The professor saved the day. He sat on the floor of Adele’s apartment, facing the women.
“I’m asking for help, too. Please listen to me for a moment?”
Adele grudgingly nodded.
“I’m sorry about fooling you at the center. We thought it was necessary. By helping us, you truly helped Willem Albert, and his lover, and you brought us closer to our goal. That goal is not only to survive, but to find some very bad men who’ve done terrible things. I’m just a …” he hesitated, “a clown. But I am also a bit of a father. I helped raise my brother’s child, who was murdered. He was my only living relative. I don’t want to believe that my nephew died for no reason. There is one other thing: they are also after Commander Matinova. We have no one else to ask. If we stay in Amsterdam, we will both probably be killed. If we can get to The Hague, we have a slim chance. I ask that you give us that chance by helping us.”
The professor spoke with absolute simplicity. There was not an ounce of performance about what he said, no false note. No clowning. It was impossible to turn him down.
Adele made them a late snack, then called a friend in The Hague, preparing to spend the night with her when she got there. She called another friend and borrowed a car. In less than an hour, she was driving them to The Hague.
She kissed the professor on the cheek when she dropped them off at Kroslak’s apartment. She lightly kissed Jana on the mouth, then hugged her.
“We could have had fun,” she said regretfully, then drove off.
Chapter 23
When they walked into Kroslak’s apartment late that night, it was as if an industrial-sized mixer had whirled through the place. The professor was aghast at the wreckage; Jana angry. No matter what, the people who were after them seemed to be able to match her moves. Jana paused for a moment before walking into the bathroom to see if the originals of Peter’s papers she’d recovered from her closet were still where she’d hidden them The back of the cistern had been pulled out; the papers were gone. She felt angry and disappointed, and then tried to console herself. All was not lost. She still had copies, but originals have a convincing quality that copies lack, particularly if it comes to presenting evidence in a court of law. Her hope that the killers might not revisit Kroslak’s apartment was wrong. Which portended they might revisit it again. Not a comforting prospect.
Jana walked back into the living room. The professor had taken his now usual position: on the floor, gloomily surveying the wreckage around him.
“This is getting to be a habit, Professor. How will your audience react if you sit down when you perform?”
“There’s no furniture here to sit on,” he grumped. “It’s all been destroyed.” He tossed the wooden arm of a casual chair that had formerly decorated the apartment into the largest pile in the center of the room. “The people who created this carnage do not seem to like you at all.”
“Nor Kroslak; and by now, probably, not you. If you recall, I suggested you stay away from me.” She kicked at a table leg on the floor. “There is one consolation: if they’re this mad at us, then they think we’re a substantial threat. Which means we’re going about things in the right way. We’re getting closer to them.”
“And they’re getting closer to us.” He could see the frustration on her face. “Did you find what you came for?”
“They got it.” She saw his face fall. “I have copies, Professor,” she reassured him. “We can go forward.” She pulled one of the copies from her shoulder bag. “You should look at this, Professor. You talked to your nephew. It might trigger something if you read this. It’s not in Slovak, but maybe you have some idea of what it could be?” Jana handed the report to him.
Before he began reading, the professor crawled over to a ripped couch pillow.
“Comfort is paramount when the mind is called to action.” He propped the pillow against a wall, bracing his back against it, then began to read. Almost at once he stiffened, holding the report out, as if to keep it as far away from him as possible.
“It can’t hurt you, Professor,” Jana joked.
He softly began reciting a phrase over and over again, a mantra he reeled off to protect himself. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
Jana listened for a moment, then knelt down next to the man. “Professor, what’s happening? Can I help?”
The professor put the papers down, rubbing his hands on his pants, his voice apprehensive. “Why is it that you want to forget and the rest of the world won’t let you? You try to ignore things and hope you’ve left them in the wake of fading conversation or bad memories locked away. Then they suddenly dance around you, costumed, even louder than before.”
“Something in these papers, Professor?”
He reluctantly picked up the report again.
“Are you all right?” She put her hand on his arm, trying to ease his fear. “I need you to be okay, Professor. If either of us is not okay, then both of us are in even worse trouble. So, are you okay?”
The mantra faded away. The professor took a deep breath, then another.
“I’m merely tolerable. That’s all one can hope for on occasion. This is one of those occasions.”
“The papers brought back some bad memory?”
“The past wormed its way back. Perhaps seeing the swastika on the page. Did I tell you I was terribly afraid of the Nazis when I was a child?” He began reading again. “I don’t understand this language.” The anguish in his voice had abated. “Words, and feelings, have to mean something.” He didn’t look up, continuing to study the report.
Jana watched him. The professor seemed to have recovered from whatever had bothered him, so Jana walked around the room, looking for anything the intruders had left. There were candy wrappers where the couch stood, and, going back into the bathroom, she found one that had been tossed in the bathtub. Whoever had raped the apartment hadn’t gone hungry. She gingerly picked up the wrappers by their ends and found a piece of torn curtain to put them in, carefully folding the cloth over them so as not to smear potential fingerprints, then put them in her handbag. If there were prints, a chemical fuming process might bring them out.
Jana walked back into the devastation of the living room just as the professor looked up, finished with the report.
“I couldn’t understand a word, except for the German.”
“It was the same with me as well.”
“The rest of it is a scientific report. I think it may be a geology report.”
“Are you saying that because your nephew was studying geology?”
“I’m looking for a connection.”
“So it’s a guess?”
“There is the word petro here. It means rock or stone.”
“What does petro mean in Romanian?”
“I don’t know.” He handed the papers back to her, disappointed with himself. “I’m old. Nothing comes easy anymore.”
Jana tucked the papers into another section of her capacious shoulder bag.
“Thanks for trying.”
“You’re welcome.” He tried to make himself more comfortable by plumping the pillow. All he succeeded in doing was disgorging more of the pillow’s stuffing. “The only things that have been attached to me in the last few days have been feathers.”
Jana began moving the pile of debris to the front door, blocking entry to the room.
“If they come back, this won’t stop them for long, but it may be enough time for me to prepare a warm greeting before they get to us.”
“If they read the papers about what happened to their comrades when they broke into your hotel room, I think they will hesitate.” He turned on his side, adjusting the pillow so he could sleep more comfortably. “Do criminals read? This time, I hope so.”
“Good night, Professor.”
There was no reply. The old man was already sleeping.
Chapter 24
When you are presumably under surveillance or b
eing monitored, particularly with electronic devices, it’s difficult to arrange a meeting place. Although it was Saturday, Jana called Paola’s cell phone, recording a message to respond from a public phone, and then went out for a breakfast pastry with the professor, giving him explicit instructions on what to do when they parted. She walked with the professor to the busiest part of the central district of The Hague, watched him go into a building; then she began to stroll about the streets until Paola called. They arranged to meet in a safe place, at the business of a friend of Paola’s.
Thirty minutes later, after going through a variety of evasive moves to throw off anyone who might be following her, she arrived at the Crescent Supermart, a Dutch—Arab food store catering to the substantial Arab community in the area. Paola had alerted her Palestinian friend, the manager of the market, that Jana was coming. As soon as Jana entered the store the woman, who looked more European than Middle Eastern, except for the head scarf, walked up to Jana, and when Jana identified herself, escorted her through all the smells of the open spice sections, to the back of the store where a small office had been created. Paola and Aidan Walsh were already there, Walsh unsuccessfully trying to make himself small enough to fit comfortably into the cramped space. Paola thanked her friend, who nodded, then left.
“Greetings and salutations,” Aidan offered, helping himself to a plate of dates that had been placed on the desk. “Any buzzards follow you here?”
“If there were, I think I left them fighting the hordes of Dutch cyclists I had to battle crossing the streets.”
“Better than fighting us,” Walsh muttered.
“These people seem able to find me wherever I run.”
“Run faster,” he advised.
“There has to be some place to run to. I haven’t found it yet.”
“Are you sure this is not part of your homicide training exercise? I won’t like it if it is.”
“I guarantee that this is no part of any training program I had in mind.” She turned to Paola. “They got the originals of the report I brought from Slovakia.”
“More shit hits the fan,” Paola murmured. She took a breath. “The Romanian was away today. I’ll get the copy to him when he comes in tomorrow.”
“Is it safe?”
“My friend the Palestinian lady has it under safekeeping. Her husband works out of their house. He also has a few bad cousins who are going to assist him. So it should be okay, at least until tomorrow. I’ll pick it up in the morning.”
“Anything from Slovakia?”
“The reports on the witness interrogations and the rest of the investigation your compatriots have completed are due in tomorrow. There was an argument, but your Ministry of the Interior affirmed our treaty rights to copies of the reports.” She wrote an imaginary check mark in the air. “One battle won.”
“Did anyone find out what caused the computer wipe-out in the records-area fire?”
“Nothing. The crime was committed in Netherlands territory, so the Dutch indicated that they would investigate. They came over and talked briefly to our people. Had them sign some statements … and that’s that! I think they’ve decided we should clean up our own mess.”
“Piss on these local police forces.” Walsh pushed the now-empty plate of dates away from him.
“I need some possible fingerprints run.” Jana eased the cloth-enfolded candy wrappers from her shoulder bag, handing them to Paola. “Kroslak’s old apartment was tossed again. The furniture-breakers ate while they were tearing up the place. The candy wrappers in here may give us prints. If we have prints, we might identify the wreckers.”
Walsh looked dubious. “Professionals wear gloves when they search a room.”
“Have you ever tried to tear off a candy wrapper when you were wearing gloves?”
He thought about it. “It would be clumsy.”
“All we need is for the room-butchers to have forgotten for a minute where they were and why. Maybe one or both of them took off a glove when they fed their bellies. Presto, we may have a print.”
Paola gingerly placed the packet containing the candy wrappers in her own purse. Jana sat back, thinking about what she was going to say, then began speaking almost as if she was having a conversation with herself.
“Think about this: where did the papers we hope Ilica can translate for us come from?”
“You got them from your closet. Your boyfriend had them,” Walsh reminded her.
“I know where I got them; I know who put them there,” Jana snapped. “Peter….” She stopped, fighting back the sudden rise of her feelings about Peter’s death. “Okay, we know a prosecutor had the papers. He told us, by hiding them, that they were important to whatever it was he was investigating. I think we can safely conclude that it’s because of this report that they’re after me. Then there’s Kroslak on the run.”
Walsh interrupted her. “You don’t think he’s dead?”
“I think he’s alive and in Prague. He’s looking for something. I think it has to do with the same events we’re involved in. I couldn’t say this before, but I think, now, that he’s a good investigator. You don’t keep at it as he is doing unless you believe in your job. It also takes a strong will to survive,” she added.
“Like you,” Paola pointed out.
Jana looked at her, wondering if Paola was joking. She decided she was not.
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“I’m just stating the obvious.”
Jana smiled her appreciation, then continued. “Kroslak’s in Prague. That means I have to go to Prague and find him.”
“Today? Tomorrow?”
“As soon as possible, after you quietly book a plane ticket for me.” She looked at Walsh. Walsh took the cue, using his cell phone while Jana and Paola continued the conversation.
“Someone acted as a liaison between Kroslak and Peter. Kroslak and Peter would have felt that going back and forth between Holland and Slovakia would be too obvious. I think Peter knew he was being watched and that even the attorney general’s office or police headquarters were no longer safe, so he hid the papers in my closet. Someone other than Kroslak transported the papers to Slovakia, and to Peter. The mail’s not safe and electronic transport’s no good. It’s only a copy of the original, and he’d want the original to examine and verify, and, most of all, to be able to introduce the evidence in court.”
“We need Kroslak to tell us who he used.”
“Maybe not. Do you know the people who work in our computer area by sight? Our records people? People in the area where the computers were probably attacked?”
“Some of them.”
Jana pulled out the photograph of the woman the landlady had given her and who she’d seen in Peter’s apartment. She handed it to Paola. Paola looked it over, shrugged, then passed it to Aidan Walsh. He also failed to recognize the woman.
“I still believe that Peter and Kroslak used a courier. They also may have been mailed a copy which put them in the sights of the people who eventually killed Peter and the young man shot at the hotel. Then the killers went after Kroslak. But Peter had an original.” She mulled over what she’d said. “Before I go to Prague, I want you to help me access the personnel records at Europol headquarters. I figure I’m safe, with you and Walsh and everyone else around.”
Walsh hung up the phone. “You wing it home on Czech Airlines. Tomorrow at one.”
“Good. Now, the office.”
Chapter 25
At the Europol building Aidan Walsh split off from them, going to his office to get a computer printout confirmation of Jana’s flight. Jana and Paola went to the Information Management and Technology Section. The first thing Jana asked for was a list of staff who had taken time off in the past month. There were twenty-seven of them. She shortened the list to women who had taken two or more days, which brought the number down to twelve.
If Kroslak had persuaded someone to transport his reports to Slovakia, he would want that person immediately
accessible, someone whom he could just casually pass by without creating any unwanted attention. Three people worked off-site, so Jana deleted their names, which reduced the list to nine. Jana had Paola order their personnel files and went through them one by one, hoping there would be a distinctive characteristic, some item of information in the forms contained in the files, anything that would suggest that that person had been working with Kroslak. When Jana came across the photo, she almost missed it.
The woman was Czech. Her photograph attached to the file was eight months old. She was extremely fat, her hair done up in an elaborate coif that made her look even pudgier. Jana studied it for a long time just to be sure she was right, then passed the photo to Paola.
“You know this woman?”
“No.”
“It’s the woman in the photograph I showed you earlier.”
Jana placed the photograph taken from Peter’s apartment side by side with the file photo.
“Hard to tell with all the fat, but it’s her,” Paola eventually acknowledged. “Humph,” she grunted. “The lady must have gone on one hell of a diet since that was taken.”
“Maybe she looked in a mirror and couldn’t stand what she saw,” Jana hazarded. She checked on the woman’s current assignment. She was listed as working in the Information Integrity Section. Jana took the woman’s file with her as Paola led the way to IMT 7, the woman’s work area. She was not at her desk. The woman’s supervisor informed them that she had been called away by someone who told her there was a home emergency. Some sort of plumbing problem in her apartment, the supervisor thought.
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