The Tracer

Three days I think. It has been three days since I woke up in this room. How long I had spent unconscious here beforehand? I do not know. Three days spent with no food, no drink, no sign of life other than the occasional bird darting past the small window in the roof. At one point, a crow landed by the window, hearing my screams for help, glanced down and saw me there, hands tied to a timber beam over my head, wearing the same clothes that I had arrived in, matted blood on the hair at the back of my head from the blow that struck me down. I’m not sure what I was expecting it to do but whether it was through not understanding me or having more pressing matters to attend to, the crow took flight and went about its day.

During my career I have faced much more testing situations but never felt as scared as this. Usually if I have ended up in such a predicament it is because I have planned for it. Such forewarnings meant that I could prepare for what I could encounter and calmly operate should it happen. This situation however was of no doing of my own. Believe me when I say that during those three days, I had plenty of time to try to figure out what had brought me here.

The first day was spent trying to untangle myself from the electrical cords and duct tape that I found myself bound with. I tried everything from pulling as hard as I could no matter how much my wrists bled, swinging my weight up to grab the beam with my legs and allow me to try using my teeth on my constraints. But thanks to knots, tape, and severe dizziness from dehydration, it was all in vain.

By day two I was so exhausted from the lack of sleep and my efforts to release myself, that I began to focus on why I was here. Hoping that this may help me assess what I thought the end goal was and figure out a plan. If I was going to be killed, I needed to plan how to defend myself. If I was going to be tortured, I needed to plan how to sustain myself. If I was going to be blackmailed, I needed to plan how I could negotiate.

The deep dive through my memories of 44 years on this planet did not return a single plausible explanation for the cause and nature of my captivity. Why would I have been left for three days completely alone if someone was trying to extract something from me or take revenge? Why would you take such a risk?

The third day was when the panic really set in, which is an alien feeling for me. I began sweating, wasting precious fluids and dehydrating myself further. The trembling starting using up my last reserves of energy. My breathing quickened which pushed me towards hyperventilation. I knew I had to focus and calm down otherwise I was condemning myself. I decided to take stock of every inch of my surroundings, partly to try and spot anything I may have missed but mostly to force myself to slow down and regroup. I started in the most obvious place, which was the corner where there sat the only two objects I had seen so far.

There was a brown leather duffle bag, with a single zip running down it’s length and two carry handles. The bag looked new and not well travelled. The same could not be said for the other item however.

This item, laid on top of the bag, was a small black notebook. The spine was adorned with creases as though a new one was carved with each opening of the book. The cover, providing protection for the notebook’s contents, was shiny at the edges, polished through being handled so much. And the off-white pages ever so slightly parted from one another, revealing that almost every single page had been turned.

My eyes were drawn to one of these partitions, wider than the rest, like a chasm among cracks. There was something inside, and my brain immediately darted back to day one. Could that be something to help me escape? Something sharp enough to cut the wire? Or a key to the door that I have assumed is locked? I shook myself back to reality. Of course not. Why would it be anything other than a bookmark?

It was as I scolded myself for these fanciful thoughts that I heard a noise. In an instant every muscle in my body tensed, my eyes wide, the last morsels of energy ready for whatever was to come next. I resisted the urge to hold my breath, to make sure that the sound of my heart pounding in my ears didn’t drown out any useful sounds.

A metallic clanging echoed somewhere far ahead of me. A large door had been opened and someone was walking towards me. The steps stopped just outside the door.

“Are you awake?” asked an unfamiliar male voice.

I chose not to respond. I would rather he came in and found out, then at least I would have an idea of who he was.

A boot clattered against the door, unleashing an assault on my senses that had become so heightened in the days filled with nothing but silence and my own cries.

“Well, you should be now. I’m going to come in and cut you free. You should know that I will have my shotgun aimed at you and any attempts to attack me or to run will cause me to shoot. Once I’ve released you, I will leave. I will walk backwards, with the gun trained on you. You must remain stood where you are and count to 100. After this, you may look at the items I have left for you and believe me when I say that it is within your best interests to do so. I will ask you to close your eyes and bow your head before I enter and to keep them closed until you have finished your count. Do you understand?”

Again, I chose not to respond. Why give him the satisfaction of obedience?

"Answer me or I will walk away."

Do I call his bluff or do I try to assert what little control I may still maintain? Before I could even begin to weigh the options, I heard the footsteps moving away from the door and in a response that was made through panicked reflex rather than reasoned decision I screamed "Yes I understand! Yes I do! Stop! Please!"

The footsteps came to a stop, and then began getting closer again. He arrived back at the door and says “Bow your head and close your eyes and give me a loud clear yes when you have done so.”

I immediately did as instructed.

“Yes.” There was no hesitation in my response this time, he had me well and truly trained.

I heard the unmistakable mechanical click of a shot gun being cocked and then the door being opened. The door had been unlocked this entire time. There was something sickly tortuous about this fact.

He paced towards me until I felt his breath on my face as he reached up and sliced through the wires which had been my tether. My arms fell lifeless to my sides. He immediately began his journey back towards the door until he reached the threshold and stopped.

“I’m sorry for putting you through this Anna, but it was the only way of ensuring I had everything in place. I knew when the assignment came in that I couldn’t complete it. This was a job more complicated and dangerous than I’d ever seen before. I knew that you were the only person that could. But I also knew that you would outright refuse, which made all of this necessary.” He said, and I heard genuine regret in his voice.

“So capturing me wasn’t the assignment?!” I blurted out, my utter confusion overriding my better judgement to stay silent.

“No. I needed you to take the assignment. But I have been told how profoundly the murder of your husband affected you and how strongly you felt about retiring to make sure your boy would never lose his mother in the same way. Therefore I knew that you would say no, as you have to every other approach that has been made since you left.” the unrecognisable voice explained. “Now do as I asked. Then open the bag where you’ll find your down payment for the job and a phone. On top is a notebook where I have compiled as many details as I could find to help you complete the job. Goodbye Anna, good luck.”

The door closed, and the steps moved away. My head remained down and my eyes remained closed, but the count did not begin. My mind was reeling. The man has to be a Tracer, my job prior to my retirement. Tracers specialise in finding and recovering victims of kidnap. My fee was a non-negotiable 50% of whatever ransom was being demanded. Does this makes me any different to the captors? Receiving substantial sums to return someone most precious. At least I had no intention of killing them, and I liked to think I was always on the good side.

I walked over and opened the bag and found at least £20,000 in cash, a much larger down payment than usual which was concerning. There was also the mobile phone.

I will admit that at this point, my full intention was to take the cash, take Sam out of his boarding school, make an excuse for why I hadn’t called him for a few days, then run for the hills and make sure that the Tracers could never find me again.

That was until I decided to have a cursory glance through the notebook. The job looked extremely complex and treacherous, as the Tracer had warned. It involved a kidnapped member of a foreign monarchy. Even more of a reason to get Sam and I as far away from it as possible.

Then, as I continued to flick through the pages, the notebook naturally fell open at the gap in the pages that I had been studying so intently before the Tracer turned up. There was a Polaroid tucked between the pages. My heart stopped. It was a photograph of Sam on his first day of school. I kept this photograph next to my bed. Beneath my handwritten date, there was something written more recently, in writing that did not belong to me. A phone number.

I grabbed the phone from the bag, turned it on, and rang the number as fast as I could. The call was picked up almost immediately, and a heavily distorted voice came on the line and I listened in stunned silence.

“Anna, we have Sam. He is safe and unharmed. Do not try to find him as you will not be able to, and it will force us to dispose of him. Once you have completed the assignment, call this number again and he will be returned to you. Until then, do not contact us.”

The line went dead, and almost instantly the phone then vibrated as a picture message had been sent through. It was a photograph of Sam holding up a newspaper from the 22 August. I quickly went to the phone’s home screen to check the date and saw that it was today. They really did have my boy. He looked healthy, but he looked terrified.

Any illusion of escaping this situation quickly vanished. I fell to the floor. I opened the notebook to it’s first page and began taking in the details and formulating a plan.

I was a Tracer again. For a stranger, but also for my own son.