by Jonas Saul
“Stay seated,” a Mexican-accented voice whispered beside him.
Aaron settled into his chair, the red wine soaking through his pants, his hands slightly raised above the armrests. This had Juan Lopez written all over it. Aaron had been careless. Sarah would be upset with him. He’d let her down.
Listen to them. Hear them out. Find out what they wanted and try to mediate their demands, the whole time looking for an opening. When he saw one, he would break bones. He would fight like someone possessed. And these men would regret coming to his apartment.
“We want Sarah Roberts,” the man at the dining room table said.
He sat in shadows, his features obscured. Aaron hadn’t turned to look at the man behind him, so he had no idea who he was dealing with.
“She’s in Europe.”
“We know this.”
“Then why come here?” Aaron asked.
“When she returns, she will need motivation to come see us. You’re our motivation.”
“Leave me your name and number—like most people on this planet do—and I’ll be sure to give it to her.”
“Listen to something for me,” the man at the table said.
“I’m listening.”
A recording started. Sarah’s voice. Like she was leaving a message.
“Listen Aaron, you are going to have a new student at the dojo. Don’t trust him. Vivian says there’s something wrong with him. I need you to hospitalize that new student then disappear for a week or more. Can you do that for me? Listen closely, hospitalize the customer. Then disappear. Do it in that order. But make sure you do it.”
The recording ended.
“What does that mean?” the man asked. “Who is Vivian?”
Sarah left him that message. How did he not get it? Whatever was supposed to happen will happen because he didn’t put Juan in the hospital. He clenched his fists and unclenched them. Sarah was going to be pissed with him.
“I only had one new student recently and I would’ve loved to hospitalize his ass.”
The man at the dining room table rose and stepped around the table. As he came into the light, the suit he wore shone like it was lit from the inside. A bright silver jacket, a white shirt. A professional. Dark hair and brown skin.
“You will come with us now. You will be our guest until Sarah returns.”
“I don’t think so.”
Something jabbed his neck. He reached up, wrapped his fingers around the offending wrist, yanked and twisted intent on snapping the offending wrist. But whatever hit his neck seemed to work fast. He lost his strength, his will to fight. It was like the anger ebbed out of him as if it were a liquid.
“You will join us and then you will die when she returns as I will have no further use for you.”
Die? Use … what?
“Where are we going?” Aaron asked, but he wasn’t sure the words left his mouth or remained a thought.
“Tijuana.”
But I can’t go … Aaron tried to say before everything went black and he slumped in the chair, slid off it and bumped his head on the floor.
He was out before his head bounced once.
Chapter 12
Amber Dijkstra rolled another cigarette with precision and care. Each piece of tobacco mattered, the amount of saliva to close the paper mattered. Too wet, the taste was off. Not enough guts, the smoke was too weak.
Her hands shook because she had decided today would be the day she would tell her boyfriend everything. Her boyfriend was also her pimp. And when he heard what she had to say, Amber wasn’t sure she wanted to know the outcome. That was why she had asked two of her friends to join her as backup.
Ten years working the red light district windows for Sven Spaans and all she ever got was just enough to eat. She had chances in the past to leave this place with several rich clients. One recent client—known as platinum clients—who she had been with half a dozen times over the last year offered her a one-way ticket to London. She could stay in his manor, remain hidden until Sven forgot about her.
But Amber didn’t leave. She loved Sven. Even when he beat her, she loved him. Even when he slept with other girls. How was that any different than all the men she bedded down every day? Of course he needed variety. A man needs variety. Every girl knew that.
She lit the tip of the cigarette, inhaled long and deep, held it, then blew the smoke out into the stale air of the cobblestoned street. In a few hours she was supposed to be in her bikini, dancing in the window half a block up, the red and pink lights making her look ten years younger.
When she spilled her guts to Sven, there would be little chance she’d be dancing tonight. When Sven heard what she had to say, Amber was sure she would end up in the hospital. Unless he didn’t want to touch her. Although he could still beat her with pipes, baseball bats and stones.
Just save the face. All the girls got beat at one time or another, and all the girls knew to save the face. Without the face, you don’t work. Bruises can be covered up. Facial wounds not so much.
The sun beat through patches of clouds roaming across the Amsterdam sky, warming her, then leaving her in the shade. A soft breeze rose up off the canal, moving the cigarette’s smoke away and replacing it with a stench of urine and feces. At times, when the wind was just right, the canal reeked worse than an unwashed commode. Or maybe that was her impression of the city that had slowly eroded her, worked her will to live through a meat grinder and spat out an Amber hamburger of an existence. She wasn’t worth much anymore. There was nothing left. Used and abused. The new girls coming up were pert, young, with tits that hadn’t been affected by age or gravity. Soon Amber would only be catering to the creeps, the weirdos and the fetish crowd.
But she used to be a somebody. A painter, an artist. At seventeen, stars in her youthful eyes, she thought she’d be famous one day like Van Gogh. Sven assured her of her success when they met. A little party here, a little party there and suddenly she was doing too many drugs and having too much sex.
She forgets how, but by eighteen she was in the red-lit window, dancing in a tiny bikini, watching the tourists gawk at her, every fifteen minutes a customer entering the door, negotiating a price to use her body.
Sven explained that to be an artist on a world stage, they had to save money. She could make so much more doing what she did. More than he could ever make working a canal tour boat.
For the love, for the art, for Sven, she had agreed. It was supposed to be temporary. Six months max. That was a decade ago.
And now she had to quit. She just turned twenty-eight-years old. She was washed up, dangerously thin, the elasticity of her skin gone, and a few teeth missing from a heroin addiction that she never fully kicked.
Sven didn’t love her anymore. She knew that. But after a few years in the trade, what else was there for a used up prostitute?
She dropped the end of the cigarette onto the cobblestone, set her flip flop on it and twisted.
Sven wouldn’t care she was quitting. Business was slow with someone her age. What he would be mad at was why she was quitting.
Especially since he never used a condom with her. He swore he used one with all the other girls, but with her, his one true girlfriend, he never did.
Her HIV test came back positive over a month ago. Afraid to say anything, she had tried to believe it was a false positive.
Yesterday’s test confirmed she had the deadly disease that led to AIDS.
She didn’t feel too guilty about the hundred plus customers visiting from around the world who slept with her in that time. She had been careful, made them wear condoms.
It was Sven she worried about. He came to her almost every day, had sex with her in every way possible and even made her ass bleed a few times.
The likelihood of Sven getting a positive test was so high, she worried that he’d kill her with his huge hands.
She looked out over the canal and wondered why living really mattered anyway if this was all there was to life. Witho
ut hooking, what did she have? What could she do?
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Sven’s number.
“Yeah?” he answered on the second ring. He sounded out of breath.
“It’s Amber.”
“What do you want? I’m fucking busy right now.”
“We need to talk.”
“I’ve got a runner. Stupid bitch took off. They caught her at the airport. I haven’t got time for this.”
“But Sven, we have to talk.”
A car door slammed on his end of the phone. “I’m heading to a meet. My contact is bringing the runner to a warehouse. I have to do this first. Then we can talk.”
“No.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. When he spoke, his tone was tight, firm. “What did you say?”
“I said, no.” Her hand shook so much, the cell phone jerked against her ear. “Where are you now?”
“Where I always park my car. At my apartment.”
“That’s only a few blocks from the window I dance in. Come pick me up. We’ll talk on the way.”
He was quiet a moment. She thought he hung up on her. Then he cleared his throat and coughed into the phone.
“Okay. But be ready. And be ready to handle some blood. The girl we’re picking up is a runner. She won’t walk away from this. Can you handle that?”
“I can stay in the car.”
“I’ll be there in two minutes. Be outside. Be ready or I’m leaving you behind.”
She clicked off her phone and began rolling another cigarette. After two failed attempts because her hands weren’t steady enough, she shoved the tobacco and paper onto the road in front of her, got to her feet, swung her purse with the gun in it over her shoulder and waited for her boyfriend to arrive.
She would let him have his meeting. Locate his runaway girl. When they were done and he was calmer, she would tell him she had contracted HIV. She could do this without her two friends because this was where it ended. She had made her decision.
One bullet to his forehead and one to hers. For all the beatings. Payback for the years Sven tortured and sexually abused her.
It was payback because he took away her dreams.
Sven was a dream stealer and a rapist. And rapists deserved to die. Sometimes faster opposed to slower.
Chapter 13
It was three hours before they returned. The coffee made her bladder scream but she didn’t say anything at first. She was too interested in what they had to say as Dekker entered with uniformed police officers again. This time he toted a box overloaded with file folders.
Everyone took a seat opposite her as Dekker pulled files from the box.
“What’s all this?” Sarah asked.
“You,” Dekker said. “We did our research. We looked into who you really are. But something mystifies us.”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“How is it you’re still alive?”
Sarah shrugged. “Luck.”
“Hmmph,” Dekker muttered under his breath. He dropped the unopened files back inside the box and looked up. “Sarah, we have a situation and we want to ask your help.”
“What? Really?” She snickered. “You’ve got to be kidding. My help? After the way I’ve been treated?”
Dekker nodded.
“You bring me in here and threaten years of imprisonment, claim I’m part of a group of diamond thieves and use the word terrorist in connection with the ITA flight and then ask for my help.”
“You’re right. Forget it.”
Dekker started for the door, the officers following.
The notion struck Sarah that everything Dekker had said and did up until then was a set up. He wanted her help from the beginning but needed to scare her first. They needed to make her pliable.
Before Dekker shut the door, Sarah said, “Wait.”
The door stopped, then started to open again.
“What kind of help?” she asked.
Dekker almost looked like he was going to smile as he stepped back inside the room. He waved the officers away and closed the door.
With his back against the wall, he crossed his arms and placed a foot on the wall.
“There’s a criminal element interested in our red light district. We’ve been working to root them out for years, but it’s never ending.”
“Understandable.”
“We have a few insiders—”
“Like your undercover diamond worker?”
Dekker nodded, not missing a beat. “Like him.”
“Go on.”
“Of the most organized criminal activity in the area, glorified pimps run over seventy percent of the girls in the windows. The girls are legal in the Netherlands. But human trafficking, the victims who aren’t there willingly, is something we’re always fighting.”
“It’s a problem the entire world faces.”
“Right. Well, the Netherlands has been labeled as the top destination of victims of human trafficking and we aim to do everything we can to stop that.”
“What do you need from me?” Sarah asked.
“Your unique history revealed how you dealt with a major organization years ago that operated out of crypts.”
“I remember it clearly. It started in Budapest, then Italy and then to Esztergom, Hungary where Armond Stuart was killed.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Didn’t you chase him throughout the United States as well?”
She nodded, her bladder begging for release.
“The man we’re looking to take down is Sven Spaans. He’s not just a trafficker of women, he is a murderer but we can never gather enough evidence to make a case.”
“How can I be of help?” She held up a finger. “Wait. Before we go any further, I need to use the toilet.”
Dekker pushed off the wall and opened the door. He called for the female officer and ushered her inside.
“Please take Miss Roberts to the toilet and then return her here.” He turned to Sarah. “When you get back, is there anything you need?”
Sarah started for the door. “Another coffee would be good.”
“Done. See you back in five.”
The restrooms were remarkably clean, the white walls sterile looking. The female officer waited outside in the hall. When Sarah was done, and breathing easier as her bladder had ceased its protesting, she was escorted back to the interview room.
A steaming cup of coffee in a proper mug was at her spot. Dekker sat in a chair in the corner.
Once she was seated, the female officer exited the room and closed the door behind her.
Sarah took a sip from her coffee, inhaled the aroma and relaxed as she knew their angle now. It had all been for the deal. She would be released to do some menial task and then she could get that damned black book and leave for Toronto.
And she had to call Aaron to make sure he got her message.
“As I was saying, Sven Spaans is public enemy number one in Amsterdam. Is that how you say it in America?”
“Something like that.”
“We have a meeting set up with him for seventeen hundred hours this afternoon.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Sven has been informed that he has a runner.”
“A runner?”
“Yes, a girl under his control has taken off. According to our contact, someone Sven trusts, this runner was picked up at the airport and released to his care. When they meet at the warehouse at seventeen hundred, the runner is supposed to be handed back to Sven.”
“Who is this runner?” Sarah asked, but suspected that as the role they wanted her to play.
“There is no runner. We want to use you. When Sven swoops in to pick up his runner, we’ll be waiting to nab him.”
“With one look, won’t he realize I never worked for him?”
“He has approximately one thousand girls under his control. He has soldiers who run things for him. His boss is the man we’re really after,
but if we bring Sven in, we are one step closer to the boss.”
“Who’s the boss?”
“A Chinese man who runs torture clubs in Moscow, Athens and Toronto. That’s what sparked our interest as we saw that the Torture Club in Toronto was recently raided. When I called Detective Marina Diner, the name you gave us, we heard you were responsible for ceasing their operations recently.”
