I swung the blade down directly into the glass—five-inches to the right, three inches north, about six inches total from the top of her tender head—into the window, into the slight concave area, into what I estimated would be the weakest structural point of the pane. And that blade hit its mark fucking dead-fucking-on-target.
And cracked nothing.
“Nooooooo!” the girl screamed.
She screamed so hard and uncontrollably, you’d think I actually split her skull clean open. The crowd roared with applause, having no idea that I didn’t touch her. With my back to the majority of them, no one in the room could see that my eyes never locked on the girl or any part of her. Everybody thought I’d missed her, or that maybe I wanted to scare her first, to intimidate her with my physical might. I wasn’t paying attention to these men. I just wanted the hatchet to crack the glass the next time I hit it, and after I ever-so-briefly fingered the nick above her head, sizing the depth, noting the angle, I hauled back and swung the whole thing again, this time with more desperation, aiming to hit the same gash again, same spot—the girl screaming rabidly, the tourists outside hearing it all as pure music.
Wham—coming within millimeters of the initial gouge, splintering part of the window into a light dust.
With no crack.
The horizontal dome was freakishly thick, built not only to secure the sounds of the interior but to withstand, who knows, an errant pedestrian, some drunkard punching it, a stray car? Bulletproof? I swung a third time, even harder—insanely hard. I thought the bones in my hand would break I hit the damn thing so hard. The crowd cheered again but a few of them were starting to grow unsure as to whether or not I’d actually missed this girl. “He’s cracking the glass!” someone shouted. The girl had slumped down, believing her life had already ended, crying, gushing tears. I hit it again. I hit it again. I hit it again. More and more guys started to feel the potential of the glass cracking as I checked my target for a fifth impact. They had to know the odds of me rupturing their sacred membrane were zero—I’d known it after my first contact—but, c’mon, you pit your theory-based confidence against the real-world prospect of you as a billionaire potentially getting caught?! Caught for a broken window leading to your organized-rape session?!
Pandemonium began behind me.
In stages.
At first it was one or two guys. “Security! SECURITY!” I swung again, hitting with precision again. Then all hell broke loose—the collision course between two desperate forces. Men who had everything to lose, leaving. Men hired to protect those men, trying to enter. The wealthy elite couldn’t get out fast enough and the bouncers beyond the door couldn’t get in to save them, bottlenecking at the small entrance. Some of them saw the maniacal look in my face and none wanted to be the one guy to come get me, to risk injury for the sake of the rest of the group. They were fighting with each other to stampede out. I swung again, a sixth time, powdering the previous incision ever so slightly—the whole process, from first chop to now, taking maybe fifteen seconds to complete—just fifteen seconds for me to test their barrier, for me to foment what had blown up behind me. Anarchy.
For the first time I looked down at the girl. “Don’t move,” I said to her, as I adjusted my stance, looming directly over her.
She quivered just before I then let the hatchet sail down in her general direction.
To split her chain in two.
It succeeded thanks to pure adrenaline. She lay there wide eyed in confusion, looking at the undone tether, then sped off like an animal, in a crawl-sprint-stumble, through the rabbit-hole exit by the fireplace. Nobody was paying attention to her. The members of the Society were fleeing. Their bouncers were finally pushing through and they’d have me dead in under a minute. I’d originally wondered if it’d be the red-haired man or the usher who’d be the first to topple me but both of those gentlemen were the first to vanish.
I ran for the rabbit hole. I had to kick and kick to get the little door open because she’d shut it behind her, but I kicked hard enough and ducked through the hatch then ran through a series of turns where I found her scurrying ahead of me, stumbling to a stop when she saw me. I still had the hatchet in my hand so to her I must’ve looked like the Antichrist. She was cowering at the far end of the hall as I approached her, scooting herself backward, which put her in the arms of an elegantly dressed older lady, who began clutching the girl steadily in place. The house madame?
“Stop!” screamed the lady, directly at me. She had to be the madame.
I should have flung my axe into her face—a tomahawk—for having deployed any of her girls into this shit, not just the current one.
“Where’s the exit?” I said to her.
They had to have a service entrance, where the slaves and maids entered from whatever cargo truck they came off of.
“Where’s the exit?” I repeated.
I looked at the naked girl she had in her grip. Lily Volkova. I remembered her name. I went over to grab her. Lily. Dragging Lily. Dragging her with nearly zero compassion for the very life I was saving. You fucking come! You come whether you like it or not! It was unreal, the misplaced anger I felt. We could each hear the commotion in the distance—the voices down the hallway growing louder, growing in number. On the manhunt.
“Let’s go,” I whispered to Lily.
“HE’S HERE!” yelled the madame. “HE IS WITH ME HERE!”
Lily didn’t budge and I gave up. I ran. I had no idea how to win. At any of this. I arrived at a T-junction—to the left was a large kitchen where I could see people bringing glassware to a washroom, to the right was nothing in particular. I ran right. I could see one lone guy remaining ahead of me. “She’s got a bomb!” I shouted to him. “They fucking let the bitch back in and she has a bomb.” I might as well yell the most confusing thing he could hear from me. He had to know about Katarina, right? He had to be on the lookout for Katarina. When he saw me running at him, he couldn’t decide fast enough if my words were actua—
Sklurge. I sank the blade into his clavicle.
At a sixty-degree angle to the horizon, splitting open the marrow of his collar bone in a single slice, I swung well. I almost missed him entirely—such is the messy momentum of adrenaline. I should’ve hit him eighteen more times, one for each year of that girl’s young life. I should’ve carved her initials in his neck. I scurried out through the next door in utter self-preservation, having no idea where this might lead me, walking directly to the middle of the tourist heart of Amsterdam—a street corner lined with clubs and bars—quickly slipping off my masquerade mask along with my bow tie, quickly becoming unremarkable to meld into the throng of rambunctious drinkers.
Go. Calmly. Walk, walk, walk. Go.
The route to the Oosterdok Hotel wasn’t long but it wasn’t simple either. I didn’t hear police sirens in the distance. I listened. I didn’t hear them. I had to cross through a lot of crowds, so I just kept going. The cops ride bicycles here and they ride fast. I’d grown terrified of the sound of sirens in the past three days. Prior to this week I’d never noticed them—someone else’s problem—but now every sharp sound around me became police or police dogs or the shouts of a da Vinci bodyguard. I kept going southwest, directly toward the hotel, just wanting to get clear of the crowds. Yet what had I even accomplished back there? Was da Vinci even present? The red-haired guy at the bar—he stood out. He seemed like the most prominent person in the equation. The other guy, the one who laughed like Jordi Carreras—too flashy. I should’ve run to the lobby of the club and buried the axe into the red-haired guy’s spine, almost like marking lumber for a future cut. Look for the man with the chipped vertebra. I didn’t do that though, did I? I did nothing. So, congratulations, Adam, you now have no idea who da Vinci is and everyone in Europe is looking for you.
By the time I reached the driveway of our hotel, I almost wished his men would’ve caught me. I couldn’t think straight—instead of entering the lobby, I walked around the block twice. I had no idea if this was the right way to elude someone, but I felt compelled to do something—the misfiring synapses of a man in over his head, a man in panic, still replaying the moment his axe bounced off a window, dwelling on the myriad of better ways he could’ve handled it, saved her. That girl’s name was Lily. Nearly every alternative action I came up with now was more effective than what I’d actually done for Lily. I walked to the edge of the hotel’s delivery entrance to get a look at the exterior of the room we booked for Nikos—second floor from the top, two windows over. I could see a light on but no other clues. Nothing felt secure about it. What should I expect up there? For all I knew, I could be entering a hotel suite full of policemen, guns drawn. Nikos could’ve demolished the room in an understandable rage. He could’ve beaten up Astral. Astral could’ve beaten him. She could’ve left with his kidney in a bucket of ice and I’d be walking in to find him lying in a bathtub, looking up at me, waiting for me to explain why I’d let him down, or I could be knocking on the door of an empty suite—everyone having fled the country.
I held the hatchet inside my jacket—I still had it—held there all bulky and awkward, as I entered the lobby. Whatever was about to happen up in that room, this time I was going to be the one to initiate it. Be first. The moment you see trouble, you be first to act. You swing without hesitation. You swing first. The elevator arrived on my floor. I walked out. I arrived at my door. I listened. I knocked. I listened. I waited. I heard footsteps inside. I gripped the hatchet.