Absinthe

by Guido Eekhaut

  Praise for Absinthe

  Winner of the Hercule Poirot Award

  “Tense, up-to-date Euro-political intrigue, topped off with that rarest of gems: a satisfying finale.”

  —Three-time Emmy-award-winning writer Jim Houghton

  “The genre doesn’t get any better than this. Absinthe is intoxicating.”

  —John Enright, author of the Jungle Beat Mystery series

  “This book could not be more timely. A riveting read in which the Russians support ultra-right-wing politicians and undermine democracy—much more fun than the newspapers and no less scary. Most enjoyable.”

  —Theodore Riccardi, professor emeritus, Columbia University, and the author of The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

  “In Absinthe, Guido Eekhaut has masterfully produced a gripping political thriller. Readers could not ask for more: a clever, if slightly tarnished, detective; shadowy assassins; shady Russian financiers; and a controversial missing list of names. And all set in Amsterdam in all of its glory and darkness. It adds up to a mystery tour-de-force that is impossible to put down once you dive in.”

  —Allan Levine, award-winning author of the Sam Klein series

  “In his latest novel … Guido Eekhaut writes about today’s clear and present danger facing Western democracies emanating from the mixture of dirty politicians and organized crime. This is a work of fiction but all too realistic. Indeed, the new threats to Western democracies no longer come from ICBMs but rather from crooked bankers and business men in fancy suits. The West may have won the Cold War but the threats are finding their way into the very temples of capitalism, the banks.”

  —Claude Salhani, author of Inauguration Day

  “Eekhaut’s award-winning novel, pitting a small force of Belgian and Dutch detectives against the might of Russia’s criminal oligarchs and far-right-wing politicians, is a tour de force in Europe’s dark literature. Convincing, gripping and utterly realistic, Eekhaut populates his book with characters and situations which will stay with you long after you’ve finished.”

  —Alan Gold, author of the internationally successful The Jericho Files and the bestseller The Lost Testament

  “A Belgian detective worthy to follow in the footsteps of Poirot! Political intrigue, an atmospheric venue, and rollicking action from beginning to end!”

  —Paul J. Heald, author of Death in Eden and Cotton

  “A subtle, engaging, and very timely thriller.”

  —Michael Marshall Smith, author of The Intruders

  “The surprise of this spring. It is original and shows considerable stylistic skills.”

  —De Standaard

  “Intelligent and exciting.”

  —Crime Zone

  “Eekhaut presents us with lifelike characters, not heroes in the hard-boiled tradition, but human detectives plagued by doubt.”

  —Knack

  Copyright © 2009 by Guido Eekhaut

  English-language translation copyright © 2018 by Guido Eekhaut

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First English-language Edition

  Originally published in the Netherlands under the title Absint by Mynx

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Visit the author’s website at www.eekhaut.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943494

  Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Cover illustration: iStockphoto

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3067-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3069-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Prologue

  PARNOW DIDN’T SPEAK DUTCH. He didn’t have to. He had no need of that bizarre, guttural language. Nor did he speak much English, apart from a few basic phrases and a limited vocabulary. He knew just enough to get by in daily life and do a few things. Even then, he didn’t have much use for it. The handgun with the big black silencer sufficed to show people he meant business. Why go through all the trouble of learning a foreign language when all you needed were some universal gestures that everyone understood? There was no need at all for words and interpreters and such. In his business, people were fast enough on the uptake.

  A gun pressed against your head, for instance. That tells you more than enough about the intentions of the one holding the gun. He’s clearly not here for fun and games. He wants you to cooperate. Especially because the gun has that nasty silencer. People everywhere watch movies and television and know what a silencer is for. It tells them: you are about to get wasted, and nobody will notice. Not a soul will care.

  The young man at the other end of the barrel seemed to know a lot about guns and silencers and universal symbols. His face was contorted with fear. His hands were shaking. He was living his final minutes. Parnow had only one real concern: that the guy was going to pee in his pants. That did occasionally happen to people who were confronted with their last moment on earth. It would be annoying because Parnow would have to endure the stench after the guy was dead.

  The young man didn’t wet his pants, but he seemed close. The universal symbol was clear and well understood, the message was received. His life was about to end. Maybe he could avert that by providing answers. The right answers, the ones Parnow expected. That was the message of the gun. “Van Boer,” Parnow said. “Where is Van Boer?”

  He was at the right address. Someone had slipped him a piece of paper with a name, address, and brief directions for how to find the place. Everything checked out, except that this young man wasn’t Van Boer. He knew that at once because this kid was black. Well, not really black, but Surinamese or something, Moroccan maybe, although Parnow was a bit vague about the difference.

  It didn’t matter. Van Boer wasn’t supposed to be black. The picture he’d been given of Van Boer wasn’t very sharp, but this certainly was not him. So Van Boer had given out a false address. Parnow had crossed a considerable part of Amsterdam on his way to the wrong place. He didn’t like that. He was pissed off, because Amsterdam wasn’t the kind of city that he enjoyed wandering around. Too many insolent kids and too many fat tourists. He didn’t enjoy this at all. So he pushed the gun a bit harder against the black kid’s skull. It might make a dent. He didn’t give a shit because the kid wouldn’t live long.

  “He doesn’t live here,” the kid said in English, with some difficulty, mostly because it’s not easy to talk with a gun to your head. And a silencer attached to the gun. And the end of your short life in sight.

  “Where?” Parnow hated this sort of conversation. Surely the situation must have been clear as far as the kid was concerned. He, Parnow, was looking for a man named Van Boer. So he wanted to know where the man lived. Why wouldn’t the black kid cooperate? Would be easier all around. How difficult could it be? Van Boer lives on so-and-so street
. Easy as pie.

  “On Leidsestraat, eighty-four, one flight up,” the kid said.

  Parnow growled. He let go of the kid, who tumbled to the floor. “Paper,” Parnow said. “Write.” He hadn’t completely understood what the kid said—he needed the address written down. He didn’t know his way around Amsterdam either; he didn’t know which street the kid meant.

  The young man got up, averted his eyes, grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil, and wrote two lines. Parnow snatched the paper from his hands. “Liedsestrait,” he said.

  “Leidsestraat,” the kid corrected him. As if anybody fucking cared how the name was pronounced. Telling him how the street was called. Fucking wiseass nigger. “It’s not far from here.”

  “Oh,” Parnow said. Playing tour guide now as well. Telling him what to do. Not far from here. He raised the gun and shot the kid between the eyes. Parts of his skull and brain splattered the wall behind him. Parnow stepped back and left the apartment. Chaos, the stench of heroin, the stench of sweat, and now the stench of death as well. Amsterdam! A corrupt and decadent metropolis. Thick with black people and people not capable of holding down a decent job.

  He removed the warm silencer from the gun and stuffed both in his small black backpack. Moments later, after consulting a map, he was on his way to Leidsestraat. Nobody took notice of him. He had dragged the kid from his bed after kicking in his door. It had been easy so far, but frustrating nevertheless. The wrong address. They had given him the wrong address. He glanced at his watch. Half past eight. With some luck, he would find the real Van Boer in his bed as well. That would be fun.

  “And what do you plan to do with it?”

  Eileen Calster lay on the unmade bed, wearing only a pair of panties. Pink panties, not her best. Under other circumstances, Pieter would have made some remark about them and about her not being properly dressed yet, despite the hour. She couldn’t care less. What did it matter that she was still in bed? She had other things on her mind. Such as Pieter’s insane plan.

  A plan that wouldn’t stand a chance in the real world. That much she knew. He was determined to go through with it anyway, now that he had his hands on that famous list. The list of contributors to the Partij Dierbaar Nederland, the PDN. Who invented these party names anyway? Beloved Netherlands Party? You’ve gotta be kidding. Anyway, this was a list of private citizens who had donated money to Van Tillo’s party, including the amounts contributed. Every ambitious CEO of a midsize company in the country who favored the right-wing politics of Van Tillo. Pieter had stolen the list the previous night from the carelessly guarded party headquarters. Politically speaking, the Netherlands would be in turmoil if this list appeared in the press. Too many big names, people who wouldn’t want to be associated with this party.

  Pieter was far from happy about it. He was worried that his coup of grabbing the list had brought with it a heavy burden, which was indeed the case. He hadn’t counted on that. And so he had done nothing with the list yet.

  “If they catch you with those documents, you’ll go to prison.” Not the first time she’d told him that, but he wasn’t impressed and hadn’t been in the past. She knew how stubborn he was. He was convinced that his sense of justice gave him a license to do as he pleased and made him invulnerable to boot.

  “It had to be done,” he said. He’d been saying that all day yesterday, trying to convince her, but in vain. “We have to show the world how the PDN practices politics. Where they get their money from. The kind of people who finance them. We all know how important this is.”

  She stretched slowly in the warm bed. When she first met him, she’d admired his drive. He had been a sort of hero to her. Now she understood he was just plain stubborn, which made him ignore the dangers involved. He was driven by his desire to pursue his ideals, nothing else.

  “And you’re willing to run such risks? What about the police and the press? Why don’t they play their part? They should be intervening if something illegal has happened.”

  He shrugged. He shrugged more often than before. It wasn’t nonchalance—merely a sign he didn’t intend to share his motives with her.

  She got up and stood at the window. In the street, a pedicab, a cobbled-together vehicle that even tourists sneered at, rolled by. She wanted a cigarette, but Pieter didn’t allow smoking in the apartment. Of course, she often ignored him. She’d learned to do her own thing even when Pieter was around. Later she’d go down to the pub, but she wanted to freshen up first. And eat something.

  “I have to give all that some very careful thought, Eileen,” he said. “I’m not going to flaunt this list in the streets. And do put some clothes on. The whole neighborhood is watching.”

  “Goddamn, Pieter, this is Amsterdam. Not that provincial shithole you were born in. People see more tits in this street than you probably will in your whole life. Grow up! You’re thirty. What are you going to do now you have that list?”

  Why was she angry with him? She too came from some shithole, far from the big city. At least he’d grown up in a modern provincial town.

  He tried to do something about his hair. Needed a cut, surely, but no time for that. He hadn’t slept well last night. He’d been worried, had made plans, had been making plans for the past twenty-four hours. He still didn’t see a way out. “There’s really no hurry, Eileen. They’re not going to miss the list all of a sudden. Their offices are a mess. I can talk to a journalist, but I’ll have to figure out who. Most of the newspapers just go along with those right-wingers. So I have to choose wisely. I need a journalist with integrity. One who also works for the major dailies.”

  “Why not do it sooner? Today, even. Or go to the police. I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Nothing concerning the list is illegal. All of it is pretty much within the law. The police won’t do anything with it, but the press might. Public opinion is very sensitive about these matters. Money and politics combined, that’s very suspect for most people. Getting this list published in the right newspaper may do a lot of damage to certain people. But I want to be careful as to whom to approach. This is dynamite. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “You’ve been working on this for over a year. Why didn’t you go public earlier? You’re impossible, Pieter! You’re naïve. You’re the most disorganized conspirator I know.” She didn’t know any other conspirators, but that didn’t matter. He was simply out of his depth.

  “Just leave me alone, Eileen!”

  She shrugged. Pieter was an idealist. And to her, idealists were the most dangerous kind of people. Guided by inspired ideas but not practical. Rarely focused on lasting results. That’s how Pieter was. A year ago, he’d managed to infiltrate the headquarters of the Partij Dierbaar Nederland. For a year, he had worked there without them suspecting anything. Right-wing nationalists of the worst sort, he called them. They seemed respectable, but they were only that on the outside. A party for middle-class xenophobes. A party for anyone who wanted a “livable Holland.” Not overtly racist, not overtly fascist, but they did appeal to the most narrow-minded prejudices in society while keeping their extremist views behind closed doors. The Netherlands for the Dutch only. For the white-skinned Dutch. Those sorts of ideas. And it seemed to work well for them. They’d been successful in recent elections, a couple of seats in the upper and lower chambers, two ministerial portfolios in a previous government, but now in the opposition.

  “Organizations like these can’t raise enough money on donations from ordinary members alone,” Pieter had told her. He followed the left-wing papers and bloggers with great interest. Sometimes he even wrote for them. “They wouldn’t get very far on that sort of money. Much more is coming in from the business community. From the midsize companies. The self-inflated populist right-wing elite of hardworking Holland.”

  And Pieter had resolved to prove his theory.

  Now he had evidence he needed. It had taken him the better part of a year.

  “Well,” Eileen said, turning her slender back
toward the street, “I hope you don’t leave that list lying around here too long. I don’t feel safe, if you want my view. Which, I’m sure, you don’t.” She went in search of a sweater. The outside air was crisp.

  “They’re not going to send a gang of thugs after me, Eileen,” Pieter said. “They don’t even know where to find me. I made sure of that.”

  “These people creep me out.”

  “They want to protect the Netherlands, sweetie. Against all that is sinister and dark and alien in the big, bad world outside. At least that’s what they claim, and a lot of people are willing to believe their rhetoric. The same people who want to give up their freedom in order to feel more secure. It just shows how uncritical they are.”

  “This sweetie doesn’t need that sort of protection. This sweetie is tired of oppressive, patronizing ideas. Have you taken a good look at Hendrika Van Tillo yet?”

  “I see her almost every day.”

  “Lucky you. I certainly don’t need that woman’s protection.”

  “Neither do I. But a lot of Dutch think they do. The ones who are afraid.”

  “What should they be afraid of? Islam? Terrorists? People with skin darker than their own? What’s the sense in that? Van Tillo is only good at peddling fear. The only thing she’s good at.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better, sweetie. That’s why I’m doing this.”

  “Oh,” she replied, wanting to tease him now. “And as a reward for your courage, I should pop off to the store so your eminence can have his tea with milk. And maybe your eminence would require a baguette and some Boursin cheese too? Buttermilk, croissants, fresh-squeezed juice? A full English breakfast in bed?”

  “That would be a nice start,” Pieter said. It sounded as if he expected more from her than breakfast. Not that he had anything to complain about regarding Eileen or the attention he got from her. He was usually the one neglecting her.

  She glanced at her body in the mirror. Too skinny, no doubt. Some boys liked that. Boys like Pieter. Boys? Pieter was thirty. He was almost ten years her senior. He still had his boyish looks, just as she liked, but his age had begun to show. A few wrinkles, some gray hairs.