The Not so Secret Agent Ch. 14

Chapter 14: The River

Arthur liked the Danubian clergy, mostly because the priests and priestesses treated criminals like him about the same as they did free people. It felt good to be spoken with like a human being instead of spoken at like a number. When Arthur was in the city he always tried to attend services; normally it was hard to find the time, but on this special day all of Danubia's criminals were off work.

The massive bell rang one last time, deep reverberating tones faded to inaudible levels and the crowd of a couple thousand worshipers turned their attention toward the entrance. Families clustered in groups of ten or twenty; parents and children stood with grandparents and other relatives, all were dressed in simple black prayer robes except for an occasional nude collared criminal or penitent family member, their skin tone standing out in a mass of black.

The Cathedral was the largest and oldest of Rika Chorna's many temples, a massive stone structure dating back to the decades following the eastern people's exodus from Lower Danubia. A group of clergy stood high at the church entrance facing the rising sun, chanting a prayer in archaic Danubian for gathered worshipers to repeat. The ancient prayer called upon the Creator to remove false visions from the minds of the faithful before they entered the temple.

Arthur waited for most of the congregation to enter before he passed between the massive wood and bronze doors. There were no pews inside, just a cavernous room with vaulted ceilings, patterned rugs on the floor, and an elevated dais at the front. Worshipers stood with their families, forming long orderly rows across the chamber. Arthur stood with a group of worshipers who came alone.

Despite it being an important day, the service followed the normal format. There were hymns sung, rituals of fire and purification, and a women's choir performed in the uniquely Danubian style with contrasting vocal pitch taking the place of instrumental music. The service concluded with a sermon.

The congregation got down on their knees and knelt upright while an elderly priest dressed in a black robe and tall cylindrical hat spoke on the subject of suffering and redemption. Arthur listened intently; suffering had been a big part of his life for the past three years. Redemption was more of a relative concept, but Arthur did have something specific in mind.

There were just a few worshipers remaining when Arthur turned to leave the Holy Cathedral; then he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Arthur," the young priestess said. "It is good to see you here at the temple again; I want to again express my gratitude for all the help you have given the Church. The Temple Archivist said that the English translations that you made have put his project ahead of schedule by weeks."

The priestess was about his age, tall and thin, with sharp expressive features that complimented her energetic determined nature. She had been his spiritual advisor for almost three years. Arthur thought she viewed him as a challenge, a chance to prove herself; she was eager and driven where others might have advised caution and patience. To drag a prideful, greedy, deceptive criminal toward the Correct Path was one thing, but to reform the infamous American spy- now that would be something to brag about, but of course Danubians (especially clergy) didn't do that sort of thing.

"I remember that day clearly when you first came to the temple three years ago. Everyone talked about that terrible crime you were involved in. At first I was suspicious, I thought you were simply acting interested in the faith to gain something, but throughout these past three years I have seen a tremendous change come over you. Arthur, it has been an honor to help guide you back toward your True Path in Life."

"The honor is all mine, priestess. When I first came to the Church I was skeptical." Arthur grinned. "I never would have thought that I would become a religious person again; I hadn't gone to any kind of church since I was fifteen years old. But I suppose I'm not the same person I used to be."

She smiled brightly. "Arthur, it will be good to have you with us on our most holy observance."

"I too have been looking forward to this day for a very long time priestess and I have a feeling that this Day of the Dead will have special significance for me."

There was the slightest hint of a smile on Arthur's face as he walked purposefully away from the church.

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On the second night of the Day of the Dead the marchers filed into a city park to rest. They set down their torches and slings, got a drink, and took bathroom breaks. The rest was brief; after a few minutes the priests called on the marchers to reform a line so they could have their ghoulish black on white body paint retouched and their torches refueled and lighted. Soon the entire criminal population of Rika Chorna walked in fire-lit columns through the dark city streets, all except one.

Arthur had deliberately been one of the last to visit the restroom; there were five empty stalls, including the one that he wanted on the left. He stood on top of the toilet seat, lifted a vent panel off the wall and retrieved a packet that he had placed there the day before. Tucking it under his arm along with his sling and torch he stepped outside the door and glanced toward the priests thirty meters away. Arthur waited in the shadows behind the building; five minutes passed. Keeping low to the ground and moving slowly he looked around the corner. No one had noticed his absence, it was clear.

Arthur ran down one of Rika Chorna's many walking trails; one that lead to the south side of the business district. After a thirty minute run, he stopped, set the torch and sling down on the trail and opened the heavy plastic bag. He removed two items: a hexagonal screwdriver and a small flashlight fitted with a blue filter.

Arthur cautiously approached a large metal building; ordinarily it would have been illuminated but on this one holiday all its lights were turned off. A thin line of fire glowed a couple kilometers to the north as he crept toward the rear of the building. This was the water rescue-training center run by Natural Resources, and it had a few items Arthur wanted to borrow.

There was a boiler room at the back of the building that was unfinished and un-insulated inside; Arthur unscrewed the lower edge of a piece of sheet metal enough so he could squeeze through, once inside he turned on his light and walked to a supply room, he took three items and then promptly left the building.

Arthur replaced a couple of the screws to hold the metal down and then he carried his new equipment back to the trail. He packed everything carefully inside the bag, tied the bundle securely, threw it over his shoulder and ran west, until he came to a small murky pond half filled with leaves shed from overhanging tree limbs.

Taking a length of thin nylon rope he bound the package with a double-constrictor knot and waded into the center, his bare feet sank through black layers of rotting leaves, bubbles of methane churned to the surface with each squishy unpleasant step. When the water was just above his knees Arthur let the package sink. He buried the free end of the rope a couple inches deep in the pond bank, and placed a perfectly ordinary rock, though one he would recognize, on top. After that it was only a matter of retrieving the torch and sling, taking another hiking trail to yet another park and waiting.

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No one noticed the figure hidden at the forest's edge as the line of convicted criminals and penitents entered the park, the last scheduled rest stop of the March. The fires they carried provided the only light; the rest of Rika Chorna was blacker than the moonless sky. A seemingly endless line of tired and thirsty marchers filed into the park and the dedicated clergy attended to their needs.

With the darkness pierced only by a few pale fires it was remarkably easy for him to slip back into their midst; Criminal # 88588 simply walked out, had a couple glasses of the berry punch that stained his mouth red as blood, and then like most everyone else, he reclined in the soft dew-covered grass and rested.

A few minutes passed and then Arthur lined up with everyone else. A priest frowned and remarked about the poor condition of his body paint, especially from the knees down; Arthur just shrugged as they repainted him.

The holiday ended at dawn, and then the criminals cleaned up, ate breakfast, and traveled to the police station to pick up their winter gear. Arthur reported to work just before noon; the workload was easy and the day was short. It was like that all over the city as people recovered from the Day of the Dead; work schedules were cut back and people commonly took the rest of the day off if they could.

Arthur had observed the Danubians carefully during his previous three years, noting that the celebration of the fall equinox with all its activities and two nights without much rest left most of the population sleepy- and not too alert.

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Jakt was asleep early that night, as was most everyone. Arthur pulled on his orange work boots, laced them up tight and walked to the door. It screeched and rattled as he opened it, it really didn't matter; Jakt slept as if in a coma. Arthur paused, briefly looking back at his occasional home for over three years; then he shut the door behind him and walked away.

Outwardly calm, Arthur traveled the same path he always took to the criminal's club. This time however, instead of continuing east he turned south into a dark forested park, and then, when he was sure he wasn't being observed Arthur sprinted back to the pond he visited the previous night.

Reaching into the mud, his fingers found the end of the rope; he fished out the package and unwrapped it. Once he had put the twenty-pound boat anchor back into the water, the pack was considerably lighter.

Arthur took out a can of black shoe polish. "I- Fucking- Hate- Orange!"

Arthur spoke loud enough to surprise himself. "Focus 885... Uh, I mean Arthur... gotta stay focused." He took steady even breaths as he rubbed black on his issued orange work boots.

Next he covered all the skin he could reach in cold dark mud scooped from the pond bank. That done, he bound up his pack, threw it over his shoulder and took another trail westward. After a hard thirty-minute run he came to a place where the trail crossed a paved road. One of the yellow warning signs marking the edge of the Rika Chorna Collar Zone lie directly ahead.

Arthur stopped and opened the packet. He pulled out a roll of electrical tape and began wrapping his collar. After going all the way around it he used the flashlight and a small mirror to see if there was any uncovered metal remaining.

Satisfied, he went into his package again and removed a roll of metallic foil that had been cut into two-inch wide strips. In the same fashion he carefully wrapped the collar in foil. He repeated with two other rolls, and then with some difficulty, covered the foil with the remaining electrical tape.

Four months into his sentence he had thought of something peculiar. His collar had never been charged; if it were a transmitting collar he thought its battery would have surely worn down by then. Perhaps, he speculated, the collar was not an active transmitter but a passive unit like the radio frequency tags used in shipping.

Arthur reasoned that the government would only know a criminal's whereabouts when he passed by a detector. The outer perimeter must be lined with them, as soon as a collar passed through that electrical field, a current would be induced and the collar's antenna would transmit its identifying characteristics back to the detector.

If that was the case, he reasoned, the government would not know a criminal's location all the time, and more importantly if a collar was disabled it wouldn't immediately be noticed.

One night in his second summer Arthur built up the nerve to test his idea; that night he stepped across the boundary of the Collar Zone and traveled into the woods a few hundred feet. He thought the foil would effectively shield the collar's antenna from the electric field as long as there was an insulator between the metal collar and the foil. After an agonizing wait he realized it had worked, and Arthur, from that point on, knew that he had a real chance at escaping.

Praying to the ghost of Michael Faraday, Arthur stepped past the Collar Zone sign and continued toward the rail yard on the western side of the city. This was not a train station but a loading area for heavy cargo, chemical tankers, and aggregate. The lot wasn't illuminated much and there was clearly just a skeleton crew running the night operation but Arthur knew that this was one of the most dangerous parts of his plan.

Staying low to the ground he crept up to the chain link fence that surrounded the terminal. Using a pair of wire cutters he made a three foot high slice in the fence and squeezed through. After tightly binding up his pack, Arthur moved closer to the rail cars. They were already loaded and the locomotive was ready to move west toward Danube City. Train schedules were something you could count on in Danubia, and this one was scheduled to leave at 10:05 PM.

Arthur crept along a gully that paralleled the track until he could find a suitable car. There were locked container cars, and tankers, but the type he wanted was open on the top and used for hauling aggregate. A hundred feet downstream he found a suitable car and slowly moved up toward the rails. Arthur waited and listened for about five minutes before making his move; he climbed the outside of the car and jumped inside. Relieved that no one had noticed him; Arthur looked through his bag and put on a wristwatch. It was 9:45 PM; there was nothing more to do but wait.

Right on schedule the train began moving at 10:05 PM. Arthur spent the next few hours lying on top of a load of gravel and going over the next phase of his plan in his head. At one o'clock in the morning the train rolled past one of the smaller provincial capitals. Eighty kilometers ahead was Danube City and the part that made him the most nervous.

Rika Chorna he knew well. Over the past three years Arthur had studied the city carefully. He knew its roads and trails well enough to draw them from memory. He knew the location of fences and guard posts; he knew which facilities had watchdogs posted, as well as ways to move about without being seen.

Arthur had little first-hand knowledge of Danube City though. He had studied several maps and aerial photographs of the city but that was it. He would have to depend on the cover of darkness, and the fatigue brought on by the Day of the Dead to help him pass by undetected.

The heavily loaded train started slowing three miles from the Danube City rail-yard. Arthur threw his pack over his shoulder and carefully looked for a relatively safe place to jump. When the train slowed to about ten km per hour Arthur climbed down the outside of the car to the lowest rung and leapt. He hit the ground on his feet but tripped, rolling down the slope and landing with a splash in a foul-smelling puddle at the bottom of the ditch.

Scraped but otherwise uninjured, Arthur crawled out of the mud and examined his surroundings. The rail-yard was only one and a half kilometers from the East Danube River; the ditch went westward through the well-lighted complex so he would have to find another way around. There were just two options: north or south.

To the south, on the far side of the ditch, a hundred meters of un-mowed grass and weeds separated him and a one-lane access road that he recognized from the map. That road continued west for 1.2 kilometers, passing near several residences. The glow of electric lights in that direction was more than he expected. The aerial photographs of Danube City were over five years old, perhaps Arthur thought; the southern route was no longer safe.

Before he could examine the northern route Arthur had to wait five minutes for the train to stop, then he scrambled under a rail car and moved north. Arthur knew that a half-kilometer directly to the north of the rails there was a boundary between the industrial and residential zones. The aerial photos showed a strip of forested land in between that extended all the way to the river; he hoped it was still there.

Arthur couldn't see any lights to the northwest, but he did find an eight-foot high fence covered in vines, he grasped the wire in his fingers and pulled himself easily over the top. On the far side of the fence was an overgrown lot with lines of empty shipping containers parked inside.

Arthur sneaked past two hundred meters of empty containers, and came to a fence twice his height. A dog barked not far away. Arthur climbed on top of a container close to the fence, leapt and caught hold, rolled over the top and dropped down the outside.

A flashlight beam darted in his direction, but Arthur was already in the tall brush running west. The barking receded behind him as he sprinted along a rocky gully with thick vegetation to either side, after ten minutes he heard the rush of the East Danube River.

Arthur touched his fingertips to the cold water. He figured it must be fifty degrees already; unprotected, a man wouldn't survive in that for long. The flood had subsided but the river was still above its banks and flowing in the middle at around 18 kilometers per hour.

He opened the packet and pulled out the dry-suit that he gathered from the training center; after squeezing into the insulated watertight suit he stuffed the rest of his supplies into the bag and strapped it to his leg using Tee's snakeskin belt. Sealed in the dry-suit with only his face exposed Arthur stepped into the swift current.

Samantha would have quite a surprise if the rest of his plan worked or a nasty surprise if it failed. Arthur had planned his own escape since midway through his first year, though back then he knew not to make the attempt until he was ready.

His sister's first trip was not to visit; Arthur needed an accomplice. He told her of his discovery, how he could disable the collar and how he planned to escape. Tee was as enthusiastic as always to be part of his plans.

Tee and Arthur had something else in common besides the odd behavior; they knew how to keep a secret. During her last trip they carefully went over every aspect of the plan and then said what might have been their last insults to one another.

Arthur never considered telling Samantha; that would have been too big of a risk for both of them. Though she had been confused by his insistence that she postpone her trip to California until September; she had, in the end done exactly as he wanted, so she would either be back in the US when he made a surprise appearance home, or she would be out of the reach of the Danubian authorities if his attempt failed.

Arthur wondered what he would say to her if he got back. Would she be angry that he hadn't shared his plan with her? Probably, he thought, but the anger would fade and they would get on with their lives.

It was bad about the wedding. Many people would be in for a shock. To make everything look convincing he had to go through all the normal steps required before a Danubian wedding. Jakt, Spokesman Ralkliv and his family, all of Arthur's contacts at the Church, and many friends that both he and Samantha had acquired during the past few years would probably feel betrayed. That was unfortunate but necessary; if he succeeded there would be no one there to wed, if he failed there would be nothing to attend but an execution.

He trusted one person with his life: his sister Tee. She had come through for him, even at the cost of sacrificing much of her own life to give her brother a chance to escape. Her diplomat boyfriend, whom she didn't even like, had the connections that Arthur needed to return to the US quietly without a passport.