.
"I'm Lisa."
"But who are you?" persisted the blonde with saucered eyes. "And why am I being held here? The train's not moving is it?" she put in suddenly, as if recognizing that fact for the first time. Amsterdam seemed impossibly far. "And where are my clothes-my blue dress and my robe? What's going to happen to me?"
"Look, little girl," Lisa said. "None of us are happy about this damnable situation. We want to get to Amsterdam worse than you do."
Janice sat upright on the bed, trying to focus her attention on what Lisa was telling her, but nothing made sense. Here she was on a train in a country she'd never been in before, in a train car with a whole gang of awful people who had taken her clothes, with her head throbbing and aching and whirling from whatever it was that had been in that bottle-so that she couldn't seem to grasp anything she was told. And she felt tired, too tired to think, to figure things out. "I don't understand," she said at last.
Patiently, as if she were talking to a small child, Lisa began, "You are a hostage."
"You mean I've been kidnapped?" Janice whispered the words.
"Of sorts . . . you see we're in a mess just like you are now. The police are after us-have been for a long time and now, in order to bargain our way out, we're trading you for a couple years in prison. Understand now?"
As Janice thought about it, things started to fall in place, even in her fogged, chloroformed brain.
But that was no reason to take her robe, was it? She looked at her luxurious curves of her naked body under the thin sheet, and felt the full humiliation of her position. "Don't hurt me, please," she said in a half whisper. I'll give you money, anything you want-Charles will too-but don't hurt me."
"We aren't planning to," said Lisa. "We don't want to hurt you any more than we want the police to start shooting at us."
There sounded a rap on the door, and Janice slid down between the sheets, pulling the coverlet up to her chin as Hank sauntered into the room, a tall, burly looking man with thick black hair and a beard to match. Every inch of him seemed to be covered by hair, like some kind of evolutionary throwback. She dived deeper into the bed. Again she fell into a heavy sleep.
When she awoke it was to see Hank and Gunnar in the room, deep in discussion with Lisa. She strained her ears to hear what they were saying, and, although their words escaped her, she knew by the solemn tones that it was bad news.
By the evening of the second day, Janice had a sense of impending doom. A heavy pall of gloom hung over the train car and all five within its metal prison. Lisa sat by Janice's bed wrapped in deep thought from which she stirred occasionally to pace nervously back and forth in the tiny prison of gloom. Once in a while one of the others-Hank, Gunnar, or Theo opened the door a crack, poked his head in and held whispered, mysterious conversations with her.
As the night dragged on, Janice's nerves began to give way. The slam of the door made her teeth clench with fear. With trembling fingers, she lit one cigarette after another, snuffing them out half smoked.
By morning, she awakened to find Hank in her room.