Sun of the Sleepless

by Patrick Horne

  Taking in the surroundings, Rey could not help but immediately notice the brightly marked Volkswagen Touareg 4x4 carrying the insignia of the Dutch Politie, its engine idling as it sat parked further along in the middle of a large paved pedestrian area at one of the many entrances to the Ministry of Finance.

  'Are they expecting trouble?'

  Frans shrugged non-committedly, 'They do it all the time. Every minute of every day there is a police presence, the engine running and ready for action.'

  He jerked his head, pointing across to the other side of the road opposite the police car, at a large squat ugly grey building entirely surrounded by a tall black palisade security fence.

  'The American Embassy, I would imagine that they are always expecting trouble, eh?' he chuckled.

  'I guess that rules out direct action then?' Rey wryly smirked.

  'Ha! I have no wish to go down the Butch and Sundance route today! Besides, as you have no doubt worked out, you're here simply to observe and as backup, not to mention that it keeps our chiefs happy, eh?'

  Rey sighed and pull a humorous sneer of discontent, 'I can think of better things to do with my time. Basically this is just an inter-organisational PR stunt and I'm being dragged along for the ride.'

  Frans scoffed at the suggestion and deliberately gazed along the road, causing Rey to look past the embassy building to the plein of Lange Voorhout where he could see the outside rank of brightly coloured market stalls erected that very morning. Various traders were still unpacking items from crates and arranging their wares on their trestle tables.

  'The book fair?' Rey asked matter of factly.

  'Yes, well, it is more of an antique and book fair,' Frans confirmed, 'you might call it a flea-market. It is on every Thursday but gets much bigger in the summer months. Let's wander down and take a closer look.'

  They had crossed the wide road and were standing by the corner of the fencing surrounding the American Embassy. Rey was conscious of the CCTV cameras gawking out from strategic points around the top of the building and was unconsciously shifting to provide as little exposure to them as possible. It was a force of habit rather than risk awareness in the context of their current objective; after all, they were only buying a book from a market stall.

  He surveyed the large square, studded all about with a grove of trees, row upon row creating a pleasant park atmosphere and the whole area ringed in by the elegant homes of former patricians of the city. The market was already bustling even with many traders still unpacking and finalising their set-up, but Rey was indifferent enough to note a large painted black and white wooden sign advertising the presence of The Escher Museum in the Lange Voorhout Palace, a former royal residence dating from the eighteenth century. He briefly considered that he would have to pop in after they had completed their morning's work.

  'That's the girl,' Frans said suddenly.

  Rey followed Frans' gaze and saw a little stall with a yellow and white striped tarpaulin canopy attended by a young red-haired girl in her early twenties. She was reaching into the top box of three large plastic storage containers stacked upon each other, laying out the books that she retrieved across the flat table of her stall and arranging them into assorted groups. He scanned the rest of the market again and suddenly saw something that made him stop and stare.

  'So, Frans, that Sister you had watching our book seller, where did you call her in from?'

  Frans assumed a look of mock surprise, 'Ohh, have you seen somebody you know?'

  A young and striking black woman meandered about the stalls, stopping now and again to examine a piece that apparently took her interest. Her activity was inconspicuous enough; however, the shock of her closely shaven bleached blonde hair made her a notably vibrant figure in the midst of pragmatically dressed vendors and subtly attired shoppers and tourists. She stopped for a moment in front of a jewellery stall and her angelically crowned head bobbed down so that she could look closer at a glass topped box lying before her.

  Akosua; Rey appraised her. He might have to remind her of urban camouflage techniques. She was wearing a pair of shiny tan leather riding boots, what might have been authentic black jodhpurs and a tan retro look leather jacket. It seemed that her one concession to the cold weather was a cream cashmere scarf bundled about her neck like a Palestinian Keffiyeh.

  He guessed that she had the tag reader in her discrete and expensive looking shoulder bag as her clothing was too form-fitting to hide the relatively bulky device. He turned to Frans and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  'Come now Rey,' Frans grinned, 'once I'd called you over there was little your team could do except a bit of training and sitting around waiting. I needed an extra pair of hands and since she is in your team I thought, "who better?" Besides, from your reports she is the best Sister you have, maybe the best out of the Principalities, eh?'

  Rey turned back, unperturbed by the turn of events but clearly a little miffed that Frans had not mentioned it earlier. Frans saw the look and realised that he needed to smooth things over.

  'She wouldn't be doing much with you out of the country and your operations, shall we say, interrupted? I called her not long after I called you.'

  The piqued look remained on Rey's face.

  'She's good, you have trained her well.'

  'It isn't the training,' Rey said, shaking his head, 'she's a natural.'

  Frans took the verbal cue that it was time to move on,'Well, we're all here now, eh?' he consoled, reaching into his pocket and taking out a mobile phone.

  Placing the attached hands-free device into his right ear and wiggling it into place, he pressed a speed-dial and then watched Akosua intently.

  As if she were expecting a call only from a friend to chatter about where they might go out that night, Akosua distractedly reached into her jacket pocket and took out her phone. She glanced at the caller ID screen and flipped the phone open, continuing to gaze at the various jewellery boxes as she had done a moment before. She placed the phone to her ear and after a short conversation flipped it shut and pocketed it before casually wandering from stall to stall, gradually nearing the book seller.

  'The moment of truth, Frans?' Rey asked with a hint of derision.

  Frans simply returned a sly look and then gazed back at the apparently inconsequential scene unfolding for their eyes only.

  Akosua stood before the stall adjacent to the book seller and nonchalantly reached into her shoulder-bag. She then opened it wider and rummaged inside as if hunting for a small item buried at the bottom. She looked up and her gaze scanned the book seller's table as she snapped the bag shut. After a moment she wandered past to the next stall and a table set with antique prints and small water-colours. To anybody else watching, the perfunctory adjustment of her left earring was insignificant, to Frans it meant everything.

  Rey saw the movement and understood that it was a pre-arranged signal.

  'So are we in business?'

  Frans grimaced derisively.

  'The damn girl is not unpacking fast enough. The book is there but not on display, it must still be in one of those containers.'

  'Akosua could just ask for it,' Rey suggested sarcastically, 'it isn't as if she's tying to buy a kilo of explosives.'

  'Hmm, yes,' Frans responded, deliberately ignoring the tone, 'I just didn't want to make it that obvious. You know, the girl may remember a book that is asked for, may go digging, you never know.'

  'Awww, come on Frans, so what if she remembers? She'll remember when we buy it anyway, it'll go in her receipt book, she might think, "Oh that was a good sale, I'll look for another one of those!" Let's just get it and get out! We're way over-playing this.'

  'It is all good training for Akosua, at no extra cost,' Frans said, steadfastly looking ahead.

  He had surreptitiously caught Akosua's eye and immediately brought his left hand up to his face, the thumb placed at the temple and the fingers cupped over his left eye. He could have been rubbing his eyebrow or shielding his
eyes from the sun.

  Akosua immediately looked away and brought up her own left hand and rubbed her forehead just twice with the knuckle of her first finger as it made a ring with her thumb. She had understood Frans' instruction to keep watching the stall and had confirmed it with her own coyly performed 'OK' signal.

  Rey sighed forlornly, 'Right, let's wait and see!'

  Martha Korteweg slipped the handles of her large shopping bag onto her right arm and pulled the lapels of her long winter coat across her chest, the wide wooden rings sliding to the nook of her elbow as she did so. She shrugged her shoulders in a slight shiver to ward off the worst effects of the bone numbing chill of the morning and walked briskly along the expansive tree lined path that paralleled the placid waters of the large Hofvijver pond, the frosted gravel of the wide pedestrian path crunching beneath her low heeled shoes.

  Stretching the full length of the Het Binnenhof parliament buildings, the calm water surface reflected the grand façade in inverted detail, the whole scene providing a picturesque visage of a classical age, now only routinely remembered through the preservation of architecture and tourist postcards, guide tours and pamphlets.

  Without noticeably dispelling the cold, the sun was intermittently shining brightly through breaks in the cloud and as a ray of illumination struck the assorted peaks and spires of the silhouette of roofs, she spotted a large grey heron loftily perched atop the faux crenellation capping one of the towers, the lanky bird resembling a medieval guard standing watch over a fairy-tale castle.

  The vision changed for her as she suddenly remembered walking past this place with her mother as a child. How old was she, maybe nine or ten years? It may have been 1941. Was it October or November? She could not recall, but it must have been around then as she did remember her mother telling her how she should be good or Zwarte Piet would come and carry her off. She had been scared and promised to behave.

  On that occasion the grey figures standing guard were not herons, they were soldiers, soldiers with steel helmets and grey uniforms and the only bird she remembered was the depiction of a stern-faced eagle, its wings spread wide. Martha blinked her eyes to eradicate the memory before it led her to other more traumatic recollections and walked on past the waters.

  She looked across to the opposite side of the wide road, at the bright stalls of the market on the Lange Voorhout Plein, bringing her back to her purpose, immediately focussing and cheering her. She smiled and wondered what she might find today; she hoped that her new acquaintance Gertrude had managed to locate some nice books on art and beauty as she had requested, more, she was keen to know whether they could have an afternoon coffee together. It would give her something to look forward to after a morning spent wandering about the stalls and a generally otiose trip into the shopping district. She looked again and thought that she had spotted her - yes - the red hair. Had she just seen a flash of recognition upon her face? She could not be sure, even though her sight was good for her age she really needed her glasses to see clearly at this distance but she would know soon enough.

  Martha followed the contours of the chicane leading to Korte Voorhout, reached the pedestrian crossing opposite the market and halted. Traffic was so heavy along this road at this time of the morning and people in their cars could be so inconsiderate, always rushing. Those little scooters and mopeds were worst, always ridden so aggressively by youths, girls as well as boys, youngsters without a care in the world and a lifetime of experience to look forward to. She started to cross and reached about halfway before she paused in her thought and slowly turned to look back over her left shoulder at the heron, it was not clear but it seemed that it had gone, flown away to a different time and place.

  Martha turned back to the crossing but only managed to take a couple strides more before her last two split-second moments of consciousness were upon her. In the first instant she imagined that her rib-cage had been viciously squeezed in the grip of a giant hand, violently expelling every breath of air from her lungs. In the second instant she believed that the entire right side of her body had been bludgeoned by a thunderous blast that had smashed the side of her head and crushed her shoulder, her arm, her hip. All sentient thought was extinguished as her palsied body was sent spinning to the ground and then there was nothing, nothing at all.

  The tram driver was jolted to full attention at the sound of a dull thud and for an instant he was transfixed by the grotesque image of a horribly distorted face pressed against the flat glass of the windscreen before it disappeared from view. He jammed the brakes on and sensed the passengers of all three cars being thrown forward, hearing some cries of dismay and some swearing aimed at him; the tram quickly halted but without so much as a screech from the steel wheels on the tracks to indicate the urgency.

  He threw open the little driver's door and leapt from his seat in one motion, jabbing repeatedly at the glowing green 'open' button for the front set of doors. After what seemed an interminable second or two the door opened with a sigh and a clunk and in one bound the driver was down the steps to the road. At that point he simply froze.

  Glancing down he could see what appeared to be a foot in a low heeled shoe, a left foot he judged from the shape of the sole, poking out from immediately below the side of the nose of the tram. The foot was partially attached to what could have been a long rolled cut of meat straight from the butcher's block but, oddly, swathed in a stocking. It was only partially attached because the blunt lower edge of the metal bodywork on the right side of the tram had managed to gouge through the flesh and some of the bone and the fresh meat dripped blood freely.

  The driver slowly placed his palm against the side of the tram and indecisively peeped around the corner to the front. He could see a large bundle of something or other, maybe rags, wrapped up in a long winter coat and wedged under the front of the tram compressed by the large flat metal plate that was supposed to act as the safety plough. The right arm of the coat was splayed out pointing in the direction of the tracks with what seemed like a human hand with rings on the fingers reaching out of it and resting inertly on the cobblestones, just short of the large wooden ring handles of a discarded shopping bag. He crouched slightly and could see more clearly, the lower right limb was scrunched under the left at an awkward angle and poking out of the top of the coat was a mass of intertwined wires, a braided mix of what appeared to be the finest steel and copper threads. It was a confusing sight.

  The driver was suddenly aware of sounds, not from beneath the tram but from right next to him. He heard gasps and murmurs and then felt a shove as he was pushed aside. He saw a man was kneeling down in front of him, touching the coat, the braided wires, crawling down to get under the tram to retrieve the bundle. The driver was affronted, that was his job, he was the tram driver and he would remove the rubbish that had been so recklessly thrown into the street and that had jammed under his tram.

  He made to move but then realised that he could not. He then realised once and for all that it was not a bundle of rags or a bag of rubbish that the tram had bluntly sliced into; the partially severed lower leg, the crushed and lifeless body, the bloody morass of braided hair that covered a contorted and battered face, this was a human being - an old woman.

  Rey had heard and seen the incident first; Frans was absorbed in watching the book seller and keeping a second eye on Akosua's position amongst the stalls. His attention was caught by the sudden movement of heads turning to look in the direction of the parliament buildings, but not at the parliament itself, they were all turning to stare at a tram that had stopped at a pedestrian crossing as it headed away from their position, a tram with a tumult of passengers now spilling out from the doors and milling about in front of it.

  'What?' queried Frans as he turned.

  'I think the tram just hit somebody.'

  Rey squinted as the plangent wailing of a woman rose up above the murmuring coming from the direction of the tram. He was momentarily distracted by the shriek of a siren from his left a
nd he became aware of the heavy revving of an engine. The 4x4 of the police team watching the American Embassy roared passed and within fifty metres had passed the carriages of the tram to quickly pull up and brake to a halt across the tracks, the officers scrambling out to deal with the situation.

  Looking to the book seller, Rey could see that the girl had stopped unpacking and was also staring at the burgeoning scene. He thought that he could sense an anxious exhalation from her as she brought her hands up as if in prayer and cupped them over her nose and mouth as if stifling a sneeze.

  She was now slowly walking around her stall to the pavement alongside the road, still covering her face. She kept moving, taking small steps, then suddenly stopped, exclaiming a winded grunt and choking forward as if she had been punched in the stomach. She launched into a rapid jog and as she neared the crowd milling about the tram, started calling, quietly at first.

  'Mevrouw Korteweg! Mevrouw Korteweg!'

  Akosua had seen the shift in the people of the market, the movement of heads and focus of attention to something that was happening in the road beyond the stalls. From her vantage point she could not see what was happening; just that the book seller had left and that something was going on. She glanced at Frans for a moment and then gazed directly at Rey, her real boss. Although Frans was running this operation, in a time of crisis it was her mentor that she looked to.

  Looking from the emotional girl back to the stall and then scanning for Akosua, Rey caught her gaze. He knew her well enough to see the imploring question burning behind her eyes, eyes that right at that moment looked for consent, eyes that seemed much brighter than usual, especially now that he was looking directly into them and could detect the difference in their shade.

  She was wearing ice blue contact lenses and her irides seemed to luminesce like a cat's eyes. Rey could still tell the meaning of her gaze; she wanted to act, she wanted to go in, check the containers and just grab the book.