It was a honeymoon, indeed.
The truck stopped and a moment later, the driver opened the back door, hiding himself behind it. Clambering out, they stood and gazed around the walled courtyard of a very old rural manor. His voice behind the door said, “Rode deur.” They walked toward the only red door visible in the place. The van hurried out the gate. Turning the long handle, Preston opened it and looked inside. To his eyes it appeared as a nice little townhouse apartment, fully furnished. He turned and found Angie waiting, so he scooped her up in his arms and carried her inside. It was the first time he heard her actually giggling like a girl. It was a good sign.
Preston set her back on her feet and wandered to the back window. The joke was on them. He saw endless rows of apple trees. Off to one side was a large building with what he was sure were large vats, fat plumbing and conveyor belts. “Apple cider mill,” he said out loud. She chuckled.
They eventually met their hosts. The old man was taciturn and they seldom saw him. His wife was quite the social butterfly. She gave them their security briefing, sounding very much like some of the government bureaucrats Preston had encountered in the military, just with a much nicer tone of voice and choice of words. Her English was pure American Midwest.
They shouldn’t leave until further notice, but that meant they had the run of the place as long as they didn’t get in the old man’s way. Preston wasn’t in a hurry to explore. The old lady had some assistant measure them and fetch in local clothing of reasonable quality the next day. They hadn’t been in any particular hurry to get dressed the next morning, but found the clothing laid across the two armchairs downstairs.
For the next couple of days they strolled around the property and simply got to know each other. Both had seen so much trouble, there were no significant conflicts or implacable demands. They were still getting over the shock of their good and bad fortune, deciding it was definitely worth it in the balance of things. Still, the sudden and dramatic changes were mind-numbing at first.
At some point, they really needed to let their real world friends know they were okay. Angie had been living in part of the old nun’s quarters at the school where she served as a teacher’s aid. In a quick phone call, she simply told the sister in charge that she had been falsely arrested in an overzealous police sweep during a riot. This was the protest and demonstration season in The Hague. Angie said it would take some time to process her case but she already knew how it would turn out.
Preston had a much tricker problem. Harry would worry but only if Preston never got back to him. However, Harry was notoriously bad about answering any of his phones and Preston didn’t trust anyone else to get him a message. Since Harry was an avid reader of the nautical forums, Preston decided that was the best way to contact him. Once he explained what he planned to do to avoid Harry calling the police or anything, their hostess gave him access to a wired broadband connection. He had never used the ethernet adapter so his MAC address would be unknown on the Net. He immediately connected with Tor and posted a pre-written message where Harry would surely see it:
Been kidnapped by a foxy redhead and have no idea where I am. If I can’t escape I’ll whisper for help next month.
It was true enough and Harry was quite likely to buy it, not to mention have a good laugh.
After a few days Preston had an itch for some photo work. He brought his camera to the breakfast table. Angie looked at him with a faint smile and a raised eyebrow. “Time for your training, apprentice,” he announced.
Preston estimated they were on a high ridge because the wind was more constant and the temperatures marginally cooler than what he expected. They hadn’t crossed any borders because he could see Dutch traffic signs on roads running near the property, so there weren’t that many places they could be driven in less than three hours and still be in the Netherlands.
They wandered the property at length as he taught her to think like a photographer. “The lens hardly replaces the eye. They are symbiotic. The lens catches things the eyes cannot see, but it requires the eye to give meaning to any resulting image. Thus, all the details my eyes could not see in that video from the night we met.”
Angie responded, “And all the meaning which gave us so much trouble, but also gave us each other.”
He grinned. “I have no doubt you would have carried through your plot to attach yourself to me one way or another. And I surely would have fallen for you sooner or later. This just hurried things along by stripping our existence down to the bare essentials.”
There were more than just apple trees on the place. The Dutch government keeps a tight regulation over old growth forest, which stands in odd patches all over the country. Preston spotted a very substantial old tree on a faint elevation in the ground. The bark showed signs of wear from previous climbers. “Ah,” he said holding one finger in the air, “time for an elevated viewing angle.” Angie was a more energetic climber than he, but his reach was much longer. He managed to get up into the higher branches before he felt the tree waving too much under his weight.
“The problem with trees,” he said panting, “is there aren’t many open angles through the foliage.” He was turning as best he could without losing his grip. Something caught his eye to the north. With great care and shifting around a bit, he caught a glimpse of a white cross atop a round structure. While describing what he saw, he took out his camera. Zooming in the viewer, he saw something move, and then dropping down from the tower at an angle. He watched a little longer and saw it again. He held the camera overhead in a blind estimate and took a short video, panning slowly and as steadily as possible.
He was reminded that coming down was harder than climbing up if you wanted to avoid getting hurt. It gets harder when a man passes forty. At the bottom, they huddled over the back of the camera watching the viewer. They decided it was a spire or tower, but with an open top. After zooming in, Preston recognized the movement he saw earlier. “Slide for life,” he said. People were dropping out of the tower harnessed to a cable.
More importantly, he saw a high hilly background behind and it clicked. “We are in South Limburg, the only part of the Netherlands with any kind of hills. A tall spire with a white cross is common to just about any part of Europe, but one used for recreation like that could only be the Wilhelmina Tower, don’t you think?”
She grinned. “Valkenburg!”
