Choke Point

by Ridley Pearson

  “Yeah, okay.” Tommy knows the rules.

  “So we’re good?” A loaded question.

  “You’re saying you’re not coming to see me.”

  The question hangs over Knox like an executioner’s blade. He can’t speak. Who’s the child now? Knox resents the responsibility for Tommy even as he moves to meet it.

  “Take care, Johnny.” It comes out as a memorized line.

  Grace enters the Netherlands on her own passport. One of the fallouts from 9/11 for companies like Rutherford Risk is the difficulty in forging identities. It can still be done, she knows, but it’s expensive and time consuming. It has been two weeks since Dulwich offered her the work. Two extremely busy weeks of conference calls with Dulwich and Knox, and Knox alone; CV creation and corresponding background support so that by the time she hands the hotel desk clerk her European Union business card everything will check out. Not exactly a new identity, but a solid academic and employment record that will hold up under all but the most intense and high-level scrutiny.

  She is dressed in a conservative gray suit with low black heels. It was bought off a used-clothing rack in Hong Kong specifically for the slight fraying of both sleeve cuffs. She wears the worn, tired expression of an overtraveled low-level bureaucrat. At hotel registration her speech is clipped, but polite, and she displays a road warrior’s knowledge of everything expected of her: passport, credit card, business card, signature. She waves off the bellman and hauls her roll-aboard to the elevator, barely lifting her eyes as she punches her floor number.

  Once into her room, she unpacks, maintaining the routine of an experienced traveler. Her mobile alerts her to an e-mail with an attachment she’d rather open on her laptop, so she takes a minute to set up her traveling office. Chargers, wires, the laptop with a Bluetooth mouse. She carries a data/Wi-Fi device that goes on the desk as well. The encryption between the laptop, the data device and the cell network requires a piece of USB hardware, the software equivalent of a tempered stainless-steel lock. Three passwords later, she’s into her corporate mail and is downloading a PDF sent by Dulwich—which turns out to be a scanned copy of an Amsterdam police report. The existence of the report should have been good news, for it signals Dulwich’s having established a local police contact for her and Knox. But it’s anything but.

  She responds to her situation physically—an elevated heart rate, sweaty palms. This assignment is important, if not critical. Her moment has arrived; she intends to capitalize on it. Brian Primer will not be sorry he approved her participation.

  Grace’s Dutch is better spoken than written and read. It’s true of her Italian, Russian and Arabic as well. But she’s fluent in German and finds it useful as she attempts to decipher the police report.

  An Egyptian-born male, one Kahil Fahiz, thirty-two, was the victim of a mugging/robbery just west of the central district. He sustained multiple minor injuries and lacerations, was treated at a hospital as an outpatient and was discharged. On the surface it looks common enough. But for Grace, it is a minor shot of adrenaline. She reviews the initial newspaper article, skimming it for a name that’s echoing around her head. Finds it:

  Kabril Fahiz.

  Sonia Pangarkar’s article quotes a Kabril Fahiz, a local merchant who took a dim view of child labor sweatshops in his neighborhood.

  Kahil . . . Kabril.

  She places a call using the laptop.

  “Have you opened it yet?” she asks Knox over the VPN’s voice-to-Internet protocol software. As he speaks on his mobile, it is conceivable Knox’s end of the conversation might be eavesdropped on. Not so for her. In a perfect world they would both be on the VPN.

  “The police report? I have. My written Dutch is a little lacking.”

  “It’s the victim’s statement, short as it is, that interests me—us. That, and his family name of course.”

  “Okay,” Knox says.

  “It states that they beat him and robbed him. But at the end of the beating, one of them said something in Farsi along the lines of: ‘That’ll teach you to open your mouth.’ The victim said he spent hours trying to figure out what he might’ve said and when he might’ve said it, but came up blank.”

  “We all say things we later regret.”

  “No . . . it is not that. Not in this case. The sergeant filing the report made an interesting observation. Entirely speculative, but important to us.”

  “Okay?”

  “Kabril Fahiz,” she says, emphasizing the second syllable, “the man Pangarkar interviewed for her story, is from the same neighborhood—Oud-West—and is the same approximate age as the victim, Kahil Fahiz, the one they assaulted.”

  “These apes go asking around intending to pound this guy who’s speaking to reporters into a different postal code—”

  “But they mispronounce his name. Kabril and Kahil—an easy mistake to make.”

  “They beat up the wrong guy,” Knox said, speculating. “I like the way you think. Have I told you that?”

  “It wasn’t me, it was the police. It is speculation. You’re jet-lagged. Stay on point.”

  “They got the wrong guy. Mixed up the names. Listen, I get it!”

  “Avoided using a car bomb this time because they didn’t want the assault connected back to the earlier murder. To the newspaper article. But the police made that connection. The police report suggests a follow-up on all of Pangarkar’s sources mentioned in the article. They will have sent them to ground, John. Protect them from the possibility of more reprisals.”

  “That won’t help us. Is there contact info in the report?”

  “There is.”

  “You should interview Fahiz.”

  “Who do you think you are dealing with?” She hears herself slip into her Chinese dialect—she sounds like her mother!—and resents Knox for triggering her anger.

  She resents a great deal about John Knox—his singular focus, his single-mindedness. The arrogance. Theirs is an evolving relationship. She imagines this is what an older brother would feel like—a combination of love, hate, respect, embarrassment. Together, they wander a no-man’s-land booby-trapped with buried mines of sexual innuendo but lacking the chemistry to go along with it. He is at once fascinating and intriguing, boorish and disagreeable.

  “If you go talking to . . . well . . . you know how I feel about it.”

  He had objected vehemently to Dulwich’s plan for Grace to take the cover of a low-level EU bureaucrat arriving to replace the victim of the car bombing. Dulwich believed it not only gave her an excuse to follow in Pangarkar’s footsteps, but that it also might “attract the bee to the pollen.” Dulwich showed little concern over using her as bait—a gamble given her increased importance to Primer. For Dulwich, it’s all about efficiency—getting the most out of his assets to reach the endpoint the quickest. He would argue that that included suffering the least collateral damage. But the way he stages an operation often runs contrary to that objective.

  “I don’t need hand-holding,” she claims.

  “Just make sure to keep the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature turned on. I want you on a leash.”

  She pulls the phone quickly from her ear not wanting him to hear her laugh. She knows he’d rather be shopping in Marrakesh than pursuing a bomber in Amsterdam, knows that for him this is about his brother—always will be. Senses there is residual guilt there, but has never heard Tommy’s full story. It bothers her that he has coaxed more out of her than she has from him.

  “And you?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he says.

  “Who said I was worried?”

  Knox has never been in a newsroom before. His only impressions are from the movies—the noise, the confusion of dozens of reporters in small cubicles, phones ringing, pages running up and down aisles. About the only thing that matches with the image now in front of him is the glass wall at the end of the room beyond which are the offices of various editors, including the editor in chief. It’s quiet, subdued, many of the cubicle
s empty. It has to do with the world economy, the state of the newspaper business. If once this newsroom thrived, it does no longer.

  “Emily Prager?”

  The woman who looks up at him is tired and needs to wash her hair. A package of nicotine gum rests by her keyboard, along with a blue spongy ball and a black hair tie.

  He introduces himself as John Steele, the freelance photographer who called looking for Sonia Pangarkar. The receptionist told him where to find her. “You said you might be able to help me find her.”

  “I did not expect a visit.”

  “I can be impulsive.”

  “I told you: she’s not coming into work right now. She’s taken a leave. I’m sorry.”

  “A leave, or on holiday?”

  “She and Mark had a falling out. Our city editor.”

  “Over?”

  “Not for me to say.” Her eyes tell him she’s uncomfortable speaking to him here. “You’ll need to take that up with her.”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Please.”

  She lowers her voice as her eyes appraise him. “Sonia is sometimes a little too independent—a little too creative for Mark.”

  “The sweatshop article. The girl. That’s exactly why I’m here.”

  “She was assigned a piece on medical care. It’s not exactly what she filed.”

  “But a strong piece just the same.”

  “But Mark . . . he writes the paychecks. He knows what he wants. He and Sonia . . . believe me, they have both benefited from the other, but it is push and pull with them. Right now, Mark is pushing. So is Sonia. So, her leave of absence.”

  “The car bombing didn’t carry her byline.” Knox had a crash course in journalism over the phone with a friend at the Detroit Free Press. He hopes to hell he has his lexicon straight. He feels he’s inching closer to something, doesn’t want to give himself away.

  “No.”

  “And that upset her.”

  Emily Prager’s consternation gives way. “There’s a Starbucks on the corner. Ten minutes.”

  After twelve minutes he’s beginning to worry, but she arrives soon thereafter, a sweater around her shoulders. She orders a coffee and waits for it, and joins him at a small table. The place is jumping. The streets are busy.

  “Look,” she says, “it’s not like I have a lot to say to you.”

  “Yet here we are.”

  “I Googled your work. It’s good. You’re good.”

  Dulwich and the Hong Kong office have made John Steele credible. “Her phone number?”

  She appraises him. “I don’t think so.”

  “You could text her for me. Let her know I’d like to meet with her.”

  “I could, but I won’t. Sonia doesn’t need a photographer, she needs time away. This story got to her. It happens.”

  “Good photographs carry a story,” he says. “From the moment I read her piece . . .” He shakes his head. “You could just let her know I’m available.”

  “I can’t get involved.” Again, she studies his face. This time her expression softens. “There is a café on the corner of Paleisstraat and Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. Southwest corner, close by to the tram stop. I forget the name of it. We have met there several times. Couches. Lamps. More like a home than these Starbucks,” she says. “She favors it.”

  “I’ll give you my number.” He pulls out a business card for John Steele, circles the mobile number in pen, and passes her the card. He compliments himself for having the cards made. Best thirty euros he’s spent.

  “I won’t,” she says.

  “You might.”

  “It’s personal for her. For Sonia. There was a niece, I believe it was. It’s a mistake to allow that into your stories. Mark knows that. Sonia should. But that’s the thing about the personal—it creeps in, and you don’t see it for what it is.”

  Knox thinks about Tommy, and his heart is heavy. “A niece.”

  “In India. Similar circumstances.”

  Knox senses her reluctance. Isn’t going to push. Similar circumstances. The words swim around.

  He says, “She’s going to freelance the story.”

  “It happens.”

  “And the paper?”

  “Mark won’t like it. He’ll throw a fit. But in the end, Sonia will win. Sonia always wins. She’s very, very good. A reporter like her comes around only a few times a generation. The language skills. The people skills. Aggressive to the point of dangerous. To herself. To others. She is pretty enough for television, but has not given into it fully yet. She dabbles, for her own amusement. She is still a writer first.” She drinks the coffee, her eyes searching him over the rim expectantly.

  She looks like she’s beginning to enjoy this.

  “It’s a compelling story,” he says. “Child labor. Poor working conditions. Impoverished neighborhoods. Unwanted immigrants. Why would an editor turn away from that?”

  “The neighborhoods are not impoverished, Mr. Steele. Amsterdam is a city of immigrants—but only for the past three centuries. Do your research! Mark got a story he didn’t ask for. It’s as simple as that. He’s a control freak. If he assigns the story, it has value. If it’s brought to him in a meeting and discussed, it has value. If it shows up in his in-box unassigned . . .”

  “What editor can work that way?”

  “Now you’re sounding like Sonia.”

  “You have my card.”

  She fingers it, flicking the corner. “Yes.”

  Grace doesn’t know if it’s her being Chinese, or the EU credentials, but no one at the health clinic attempts to stonewall her. She asks for and is given a printout of the emergency admission records for Kahil Fahiz. It goes too easily, a rarity. She commits the home address to memory, along with a mobile number. A few minutes later, she has entered them both into her phone. Without Sonia Pangarkar’s tendency toward graphic journalism she would not have known the hospital. But now all that’s left is navigating her way through a busy city, finding bridges across canals, and wending her way toward the address.

  When mapped, Amsterdam sits like the left half of a bike wheel with crepe paper woven through the spokes; the crepe paper is the canals, with Centraal Station as the wheel’s hub. Over the centuries, the city has expanded ever outward from the thirty blocks of its central historic district—devoted entirely to tourism, the canals lined with picturesque three-story Dutch timber and Tudor houses—to a postwar district of nearly identical brick and white-trim apartment complexes. These outer neighborhoods, all identical, stretch for miles in every direction.

  Grace double-checks not only the building number, but the street name. The architecture and street layout are so homogeneous as to be dizzying.

  No one answers her repeated tries on the Fahizes’ door. The first hiccup. She tries the phone number but gets voice mail in Farsi. She understands this. She imagines no matter how many times she called, it would go to voice mail. The victim of a beating, Fahiz will strive to remain as anonymous and invisible as possible. Because of this, she has her work cut out for her. But a person has to work.

  The third neighbor she tries cringes at the mention of Fahiz’s name; a reaction to his face following the beating, or his personality? She tells Grace of a shisha café, La Tertulia, that Fahiz frequents. How this woman knows this, or whether it’s accurate, is anybody’s guess. She asks directions, thanks the woman and heads off. She pauses at the bottom of the stairs; the neighbor is still watching her. There seems to be a question hanging between them—as if Grace forgot to ask this woman something. It’s a strange and haunting feeling, and she can’t shake it for the entire walk to the café.

  La Tertulia is located on the ground floor of a brownstone. The smell of cannabis overwhelms as Grace enters, despite what are supposed to be vaporless pipes. New Age murals cover the walls—whales in blue oceans—with cannabis plants spreading above the couches and opium beds that proliferate. It’s a pot shop primar
ily aimed at tourists, but there appear to be locals in residence as well, some of whom are of Middle Eastern descent and are smoking tobacco, not cannabis, from hookahs. The piped-in music reminds Grace of massage spas. A waitress with three studs in her lower lip and blue dye streaking her dark hair waves Grace toward a beanbag.

  She thanks the girl, speaking Dutch, but heads directly to two men in the corner, one of whom has a face like a punching bag.

  “Mr. Fahiz?” She speaks English first.

  Fahiz looks up at her with mild interest. He has sleepy, dark eyes, a heavy shadow of beard, expressive thick eyebrows and a full head of hair. He’s easily seventy years old.

  Not the man described in Sonia Pangarkar’s article.

  Not by a long shot.

  Knox walks along the avenue, Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, beneath an oppressive quicksilver marine layer that makes everyone look small, the tram and cabs toylike. The only relief to the impervious gray comes in the form of an occasional umbrella—of little use against the steady mist. He wears nondescript brown shoes, blue jeans and a tan Scottevest windbreaker with sixteen zippered internal pockets all containing various necessities. A roll of coins to palm in a fistfight. A penlight. A pack of waterproof matches. A pick gun for the occasional locked door. A sewing kit in case he’s wounded. That he blends in is never in question. The Detroit Tigers cap helps to hide his face with its two-day beard and Tunisian tan. He passes a dozen of himself. Keeps his right shoulder to the storefronts to reduce his exposure. Uses reflections off the glass to his advantage.

  The coffee shop is abuzz with conversation as he enters. This is his fifth visit here in as many days and it’s always the same. The crowd is a sprinkling of tourists on top of a foundation of firmly rooted locals. English is spoken as much as Dutch. There is an intensity to the conversation that one doesn’t hear as much in the U.S. The women look masculine in their short haircuts. Only the piercings give them away. Knox is a fan of femininity, and mourns its passing.

  He finds a chair at a table occupied by a young couple, and installs himself. A waitress with a lip stud and midnight purple eye shadow takes his order for an espresso. Knox pulls out his mobile—an iPhone on a prepaid SIM—and sends a text across the room. Of the twenty or so in the café, twenty or so have their phones out. Including Sonia.