A Long Time from Home Ch. 28

Overall, it was skillfully done and satisfied that the girls were safe, I turned around and was walking away, when a thought suddenly struck me: How did Parker know that the women were at the restaurant?

The possibility of him running into them at random was small in a city as big as Malaga and it was highly unlikely that Parker had used mental powers, since the Twins would have felt it. So, either he had been watching the hotel and followed them here or he had somebody else doing it. Considering he knew the police was searching for him, the last option was the most likely.

For a moment, I thought about walking past the hotel and look for the scout but rejected the thought. Without more information, it would be almost impossible to see if a given person was a scout for Parker or a police officer out of uniform.

--------------------

I had barely entered my hotel room when a knocking on the door disturbed me.
It was Julian and as soon as he saw me, he smiled widely. “Damn, that must have been the best massage EVER! You look almost alive now.”

“Geez thanks.” I grinned as I let him inside. “And yes, it was an excellent massage. Thanks for calling her.”

“You’re welcome.” He dropped into a chair with all the grace of a sack of apples and pushed the black hat a little further up. “So, nothing new?”

“Not from me… It’s you who needed a new room and went out to investigate.” I said with a shrug and sat down on the bed. “Did you discover where the thug squad was from?”

He grimaced and nodded slowly. “Yeah… While searching for Mr. Smith, I had a little fight with one of the local criminals. I kicked his butt and apparently, he talked four of his friends into paying me a visit… which was what you interrupted.” He stopped and looked at me. “You gotta be some kinda martial arts expert if you too took them out without weapons. How did you avoid the taser? That’s what got me.”

I had no idea what a taser was, but it sounded like a weapon.

“Was that the guy by the door?”

“Sounds about right.” Said Julian with nod.

“I took him out first. He was the closest one and he was looking at you, so he never saw it coming. Anyway… What’re you gonna do now?”

Sighing, he leaned back in the chair. “Well… the plan is still the same: Either I get Mr. Smith on an American boat or give up and go home.” He smiled a bit. “The last idea is probably the smartest, but I kinda need the money.”

“Hmmm…. Why an American boat?”

He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Well… according to the law, as soon as a ship leaves any nations waters, it becomes part of the nation it comes from.”

“Yeah… what’s the point?” I asked as he paused, but he continued as if I haven’t said anything.

”Meaning that as soon as an American ship have left Spanish water, it’s American soil an’ I can take the bastard in.”

Put that way, getting Mr. Smith on an American ship did make sense, except for the trouble of keeping the guy in chains for the weeks it took to sail across the ocean.

On the other hand, I had seen some of the ships of this age in the harbour and they were gigantic, more like small floating cities than vessels, and like a city, it was possible that at least some of those giant ships had an onboard prison cell where Mr. Smith could be held.

However, since Julian had said earlier that he couldn’t simply drag the guy there, probably because of some American law, the trick would be to get him aboard the ship in the first place.

“Are there any American ships around?”

Grinning Julian held one finger up. “One. Wave Dancer.”

“Wave Dancer?”

“Yeah, it’s a cruise ship owned by… “ He stopped himself,“… someone I know.”

Having no idea what a cruise ship was - except that it was a ship - I just smiled “I guess that it’s not here by chance.”

“Not by a long shot.” Julian grinned, “Wave Dancer have been cruising the Med, but is setting out towards the Caribbean later this week, before the hurricane season sets in for real.”

“So, you lure him onto the ship, get him to stay here until the ship has left Spanish territory, take him in and happily sail on to America.”

“Yeah… that’s the short an’ easy plan.” Julian scratched his stubble again. “Except that getting him on that ship and make him stay there without the use of force, is not gonna be easy. He knows the law as well.”

“And if you use force?”

“Then it would be kidnapping and get me in jail for a long time.”

“Got it.” I said, “Do you have a plan for getting him on the ship?”

“Yes and no.” He said with a sigh. “I mean… I do have a plan, but I’m not sure that it’s gonna work.”

“So, you’re out of luck.” I stated.

“Yeah… Let’s grab something to eat and think about it.” Julian said and stood up from the chair.

I stayed where I was. “Julian, there’re armed people out there that know what you look like and how you dress… I am not going anywhere with you until you have shaved, changed into some other clothes and dropped the hat, so there’s small chance they won’t recognize you on sight.”

He grinned. “Fair… Gimme half an hour… ehh... can I borrow your bathroom?”

“Sure.” I found the correct expression. “Knock yourself out.”

When Julian emerged from the bathroom, I almost couldn’t recognize him.
The shaggy and un-kept look was gone. Now he was clean-shaven and dressed in shirt and long sand-coloured trousers. In short, he looked like a completely different man.

“Nice. I doubt they will recognize you now.” I commentated as I stood up. “Julian, I was thinking about Mr. Smith and there’s one thing I don’t understand in all this. How did you trace him from USA to Spain?”

“Skip tracing, informers and footwork.” He said with a smile.

“Skip…what?”

He grinned. “I’ll explain over lunch.”

I smiled back. “Deal.”

---------- Department 55 ----------

Once they were safely back in the hotel, Maya made sure that the American were safe in their rooms, but before she could do much else, she was surprised by Sheena and Zavala’s return. Both looked displeased as they entered the room.

“We lost him.” Said Zavala with a sigh. “In fact, we only laid eyes on him once before he was gone.”

Sheena nodded. “We tracked him into a crowd of tourists and while we tried to get through them, he got unto the back of a motorcycle and…“ She snapped her fingers “… poof… gone.”

Maya blinked in surprise. “But weren’t the police ready?”

Zavala nodded. “Yes, and the motorcycle was stopped less than a kilometre away, but the backseat passenger turned out to be a twenty-nine-year-old man, that just happened to be dressed in the same way as Parker. They must have traded places, but it’s impossible to say where.”

“I checked the passenger and he really believe that he was just out for a ride with his friend, who believed the same.” Said Sheena with a sigh and took a bottle of water from the minibar. “Let’s face it… this time Parker outsmarted us. He clearly had a plan and it worked.”

---------- Ivan ----------

Finding a restaurant wasn’t a problem and while we enjoyed a tasty meal, Julian explained how people could be traced by following their ‘digital footprint’, while I listened attentively.

Apparently, just about everything people did now was monitored to a certain degree, and that information was stored by computers, enabling other people to see what you had done in the past. Added to that, was as much information about the person you were looking for as you could get. Put together and analysed, it amounted to what Julian called ‘skip tracing’.

This was a completely new world for me, and it was fascinating to hear about the methods and counter measures that were used in this digital form for tracking persons, even if I didn’t understand more than half of what he was saying.

It would also be a major problem for me in the future.

The ‘Peaches of Immortality’ Vis power prevented me from aging and people would eventually notice that I don’t grow old. In the past, I had solved that problem by simply moving to a new place every ten year or so. However, with all the documentation that was a part of life in this age, staying undetected would become more and more difficult.

To make matters worse, easy access to instant and permanent image making, like digital cameras, would severely limit my use of Powers. At least if I wanted to keep my abilities secret and that seemed like a good idea.

In my experience, governments and rulers only had two ways to react: Either you were a useful tool that had to be controlled or you were a danger that needed to be eliminated.

As I listened to Julian, it suddenly struck me, that at least some people had to have knowledge of how to move around in the world undetected. If they didn’t know how to do that, most criminals would be caught by the regular police or by bounty hunters, like Julian.

Other people with that skill set had to be spies, since I doubted that spies were less useful now than they had been in the past and any spy needs to be able to move undetected.

Flipping the coin, people who hunted spies also needed that skill set, to be able to catch spies.

That left me with at least four groups of people to learn that skill set from, which meant that there was hope that I could eliminate the problem, before it even showed up.

Right now, I had one of those people right in front of me and I was determined to learn as much about it as I could. Not that it was easy, since there were many concepts, I didn’t understand yet, but understanding would come it time, as I got to know more of the world. So, I asked questions, listened to the answers, and learned.

We were drinking the last of the beer, when a buzzing sound interrupted us and a moment later, Julian took a cell phone from a pocked, looked at the number and said, “Sorry… gotta answer this.”

I nodded my accept and a moment later, he left the table, saying “Julian” into the phone as he hurriedly walked out of hearing range.

It didn’t take long before he closed the phone and walked back to the table in a fast pace, looking like he was in a hurry. “Ivan, I gotta go talk with someone… can I crash on your sofa later?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, and sorry for leaving so suddenly, but I have to run.”

“Relax, Julian.” I said with a smile. “It’s not a problem.”

He nodded and walked hurriedly to the door.

I shook my head. Julian was a good guy to know, but he was a little strange from time to time.

On the other hand, it did give me time to think about all that he had told me, so I paid the bill and walked back to the hotel to relax.