True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  “All right. Tell me. Why do you think Tanja Goedenacht is hiding something?”

  “As I said in my message to you, when I was in the greenhouse, I overheard the gardener talking to her in Sicilian. Now, you might say that Tanja is a common name in the Netherlands and hearing the gardener talking to someone named Tanja is a coincidence, but how many Tanjas do you think there are working in The Hortus for someone named Vlaming? Then there’s what you think about there being no such thing as ‘coincidence’, as well as what was said to Tanja, which was along the lines of Vlaming knows what to say and what will happen if he doesn’t do as he is told. Then the gardener went on and told Tanja he would meet a guy in an hour at the place on Openhartsteeg.”

  Kitt had a seat beside her on the hard, concrete bench, the phone in his pocket buzzing. He handed the cone to her and read Bryce’s reply to his request to organise a dinner meeting with an appropriately-briefed ‘guest’. Arrangements underway. Can I come? My hotel’s crap.

  Mae took a chip from the cone. “It has now been nine minutes and Openhartsteeg is near the Bloemenmarkt, which is about a twelve-minute walk from here, back past the sculptures in Rembrantplein.”

  Kitt said nothing. He simply pocketed his phone, took back the cone, and gobbled another patatje joppie, thinking.

  Mae glanced at the cone of fried potatoes and the curry-spiced mayonnaise he’d dipped a chip into. She watched him focus on each bite, tasting, savouring the feel and texture of each delightfully greasy, lusciously fatty mouthful until his mind found a sense of calm, a sense of clarity, and, as it settled over him, she knew he began to make a plan. He became a mindless eater, stabbing his little plastic fork into chip after chip, thinking, thinking, thinking, planning the next step. She chuckled. She’d witnessed that change come over him once before, in Sicily, after they’d found a burnt hand in a bread oven and a dead man in an industrial dough mixer. That day Kitt had eaten cannoli and left a mess of pastry crumbs all over.

  Kitt’s eyes refocused from internally organising his thoughts to fix on her, sliding his sunglasses down his nose slightly. “You’re not eating. Something wrong with the food?”

  “I’m not sure. When most people think of spies and food, they see romance, women, caviar, and champagne, not hot chips. You’re utterly forsaking the spy legend.”

  “Few people realise James Bond ate kebabs and fried chicken.”

  “See? There he is again.”

  “My point is, I have the woman, I’m not fond of champagne, and as for the romance, I refrained from adding onions to the potatoes. Eating onions is poor form when one knows kissing will occur after all the thinking.”

  “You think there’s going to be kissing?”

  “I know there’s going to be kissing.”

  “Then thank you for being so considerate.”

  “I do try.”

  “Indeed, you are the epitome of romance and fine dining.”

  “I know it’s not fancy, but it is tasty.”

  She laughed again and reached for a chip. “I don’t need fancy.”

  “No, you just need me.” He pushed his sunglasses back into place.

  “I’ve needed you for some time.” She bit into a long, golden potato dabbed with yellowish sauce.

  “And now you need me like you’ve never needed me before?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “Did I?”

  “You did. It’s written all over your face.”

  “I suspect what you see is actually curry mayonnaise.” She licked the corner of her mouth. “I’m glad you’re in a better mood. I have a theory about Vlaming—”

  “Oh, goody, you have another theory. There goes my better mood.”

  “—but I’d like to know yours. Please share it with me. Why do you think Vlaming is a liar? My money is on Tanja. His story seems plausible.”

  “Precisely because it’s a plausible story, emphasis on that word. It’s rubbish any mystery reader could formulate. Ruby Bleuville was identified by name in news stories. It’s easy to lay the blame on a woman who made international news for murder, bypassing security measures in freeports, and the theft of cultural artefacts. He told me everything I wanted to know. Everything.” His phone buzzed again in his pocket. He ignored it.

  “But his story is still something we have to prove is a fabrication.”

  “I have to prove. There is no we in this. On the off chance, in the time you worked for him in New Mexico, did Taittinger or any of his wine friends mention the name Negroni or Goedenacht?”

  “No, not that I can remember. Do you want to know my theory?”

  “I’ve read the texts you sent me as I walked here and you’ve recounted what you overheard.”

  “Yes, but would you like to hear my actual theory?”

  “My love, I’m aquiver with anticipation.”

  “Funny, it looks more like you think the curry mayonnaise tastes off.”

  “No, no,” he swept a chip into sauce, “I assure you. I am aquiver.”

  She watched him and the left side of his mouth curved with humour. “Yes, we both think that everything Vlaming told you is a load of cobblers. He’s a pawn,” she said, “and he’s being blackmailed by Tanja Goedenacht and whoever it is we find at Openhartsteeg.”

  “She works for him. She was with him when they met Ruby Bleuville. It’s not a stretch to think that she would know about the theft of his family’s heirloom jewellery.” Kitt said, half-eaten curry mayonnaise-dipped chip in one hand, and his expression lost its amusement, hardened to a slab of cold marble, and he spat out masticated potato. “And there is no we.”

  “As much as you want to pretend I’m not here so you can go about your work unencumbered,” she looked at him, her expression as colourless and frosty as the bloody truth, “you don’t know what the man in the greenhouse looks like.”

  “You didn’t take a picture of him?”

  “I didn’t quite have the chance, and now that I think about it, it’s best that I hadn’t because if he’d seen me that would have made it harder for us to follow him.”

  Kitt swore and got to his feet, tossing the remaining patatje joppie into a shiny rubbish bin. Sending her back to the hotel was not an option—yet. “You’re a sodding nuisance,” he said, looking at her over one shoulder. “Well, come on then, we want to get there before Greenhouse man. Oh, do stop smirking at me.” He began to walk away, paused when she didn’t follow immediately, and waited without turning about to see if she did.

  Mae looped her handbag across her torso, put on her coat, and exhaled. “So much for all the kissing.” She followed him over the Blauwbrug, the bridge across the Amstel.

  Petulant, saying nothing for the next several blocks until they passed the life-sized Night Watch sculpture, Kitt reached back and took her hand. “You’re a nuisance,” he said, “but you’re my nuisance.” He ran his thumb over hers and returned to being surly and silent.

  Chapter Nine

  Hand in hand, they reached the edge of the Singel. The innermost canal of Amsterdam’s semicircle of canals once served the city as a moat in the Middle Ages. Stretched along a backdrop of narrow, picturesque, quintessentially gabled Dutch houses built during the Golden Age, the modern Singel ran between Koningsplein and Muntplein, where the Bloemenmarkt stood, its flower stalls made of small boats permanently floating in the canal. The north section of the Singel had developed into another well-known red-light district, but this area was popular with tourists. On a mild spring day like this, it was crowded with sightseers—and pickpockets. Illustrated signs warned of the danger.

  Mae liked the Dutch word for pickpocket. She read a sign out loud, “Zakkenrollers winkelen óók.”

  “I didn’t catch that,” Kitt said.

  Eyes on a man who could have been, but wasn’t the gardener from The Hortus greenhouse, she pointed to a sign with a cartoon of an elderly woman flouncing about carelessly with her handbag. “Beware of zak
kenroller, pickpockets.”

  Kitt glanced at the sign and then Mae. “Where’s your handbag?”

  “Under my coat. Where’s your wallet?”

  “In my back pocket.”

  “Your back pocket? Oh, you do live dangerously.” She let go of his hand and began walking ahead of him along the Bloemenmarkt, knowing it would annoy him, which in turn annoyed her because it meant she’d become petty. Her pettiness gave way to a sense of remorse that was trounced by urgency, a desire to ‘crack this mystery’ and get back to the quiet-ish life she and Kitt had begun to lead. In earnest, she scanned the people meandering through the Bloemenmarkt, older-aged folk in a tour group, families with children, stall-keepers, couples, none of them muscly Sicilians built like torpedoes.

  Jaysus, who was she trying to fool here? She’d gone into this eyes wide-open, and yet she’d forgotten that they hadn’t quite yet succeeded in having a quiet-ish life. A murky, furtive, knuckle-bruising, blood-flowing, people-lying, people-dying life was the sort her husband led, and he believed he made a difference. While she hadn’t realised it before, preposterously, she’d begun to believe she could make a difference too, and she laughed at herself.

  Arranged in a single row along the canal front, the market stalls were touristy, offering tacky souvenirs of brightly painted clogs, Dutch canal house figurines, spoons, I