From Cape Town with Love (43 page)

The second door looked only wide enough to be a broom closet, but
why would a broom closet need a padlock? The blowtorch was the easy part; I've used them before. I counted slowly to sixty as the flame flared against metal. I smelled the wood around the doorknob getting singed as the heat grew. The liquid nitrogen was actually more iffy. Two hundred degrees below zero is as corrosive as flame, but less familiar. The hissing sound was deafening to me.

Frosted. Thumped. Metal cracked, and I caught the pieces in the backpack. Only a hole remained where the doorknob had been. I wouldn't have much time in the basement.

The two men near the kitchen went on with their endless conversation. They weren't leaving, and they might wander back at any time. Fighting not to rush, I reached for the door.

I pushed the door open, expecting a guard just inside. A light was on above the doorway. My only Xhosa flashed to my mind:
Molo,
I would say. A friendly hello and a smile. One word might buy me enough time to knock him down the stairs.

Molo. Molo. Molo.

No one was there to greet me at the top of the concrete basement stairs, but Nandi's cry burrowed into my ear. Holding my breath, I slid inside and pulled the door closed.

I don't remember pulling out my Beretta, but it was in my hand, ready to fire. I crept down the stairs, my eyes watching for blind angles. I expected to see a muzzle flash with every step.
Hold on, Nandi, I'm almost there.

It was pitch dark at the bottom of the stairs. Nandi's cry was everywhere.

I touched the wall closest to me and found a dimmer switch. I turned on a chandelier, which looked misplaced, and it cast pale spikes of light across the unfinished room.

The basement was large, only partially finished, with industrial-grade carpeting. Giant rolls of brown carpet leaned against the walls, and other piles were covered by tarps. A washer and dryer sat silently behind me, beneath the stairs. The only furniture sharing the huge empty floor space was an old picnic table and benches.

Far across the room, I saw an overturned playpen.

But no Nandi. No one in sight. Now that I was here, she'd gone silent.

“Nandi?” I finally called out. “It's Mr. Ten.”

An answering wail.

I ran toward the playpen and its sharp smell of urine and feces. A dirtied Barbie doll sat on top of a discarded diaper soaked brown. A child's cup had spilled to the floor after the playpen fell over. Nandi had begun her escape without me.

“Sweetheart? I'm here to take you home,” I said, raising my voice as loudly as I dared.

In my imagination, Spider was already there and it was too late. I turned to aim my gun toward the stairs, sure he was standing there. He wasn't. My joints were trembling in hidden places I hadn't known about, slowing my movement.

Keep it together, Ten . . .

What looked like a trail of discarded animal cracker pieces led me to an overturned laundry basket in the corner behind the playpen. The crying was coming from the basket.

Nandi already sounded petrified, so I didn't want to startle her by wresting away her protective basket. I kneeled down to stare past the white plastic bars to the small face inside.

Two frightened, damp eyes stared back at me.

“Nandi?” I said gently. “I'm here to take you home. But you need to be very quiet. We don't want the bad people to hear us.” I had been rehearsing for Nandi since the football stadium.

“I want my
BOTTLE!”
Nandi screamed, furious that I hadn't brought one.

And she was right. If I'd brought one, she wouldn't have been screaming.

“Shhhhhh,
hon, please please don't cry,” I said. “Your mommy's waiting for you, but we can only see her if you're quiet.” Energy bar! What had Marsha said? I shucked the backpack, opened the zipper, and dug around, producing a foil-wrapped granola stick. Nandi's eyes went wide when I pulled it out, and peeled it. She held her chubby hands out, and I gave it to her. She jammed it into her mouth and chewed greedily.

“Now as soon as we get you home,” I began, “your mommy—”

“MOM-MEEEEEEEEE!”
Nandi shrieked, trying to conjure up her mother. I was horrified by the idea of rendering a two-year-old unconscious,
but I might have to. I didn't have a sedative. The only other ways might hurt her.

My Beretta and I checked the basement door. Spider's ghost was running toward us again, but he was gone when I blinked.

Desperate to distract Nandi, I tugged at the energy bar. “Gimme! I'm hungry.”

“Mine!”
Nandi objected.

I was bringing her back down from the cliff.

“Can't I have just one bite?”

“No!” Nandi insisted.

I pretended to sigh with disappointment. “Well, then go ahead and be a little piggy. Hungry as I am, I might eat
you
by accident.” I don't know where I found the jollity.

Slowly, the laundry basket lifted, and Nandi's full face came into the light.

She was not the same child I had seen on the football field. Her face was so changed, I would not have recognized her. It wasn't just the dirt that shadowed her complexion, although the dirt alone broke my heart. Her nose and cheeks were caked with dried mucus. Her hair was matted with dried baby food. She was naked except for a Dodgers T-shirt that hung past her thighs, and had been white before it turned gray. The child hadn't been groomed in days.

The abductors had taken better care of Nandi when they thought they were sending her home. Once their plans changed, Nandi's treatment changed. How long had it been since she'd been fed, or had a diaper changed?

For the first time, there was utter silence in the laundry room.

“Nandi, you know how there's good guys and bad guys?” I said, risking more tears.

Nandi nodded fervently while she chewed, as if she'd been studying the subject.

“You and me, we're the good guys—but the bad guys are coming. And I want to take you away, but the bad guys will hurt us if they find us. So we have to be
very quiet.
Understand?”

I didn't dress it up like a game this time. I stared straight into Nandi's eyes and talked to the part of her that already knew.

“My bottle?” she said, still negotiating despite a mouth full of granola.

“I'll get you a bottle as soon as we get away from the bad men. I promise.”

“I want it
now.”

There was no time for further negotiation. I sat Nandi across the crook of my arm. She already seemed lighter than she'd been at the football stadium. Her T-shirt was damp, probably from urine. I felt so filled with rage that I planned to come back and lay waste to the whole house after I got Nandi home.

Nandi's crying started again—much more softly, but much too loud. Still, we had to go.

I didn't see any windows or other doors, so I carried her to the stairs.

We were halfway up when the basement door cracked open.

That time, I knew it wasn't a trick of my eyes. I leaped backward, landing on the floor silently while air
whooshed
from Nandi's lungs. I darted around the corner as a lone man's footsteps descended.

“What happened to this door?” a man's voice said.

Spider.

In one version of that night, Nandi was completely silent. Spider never saw us around the corner, distracted while he investigated Nandi's overturned playpen. While his back was turned, I hit him in the base of the skull with the butt of the automatic, hard enough to send this King to the Kingdom.

That version died when Nandi wailed. My hand over her mouth only made her cry harder. “Hey!” Spider said, chiding Nandi. “How did you get—”

When Spider turned the corner from the stairs to look for Nandi, he came face-to-face with my Beretta.

“Get back!”
I said. “Stand against the wall!”

Under different circumstances, the childlike O of surprise on Spider's face might have been comical. His hands flew above his head, and he fell back against the wall, blinking.

When the startled moment passed, Spider grinned at me as if we'd just shared an adventure. His teeth grew large. “Shit, man, you got me, eh? It's just you! The one from Skylight? I thought you were the FBI!
Oh, you scared me . . . I saw your face on television. You're the actor who works for Sofia Maitlin! I should have known you.”

His easy banter was a ruse to distract me. Even knowing that, I almost forgot.

“Shut up,
Mhambi,” I said. “Step away from the stairs.”

The grin was gone. “Or what, cowboy? Is that what they call you in movies? The white cowboy?”

“Live or die. Your choice.”

For five excruciating seconds, Spider didn't move. He was already testing me. Spider gave a bitter laugh. “After you shoot me, then what? Who's outside that door, actor? You shoot me, they all come running. Tell me: Then what?”

“Then you'll still be dead.”

“I should be dead ten times over,” Spider said, shrugging. “What's death to me? What about you, actor?”

“If you die, too?” I said, also shrugging. “Why not?”

Spider
tsk
'd. “Is that what you want for Nandi? Bullets and blood?”

“Better than starvation.”

“Nobody's starving this girl!” Spider said. “Eish! She's very fat, this one. Put down your gun. My conscience won't let me kill this little girl. I was coming to take her to her father—her
real
father. He's going to take her where she belongs.”

He didn't try to hide the lie in his voice, but I still wanted to believe him. Nandi wailed, clinging hard to my neck. She might not have known everything, but she knew enough.

“Conscience?” I said. “Try again.”

“You're a madman to come here,” Spider said, his voice tinged with admiration. “I told my boss we should have killed you before. Look how far you've come, actor!”

“You think I got here by myself?” I said. “The feds are arresting everyone at your meeting right now, including Yi and your boss. It's over—
get down on the floor.”

A glimmer of hesitation in Spider's eyes. My gun felt heavier with its growing power.

I had logic on my side, after all: What kind of fool would try a rescue without backup?

But when Spider spread his arms akimbo, my heart plummeted.

“That's what you want?” I said. “You'd rather die than let me take her?”

Instead of answering, Spider stepped toward me, his face placid. Taking his time, Spider lifted his tunic to reveal his knife sheath. With a flourish of his fingers, he reached for his knife. He slowly fanned it in the air.

My gun arm was so rigid that if I breathed too hard, I would pull the trigger.

“Don't make me!” I said.
“I will shoot you
before I let you hurt her.”

I heard voices upstairs, and I realized that Spider had left the door ajar. The two men I'd heard near the kitchen were only a few yards from the basement door. Right above us.

“Where's your FBI raid?” Spider said, voice low. He was enjoying his game.

Suddenly, my Beretta felt light enough to float away, powerless. All of the moisture in my body turned to dust. No single gun would keep me alive in a basement with only one exit. The basement was my prison.

Where was Marsha? Was there a chance that, even now, she was making her way down the stairs? Could she have already called for backup? How much time did I need to buy us?

“You have a problem with your rescue, actor,” Spider said. “A
big
problem.”

I took a step backward, maneuvering the picnic bench between us. I'd already killed Spider in my mind, imagining how Marsha and I could prop the picnic table up to stave off the bullets from upstairs as long as we could. Bullets and blood were surely coming. My eardrums sang from Nandi's cries; I was sure they must be bleeding inside.

“You pull the trigger,” Spider sneered, “we both die. My way, one of us has a chance.”

“Your way?”

“No gun,” he said. “No bullets. Just you and me.”

“Mhambi!”
a voice boomed from upstairs. “Still so much noise! My ears!”

I dodged back to the corner, out of sight. My gun never left Spider, and I'd pinned him. He couldn't make it past me to the stairs without getting shot. We were stuck with each other.

Spider's unblinking eyes stared through me.

“Then close the door!” he called upstairs. “Or come do it yourself!”

The men complained, but the door slammed shut.

“Put the gun down,” Spider said.

“Not so fast.” Warily, I made a wide circle away from Spider, toward Nandi's overturned playpen. Spider twitched like a batter ready to steal second, but my steady gun barrel and unblinking eye held him in place.

“That's the agreement—no gun,” Spider said. “You will do this thing.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you,” Spider said. “I knew you in the dressing room. At the nightclub. You have trained for many years. But you have never had the moment I offer you.”

“And what the hell is that?”

“You will not do this to save your life. Or the child's life. You will not do it for Sofia Maitlin, or the FBI. You will use all of those things as an excuse.”

“Why?” I was only half listening, trying to think of a better way to save Nandi.

“Because you are tired of playacting,” he said. “Of pretending to be men you are not. You want to know who you really are.”

“And you know who I am?”

“No,” he said, voice seductive. “I know who
I
am. All your life you have sought the answer to a question you could never speak. You have trained, and sweated. I know. I did as well. The difference between us? I did not seek this out, trying to become something I feared I was not. My father gave me this, Ummese Izulu, the Zulu knife. As his father gave it to him. What did you do? What is the American way? Did you drift from school to school, digging shallow holes while the gold you sought was just a few strokes deeper beneath your feet?”