by Jeff Abbott
“First things first. Yasmin. This gang. That’s the way to find out the truth about your wife, Sam. Stay focused.” Her voice got a new steel to it. “I have some leverage for you with Nic. Most unpleasant.”
“What?”
“On his computer.” She opened a file. Photos. Photos of youngsters, in awful, provocative poses. Boys, girls, a range of ages, a range of poses, from coy to hardcore. I saw a list of names, of e-mails. I looked away.
“He’s a child molester?”
“Perhaps. At the least he is a broker of smut. It seems that if you want a photo to your specifications—Nic can provide it.” The steel in her voice faded and she cursed under her breath.
I thought of the odd glance he’d given the little girl in the café by Dam Square last night, and felt ill. “Okay. That’s leverage. I can force his hand.”
“And then,” Mila said, “you can cut it off.”
40
HOWELL STUDIED THE VIDEO FEED in the security center at the Rotterdam train station. There. The cameras caught the man he’d seen on the port coverage that looked like Sam Capra. The blond-haired pixie in the huge sunglasses walking a few steps in front of him.
“The train they’re boarding?” he said.
“That was the 10:15 service to Amsterdam,” August said, checking a train itinerary.
“I want every record of a pair of tickets bought together on a credit card.”
“They could have paid cash, or used a prepaid ticket,” August said.
“Or they could have made a mistake,” Howell said.
Ten minutes later Howell had a name, en route to Amsterdam. Most people traveling on the 10:15 service already had their tickets; but one pair, in car five, were charged to a credit card belonging to a woman named Fernanda Gatil.
He called the CIA office in Amsterdam and gave them the name, requested a full workup on Fernanda Gatil, told them to put her name out on the wire to the Dutch border stations. He wanted to know where she worked, where she lived, every detail of her life. He wanted photo enhancement on the images pulled from the train station security cameras; he wanted to know who this woman was and why she was traveling with a man he felt reasonably sure was Sam Capra.
41
TEN AFTER NOON.
Nic the scumbag was late. I sat outside the Pelikaan, on the south side of the canal, sipping a half-pint of Heineken. The sunlight shimmered on the water.
I wondered, for the first time, who the Turk was that Zaid had hired. A soldier of fortune? An actual smuggler? Someone, like me, with his own personal vendetta against the scarred man? Bahjat Zaid was a panicked father who hadn’t put his entire trust into Mila or her secret employers. After I calmed down a bit on the way to this meeting, I could not blame him. I didn’t know if my child was dead or alive, either.
I was getting closer to the truth and to Lucy. I knew it. This was the most important meeting of my life. I tried not to sweat. I tried not to think too much. Just play the right note and I’d be in.
Nic worked his way through the strolling Saturday crowds. He gave everything and everyone a disdainful glare. He did not look happy.
He sat across from me. In the daylight he looked pasty, robbed of sleep. I wondered if he’d figured out he’d had an intruder in his room, parsing his hideous secrets. But probably none of them had slept well last night after learning of the Turk’s attempt to infiltrate them.
“Hello,” I said. I absolutely had to keep the contempt from my voice. I know what you are.
“I’m having a very bad day,” he said. The waiter stopped by the table; Nic ordered a Coke. The waiter brought it and vanished. No one sat near us.
“So. This Turk compromised your route?”
“It was all bluff,” Nic said. “The Turk was a liar.”
“Was?”
“I mean is. Forgive my English.”
I had to sound like a guy desperate for a job; which I was. “Nic. Listen. I’ve moved plenty of stuff from eastern Europe to Holland, to England and America. I know how to get contraband of any sort through. If you’re worried that the Turk has screwed up your planned route, let me design an entirely new route for you, with new transport. Be safe.”
Nic sipped his soda. I waited. If they’d depended on the Turk to set up transit for their goods to the U.S., they couldn’t use whatever he’d arranged, so they had to be desperate. Unless they’d already found a solution. But the Turk had died a few hours ago, and maybe I was their best chance of keeping their operation moving forward. Nic would have been sent to take my measure.
“Why are you so desperate for work?” he asked.
“I like eating and sleeping under a roof. And I need a foothold in the Netherlands.”
“Why here?”
“A few minor difficulties for me in eastern Europe. I need to focus on smuggling goods to the West.” I took a long sip of beer. “I wouldn’t mind a slice of the action of whatever you’ve got going. What is it? Counterfeit cigs or luxury goods? Designer drugs?” All of those were trades worth billions—nearly twenty percent of the world economy these days is in illicit goods.
“You must be in dire straits to be hanging out in seedy bars looking for work to appear.”
“Actually I’m just a big karaoke fan. And if you’d said dire straits there last night, I would have sung one of their hits.”
A smile flickered and vanished. “What’s your full name, Sam?”
“Peter Michael Samson.”
Nic’s phone rang. He opened it, listened carefully. He kept a poker face, mostly—I saw the slightest tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He got up from the table, walked to another empty one, made a second call. He listened, watching me. I raised my glass to my lips, whispered behind the camouflage of the half-pint.
“Did you get that?” I said.
Mila answered. “Yes.” The transmitter was hidden beneath my collar, thin as a toothpick. Hard to detect under my starched shirt. Hence dressing for the meeting like it was a job interview. Mila had slipped the transmitter into my clothes. The earpiece where I could hear Mila speak to me was a risk; it would be easier to spot. State of the art; I wasn’t sure the Company had field gear this good. It made me wonder again exactly who I’d decided to work for.
“If they have passport records access… they could be digging my name up right now.”
The Company could have killed the Peter Samson legend, eliminated the IDs, the passport records. And surely there would be a trace put on any queries made against my old, discarded names, as well as watching for any use of them.
Which might bring the Company right down on Nic and his friends. But that couldn’t happen before I got what I needed from them. Not before I had the scarred man in my grip. Not before I had got Yasmin to safety and knew the truth about Lucy and my son.
I watched Nic. Nic watched me. Minutes passed. Long enough for whoever he had working for him to access a Canadian passport database? They had hacked into the Amsterdam police servers; why not the Canadians’ as well? I had underestimated Nic before.
I said nothing more to Mila; she was close, watching us from an empty office space across the Singel canal.
On the Herengracht, in the grand Company safe house, August pushed open the door of Howell’s office. Howell glanced up from looking at photos that had come through passport control in Rotterdam. Thousands of faces, none of them Sam Capra. He felt dizzy.
“Sir, we just got a query hit on one of Sam Capra’s old legends. The Peter Samson identity. It just came, moments ago, from an IP address from an Internet café in Amsterdam. Looking for passport information, military records, criminal history.”
“Where?”
“Over on Singel. A few minutes away.”
“Let’s find out who’s so interested in Sam.” God, he thought, maybe it was Sam himself, checking to see if the old identity was still active. That little bastard finally made a mistake. “Any record of the passport being used to enter Holland?”
�
��No, sir,” August said. “Do you want me to kill all the documentation tied to the identity?”
“No. No. Leave it active. Let’s see where it leads us.”
He and August and Van Vleck, an ex-Marine permanently assigned to the Company office in Amsterdam, hurried down the steps into the bright spring day. “We can call the Dutch police…,” Van Vleck said.
Howell raised a hand. “Absolutely not. We handle this ourselves.” He glanced at August. “This may get ugly. If he’s there, we take him down, and you can talk to him later. Don’t hesitate.”
“I won’t, sir,” August said. “We’ll catch him.”
42
NIC CLOSED THE PHONE and I lowered the beer glass from my mouth. He approached the table. He might have been told that Peter Samson no longer existed. He could have taken a picture of me with his phone, sent it to Piet or even the scarred man—in which case I was dead. I looked at what was on the table: cloth, lovely flowers in a small glass vase, half-pint glass. If he came back to the table knowing I was a fraud, I could kill him with the vase. Shatter the end, put it against his throat. The glass in the vase was heavier than the beer glass.
Nic slid into the seat across from me. He straightened the ponytail and smiled at me.
“You were wanted in Croatia last year for smuggling.”
That was sadly true of Peter Samson; he was such a loser. “That’s so last year.”
“I guess so. The charges were dismissed.”
“Bribes work.” I shrugged. “And a witness decided not to talk.”
“What were you moving?”
“Whatever needed moving. Illicit explosives from the Czech Republic. Old weapons from Ukraine. Opium moving through Turkey.” I shrugged again. “I’m not a product specialist. I move whatever needs moving to Canada and New York.”
“And being a mover made you a good fighter.”
“The Canadian Army made me a good fighter.”
“I have a friend from Prague. I asked him about you last night.”
Gregor. “Yes.”
“He said you could do a good job, but he also said that he thought you might have sold out some people who tried to screw you over, a pair of brothers.”
“The Vrana brothers were screwing over the people who brought me into the deal. Internal politics in a group aren’t my concern. I’m only about the money. Sorry if that makes me sound bad; it is what it is.”
“So your loyalty would be to… me.”
“Are you the one getting me my money? Then, yeah, my loyalty is to you.”
He watched me for a minute, deciding. “I might have a job for you, then. But I need you to do me a favor if you want to land work.”
“I’m not really in the favor business.”
“Then think of it as an investment. My boss, Piet, has become a liability. I think he needs to be cut out.” There it was, bluntly. Nic wanted Piet gone. Probably to take his place, to take his cut. Or to take his power. “If you can get us a route to America, then you and I—we don’t really need Piet in the picture. Or in the profit.”
“And if I don’t want to get into your messy office politics?”
“Then we’re done.”
He was using me. This was survival of the meanest. Nic was using Piet’s mistake in trusting the Turk to bolt up the food chain.
But then, so could I.
“What’s your beef with your boss?”
“Brains make more money than brute force.” The hacker didn’t like the muscle.
“No doubt you’re smarter than your boss.”
“There is no doubt. Piet is a moronic whoreson. He waves a sword around, if you can believe it. A sword. Do you know how unprofessional that appears?” The superior tone I’d heard in his voice last night returned.
“What is it you’re shipping?”
“They’re not large packages, but they must be well hidden. Extremely valuable and not easily replaced.”
“Not an answer. What is it?”
“That you need not know. It is not toxic or poisonous or dangerous.”
I didn’t believe him. But I didn’t press it. Not now. I had a new card to play. Basically, Nic wanted me to tattle on Piet, make him look bad, hope that the scarred man would cut Piet down. Even loose networks are brimming with egos and ambitions. This might be the fastest road to the scarred man.
“You want this job, you’ll help me,” Nic pressed.
“And I design you a perfect route to smuggle your goodies, with documentation and containers and a well-greased captain and the right bribes, and you take my route, and you shut me out? No.”
“We must trust each other a little, Sam. I’m proposing you and I work together; this job, all the other jobs that come. I’m in demand right now, and I need a partner who’s not an idiot and is reliable. I don’t want to have a boss who thinks he’s a ninja.”
I put an edge of nervousness into my voice. “Look, I’m going to put my ass on the line here. I don’t know you people. I’ve got resources to smuggle whatever you need smuggled, but I need appropriate guarantees.” I sounded like a man who was talking too much, and that’s what I wanted Nic to think. I wanted a scent of desperation, to close the deal. But to close it with someone with power. “If you can’t give them to me, I need to talk to someone who can.”
“I can’t take you to Piet’s boss. Doesn’t work that way.”
Compartmentalize. Keep each node of the network safe. That was clearly their operating standard here. It was smart. “Then we’re done.” Bluff time. I stood.
He needed me. I knew that. I was his chance for a power grab.
“There is a great deal at stake,” Nic said.
“The only great deal I care about is a great deal of money.”
“You will get a cut and a bonus for helping me oust Piet.”
“Can’t I get a job without bloodshed?”
“Not these days.” He lowered his voice. “Look, we need our goods moved from Rotterdam to New York. I don’t know where the goods are right now except they’re on their way to Holland from Hungary. Piet knows, all right? You can talk with him and see if you’re willing to take this on. Both the smuggling job and helping me get him out of the game.”
That was as much as I could hope for now. “All right. Let’s go.” And then I saw Howell. Hurrying down the north side of the Singel canal. Heading in our direction. Behind him walked August. I kept my smile in place.
It meant we’d made a mistake. But Mila had left a trail for us to follow if that happened.
Then I saw Howell and August and another man, clearly a Company agent, turn hard into the doorway of an Internet café. A neon coffee cup steamed in the window. Same building where Mila was watching from the top floor.
Choice: help Mila or go with Nic. I wanted to help her. But I couldn’t walk away from Nic. That way led to Lucy and my son.
I followed him, wondering how Howell had found us. From the ID check Nic had done? Maybe, if his associate who searched for the Peter Samson name had hit an electronic tripwire.
Nic walked directly beside me, hand across my shoulders. I couldn’t look behind me. Couldn’t see Mila. I had to think of a way to warn her.
“Trouble is coming,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Nic jerked a glance behind us.
“You. Playing your boss.”
“He won’t be my boss for long.”
“I had a boss once, a guy named Howell,” I said in a conversational way, “a total ass, and I feel he’s always behind me.”
“Then you should have dealt with him the way I’m going to deal with Piet.”
I couldn’t say more. I had to trust that Mila had deciphered my warning. I had to go with Nic, and I knew he’d search me. The earpiece was a liability; he would find it. The moment Nic pulled up ahead of me I tore the tiny earpiece from my ear and dropped it on the street. I left the transmitter in place. I wanted Mila to hear every precious word.
43
MILA HURRIED
FROM THE EMPTY OFFICE space and ran down the narrow staircase. Howell was close; if he interfered in the sting, all was lost. The top three floors were offices; the ground floor housed a small Internet café, popular with students and college-age tourists. She reached the bottom foyer; to her right was Café Sprong. Right now the Internet café held a half-dozen surprised kids, hands lifted off their keyboards. Three men in suits stood inside, two holding guns. An older man—she recognized him from the Company files as Howell—was saying, “Just everyone stay calm, we’re working with the Dutch police.” He was hurrying from laptop to laptop, clicking on the keyboards. Searching.
They’d found her and Sam.
The one closest to the door grabbed at her arm. He was a big man, blond, Scandinavian-looking, with apple-florid cheeks.
Mila fought down the overwhelming urge to throw him through the neon-coffee-cup window. “Excuse me,” she said in a low, hard growl.
He didn’t raise the gun but he pulled her inside. “This is police business. Do not be alarmed, we are seeking a criminal. Were you accessing the café’s Internet connection?” he said to her in slightly mangled Dutch. She shrugged like she didn’t understand.
“Is this a joke?” she said in English, braving a smile. “Or a movie?”
“Do you have a laptop? Or a smartphone?” he asked in English. “Were you on the web?”
“No.” She only had a small purse. The wireless kit she’d used to talk with Sam was taped to the small of her back, under her suit jacket. Her gun lay strapped to her ankle. He looked inside her purse, found her smartphone. He tapped her browser. She waited.
The big man put the phone back in her purse. “Thank you. Police business. Please don’t try to leave.” So she didn’t.
But if they were looking for her—shouldn’t they have just rushed to the roof? Perhaps not. Maybe they knew she was here but not who she was. She stayed put, but every muscle was singing. Howell didn’t have a weapon out. She decided how she would fight; the order in which she would kill them. The big blond, and then the dark-haired man, then Howell. The decision put her mind at rest and she watched Howell like everyone else.
