Nationalist, Bourne
by Rundo
The masked agent digs through my pocket, pulls out an ID, and growls,
"Are you Robert Rundo?
"
I can’t answer. Not yet. My lungs are still somewhere on the floor in that Bucharest gym, where they body-slammed me hard enough to crack a rib.
"Ne brate... ja sam Hrvat. Ne govorim engleski," I wheeze.
(No, brother. I’m Croatian. Don’t speak English.)
He looks at the others, confused. All of them in black balaclavas . Then the only one without a balaclava clean-shaven, state-issued face, "No matter," he says with a thick Romanian accent. "No matter. We do interrogation. We find truth. Do you understand?"
Truth?
Try this
Six years on the run.
Six years of passports with names I barely remember, identities worn like track suits.
A girl in Serbia loved one of them, she cried when that version of me disappeared.
Friends made and lost, hostels, bus terminals. All gone. Ghosts in foreign cities.
Everything I owned reduced to what I could carry.
Photos, letters, books, all dead weight
And now here, flat on my back in a Romanian gym, six counter-terror agents breathing down my neck.In the corner, an old man with wired headphones stretched in place. Didn’t even blink at the scene. Six agents, one broken fugitive. Didn’t look once.
Life just goes on.
Even when yours doesn’t
.