She watched Harry mull that question over with typical care.
“He likes arm candy,” he finally said. “He prefers them young, fun, beautiful, and not especially bright. You’ve got three out of four qualities more or less covered. I’m not sure he’d equate hell-raising with fun so you might want to tone that one down.”
He made teasing him way too easy. “If I’ve got three out of four qualities covered, are you suggesting I’m not especially bright?”
His good humor faded. “Exactly the opposite, Ms. Wiersma. Unfortunately, Vanderloord is bright too. Something for you to remember.”
“They always are.” The mistake people like Vanderloord made was in forgetting that other people weren’t necessarily stupid. Arrogance was their downfall. It had also been hers and she’d learned the pitfalls of discounting another person’s intelligence the hard way. “But I’ll keep it in mind.” She’d baited Harry enough for one morning. It was time to get down to work. “Right now I need a list of your clients, current and over the past two years.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He reached for a folder on his desk. “While you’re waiting, you can reconcile my credit card statements and business expenses. I’ve asked Hannah to set you up with a computer. She’s already put in an order.”
Lies took the file from him and flipped through it. “Business expenses, hmm? You’re giving me access to a lot of information.”
“If you find anything exciting I’ll take you to dinner. On second thought,” he said before she could come up with a clever response, “I’ll take you to dinner anyway. Then I’ll drive you home. This afternoon I’ll look into renting one of the embassy’s flats for you.”
She was annoyed and impressed in equal measure. He was determined to have his own way, which came as no real surprise, but he was more devious than she’d credited him for. His change in cover story made more sense to her now. The spoiled daughter of a diplomat would expect better housing.
Annoyance won out. “I already have plans for dinner,” she lied. “I don’t need a drive and I’m OK with the flat I have now. The neighborhood is perfectly safe, Harry. So is the public transit system.”
He folded his arms across his chest and held her gaze. “Think of what your father would say if he knew where you were living.”
She lifted her chin, refusing to be the first to look away. “He’d say I’m twenty-eight years old and a trained intelligence officer who can look after herself.”
“You’re twenty-eight?” Harry sounded genuinely surprised.
“How old did you think I was?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Young. Younger than that, I mean.”
His assessment of her was based solely on emotion, not fact. She looked her age, or at least most people thought so, which meant he found her immature—and all because she’d disagreed with him over a few things that weren’t any of his business.
OK, maybe he did have a few facts on his side. She’d been doing her best to get a rise out of him since the moment they met, which didn’t speak to a high level of emotional maturity.
“I’d like to believe I’m not quite ready for a nursing home,” she replied. “When I am though, maybe you can put in a good word for me at yours. You seem to have settled in nicely.”
His left eye developed a tic. He turned the conversation back to the original topic. “Don’t make too many more dinner plans,” he advised her. “Your real work will start after hours. And most of it will take place around the embassy here in the city’s center, so I’m not sure why you want to make it more difficult.”
Because that wasn’t why he was offering her embassy accommodations, and if she were a male officer, it would never occur to him to make such a proposition.
She was going to give in. She spared a small pang of regret for the neighborhood she wasn’t going to get to explore. This wasn’t a battle worth fighting and he wasn’t necessarily wrong. She hated, however, to lose, and her irritation was real. Taking an embassy flat was going to have an impact on her ability to interact with the other staff in his office. She couldn’t be a spoiled rich girl with Vanderloord and a simple office worker with them.
“I’ll take the flat. But in the future,” she said, “I prefer to make my own decisions. Moving will limit my abilities to gather information from other sources.”
“You’re here to gather it from Vanderloord.” He gestured toward the folder in her hand. “And while you’re here in the office, you have to keep up appearances. Do you need Hannah to show you how to reconcile those?”
She finally got it. His real objective wasn’t her safety. It was to limit her ability to communicate with his staff on an equal footing. Her annoyance flipped over to admiration. He knew the culture. He wasn’t the only one who’d missed a few facts when making an assessment.
She’d been well played.
Chapter Three
Lies stepped back and surveyed the results of her handiwork. This had to be the ugliest wall she’d ever seen.
It was a late Saturday afternoon. She’d been in the Netherlands for a little better than two weeks and she was spending the weekend with her cousin Yasmin in Haarlem, helping to paint her new house.
Bernard Vanderloord had been out of the country since before her arrival and keeping up with Harry’s paperwork while she waited for his return was dull as dirt. She’d wanted to do something that would get her mind off her lack of progress at work, so here she was.
Yasmin had seen a color scheme in a magazine she’d admired and wanted to try it in her living room. She’d sectioned off one wall with tape into hundreds of squares, then cut the squares into diamonds. Each individual diamond was painted one of five different shades of five different colors, creating a bold, kaleidoscopic effect.
It was only paint, nothing that couldn’t be covered when impetuous Yasmin grew bored with it a few months from now, as history suggested she would. Lies, however, couldn’t imagine a look more inappropriate for a beautiful old townhouse that was showing its age. The cupboards sagged in the adjoining kitchen. The tracks for the sliding glass doors that led from the dining area past the narrow kitchen to the overgrown garden beyond had begun to rot to the point Lies was concerned about security. Yasmin should worry more about break-ins, and fix that problem first, rather than spend a small fortune on paint for one wall.
The garden was solidly fenced in however, and bordered on either side as it was by its neighbors, relatively inaccessible to passersby. The lock on the gate leading to the street behind the row houses was sturdy. Anyone trying to get in would have to be very athletic and determined, so maybe spending the money on paint wasn’t such a big deal and Lies should learn to let Yasmin look out for herself.
If she were in her cousin’s shoes, she wouldn’t listen to unsolicited advice either. Fearlessness was a family curse.
“I love it,” Yasmin declared.
The fine paintbrush she held dripped lemon yellow onto the drop cloth protecting warped hardwood floors that badly needed a new finish. Even though she was three years younger than Lies and sported short, spiky dark hair tipped in purple rather than blond curls, and deep, midnight blue eyes instead of cornflower, the two women were often mistaken for sisters. They were close enough that they felt as if they were.
Lies bit her tongue and began wrapping her own brush in plastic to save it to use again the next day. This was Yasmin’s first home and she’d fallen deeply in love with it. The questionable paint job and overall dilapidation aside, Lies could appreciate its appeal. The neighborhood primarily housed young couples starting their families and the elderly who’d either lived here their entire adult lives or were downsizing. These were the perfect starter homes for young professionals, particularly women living alone, and she liked it a lot more than the neighborhood around the embassy flat that Harry had forced on her. Here, children played in the street and people greeted each other by name. The Hague’s city center was overrun by tourists and people like Harry
who used it for business and entertaining.
After two weeks of dinner meetings and formal evening receptions, she could safely say that, as absorbing as it was to try and peer beneath people’s public façades, she had no desire to lead such a lifestyle herself. It was artificial and constraining, and it surprised her that Harry, who was so…real, never showed a hint of impatience.
Not even with her, and she’d done her best to get under his skin.
“Why don’t we get cleaned up and go out for dinner?” Yasmin suggested, adding a few more strokes to the wall with an intense concentration out of proportion to the task. “I have a new friend I’d like you to meet. He owns a restaurant nearby. I’ve been seeing him for a few weeks.”
The carelessness in her tone caught Lies’s attention because it didn’t match the level of detail in her announcement. Lies pressed the lid tight on the paint can she’d been using, tapping it with the plastic handle of her brush to seal it, and took her time before responding. At twenty-five, and with a good job as an office manager, Yasmin was capable of making independent decisions about men. If this new friend owned a restaurant, then he must have ambition and a decent work ethic.
So why did Yasmin sound as if she wanted a second opinion? What was wrong with this new friend?
Lies wiped her hands on a rag. It was possible Yasmin simply wasn’t ready for her family to find out she was seeing someone who might have staying power. Yasmin’s brother Pieter could be overprotective of his younger sister—and of Lies too, for that matter. She’d suffered from it during her annual summer visits, so if Yasmin was trying to hide a fledgling relationship from him, she wasn’t unsympathetic.
But Pieter wasn’t always wrong when he ran his interventions. Yasmin was an exceptionally pretty girl, and in a country where blonds were the norm, she stood out.
“I’d love to meet him,” Lies said.
An hour later they were walking the short distance to the restaurant. The cracked mortar between the bricks in the sidewalk caught at Lies’s skinny boot heels. The uneven cobblestones on the streets made for rough walking too. Both women wore tight jeans they’d tucked into tall boots and draped colorful scarves over the collars of filmy blouses—Lies’s was white and Yasmin’s a deep, midnight blue that matched the shade of her eyes.
Fortunately, the restaurant was only five minutes away. It occupied a new and modern building at the center of a large square. The square was surrounded by local businesses intended to appeal to the whole family—a flower shop, a candy store, a pool hall, and arcade. The coffee shop was closed for the night but the small pub next door had a steady trickle of teenage patrons. It was too early for an adult crowd that wouldn’t be going out for drinks until eleven.
Yasmin’s friend had picked a respectable location for his enterprise, a point in his favor, although the inside of the low-ceilinged restaurant appeared to be a work in progress. The counter near the door held a battered cash register. Behind it was a door that led to the kitchen, judging by the smells and the sounds. The tables weren’t fancy, the kind one saw at weddings in community halls with folding legs and thin plywood tops, and covered with simple white cotton cloths. Each table had a centerpiece consisting of a single candle stuck in an old wine bottle and surrounded by pretty flowers. The plain wooden chairs had seen better days, but looked sturdy enough for their intended purpose. The walls had what Lies assumed was local artwork hanging on them—some with prices attached.
And yet it all worked. The atmosphere inside leached friendly warmth. Patrons who obviously knew each other well chatted back and forth between the tables in the half-empty room.
“Yasmin!” a voice boomed.
A man in an enormous white apron strode from the kitchen and skirted the counter. He was tall, even more than the average, and about thirty years of age. Lies’s dad would call him a string bean, but when middle-age spread settled in, he’d turn into a bear. He had light brown hair—likely blond when he was a child—and wore it tied in a knot at the back of his head.
He caught Yasmin in his arms and swung her off her feet before planting a solid kiss on her mouth. When he set her down she was breathless and beaming.
She introduced them, her arm around his waist and his draped over her shoulders. “Baart, meet my cousin Marlies. Lies, this is Baart.”
Lies’s Dutch, while impeccable, was textbook, and some of the dialects from the border towns were difficult for native speakers to follow. Baart’s rapid-fire speech, laden with heavy overtones of Flemish, nearly defeated her. Before she knew what was happening, she too was hauled into an enthusiastic embrace and soundly kissed on both cheeks, European style.
“Welcome, Marlies. Come. Have a seat.”
The women chose a table near the front window for no reason other than that from it, Lies could watch the small square outside as well as the restaurant’s patrons within. A few minutes later, a bottle of red wine and two glasses arrived—compliments of the house.
Lies’s heart plunged with disappointment. She and Yasmin shared a similar poor taste in men, if not paint, because Baart wasn’t what he pretended to be. A quick glance around the restaurant assured her of that. She hoped Yasmin wasn’t too deeply attached.
Yasmin took a sip of her wine, then leaned across the table. “You’ve met my friend. Now tell me about yours. You’ve been very quiet about him. Is everything OK?”
What made her think Harry was a boyfriend? Lies scanned her memory. What had she said that might have given Yasmin that impression?
Then she realized Yasmin was referring to Michael, who Lies had foolishly mentioned in a phone conversation a few months ago—not by name, but as someone she’d taken an interest in.
“It didn’t work out.” It no longer hurt to admit it. At least not as much.
“I could ask if Baart has a friend for you.”
Yasmin watched closely for her response and Lies knew she was sounding her out for her opinion on the new man in Yasmin’s life, but they weren’t going to have this conversation in here. “We’ll see.”
Lies only half listened to Yasmin’s chatter as they ate their meal. She was more interested in finding out what was going on inside the restaurant than Yasmin’s plans for her house.
When it was time for them to leave, Baart refused to accept Lies’s money. “I can’t expect pretty ladies to pay.”
He kissed Yasmin good-bye and waved to them from the door.
Out in the square, once he’d gone back inside and the door was closed, Yasmin turned to Lies with wary hope in her eyes. “What did you think of him?”
That Yasmin’s brother Pieter would definitely overreact if he met Baart.
And if Yasmin had known Lies was an intelligence officer she probably wouldn’t have introduced her to him either, but no one in the family knew what Lies did for a living other than that she worked for the government. Yasmin really believed she was a personal assistant on a short-term contract with the Canadian embassy.
Lies decided to tear off the Band-Aid rather than tug on it gently. “I think your boyfriend is a criminal.” She counted with her fingers as she recited her reasons. “We were the only women in the restaurant and the only people who didn’t know anyone else. Only two people paid for their meals and they used cash. Baart opened the till once all evening and that was to take money out. Nothing went in. Customers wandered in and out of his kitchen as if they owned it. And I think you already knew all of this was peculiar and it’s why you brought me to meet him. You wanted a second opinion.”
“He did seem too good to be true,” Yasmin admitted, her expression woeful but hardly heartbroken, Lies was relieved to see.
“They always are. He doesn’t have a key to your house, does he? You won’t have any trouble breaking things off with him?” Lies asked, suddenly anxious. Baart might very well be doing nothing more than cheating on his taxes, but to Lies, the whole picture reeked of organized crime. If someone had fronted him money to set up his restaurant, Yasmin didn’t need
to be involved. While legally Lies had no business collecting information on non-Canadians outside of Canada, she would if she had to.
“No.” Yasmin brushed off that concern. “We aren’t exclusive. I have a school friend who is with the police. I’ll introduce them and that will be enough to make Baart lose interest.”
Lies hoped he’d be that easy to shed. Yasmin was smart, pretty, and a lot of fun.
Although, Lies was relieved to see, more astute than she’d given her credit for. Unless Yasmin had any trouble with him, she wouldn’t interfere.
“We’re going for drinks,” she decided. “And I want to go dancing. Let’s have some fun.”
She hooked her arm through Yasmin’s and dragged her toward the pub in the far corner of the square.
* * *
Harry relaxed on the sofa in his living room, a glass of wine in his hand. Across from him sat his friend Lars, who worked for the Dutch Kernfysische dienst, the Department of Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards.
Harry had spent the past two weeks watching everything he said around Lies, and trying to interpret everything she said to him, and he was exhausted. Let someone else deal with her for the weekend.
Lars, while not as pretty, offered a welcome respite.
“There’s been another report of a businessman who’s gone missing in Russia,” Lars was saying. A lick of blond hair that not even a generous application of gel had tamed stuck up at his temple. He sat with one ankle resting on the opposite knee. His left arm was slung along the back of the low, overstuffed chair in which his lanky frame slouched. Beside him, on a glass-topped end table, was an untouched drink. He’d accepted it to be polite, but in the three years Harry had known him, he’d rarely finished one.
“He knew the risks.” Harry hated to sound cold, but it was true. People regularly took black market goods across the border into Russia because the profits to be had were significant. However, it was equally common for the trucks carrying those goods to go missing, and their drivers never heard from again. The cost of doing cross-border business in a country unofficially run by organized crime was high. And well known.
His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 4
