The restraints were color-coded: red for the wrists, blue for the
ankles. These were of more recent vintage than the leather ones she had
used, but surely the lock hadn’t changed. The key, she remembered, was
small and flat with no teeth on it, straight on one side, tapered on the
other to a wedge-shaped point.
She remembered that hospital restraints were actually quite easy to pick
if you knew how, but she would need a paper clip or something like it, a
straight and rigid piece of metal wire.
She craned her head to one side and examined the bulky anesthesia
machine on one side of her bed, and, on the other side, the metal cart
just a few tantalizing feet away.
It had eight drawers. On top of it were scattered medical supplies,
bandages and forceps, scissors, and a sterile package of safety pins.
But there was no way to reach it.
She tried to shift her body to the left, toward the gleaming cart,
hoping for slack in the restraints, but there was almost none. She
shifted to the left, this time violently, a sudden hard jerk that did
nothing; the only thing that moved at all was the bed itself, which had
to be on wheels.
Wheels.
She was silent for a moment, listening for approaching footsteps. Then
she lurched against the restraints again and felt the wheels give what
she imagined was another inch or two.
Encouraged by the movement, tiny as it was, she lurched again. The
wheels moved another minuscule distance.
But the cart still looked as distant and unreachable as the mirage of a
lake to a thirsty man in a desert.
She rested a moment, her neck spasming in pain.
Then she summoned her strength again and, trying to ignore how far away
the cart was, she jerked at the restraints and gained maybe an inch.
An inch, out of several feet, felt like a single step in the New York
Marathon.
She heard footsteps in the hallway and voices that grew louder, and she
froze, resting her strained neck while she waited, and the voices
passed.
A lunge to the left and the gurney gave up another couple of inches.
She did not want to think about what she would do once she reached the
cart; that was another challenge entirely. She would have to take this
a step at a time.
An inch at a time.
Another inch or so. Another. The cart was not much more than a foot
away. She jerked again and gained another inch and the silver-haired
man entered the room.
Turgen Lenz, as he called himself. But now she knew the astonishing
truth.
JurgenLenzwhowasnotJurgenLenz.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.
At the end of Hochstrasse Ben found a sporting goods store that featured
a wide variety of equipment for the tourist and sportsman. He rented a
pair of cross-country skis and asked where he could rent a car.
No place for miles.
Parked at the side of the shop was a BMW motorcycle that looked old and
decrepit but still functional. He struck a deal with the young man who
managed the place, and owned the bike.
With the skis strapped to his back he set off across the ridge of the
Semmering pass until he came to a narrow unmarked dirt road that wound
steeply uphill through a ravine to the Schloss. The road was rutted and
icy; it had evidently been used recently by trucks and other heavy
vehicles.
When he had managed to climb perhaps a quarter of a mile, he came to a
red sign that said bet reten verboten–privatbesitz: No Trespassing
–Private Property.
Just ahead of the sign was a barrier gate whose arm was striped in
yellow-and-black reflective paint. It appeared to be electronically
controlled, but Ben was easily able to hop over it and then wheel the
bike underneath, tipped at an angle.
Nothing happened: no Klaxon, no alarm bells.
He continued up the road, through dense snow-covered woods, and in a few
minutes reached a high, crenellated stone wall. It looked centuries
old, though recently restored.
From atop the wall rose several feet of thin, horizontally strung wire.
At a distance, this addition was not visible, but Ben saw it clearly
now. It was probably electrified, but he did not want to scale the wall
and find out the hard way.
Instead, he followed the wall for a few hundred feet until it came to
what appeared to be the main gate, about six feet wide and ten feet
high, constructed of ornately scrolled wrought iron. Upon closer
examination, Ben realized that the fence was in fact steel painted to
look like iron, entirely backed with a screen of woven wire fabric. This
was certainly high-security, designed to foil intruders.
He wondered whether it was made to keep people out or in.
Had Anna somehow gotten inside? he wondered. Was it possible? Or was
she being held prisoner?
The dirt road came to an end another few hundred meters from the gate.
Beyond it was glistening virgin snow. He parked the motorcycle, put on
his skis, and set off across the snow, staying close to the wall.
His idea was to survey the entire perimeter of the property, or at least
as much as was possible to examine, in hopes of discovering any holes in
the security, any possible points of entry. But it did not look
promising.
The snow was soft and deep, so he sank into the powder, and the even
deeper drifts and dunes made maneuvering difficult. It was no easier
once he got the hang of it, because the terrain became steeper, the
siding ever more arduous.
The ground next to the wall became higher, and pretty soon Ben could see
over it.
Glare coming off the snow forced him to squint, but he could now make
out the Schloss, a great rambling stone structure, more horizontal than
vertical. At first glance this could have been a tourist attraction,
but then he saw a couple of guards in military-style tunics, carrying
submachine guns, patrolling the property.
Whatever was happening inside these walls was not simple research.
What he saw next was a profound shock. He didn’t understand it, but
within the enclosed area were children, dozens and dozens of ragged
looking children, milling outside, in the cold. He peered again,
squinting against the snow glare.
Who were they?
And why were they there?
This was no sanatorium, that was for sure; he wondered whether they were
prisoners.
He skied uphill a short distance, close enough to get a better look, but
not so close that he lost his line of sight behind the high stone wall.
Inside, next to the wall, was a fenced-in area the size of a city block.
Within it were several large military-style tents jammed with children.
It seemed to be a makeshift shantytown, a tent city, its inhabitants
youth from some Eastern European country. The steel fence that enclosed
it was topped with coils of razor wire.
It was a strange vision. Ben shook his head as if to clear it of an
optical illusion, then looked again. Yes. They were children, some
toddlers, some teenagers, unshaven and rough-looking, smoking and
shouting to one another; girls in head scarves shabby peasant dresses,
and tattered coats, children swarming all around.
He had seen news footage of people like this. Whoever they were,
wherever they were from, they had that unmistakable look of impoverished
youth driven out of their homes by war–Bosnian refugees, escapees from
the conflicts in Kosovo and Macedonia, ethnic Albanians, perhaps.
Was Lenz sheltering war refugees here, on the grounds of his clinic?
Jorgen Lenz, humanitarian, giving shelter to refugees and ailing
children?
Unlikely.
For this was hardly a shelter. These peasant children were packed into
their tent city, inadequately dressed, freezing in the cold. And there
were the armed guards. This looked like some kind of internment camp.
Then he heard a shout from the encampment, an adolescent boy’s voice.
Someone within had spotted him. The shout was soon joined by others,
the wretched inmates suddenly waving at him, beckoning to him, calling
to him. He understood at once what they wanted.
They wanted to be released.
They wanted his help. They saw him as a savior, someone outside who
could help them escape. His stomach turned, he shivered, and not from
the cold.
What was being done to them?
Suddenly a shout arose from another direction, and one of the guards
pointed his weapon toward Ben. Now several of the guards were shouting
at him, waving him away.
The threat was clear: get off the private property or we’ll shoot.
He heard a blast of gunfire and turned to see a fusillade of bullets
pock the snow a few feet to his left.
They weren’t kidding, and they weren’t patient.
The refugee children were prisoners here. And Anna?
Was Anna inside there too?
Please, God, I hope she’s all right. I hope she’s alive.