by David Hewson
Her eyes flitted down the street, checking anxiously for someone.
Then she went to the intercom and said, ‘No, Vos. Go away. I beg you.’
In the persistent rain he opened his jacket, took out his wallet, removed all the notes there, maybe three hundred euros in all, and pressed them to the glass.
She didn’t move from the phone tethered to the wall. Hanna was glancing down the street. Someone was watching and he realized, to his dismay, he’d forced her into accepting him. To refuse would somehow cause her more pain.
‘Please . . .’ he begged.
‘Will you never leave me be?’
‘Not right now.’
‘Go home.’
‘I can’t . . .’
A curse. One in her own tongue he guessed.
He watched her walk across the narrow cabin. The scarf fell from her shoulders. A dressing was stuck to the top of her back, red flesh around it.
The long scarlet curtains at the window closed. The narrow glass door buzzed and fell open to the pressure of his fingers.
Vos entered, grateful to be out of the rain.
5
Henk Kuyper checked out of the hotel in Zeedijk at seven, shaved, got dressed, went for breakfast in one of the cafes on the edge of Chinatown.
Thursday. Bright cold morning. Hard winter knocking on the door.
The place was empty. He ordered coffee and two croissants. The previous night he’d kept the drinking at bay. Just a couple of beers in a sleazy bar near the Oude Kerk. Felt better for that. It had taken two hours to shake off the tail that had followed him from the house in the Herenmarkt. One man, one woman, working together in sequence.
He’d learned the technique himself. They weren’t that good. Mirjam Fransen ordered the cover he guessed. Pissed off he’d had the temerity to try to talk to her near the office.
As if any of it mattered any more. The operation to trap Barbone was in tatters. It would take a miracle to get that back on the rails. Natalya Bublik was different. His responsibility. An innocent put in harm’s way for no good reason. And Fransen didn’t care. She made sure she only saw the bigger picture, never the individual. That was the way they were taught. There was a little mantra he’d learned on training.
Ordinary people are the ones we’re trying to protect. They just need to stay out of our way.
He’d half believed it once.
Five hundred euros in his pocket, taken from the stash he’d withdrawn for Renata the previous day. Just a pittance left in the account to keep it open. Before falling into the flophouse he’d made his way into one of the cheap foreign shops in the red-light district, the kind that did anything for you.
There, for a hundred euros, he’d picked up a cheap mobile with a pay as you go SIM and some credit. He didn’t dare use his own phone. Didn’t even feel confident he could look at his emails. AIVD would be watching the way they always did.
Mirjam Fransen was good at all that. They’d fallen into bed together on one of those training courses. He’d never summoned the courage to tell Renata. It wasn’t an affair. It was an event. A way to ease the boredom, to scratch a curious itch. For him at least. For her it was a considered career move. One that made things so easy when she decided to pull him from AIVD and edge some bait out into the world, a renegade, an activist, looking to tug in interest from the people they wanted to penetrate.
No point arguing about the cost to him, to his family. It was a plea doomed to fall on deaf ears. And just to rub it in she fetched his father into the equation. Lucas Kuyper, the shamed coward of Srebrenica, pilloried by the press for no good reason. Now a reclusive, paid adviser to AIVD for a new, more secret war.
How did he say no to both of them?
Henk Kuyper got the waiter to turn on the TV. The news headlines were coming up. The lead item: economic news. Some fresh figures claiming the country was turning the corner. The slump was coming to an end. Good times on the way. For some, the reporter said, they were already here.
The report switched to footage of the Nine Streets. Moneyed people window-shopping, eyeing expensive clothes and novelties. Pointless glitzy luxuries they didn’t really need.
The missing Georgian girl was item three on the news behind trouble at a football match. Natalya Bublik was fading out of the public consciousness. The world had a short attention span. Life was easier that way.
He finished his breakfast then went outside, pulled his hood around his face, walked to the Nieuwmarkt and found a bench in the shadow of the castle-like building called the Waag.
Kuyper scanned the square. No one had followed him that he could see. He was alone. The way it was meant to be. Mirjam and his father told him from the start: he was a free agent. Allowed to make whatever arrangements he thought necessary. Answerable to the department for nothing except eventual results. And they might take years to come, if ever.
A week ago success seemed within reach. Sinterklaas and his Black Petes were supposed to herald a rare victory. Bring down the network that had haunted them for years.
Then Marnixstraat got overzealous and spoiled the party.
He took out the new handset, got data, pulled up Skype. Prayed she’d have her iPad with her.
A long pause as the call went through then Renata asked, voice booming as she spoke to the tablet, ‘Where the hell are you, Henk? Where’ve you been?’
‘Thinking.’
‘You can think at home, can’t you?’
She sounded tired and mad at him.
‘Not always. How’s Saskia?’
Another silence.
‘Puzzled. As am I.’ He could hear the deep breath she was taking. ‘She told me. About the game. In Leidseplein.’
‘Oh.’
‘And all that crap about orang-utans. The lies you tell so easily . . .’
A tramp was drifting aimlessly across the square, stopping passers-by, begging for money. Kuyper watched him, wondered.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Do you know?’
Five years he’d been living this lie. Trying to break through. To convince the contacts he’d slowly built up he was what he said: a former spook turned angel. Theirs.
‘Sometimes. When I get to step away.’
‘Is that what you’re doing now?’ she asked with a sudden sharpness.
The tramp lurched on, a can of Heineken in his grubby fist. This wasn’t one of Mirjam’s.
‘Jesus, Henk! How can you play with a child’s life? Saskia’s? That girl’s?’
‘I wasn’t playing with Saskia. I made sure they wouldn’t get her.’
‘You got me to take her there!’
‘I had no choice. They were watching. If I’d just . . .’
So many operations in training. Real life was different. He’d thought this through as much as he could. It was important Saskia was in the square. Important that Bouali picked her up at first. And then, on his instructions – kept strictly between them – let her go and call the others. Tell them to look out for a girl in pink.
‘You lose sight of things,’ he murmured. It sounded so pathetic. ‘It was never meant to be like this.’
‘Well it is,’ she barked. ‘We’re paying the ransom. Hanna Bublik’s got some money from somewhere too.’
‘The police?’
‘She doesn’t trust them. She called me last night. Vos got suspended and he’s the only one she had some time for. She doesn’t even know who’s running the case now.’
He thought about that then asked her for Vos’s number. Tapped it into his phone when she came back.
‘Why did you do it?’
Such a short sentence. Such a big question.
‘Because I was supposed to. I wasn’t going to let them take Saskia. That was never . . .’
The grey day closed on him. His mind went blank.
‘Are you still there? Henk? I tried your father three times this morning. He’s not even answering his phone. What the hell’s going on?’
Life,
he thought. The kind he’d chosen. Or had chosen for him.
‘Later. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.’
‘Promises . . .’
That sour, disappointed tone had never been in her voice when they first met. It came from him. Another unwanted gift.
‘You’re going to give them the money?’ he said.
‘That’s the idea. What else can we do?’
He didn’t know.
‘When are you coming home?’ she asked.
‘Soon.’
He said goodbye. The wind was getting lively. White clouds dotted the bright horizon. Change on the way.
‘Stay safe,’ she said and cut the call.
Henk Kuyper looked at Vos’s number.
There was one name he had to deal with first. The only link to Barbone he had.
Vos had watched the slow winter sunrise from a wobbly chair on the front deck of the boat. Pale rays chased around the tatty tinsel on the silver dancer as if amused. He found a stray cigarette from somewhere. Lit it. Tried to think. But all that came was the realization he didn’t much like smoking any more.
Not long after he heard a familiar pitter-patter across the gangplank. Sam trotted over, his lead trailing behind him, sat on his haunches on the deck, nose in the air, sniffing, staring intently.
He kept looking at the cigarette until Vos responded.
‘I can do this. OK?’
The terrier’s long nose stayed where it was.
‘Wonderful,’ Vos moaned. ‘Now I’m being nagged by a dog.’
He threw the cigarette into the canal. Sam listened to its dying hisses then wagged his tail.
‘We don’t want you starting that again, Pieter,’ Sofia Albers called from the pavement.
‘I threw it away, didn’t I?’
‘And don’t take your hangover out on me and Sam either.’
‘Don’t have a hangover,’ he grumbled.
There was a sound from inside the boat. The door was thrown open. Hanna Bublik stuck out her head. A towel round it. She was wearing Vos’s black bathrobe.
‘Sorry,’ Sofia muttered. She looked shocked, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
Vos got up and led Sam back to the pavement. The dog grumbled with every step.
‘One more day.’ He held out the lead. ‘Then it’s back to normal.’
‘Do you know what normal is?’
Hanna Bublik was watching them as she towelled her blonde hair in the morning sun.
‘I can’t explain,’ he told Sofia.
‘You don’t have to. Not to me.’
She took the lead and tried to coax Sam to the Drie Vaten. The dog dug in his toes until she mentioned the word ‘treat’.
When he got back to the boat Hanna nodded across the street.
‘She likes you.’
He’d spent the night on the sofa in the bows, leaving her to the bedroom. Vos was determined he wouldn’t let her out of his sight. Not until the ransom was paid. By him if he could manage it.
‘Everyone likes me. I’m a popular kind of person.’
She didn’t laugh.
‘I want to hear Natalya’s voice when he calls,’ she said. ‘I want some . . . proof.’
Vos gestured to the cabin. It was time to go inside.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked when he kept quiet.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why don’t you want me to do it?’
He started up the coffee machine. Pointed out a couple of pastries he’d bought earlier that morning as the little bakery in Elandsgracht was opening.
‘Why . . . ?’
‘Let’s be careful,’ he said. ‘We might not get any more chances after this. Just give them what they want. Get her back. Forget the rest. I have.’
‘And all those others? In Marnixstraat?’
They’d been through this the night before while she got dressed in the cabin in Oude Nieuwstraat. A surveillance team would probably turn up in the morning to try to track her movements. That was one more reason he got her to scuttle off with him to the boat.
‘Don’t complicate anything. Don’t press them. Don’t argue. We’ll hand over the money. Find Natalya. After that De Groot can go hunting. AIVD too for all I care.’
She scowled, started to take off the bathrobe then grabbed her clothes. Vos sighed and shielded his eyes.
‘Christ,’ Hanna muttered. ‘I forgot there are still prudes in the world.’
‘Never been called that before,’ he complained then got his phone, walked to the cabin door and checked his messages.
Nothing new except a short, awkward text from Laura Bakker.
This is wrong and we all know it. If u want 2 talk just txt. Me an Dirkll come.
Kids. Living in a world devoid of punctuation, syntax and grammar. Just the thought made him feel old. He deleted the message, checked the phone had charged overnight then put the handset in his jacket pocket.
She was dressed by the time he went back inside. Finishing her coffee and pastry.
He wondered what to say. Hanna Bublik didn’t do small talk. Didn’t want to discuss where she came from. What brought her here. The life before.
Her hair was wet. He found a dryer from somewhere, one he never used. She plugged it in. Nothing happened.
He apologized and found her a fresh towel.
Tried conversation again. Got nowhere.
Then she asked, ‘Why do you do this?’
‘This being . . .?’
‘Helping. Me of all people.’
‘Can’t think of anything else to do. It passes the time.’
‘That’s a reason?’
‘Seems to be. I thought you might understand. The bit about not thinking of anything else to do.’
The briefest wry smile in return.
‘Ah. I see what you mean.’
He had to ask even though he knew she didn’t want to hear.
‘After this . . . if there was a job. An ordinary job. Would you take it?’
She closed her eyes and looked ready to scream.
‘I’m sorry,’ he added quickly. ‘I suppose you hear that kind of thing a lot.’
‘Helps ease the guilt, I suppose. I mean . . . you can’t feel that bad if you’re acting nice afterwards, can you?’
He didn’t say anything.
‘OK,’ she admitted. ‘This isn’t an afterwards.’
‘I just wondered . . .’
The towel went down. Her blonde hair curled round her neck.
‘Natalya and me have been on the road for the best part of seven years. All her little life pretty much. Scraping a living here and there. I went begging when I needed to. Not her. Never her. Been homeless a few times. This is all I know, Vos. What else am I good for?’
‘Maybe lots of thing if you try—’
‘Don’t say that!’ she yelled. ‘Don’t you think I’m trying now? We’ve got a home. Some money. Some security or so I thought. Maybe one day if I save I can break out of all that crap. But not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever.’
Her voice had faded almost to silence.
‘Hanna . . .’
Then the phone rang.
‘This is how it stands,’ Mirjam Fransen said. ‘I’ve got absolute authority from the ministry. It’s important you all understand that. This is our operation. It has been all along if only you’d realized.’
Eight o’clock in De Groot’s office. Bakker, Van der Berg, Fransen and Lucas Kuyper in a grey suit and heavy grey overcoat. He’d given them a business card when he turned up, making a point. Consultant to AIVD. Might have read ‘untouchable’ the way he presented it.
‘The law . . .’ Bakker began and got a sour look from the commissaris.
‘The law’s for ordinary people,’ Lucas Kuyper cut in. ‘None of this is ordinary. It wasn’t from the start. If you people had acknowledged that we’d all be in a better place.’
Even Van der Berg bristled then. The photos from Ferdi Pijpers’s phone were
on the table. Kuyper and the late Thom Geerts talking to Bouali, showing him what looked like a grenade.
‘We should arrest both of you,’ he said.
Fransen swore.
‘You can’t. We’re in the middle of a very delicate situation. Lives at risk. Years of work in jeopardy.’
‘And a little girl missing,’ Bakker added.
‘She’s probably dead by now,’ the AIVD woman said with a shake of her head. ‘You made sure of that the moment Vos barged into Westerdok.’ She looked at De Groot. ‘Where is he?’
‘Suspended,’ the commissaris told her. ‘I’ll deal with Vos later. That farce with Khaled yesterday—’
‘They knew!’ Bakker cried, jabbing a finger at Fransen. ‘They knew we were wasting our time.’
‘But not ours for once,’ Kuyper muttered.
De Groot glowered at the AIVD pair.
‘I don’t like this. Any of it.’
Mirjam Fransen leaned forward.
‘It’s not yours to like. Henk Kuyper belongs to me.’ She glanced at his father. ‘This investigation too.’ A pause. ‘And you now.’
He stayed silent.
‘I want you to keep your team downstairs pretending there’s something to chase with the Bublik girl,’ she went on. Then she nodded at Bakker and Van der Berg. ‘These two can liaise with me. Anything I share doesn’t go any further. Ever.’
Still Frank de Groot kept quiet.
‘Good,’ she added. ‘Now that’s understood. Lucas?’
Kuyper folded his arms, leaned back, closed his eyes and for the first time since that Sunday in Leidseplein Laura Bakker thought she just might be about to hear the truth.
Hanna Bublik answered the call. Voice hard and determined again.
She asked all the things Vos had told her to avoid. Demanded to talk to her daughter. Got nothing but angry when they said no.
He waved a hand. Mouthed, ‘Calm down.’
A furious stare came back at him.
‘Let me talk to her, you bastard, or I don’t give you a cent,’ Hanna barked.
Vos put his head in his hands.
When he looked again she was somewhere else. Eyes bright, fixed on a sight in her imagination.
Listening.
Then she spoke a few words in a language he couldn’t understand.
