The Magician's Accomplice

by Michael Genelin

  Jana checked her watch and then got back on her bike. She had a few hours of daylight left, and going back to the hotel after arriving in a new city was distasteful and ultimately wasteful. Besides, Jana told herself, she’d be working hard enough in the next few days simply to absorb the information in the loose-leaf binders she’d been given by the assistant director. Jana remembered Jan Leiden, the Dutch police investigator, and his excuse for following her. “It’s just too beautiful a day not to take advantage of the opportunity to ride a bike.” Jana didn’t believe that was his reason for following her, but decided his observation was correct. She would spend the rest of the day biking through the streets, taking in the sights.

  Jana pedaled in the direction of the Kaffé Hayden, quickly reached Frederik Hendriklaan, then fell into line with the other bike riders, swinging through the city’s districts, taking the longest possible route to bring her back to the hotel. Every once in a while she consulted her map. She followed an arc from the North Sea area of Scheveningen into Segbroek and then turned southeast through Rustenburg/Oosbroek, then through the Transvaal neighborhood and into The Hague Center. She could have stopped anywhere along the way to examine the art deco buildings or the museums or any of two dozen other sights, but instead she let her mind clear as the wind blew through her hair, as she tried to forget Peter, her exile to The Hague, as she thought of it, and even the riddle of Kroslak’s disappearance.

  Suddenly, Jana was brought back to reality. Her police training, triggered by the recollection that Jan Leiden had been able to follow her without her knowledge, made her check her sideview mirror. A gray car fifty meters back appeared to occupy more of the bikers’ lane than that reserved for automobiles. A man occupied the driver’s seat; another figure, perhaps a woman, sat next to him. There was nothing to prove they were following her, but they appeared to Jana to be “lurking” behind her.

  A major intersection was coming up. Jana decided to find out if they were trailing her. She watched the light at the intersection, then slowed to wait for it to turn yellow. As soon as the warning light appeared, Jana surged ahead, crossing the intersection as the light turned red. She watched the car in her mirror. It picked up speed as she increased her pace, then went through the red light, almost colliding with intersecting traffic. Cars and bicyclists had to brake, swerving; several of the bike riders went down. Jana’s instinct at that moment told her that the car behind her was being driven by a man who wanted to kill her.

  The car picked up more speed. In ten seconds the car was going to hit her and, if it did, it was going to put her in the hospital, or worse. She scanned the street. Even if she could turn off, she was going too fast to do so safely.

  Driving in the lane to her left was a canvas-covered open-back truck. Jana swung toward it, pedaling as furiously as she could, then hoisted herself so that her feet were momentarily balanced on the seat of the bike, and jumped for the back of the truck. There was a moment when she thought she was going to fall; she reached out frantically to grab a loose piece of the canvas, managing to steady herself, then slid into the rear of the truck, tumbling against a stack of boxes.

  As she slid, she caught a quick glimpse of the gray car. It slammed into her abandoned bike, sending it flying onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing several pedestrians, then crashing through the plate-glass front window of a pharmacy. The driver of the car didn’t pause to see what damage the bike had caused. The vehicle sped out of sight.

  Jana waited while the truck passed through several intersections to make sure the gray car was gone, then got out when it stopped for another traffic signal. She was only a short distance from her hotel. She went to the bike shop to tell them that their bike had been smashed by a hit-and-run driver, signed a form, then went back to her hotel and had the desk call the traffic police for her. She arranged with the police to contact the bike shop for the damage report. They informed her that they would interview her as well within the next few days.

  Jana went up to her room, took a quick shower, then lay on her bed trying to make sense of what had happened. There was no question that someone had tried to kill her, or at least put her out of action. It was one more event in the horrible two weeks she had gone through. And she was tired.

  She faded into sleep pretending that Peter was holding her in his arms.

  Chapter 9

  Jana slept deeply through the night. When the light woke her, she was not quite sure where she was. It was still early, the sun rising, when Jana heard a rustling noise at the door to her room. She shifted in her bed and watched two newspapers slide over the lintel. After she retrieved them, she sat on the edge of the bed to peruse the headlines. One was the International Herald Tribune, a newspaper the hotel supplied to all its guests; the other, Sme, a Slovak publication. Trokan had kept his promise: he was having one of the Slovak national newspapers supplied to her.

  Jana skim-read Sme. She felt a sudden pang of depression. An investigative panel had been established to look into the facts of Peter’s death. There was also a squib, on the fourth page, asserting that the police were following leads in the killing of Denis Macek at the Carleton Savoy hotel. Jana felt another pang, this time of disappointment. Articles which declared that police were following leads almost invariably meant that they had no leads.

  The rest of the paper was filled with the usual reports of turmoil: a minister was under fire for having committed Slovakia to an American company to develop the newly discovered oil field in the Low Tatras; the communists in Parliament were making noise about protecting workers being fired from government jobs; there were letters to the editor complaining about everything from plumbing to the cost of bread. As for the Herald Tribune, it had its own share of stories: Japanese voters had tossed out a number of Liberal Democrats; the Middle East was mired in the usual attacks and counterattacks; there had been a breakthrough on treating multiple sclerosis; and a story related to the one in Sme, about an American oil company having to increase oil exploration activities to obtain new reserves around the world. It was the same old same-old.

  Irritated, Jana tossed both papers in the trash, feeling like she had been deliberately put out to pasture in a corner of the world removed from relevant events … until she thought about what had happened yesterday. Maybe The Hague was not a backwater far off the beaten path after all.

  She took a quick shower, mulling over the previous day’s events. Perhaps a perceived traffic slight had caused an already-deranged man to target her? Not likely. What had happened did not suggest she had done something on her bike which had propelled a driver into an episode of road rage. Jana dressed, reviewing the cases she had left pending in Slovakia, the two murders she had begun investigating: the hotel killing and Peter’s murder. There was nothing in the little she had done to indicate that she would be targeted next.

  Perhaps the cause lay in one of the cases she had investigated in the past? All police officers make dangerous enemies, but would one of them have known she was coming to the Netherlands and followed her while she rode through the city until they determined the right spot to kill her? An outside possibility; not probable. And, as far as she could tell, she hadn’t done anything yet in The Hague to attract anyone’s malevolent interest.

  Jana went down to the dining-area buffet and took a breakfast roll and coffee. The professor came hurrying over.

  “Hello, hello, hello,” he chortled. “I hope you remember me from the plane and the drive over here?”

  Jana was surprised. “Of course I do, Professor.”

  As she started to rise, the professor lightly placed his hand on her shoulder. “Finish your breakfast. I thought you might be here, so I stopped by to suggest we have dinner tonight. I know a few places on the beach in Scheveningen. Indonesian. Indonesian food in Holland is better Indonesian food than in Indonesia. I felt it would be nice for the two Slovaks to have dinner, and I wanted to be the first to introduce you to this cuisine.”

  Jana began to refuse, but th
e professor made a further plea before she could finish. “Yes, I know, you think a handsome Dutchman is hulking in the shadows preparing to sweep you away. If he’s ‘hulking’—or is the word ‘lusting?’—he will do it tomorrow. Meanwhile, cater to the whims of a countryman, old but still captivating, and join me tonight.”

  Jana started to refuse again. The professor put his finger to his lips. “Shhhh, not a single ‘no’ will be accepted. I will whisk you away from the front door of the hotel at 19:30. A good time?”

  Jana couldn’t help smiling at the playful insistence of the old man. He wasn’t aware that she knew who he was. She decided she would let him play out the game he was engaged in, and she nodded.

  He clapped his hands. “Wonderful. I will be here, without a chariot, but with great expectations.”

  Mission accomplished, the professor danced off and out of the dining area, blowing kisses all the way.

  Jana caught a taxi for the short drive to the Europol building; the cab driver, a stocky, bristle-faced Dutchman with a very red face, insisted on playing the radio and occasionally singing along with the music as they drove through the traffic. The trip was brief. The driver let her off at the building and, as she was paying him, asked her if she knew anything about the structure she was about to enter. He cheerfully told her that it had been Gestapo headquarters during the Second World War. “They used to bring people in the front door and truck their bodies out the back. I’m sure it’s different now,” the man assured her, then drove off singing even more loudly.

  Jana concluded that the day was starting off more bizarrely than she could have imagined.

  The sedate Netherlands were not so sedate.

  Chapter 10

  The detectives on the SC 4 team began meandering into their offices. Paola, the first to arrive, offered to introduce Jana to her new associates.

  Gabi Laszlo, a Hungarian from Gyor, a town near the Slovak border, had been the first to arrive after Paola. When he was introduced to Jana, he kept kneading his shoulders as if they were stiff and he needed to loosen them. Worse, he wouldn’t look directly at Jana, almost as if he was afraid to see rejection on her face. Then he surprised Jana by handing her a small box of marzipan cookies. A friend in Budapest, an investigator-supervisor who had worked with Jana on a case, had learned she was coming to Europol. He’d ordered Gabi to buy the cookies for her.

  Still kneading his trapezius muscles, but now chewing on one of the marzipan cookies, Laszlo walked away. Sotto voce, Paola told Jana that Laszlo was still recovering from a failed love affair with a visiting Chinese student. Gabi had proposed marriage, but the woman had told him he was too old for her, which had gone down badly with Gabi. That’s when his body had started aching and he began the business of massaging his shoulders.

  “Finding the weakness in a man seems to come easier to young women,” Jana suggested.

  “Older women forget how to do it, or they’re too afraid to try,” growled Paola. “They should do it more often. It keeps the men coming back.”

  Hans Zimmer, a very tall, almost-emaciated blond man with a slightly protruding mouth and a dour look on his face, trotted in. Paola tried to signal him to come over, but he only favored her with a brief nod and then vanished very quickly into his office.

  Paola snorted. “Forgive the man. He can’t help himself. He’s Prussian.” She dropped her voice. “Zimmer doesn’t make small talk with anyone. Besides, the man has a habit of covering his mouth with his hands as if he’s afraid people will notice his crooked teeth, which makes for difficult conversation because you have to strain to hear him.”

  Rushing in, almost on Zimmer’s heels, was Camille Grosjean. He immediately walked over, introducing himself as a police officer from Antwerp.

  “Have you ever worked with the Belgian police?” he asked. “Well-trained investigators,” he told her without waiting for an answer. He snapped his fingers, as if he’d just remembered a task he’d forgotten. He gave Jana a wide, insincere smile. “Got to go.” He darted off, hurrying.

  Paola shrugged. “The man is a ‘kiss-ass.’ He brown-noses the supervisors. The bastard plays down everyone else’s work while pumping his own ‘accomplishments.’ Piss on him.”

  Jana held out the box of marzipan cookies to Paola, who took one, and then she selected one herself. The strong almond flavor came through while she chewed. Between bites, she noticed the arrival of a solidly built man, now going a little to flab, his erect posture doing its best to conceal his midriff bulge. A slight man, wearing a Tyrolean hat with a red feather, tufts of contrasting jet black hair showing underneath the hat, entered in his wake. Paola beckoned to both of them.

  “Right there, Paola darlin’.” The big man sauntered to the coffee table, poured himself an oversized cup of coffee, then ladled a huge amount of sugar into the cup.

  “He’s Aidan Walsh, not a man to be rushed,” Paola informed Jana.

  “A man who takes coffee with his sugar.”

  Gyorgi Ilica, the man with the Tyrolean hat, cheerfully walked over to them. He swept his hat off with the ease of a professional flirt, gave Jana a head-bow, said something in Romanian, and then, in barely passable English peppered with odd expressions and extravagant gestures, tried to make her feel at home.

  “Welcome to the beautiful city of The Hague. It mean the ‘hedge,’ which is why they still have greenery in this city, but do not in Amsterdam, which is why I never go to Amsterdam. You see what we mean?”

  “I certainly do,” said Jana, not knowing what he was talking about.

  “You need learn The Hague before you go the city of sin.”

  “Amsterdam is the city of sin?”

  “Why, sure. Big sex section. Narcotics. Robberies. The Hague is clean.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Aidan Walsh finally sauntered over, sipping his coffee. Ilica continued chattering, taking Jana’s hand in his, stroking it. Jana pulled her hand away; Ilica went on as if he hadn’t noticed.

  “I am suggesting it always hard starting in new place and that it is perfectly right if you come to me to inform any questions about procedures.”

  “I’ll remember to do that,” Jana assured him.

  “Good, good. You see I help you.”

  Ilica put his hat back on and walked to his office looking smug. As soon as he was out of sight, Paola and Walsh exchanged glances, smothering laughter.

  “He’s generally a decent sort,” Walsh said. “It’s just that he likes to brush his hands against any portion of the female anatomy that’s near him. If you can keep a chair or a desk between you, and if you manage to understand his English, he isn’t a bad man to go to for advice.” He held out his own hand. “My name is Aidan Walsh.”

  Jana focused her attention on Walsh. He was a prototypical Irishman with a fair, almost milky complexion, and the air of a man open to everyone. Jana offered him one of the marzipan cookies. He took two.

  “Trying to get me fatter, eh?” He patted his stomach. “You like to eat?” he asked.

  “Only good food.” She smiled.

  Walsh launched into a brief commentary on local food, commending those restaurants within walking distance that served edible fare, telling her to avoid most of the Dutch restaurants as if they carried the plague. “The Dutch,” he confided, “don’t even know how to cook their native dishes.”

  With the arrival of Walsh, Assistant Director Mazur popped his head into their offices to remind everyone of the meeting, insisting upon leading a parade into their small conference room, prattling on and on about the need for team play and cooperative behavior, which was essential to solving cases. He didn’t notice the distaste written across the faces of most of “his” team.

  Mazur apologized to Jana for the investigators who were missing, on vacation, or in the field, as he explained it; then required all those sitting around the table to relate their disparate backgrounds in law enforcement, ostensibly so Jana would become aware of their particular skills. Once that
was over, Mazur distributed several new Europol regulations and procedures and then abruptly launched into a semi-tirade which was directed, without using her name, at Jana.

  “The Dutch police have informed me that a new member of our investigation team was involved in an auto/bicycle accident that damaged not only the bicycle but almost injured several pedestrians, while also destroying private property.” He looked at Jana significantly. “And then that person fled the scene without trying to assist anyone who might have been injured.”

  There was a “tsk, tsk” of disapproval from Grosjean. Jana forced herself to say nothing, waiting for the scene to play itself out.

  “Even though we have international immunity,” Mazur went on, “this is not the appropriate message to give the public, and it is not going to be tolerated. If anyone is involved in possible criminal conduct, the circumstances will be investigated by the Dutch as well as Europol personnel. The Dutch police will then write a complete report directed toward establishing culpability, and forward the report to us for possible Europol sanctions to be applied to the officer who is the subject of the investigation.” He looked very meaningfully at Jana. “Those sanctions may include the possibility of dismissal from Europol and transport on the next plane back to that officer’s home country, where his or her own department will likely take additional action.”

  With that last blast, Mazur stood, stared fixedly at Jana for a moment, and stalked out of the conference room. Grosjean rose and walked out after Mazur, closing the door behind him.

  “Toady!” Paolo snorted in disgust, turning to Jana in explanation. “Grosjean the boot-licker. Asshole.”

  They all looked at Jana to see what she would say.

  “I informed the Dutch police about the incident Mazur reported,” Jana quietly responded. “They will get in touch with me in the next few days.”

  Laszlo fiercely rubbed his head as if trying to get circulation pumping through his thinning hair. “He’s done this to us before when we have even a minor, anemic run-in with a grocery clerk. The son-of-a-bitch is afraid that the slightest incident might result in Europol’s upper management faulting him.”