Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

AT THE DROP OF A HAT

Jane looked out the passenger window and told herself that everything was fine. Bashkim was driving, the Mercedes hurtling along the Albanian highway at a hundred kilometers an hour. The air inside the car felt tight and crackly. Outside, greenhouses stood in untilled fields, their shattered windows gaping empty. A black-clad woman followed a herd of goats up a rock-strewn hillside, spi

This has to stop, Jane scolded herself. She was a sensible girl, not one of those high-strung ones that fell apart at the drop of a hat. She just needed to rekindle the excitement she had felt last night.

She and Paul had been in their favorite Tirana restaurant, arguing because he refused to tap his diplomatic contacts to get her a ride across the border to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. A conference on Balkan literature was taking place in the capital and she really wanted to attend.

"What's the big deal?" Jane had protested. "Your embassy courier does the Tirana-Skopje run twice a week."

But Paul had suddenly grown engrossed in photos of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the French Alps that decorated the walls. Over the sound system, Edith Piaf sobbed about love and betrayal. Omelettes and salades nicoises sailed out of the kitchen. This had been their sanctuary, a little piece of Paris that shut out the chaos outside that was Albania. But now Albania had followed them inside.

"I can't put a civilian on that route, it's strictly for consular business," Paul said at last.

Since when am I just a civilian? she fumed, recalling other, more fevered words he had whispered in the three weeks they'd been together. He was a low-level attache at the U.S. embassy and she was a Fulbright scholar. They'd met at an embassy reception her first week in Tirana, bonded over too much Albanian mer-lot and hadn't been apart since, though in her weaker moments she wondered if it was just an expat thing.

"What do you want me to do, hitchhike? There aren't a lot of options going east."

There weren't a lot of options because the delusional Commie who had ruled Albania for almost fifty years had torn up the rail lines and sealed the border out of fear that the Yugoslavs, America and NATO pla

"Excuse me," said a low, melodic voice. "I don't mean to eavesdrop, but your voices…perhaps I can be of help."

The proprietor, Bashkim, stood before them, sleek in an Italian suit, hands clasped deferentially. He had toiled for years in Parisian restaurants, then come home to show the natives the glories of French cuisine. Except that Albanians, at their salaries, couldn't afford even one frite, though the brasserie had caught on immediately with the expense-account NGO and diplomatic crowd.

Paul fixed the restaurateur with a pensive gaze. "Really?" he said, a strange light flaring, then banking behind his eyes.

Bashkim gave a modest smile and bowed in Jane's direction. "I must go to Skopje on business tomorrow," he said. "I would be honored if you would accompany me. There is plenty of room."

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Paul said slowly.

But Jane had seen the shiny blue Mercedes out back and was already imagining the smooth ride, the lively discussion as first the countryside, then the desolate mountain passes, soared by. Bashkim had exquisite ma

Feeling a sudden need to assert herself, Jane said. "I am sure. I'm going."

Paul threw up his hands in mock horror, winked at Bashkim. "These Western women, they have minds of their own."

She had kicked him under the table, but later that night, they'd fallen into bed with their usual frenzy, all the sweeter for her impending absence. Afterward, Jane was touched that he shoved his cell phone into her backpack and insisted she keep it on until reaching Skopje, at which point she was to call and a

And so it was that Jane had set off from Paul's apartment this morning. The streets smelled of wet earth and sewers. Deformed Gypsy children writhed on cardboard, begging from passersby. Housewives leaned over balconies, beating carpets with red-faced fury. Four stories up, a cow mooed indignantly. The sight of livestock in apartments had startled her initially, but Jane soon learned you couldn't leave a cow out overnight in Tirana any more than you could a car.

Bashkim was tossing a suitcase into the back seat when she arrived. The Mercedes seemed low to the ground, like it was carrying a heavy load, but Jane thought that unlikely. Albania exported little but its own people.

Standing in the clear Adriatic light, she sensed Bashkim checking out her hiking boots and Levi's, the fleece-lined vest she'd thrown over a red ribbed turtleneck, and felt something shift. A flicker of apprehension went through her. Had she misjudged him? Then, he broke into a familiar smile and her misgivings evaporated.

"You ready?"

She climbed in. As the apartment blocks, then the dismal shanties on Tirana's outskirts gave way to farmland, they chatted about Albanian literature and culture. Then talk turned to the present day.

"It's wonderful, what you're building here. There's so much opportunity."

"There was more opportunity in France," Bashkim said. "But I couldn't get residency."

"But the West is so sterile. Everyone's obsessed with money, getting ahead. There's no sense of family, of what's really important."

"You think people here aren't obsessed with money?" he said, jabbing the gas. After that they sat in silence. The Mercedes jostled with donkey carts and tractors, passing so close that Jane could have plucked wisps of straw from a farmer's hair. An olive-green truck of Soviet vintage emblazoned with the letters STALIN passed them, stuffed with young Albanian men who hooted and hollered. But other vehicles fell into line behind them, content to let the Mercedes lead.

Bashkim punched in a CD and the strains of Mozart wafted through the car. The pleasant odor of his cologne hung in the air.

"I'm really lucky you were going to Skopje this week," Jane said, trying to recapture their earlier ease. "How often do you make the trip?"

A smile curled around the edge of his mouth. "Whenever business requires it."

She studied him. He was blond, with blue eyes. This, too, had surprised her. He could have been a surfer from her college back home, if not for his pallid skin and something ineluctable in his profile that, framed against the raw landscape and crumbling stone buildings, she suddenly saw as quintessentially Balkan.

"Do you go to Skopje for restaurant supplies?" she asked.

There was a pause, an intake of breath. Then, "You are very curious."

Jane shrugged. "Just wondering."

"Sometimes it's best not to wonder too much." He let the words hang in the air and she felt it building again, an odd pressure in her head, the tingling of individual hairs on her nape. For a long time, she studied the scrubby landscape, bereft even of litter.