by Andy McNab
I turned up Bergstraat, keeping to a slow tourist amble. But as soon as the Lexus was out of sight, I broke into a run. The women in the windows looked at me like I was a madman.
I jumped into the Panda and hit the ignition, narrowly missing a cyclist as I pulled out. I gunned it towards Herengracht and turned left.
The Lexus had gone.
4
I had to put my foot down and risk running someone over - there was no other way. My eyes were glued to the road ahead. I braked hard at every junction and stared down it for a second or two before continuing. The Panda’s engine screamed its complaint. So did the people on the pavement.
I reached the top of the street. If I went left, I’d be going into the centre. If I went right, it would be to the harbour bay and then out of the city. If I was going to top her, where would I go? I threw it right, jumping a red light. Horns honked. Fuck ‘em.
I snatched up a gear as the rev counter hit red. The traffic lights were suspended on wires across the junction ahead. They were on red too. A long line of vehicles tailed back towards me. There was nothing I could do. I was stuck.
The honkers from the last junction caught up with me and stared daggers. I jumped out and climbed onto the Panda’s roof. The steel buckled beneath my feet, but I caught a hint of crimson near the front of the queue, in the right-hand lane. The Lexus was aiming for the northern, industrial, side of the city.
The lights went green. I jumped back in and pushed forward, willing them not to change again before I got through. I was flapping even more now.
I saw the Lexus turn right as the lights went to amber. I was two cars back from the junction. The one ahead of me stopped. I glanced behind me for bikes and mounted the kerb. I eased my way past. It wasn’t a popular move. Every driver in Amsterdam stood on his horn.
I bumped my way back down onto the road and edged into the traffic heading right. There were two lanes. I pushed into the outside one, trying to get my foot down as I wove between vehicles. The Lexus was maybe four or five ahead. I had a better view of it now we were starting to go downhill. We were heading under the bay.
A sign for the next turn-off showed a graphic of a factory with a smoking chimney and the words Noord 5.
I went into the tunnel, still in the outside lane. About halfway through we all passed a police car on the inside lane. I didn’t know if we were speeding but the Lexus and the rest of the traffic didn’t seem concerned. Nobody slowed. I went for it.
The Lexus manoeuvred across the lanes, reaching the inside as we emerged into daylight. He was taking the turn-off. I glanced over my shoulder as I moved over. The police car was coming up behind me.
The Lexus took a right at the top of the hill just as the lights turned red. I checked my mirror. The police car was right up my arse. I had to sit there. The signs to Noord 5 now showed more little factories with smoking chimneys, this time with boats parked up alongside them.
The lights changed and I turned right. The police car came with me. I stuck to 60 k.p.h. We had left Van der Valk country far behind. The buildings here were local authority two-up, two-down monstrosities surrounded by muddy swathes of what might once have been grass. There were little Dutch touches like dormer windows, but the streets weren’t lined with milkmaids with blonde pigtails and clogs. All I saw were black or South East Asian women, and many more of unknown origin completely burqa’d up. The weather had changed too: Noord 5 seemed to have its own micro-climate. Everyone was wrapped in a long coat to fight the cold and the dark clouds that were gagging to dump on them.
I paralleled the long side of a rectangular market covered with plastic sheeting. Cheap clothes hung on rails next to stalls piled high with big bottles of cola and shampoo. Nearby houses had boarded-up windows and numbers painted on the brickwork because they’d fallen off the doors. Kerbs were choked with rusty, minging old cars. Sink estates are the same the world over. The only difference here was that Iranian or Turkish flags hung from every other sill.
I took the first option at the next roundabout. The police car carried straight on. The Lexus must have come this way, but I didn’t know which of the three exits it had taken.
I headed along the southern end of the market towards another, smaller, roundabout with another three exits. Where now? I had multiple options to cover. All I could do was cruise with my eyes peeled.
I went with the flow. Everyone I saw was in shit state. It was as if they’d been dumped here and forgotten.
I slowed to a crawl and stared down every side street.
Nothing.
I drove on.
5
An hour and a half later, I was flapping more with every passing minute. I kept telling myself she was a switched-on girl. She knew how to handle herself. She’d dealt with the Russians. But that meant fuck-all. I wanted to find her. I needed to find her.
For the last thirty minutes I’d been parked up by the market, as close as I could get to the stretch of dual carriageway that ran between the small roundabout and the big one - the last known location I had for the Lexus.
Last light was in twenty minutes. After that, I’d go back to the RV, the hotel, and hope that she’d turn up.
I was on the far side of the bay. North-west of here was the canal that connected it with the North Sea and the commercial waterways of Europe. That was why Amsterdam was a hub for trafficking drugs and women.
I was tucked into a line of vehicles. Kids on mopeds screamed up and down, helmets perched on the top of their heads and leaning so far back they could have been auditioning for Easy Rider. Women trundled past, laden with plastic shopping bags. Not one of them gave me a second glance. They were all too busy keeping their own shit together to worry about anyone else’s.
A crimson shape came into view, heading towards the small roundabout. It was definitely a Lexus. I wanted to start the engine and be ready to roll but had to wait until it had gone past and committed to an exit. Everything had to look normal. He mustn’t see me reacting. I guessed he was going to take the third option, towards the larger roundabout, and then right, back through the tunnel.
I couldn’t see anything or anyone through the windows as it passed. It surprised me by taking the second left, into the housing estate by the market.
I followed, engine screaming. No way was I going to lose this fucker now, until I knew if she was inside. If she wasn’t, I would have to take action with the bald head and his mates, and get them to tell me where she was. Fuck finding Lilian. That could wait.
The road widened. Some of the shops already had their lights on. The Lexus’s brake lights glowed. It looked like he was about to pull over. I slowed, ready to abandon the car at the kerb if they got out and walked.
He wasn’t pulling over. He was making a turn. He swung the vehicle right round until he faced me head on.
I was going to have to let him pass before I reacted.
I pulled up outside a kebab shop next to a rank of clappedout taxis. Lads leant against the bonnets, smoking and chatting, wrapped up against the cold. The Lexus had stopped. The rear door opened and I caught a glimpse of her jeans as she got out. The passenger window came down. I pulled out my BlackBerry and started driving. I went past slowly, the phone to my ear, trying to make it look like I was chatting away to someone as I tried to get a clear shot of Anna’s new best mate.
She finished her exchange with the bald guy and crossed the road towards the taxi rank. I stopped to let her past as he powered up his window and drove off.
I dropped the BlackBerry into my lap and carried on for a couple of hundred metres before swinging round by a dark-grey stone building. It looked like an old government institution, maybe a library or a theatre. Its big glass windows were filled with posters in Arabic. It must have been a mosque of sorts. Shoes were stacked on racks outside a side entrance.
Anna was talking to the driver of the taxi at the head of the queue. She saw me, gave the guy a thanks-but-no-thanks, and turned to walk down one of the side
streets. I followed and pulled up alongside her. She looked around and jumped in. The expression on her face said she was ready for her bollocking.
‘What the fuck are you doing? I told you, didn’t I? Anything spooks you, get up and walk. Didn’t I say don’t take any chances?’
She listened to me as she fastened her seatbelt. ‘Nick, watch the road. I’ve found Lilian.’
‘Alive?’
‘I think it’s her. There were twelve girls, some of them fresh off the plane. I can show you. Go back to the roundabout.’ She lowered her window and lit a cigarette.
She took a drag. ‘It was dark. But there’s one who could definitely be her.’
‘What about Baldilocks - you get his name? Anything?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s a Brit, but he doesn’t sound like you. He’s like the one in Christiania. The one who gave us the address.’
‘A Scouser?’
‘I don’t know what that means. But he sounded the same.’ She took another drag. As we turned onto the roundabout I let down my window too.
‘Take the second exit - follow the signs for the docks.’
I checked the blue plate high up on the first building past the roundabout. The street was called Distelweg.
‘Follow the road. It twists and turns through this housing estate, and then you cross a canal. After that, it’s a dead straight line down the centre of the docks.’ She turned her head to blow out another cloud of smoke. ‘I told him I’d buy the lot, thinking that maybe I could get them all out quickly. We could find the money, couldn’t we, Nicholas? Five thousand euros. Five thousand each. They’re young …’
‘Brilliant. When do we have to deliver the cash?’
‘We don’t.’ She sighed. ‘Turns out they’ve already been sold and are due to leave this Thursday. He just wanted to show me how fresh his merchandise is.’
As we drove over the bridge and into almost total darkness I had the same feeling I’d had at the Bender border crossing into Transnistria - like I was crossing into East Berlin. In my rear-view, the canal shimmered under the street-lights. We passed four or five ropy-looking boathouses. Just forty metres later the world was pitch black.
Anna tossed out her cigarette and climbed into the back without being told. She crouched in the foot-well as I turned onto the dead straight tarmac road that bisected the dock. Potholes lined the verge where it surrendered to the mud, and stacks of wooden pallets sat outside a parade of industrial units. Watery pools of security lighting surrounded a similar group of buildings in the distance. A few trucks and vans were parked up here and there, but there was no sign of life. This wasn’t a 24/7 part of town.
All signs of habitation petered out about four hundred metres further on and were replaced by a run of steel railings. To reinforce the Checkpoint Charlie experience, it started to rain.
Anna rested her head on the baby seat. ‘OK - now we’re at the wasteground. The place I was taken is on its own, set back from the road. There’s a tower on the left-hand side.’
The Noord 5 area was on the far side of the water. Piles of rubble and twisted steel reinforcing rods glistened in its ambient light.
We passed a double gate secured with a shiny new padlock and chain.
‘That’s where we drove in.’
Droplets of rain bounced through the open window and onto my cheek. I studied the dark silhouette of the target: an imposing rectangular structure with a tower at the left end. I couldn’t see a single light.
‘I think it’s a grain silo - or, at least, it used to be. There was flour over everything. It smells like a cake shop when you go in.’
I carried on for another hundred metres or so, to a point where the road turned sharp left and then almost wound back on itself. We passed a ferry point, not much more than a slipway, too small for vehicles, just for pedestrians and cyclists. I drove back towards what I hoped was the Berlin Wall canal. With luck we’d be able to cross it and get back onto Distelweg via the estate.
The bay was immediately to my right. On the other side of it was the Amsterdam I remembered. Spires were silhouetted in the neon glow. Navigation lights glided up and down the waterway between us as tonight’s passengers tucked into a romantic canal-cruise dinner.
‘Describe the building for me.’
‘It has concrete floors. The door we went in through is on the right-hand side of the building. Inside is a hallway with four doors into offices, two on each side. The first on the right is where the girls are kept. They’re in sleeping bags on mattresses.’
‘Did you see inside the other three rooms?’
She shook her head. ‘We went straight into the first on the right. There is a staircase on the left. I could hear voices coming from the first floor. Dutch voices. I didn’t see them. There were definitely two captors, maybe three or four.’
We crossed the canal and found ourselves in another estate - narrow roads and prefab houses, painted white.
‘Did they open the main door for you, or did the bald guy have a key?’
‘It was locked. He made a call and they unlocked it from the inside. They locked themselves in again when we left.’
‘What about the gate? Was it open when you got there?’
‘I couldn’t tell. The driver got out, but I don’t know if it was locked. They might have unlocked it after the call. I just don’t know.’
‘Anything else?’
She climbed back alongside me and thought for a while. ‘It all happened so fast and I didn’t want to be obvious. When we met at the cafe, I told him I wanted to see what condition the girls were in. If they were good, we could do business. These guys are greedy, they always are.’
‘Well done, mate. Brilliant.’
She laughed. ‘But … ?’ She knew what was coming.
‘Anna, you’re a nightmare.’ I looked at her. ‘Don’t do that sort of shit again.’ I stopped the car. ‘You drive back.’
We swapped seats and I checked the BlackBerry footage I’d taken earlier to make sure Anna wasn’t visible. The quality was OK - a bit dark, but they’d be able to get a few decent sightings of the face.
Anna followed signs to the A10.
I hit the secure button and waited for the app to do its stuff. I pressed send, then dialled Jules’s number. ‘I’ve found a possible.’
He sounded surprised. ‘Is she OK?’
‘I’ve uploaded a video for you. He has the possible. I’ve got three days max before she’s being moved on. The lad’s got a Lexus, a crimson four-by-four hybrid thing. I don’t know if it’s his. I don’t even know the plate. All I know is that face. Can you find out who he is? The quality ain’t great, but the Tefalheads should be able to sort something out. If not, fire them.’
‘How difficult will it be to get to her?’
‘Hard to tell. The girls are protected.’ I repeated Anna’s description of the target. ‘All I know is, there are twelve of them, and one’s a possible. I’m going to get in there and confirm.’
Tresillian jumped in from nowhere. ‘Well done, Mr Stone. I’ll organize a safe-house and a contact. Call back in two hours. In the meantime, start planning to get in there, find the possible, and if she is our target, get her out. We need this to be done as quickly as you can. Do you understand me?’
‘Loud and clear.’
‘Stand by.’
He cut us off.
We reached the slip road onto the A10, southbound to Schiphol.
‘We’ll drop you off at the Radisson and I’ll take the car.’
‘Drop me off?’
‘I’ve got to go on and do the job. You’re not going to come to the safe-house, are you? They can’t know you’re here. So wait out in the hotel. It’ll be safer for both of us. If the shit hits the fan, it means I’ve got somewhere to go, a safe RV. And if I’ve got Lilian, it means she’s got somewhere to go as well.’
‘But can’t I drive for you or something like that?’
‘No.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘Yo
u have to be on the safe side of the fence. For both of our sakes.’
6
22.35 hrs
Back on the A10 from the airport, I ignored the city centre turnoff. I crossed the North Sea canal. The smoking-chimneys sign warned me to turn off in one K. I downed a couple more Smarties and a swig of Coke.
Anna was pissed off with me. She didn’t want to sit in a hotel room until I’d finished the job. But there was no alternative. The less my contact - and therefore Tresillian - knew about what I had up my sleeve, the better. In any case, the job would be done and dusted within a couple of days. Then we could sample some R-and-R, Moscow-style. And find a way of not talking about how long I might have to go.
I’d follow Tresillian’s most recent set of instructions, then get back on target tonight. Who knows? I might even have her out of there by first light.
It wasn’t long before I was paralleling the market. The place was closed but a lot of the kebab joints and corner shops in the vicinity were still open. Brightly coloured lights glistened in the rain slick that coated the Panda’s side windows.
It had been good spending time with Anna. And I wouldn’t have got here so quickly if it wasn’t for her. But now I had to perform, and when push came to shove, I preferred to work alone. I was in control of just one person. If anything went wrong, I only had one person to blame.
I ignored the first two exits on the small roundabout, including Distelweg, and took the last option. I hit the road that doubled back on itself, eventually turning left onto the street I’d been given. Papaverhoek was narrow, and paved with concrete cobblestones.
Down at the far end, maybe two hundred metres away, sat a baby cargo ship looking like a road-block. I slowed right down. Cars parked both sides. A long blue wooden building with yellow awnings on my right. Blinds - also yellow - closed, but a sign hinting at the pleasures within: ‘FilmNoord XXX’. Foyer open, but no customers in sight.
I passed a run of concrete prefab garages with corrugated-asbestos roofs. Some didn’t have doors, just the arse of a rusty car sticking out. To my left, and stretching for sixty to seventy metres, was a two-storey office block: brick with white metal windows; precise, uncluttered, well-kept, Germanic. Numbered ‘1-3’, it wasn’t the one I wanted.
