“Let me guess,” I said. “Kaya?”
The man standing behind me didn’t answer. I put him mid-to-late-thirties, handsome in a sloppy kind of way. He was wearing brown wool pants with a faded flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to his forearms, with a two-day stubble and thick black hair that tumbled across his forehead. He had quick, searching eyes and the kind of sharp upper lip and chin that could have made him a late-night movie star from the fifties, except right now he didn’t seem to give much of a shit what he looked like at all.
“Help me get her inside,” he said, in that same low German voice. And then, touching Gobi’s chin gently, turning her head: “It is all right now, Zusane. I’m here.”
We carried her inside the empty wine store, a cramped rectangle of darkness that looked as if nobody had bought champagne or anything else here in years. As we walked past the front counter with its hooded cash register, I noticed that each shelf held exactly one row of bottles, enough to give the outward appearance of a well-stocked market. Not only were most of the bottles empty, but they were covered in about an inch of dust.
In the back, the shop gave way to a set of double doors that opened onto a narrow stairwell. I was holding Gobi’s legs and the guy took her arms, backing his way carefully up the steps while I did my best to keep her feet from dragging.
“How long has she been like this?” he asked.
“Since last night.” I looked up at him. “Who-”
“Through here.” At the top of the stairs we stepped through a doorway into a blinding expanse of light. In contrast to the gloomy booze shop below, the second floor was a spotless pine-floored room with a back wall that was one gigantic mirror.
It took me a second to realize that it was a gym.
We carried Gobi past weights and barbells, an arrangement of parallel bars, beams, tumbling mats, even a pommel horse, with a floor-to-ceiling climbing wall occupying the wall behind it. Boxing gear-heavy bags, throwing dummies, speed bags-dangled from the ceiling. The far end was dedicated to all kinds of increasingly dangerous-looking martial arts stuff, sparring gloves and masks and projectile weapons, swords, knives, and an enormous padlocked gun rack gleaming with enough well-oiled automatic firepower to blow this corner of Switzerland off the map. The cumulative effect was like taking an evolutionary speed-tour of the ultimate adolescent revenge fantasy, from “first I’ll get strong” to “then they’ll be sorry.” Taken in all at once, it was more than a little disturbing.
“Where do you keep the nuke?” I asked.
Ignoring me, the man opened a door on the opposite side of the gym. Inside, I glimpsed the residential decor, marble floors, a long leather sofa, steel and glass end tables, recessed light fixtures. I thought I heard a Hawaiian steel guitar playing somewhere softly inside.
“Stay here.”
“Now hold on-”
He took Gobi inside and shut the door in my face.