Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Uh, Java, mostly,” I said faintly. “I can find my way around in C and Smalltalk and a bunch of –”
   “Java. Fine. Why would you use the synchronized keyword in Java?”
   I had not thought that the evening could get any more surreal. And what kind of gangster overlord had a computer expert on staff at this hour? “Well…basically it’s a way to indicate that while a thread is running a given block of code no other threads may concurrently access that object.”
   “Yeah,” my interrogator said. “Good description. Give me back to Sinisa.”
   I returned the phone. I was beginning to feel much better about my situation. For one thing, I was beginning to understand my situation. I had stumbled into a gathering of refugees who had been staying in various different safe houses. They had probably all been brought here to move on to the next stage of their journey, probably tonight. Sinisa and his people were no doubt unhappy that I was here but they had already concluded that killing or kidnapping a Canadian tourist, and I was sure they now believed I was a tourist, was going to bring far more grief upon their heads than letting me go. I figured they would probably keep me here overnight, until the refugees had been taken away, and then release me. I hoped they would give me a drive back to Sarajevo. My cab driver wasn’t going to wait all night.
   Sinisa listened, said, “Good,” hung up, and said to me, “You are free to go.”
   “I…what? Right now?”
   “Yes. Now.”
   This I hadn’t expected. “I can just walk away right now?”
   “Yes,” he said impatiently. “Go.”
   He motioned to the door. Mini-Hulk scurried over and pulled it open, one-handed.
   “Right,” I said. “Okay. I’ll go.”
   I stared at Sinisa for a moment, waiting for the punch line, but none came.
   “Well, see you guys, thanks for everything,” I said, automatic Canadian courtesy, and I walked out into the night. For a moment I was afraid they had just lured me outside so they could shoot me with less mess, but the door rattled back down into place behind me.
   I was so surprised I nearly pitched off the edge of the loading dock instead of going down the steps. I didn’t understand. I show up out of nowhere, I find out exactly where they are and what they are doing, and they let me go? What kind of criminals were these?
   The answer came to me halfway back to the taxi. Very confident ones. Certain that there was nothing I could do to harm them. Go to the police? The police got a percentage. Sinisa and his people-smuggling ring had to be abetted, if not outright aided, by the Bosnian authorities. Why wouldn’t they let me go? They had nothing to hide. They had no one to hide from.
   The taxi took me back to Sarajevo.
   I never saw the child or his family again. I hope they made it.

Chapter 3 Fraying
    My adventure had taken up much of the night and I expected Talena to be up waiting for me, worried and angry. When I walked through the Pansione Konack’s battered wooden door, the little brass bells crudely rigged above it rang loudly. But when I climbed up the uneven wooden stairs into the Pansione’s common room, there was no one there but the old troll-like woman who worked there and seemed to have given up sleep years ago. She sat in one of the much-repaired chairs, squinting at an ancient magazine, paying no attention to me.
I went into our room and turned on the light. A dingy room that contained a sagging too-small bed, a bedside table, a chair, and nothing else. The walls and ceilings were pitted and cracked. Our backpacks barely fit into the available floor space. The light was a single dim bulb dangling from bare wire. We could have stayed with any of several of Talena’s old friends, but neither of us had felt comfortable with that idea, given that it had been eight long years since she had seen them. I wished we had taken up one of those offers. I