Look-Alike

by Meredith Fletcher

  “When was the last time you were in Amsterdam?” Sam asked, curious about her sister’s life.

  “Five months ago. Perhaps six.”

  “You never mentioned it.”

  “I was working.”

  “Ah.” Although they’d shared a lot about their lives, Sam knew they kept secrets from each other. Given the nature of their professions, they had to.

  However, the unclassified bits and pieces gave them much to discuss. Like who to bribe in Rio de Janeiro to get weapons and transportation, or who to lean on in Paris to get information about the black market network. Several of the people they’d met on missions had been the subject of more than a few laughs over beer and pizza.

  Sam couldn’t help wondering if the mission they were presently on would be something they’d laugh about later. The fact that she hadn’t found her quarry yet spoke volumes about how difficult it might become.

  Neither Allison nor Alex had given many clues. They’d simply come to Sam and asked her to find the man. Sam knew that Allison had been digging around in some of the secret files they’d found during their investigation of Rainy’s murder. The files’ importance had taken on a new dimension when Alex had connected them to the death of Allison’s own mother, Athena Academy founder Marion Gracelyn. She’d felt certain that the mystery assignment came out of those, but she had no clue what it pertained to.

  Now, in the middle of Amsterdam, misgivings rattled against her confidence. She didn’t doubt that she could find Meijer, but the danger quotient was doubtlessly going to go up.

  And I invited my sister to do this, Sam thought. Way to go.

  “Who are you after?” Elle asked.

  “Tuenis Meijer. He’s a—”

  “Computer cracker,” Elle said.

  She used the correct term for the man’s chosen illegal profession. Hacker was a term used by the public as a result of movies and misinformation. True masters of the craft referred to themselves as crackers because they cracked the code that protected information. “Right,” Sam said.

  “Sorry,” Elle said. “Didn’t mean to spoil your briefing.

  It’s just that I’ve dealt with guys who have done business with Tuenis in the past.”

  “It’s okay,” Sam said. “I knew you were familiar with Amsterdam. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to meet me here instead of canceling out. Your knowing Meijer is a plus.”

  “He’s truly slime.”

  “That’s what I gathered.”

  Elle stopped and gazed south. “He keeps a houseboat on the Achterburgwal near Rusland Street.”

  “I know,” Sam said. “I’ve already been by there. He wasn’t home.”

  “Do you have a destination in mind?” Elle asked.

  “I thought we would cruise the strip. Find out where the action is.” Sam walked along the Voorburgwal. Neon shimmered like stripes of runny rainbows in the dark water of the canal. A passing motorboat created a pulse of vibrant noise. Waves slapped against the houseboats moored at the canal’s edge. “Tuenis has a predilection for sex clubs.”

  “Yes, he does.” Elle smiled. “This should be interesting, since you haven’t been here before.” She turned and headed into the nearest alley. “You won’t find the ones Tuenis will be interested in out on the street. He’s a truly bad boy. At least, he thinks he is. We’ll need to hit the alleys. That’s where you find the more aggressive clubs.”

  In just a matter of steps, Sam felt like she’d been transported into another world. Narrow, long and winding, the alley slipped between tall buildings filled with large picture windows on the lower floors. Red lights ringed windows in which provocatively dressed, semiclad and nude women lounged, danced or moved in open invitation to voyeurism.

  It was like nothing Sam had ever seen before. But she couldn’t help smiling, thinking about what Riley would say if she showed up in his bedroom dressed—or undressed—in one of those outfits. In fact, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to say anything until he managed to pull his jaw up from the ground.

  The woman in the booth smiled back at Sam and blew her a kiss.

  “Sam?” Elle called.

  “Yeah?”

  “Problem?”

  Sam turned to her sister. “Before we leave Amsterdam, we have to go shopping.”

  Elle shook her head. “Poor Riley. He’s not going to know what hit him.”

  “That’s exactly the point,” Sam said. “You don’t catch him off guard often.”

  Elle glanced at the women in the windows. “That will do it. I know just the place. After we find Meijer.” Turning, still grinning, she continued down the alley.

  KEEPING HIS FACE FORWARD, Joachim performed a walk-by near Satyr Dreams. Darkness filled the houseboat’s deck. His senses tingled with alertness the way they had since he was a boy and had first learned to break and enter back in Leipzig. Back then, stealing had been a way of survival. Forced entry was merely one of the skills he employed in his current vocation.

  The houseboat was spacious but looked old. The fabricated metal exterior held pockmarks from hail and other abuse. Rocking on the waves from passing vessels, Satyr Dreams slapped against the side of the canal with quiet, hollow thuds.

  He felt confident he could get inside.

  At twelve he had started breaking into the homes of affluent people on the outer edges of the old neighborhood. That had been the year his father had been killed while trying to commit an armored car robbery. The Berlin Wall had fallen only a few years previously and West Germany was still working out the details of absorbing East Germany. The difference between the two countries’ economies had been like night and day. For a time, West German business had taken advantage of the East German labor pool, paying them only slightly more than they had already been getting paid. It wasn’t a good introduction to Western ways.

  But crime had been good. Joachim’s father hadn’t been a bad man, just one who liked living easy and grew attracted to the danger of taking what he wanted. But he’d always been kind and gentle and soft-spoken. Until his father’s death, Joachim and his mother and sister hadn’t known his father had been a criminal.

  Joachim’s mother had worked, but she hadn’t been able to make enough to keep a roof over their heads and feed them after her husband’s death. Joachim had tried to find a job, but no one wanted to hire a twelve-year-old boy and pay him enough to make up the difference his mother fell short on every month. In the end, he’d become a thief.

  At first, Joachim had taken only food and small things he could trade for more food. Later, he had worked with a few partners and started stealing from corporate warehouses, targeting electronics and vehicles, moving into higher risk theft for a chance at a higher paycheck.

  One night, one of his friends had been shot while they’d stolen a car. The boy had bled to death in the seat beside Joachim. The man Joachim had sold the stolen Mercedes to had docked the price for the blood on the seats. Joachim had been forced to dump his friend’s body in an alley as if it were common trash. He hadn’t been able to speak to his friend’s mother ever again.

  Joachim knew the world wasn’t fair, and he’d quickly gotten harder to match it.

  Since the age of fifteen, Joachim had been involved in organized crime. His mother had turned a blind eye to the money he’d brought into the house, and his sister had never known what he did. By the time he’d gotten old enough to get a legitimate job, he was too entangled to get out.

  The people he did business with wouldn’t let him step out of their circle without paying a heavy price. They feared snitches.

  Joachim had started as a numbers runner for Günter Stahlmann. At eighteen, Joachim had proven he could survive on the streets, and Günter promoted him to enforcer. For the next five years, Joachim had collected from habitual criminals who owed Günter money for sports bets and had tracked down those who had stolen from Günter. Joachim had been shot and stabbed on several occasions.

  The last two years, though, he ha
d graduated to a position of specialty assignments. The current assignment to Amsterdam came under that heading. Lately, Günter had managed a working arrangement with the mysterious woman who was currently calling the shots on the mission to capture Tuenis Meijer. Joachim didn’t know the nature of that arrangement, but he was paying careful attention.

  Getting sent after Meijer couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Joachim was close to getting away from Günter for good. During the last year, pursuant to the agreement he’d made with the German police, Joachim had been steadily betraying his employer, easing out of the shackles of crime that had bound him for all these years. It hadn’t been an easy trick to accomplish. His life was currently several layers of lies deep.

  But he desperately wanted out. Enough so to risk everything he had in the attempt.

  Joachim stepped into the dark shadows that draped the houseboat. With a lithe coil of muscles, he leaped onto the rear deck. He tried the door, because he’d learned while collecting for Günter that doors weren’t always locked.

  This one was.

  It was also armed with an alarm.

  Kneeling, Joachim pulled on a pair of thin surgical gloves and took out an electronic lock-pick kit from his pocket. Working quickly, he held a small pen-flash in his mouth for light and then cut into the alarm wiring. He bypassed the secondary alarm, then popped the plastic cover on the main alarm and connected the lock-pick’s alligator clips to the circuitry leading to the operating system. A quick tap on the electronic lock-pick device sent the digital readout scurrying to chase out the alarm code.

  Less than a minute later, the readout flashed the eight-digit code. He pressed the activation button and the lock opened with a quiet snik.

  Pocketing the electronic lock-pick, Joachim opened the door and went inside.

  The boathouse smelled like the inside of a gym locker. Joachim breathed through his mouth. Evidently Tuenis Meijer spent his ill-gotten gains on sex and drugs but not on maids. He pulled the shades and played his pen-flash around.

  It looked like a dirty clothes bomb had gone off inside the living area. Pizza boxes and fast-food containers littered every flat surface. The only thing that looked clean was the computer desk.

  Joachim left the computer alone for the moment. During his time as a collector, he’d learned that people who used computers as their preferred weapons often left them booby-trapped. He wasn’t proficient in computer usage. Günter had other people for that.

  His cell phone rang.

  Taking it out, he opened it and said, “Yes.”

  “Hey, kiddo,” Günter said in his deep voice. He was a large, broad man with a nose that had been broken many times and a thick shock of black hair only now going to gray. He liked American movies, particularly the crime dramas known as noir.

  “Hey,” Joachim said. Neither of them used names. It was a practice of many years because they both knew their phone lines could be tapped at any time.

  “How’s it going?” Günter asked.

  “I’m still looking for our package.”

  Günter sighed, and the sound was filled with all the sadness old Germany could muster. “I’m counting on you to pull this out, kiddo.”

  “I will.” Quelling the unease that talking to Günter created, Joachim made a quick circuit of the galley. The clutter continued there. How can Meijer live like this?

  Intrigued by the closet, Joachim tried to open the door. It was locked. He set the pen-flash on the galley table so the beam played over the door and he could free his hands. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he took out two lock-picks, shouldered the cell to his ear and knelt to work on the lock.

  “I just want to warn you to stay on your toes,” Günter said.

  “I am. I always do.”

  “Don’t trust anybody over there.”

  “I never do.” The lock clicked open.

  “And you’ll let me know the instant you find the package?”

  “Of course.” Joachim put the lock-picks away and pulled the closet door open. Once the lock was released, the door opened quickly, forced into frantic motion by the weight on the other side. Stepping back, Joachim reached for a long knife in the cutlery block on the galley table. The cell phone tumbled from his shoulder to the floor.

  A man sprawled at Joachim’s feet, barely illuminated by the pen-flash’s wide beam.

  Joachim brought the knife up smoothly, the blade positioned along his forearm so it wouldn’t easily be knocked from his grasp. The technique didn’t allow him to immediately stab an opponent, but he could slash an opponent’s face, hands, arms or stomach. Once an enemy started to bleed, it was only a matter of time till he succumbed.

  The man at Joachim’s feet didn’t move.

  Picking up his pen-flash, Joachim surveyed the man. A neat round bullet hole between the man’s eyes showed blue-black. A tiny streamer of blood zigzagged down his face.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Günter called from the phone. “Hey.”

  Senses flaring wildly, sensitive now to the rocking motion the houseboat made on the water, Joachim waited in the darkness. He fully expected to hear police sirens and helicopter rotors overhead.

  “Hey,” Günter called out a little more strongly. “Can you hear me now?”

  Moving slowly, making himself breathe and not bolt off the houseboat, Joachim scooped up the phone. “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  Joachim shined the pen-flash down on the man’s face. His head rocked slowly back and forth with the houseboat’s motion.

  “We have a problem,” Joachim said, struggling to keep himself calm. But he knew the problem was his. With everything so delicately balanced in his life, with all the lies he’d told, he felt certain that something had fallen through the cracks. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d just been set up. He could already feel the jaws of the trap springing closed on him.

  Chapter 3

  Elle’s mind buzzed as she rounded the corner of the alley and stepped onto the sidewalk. She automatically swept the street, looking for suspicious pedestrians, parked vehicles and passing cars. Nothing pinged the personal warning system she’d developed since becoming an intelligence agent.

  Sam remained behind her, alert and ready. Remembering how they’d met in Berzhaan, how Sam had beaten her in an unarmed fight, Elle knew her twin could take care of herself. But the situation Elle was leading them into was doubtlessly going to turn ugly fast. She had a history with the man they were going to see.

  “The place we’re going,” Elle said, “is going to be dangerous.”

  “All right.” Sam never missed a beat or showed any sign of hesitation.

  “The men we’re going to see are killers,” Elle continued. “Jan, the man we want to talk to, will have at least two bodyguards. The store he runs is a cover for his other business. He traffics in drugs and weapons, but he has a lot of contacts and knows a lot of things. Tuenis Meijer is someone he’ll know.”

  “Good.”

  “He may also try to kill me on sight.”

  “Why?”

  “A couple years ago, I cost him a major portion of his business and almost got him killed. I also put him in the hospital because I nearly burned his face off.”

  “That would do it,” Sam said lightly.

  Elle glanced at her sister. Sam looked a little tense. Then Elle focused on the street in front of her. She was feeling nervous herself. Jan wasn’t a good man to meet under any circumstance. The history they had made it worse.

  For just a moment, Elle wondered why Sam wanted Meijer and what her twin wasn’t telling her. Elle didn’t like walking into operations without knowing everything that was going on. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have been involved. But this was her sister. Family meant everything to Elle. Her parents, the people who had raised her and loved her, had taught her that.

  She just hoped there would be no regrets and both of them would live through the experience.

  They passed a small gro
up of street hookers complaining in English, German and French about the slow business of the night, the weather and assorted personal problems. Pedestrian traffic flowed around them, barely slowed by even the most aggressive sales tactics.

  The front of the shop that was the sisters’ destination held a large picture window garishly outfitted with provocatively attired mannequins sporting black leather, masks, whips, chains and furry handcuffs. Two of the kneeling mannequins had red ball gags in their mouths. Monitors played movies featuring paddling, restraints and degradation. Neon tubing advertised Sex Videos, Sex Aids and Fantasy Sex.

  Elle went through the door without hesitation. The bell overhead rang to announce her arrival. Five people were inside. Jan stood behind the counter while his two bodyguards sat at a small table beside a rack of DVDs with covers that left nothing to the imagination. A young couple peered at a swing contraption made of leather and wood that Jan was showing them.

  Jan was a thick-bodied man with a bored air. His dark hair was neatly clipped and gold chains hung around his neck. He wore a New York Yankees baseball jersey. As he looked up to greet them, recognition flared in his gray eyes.

  “Hella,” Jan called in English, scrambling to reach under the counter. “Kill her.” Then he did a double take, seeing Sam behind Elle. “Kill them both.”

  The scarlet neon from the tubing played over the burn scars on Hella’s face. He moved smoothly, showing years of practice. He was at least fifty, his hair white with age, smooth shaven like someone’s kindly grandfather. The coat slid away from the cut-down double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun hanging from a whipit sling on his right arm.

  Elle ignored the bodyguards, trusting Sam to handle them. With the men spread out inside the sex shop, the danger was spread across two fronts.

  Sam stepped toward Hella, got in close and blocked the man’s attempt to bring the weapon to bear on Elle, who was closing the distance on Jan. The shotgun erupted in a deafening blast. Neon light shimmered on the picture window as the concussive wave hammered the plate glass. The swarm of double ought buckshot cut a mannequin in half. blowing the top part off the bottom in a popcorn spray of hardened plastic.