An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  ‘All right, David, I’ll go through this again. No one at the Bureau knows who you are. I made it clear that I had to do this alone.’ She’d probably have stopped there but she saw a savage look in my eyes, sighed and went on. ‘Once here I reached out for some contract help. Guys who’d worked for us in the past, freelancers.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Contractors, there’s a weasel word if I ever heard one. Contractors. And hey, Delia, who else did the contractors work for?’

  She swallowed nervously. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The CIA? Delia, do these contractors of yours ever work for the fucking Agency?’

  Long pause. ‘It’s possible. These kinds of people are usually ex-military or ex-intelligence, retired or moved on. You know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Thing is, I had a look at Willy Pete’s driver’s license and credit cards. They track back to a place that sure looks like an Agency safe house or letter drop in McLean, Virginia.’

  ‘How did you …’ She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘The question is, how didn’t you? You ran a background on Willy Pete, how come you didn’t have him in McLean?’

  Now it was Delia’s turn to stand up and pace. ‘We don’t poke our noses into Agency business or the reverse.’

  ‘Great. Great. Fucking brilliant. Contractors work for money not loyalty, and who has more cash to throw around, Delia, the FBI or the fucking CIA?’

  I drank some more but when I closed my eyes I still saw a shiny blade going too slowly into bare flesh.

  ‘I am so tired, Delia, just fucking tired.’

  She sat beside me and put a hand on mine. ‘I know, David.’

  Now I really wanted to cry.

  ‘Here’s where we are,’ I said after a while. ‘The Ontario Crew and probably the CIA by extension know why you’re here. They have figured out – not too hard to do – that I am your operative. They can’t kill you, even the CIA doesn’t kill FBI legats, but they can sure as hell kill me. The only question left is whether the Agency has already blown a big hole in my real identity.’

  Delia didn’t argue. There was nothing to argue about.

  ‘Why would the Agency tolerate let alone support Daniel Isaac stealing art?’ I asked, not expecting an answer.

  Delia shrugged. I’d never seen her so on the defensive. ‘Arms deals and the Agency go hand in hand. Over the years Isaa— US Person One – will have done favors. You know, like, we need to get some shoulder-fired missiles to this group in that country which we can’t officially support. The weapons are delivered and the Agency owes US Person One a favor. Multiply that over decades. A lot of favors, a lot of investment in that relationship.’

  ‘Not to mention what Isaac knows and could tell a Congressional committee or the Washington Post,’ I interjected.

  ‘Yes. That, too.’

  ‘So the Agency did the math differently from you. They decided it was best to let the crazy old man have his painting if he’d go quietly to the grave soon thereafter.’

  There followed a period of silence, both of us in our own heads running scenarios. From the length of the silence it was clear neither of us had any brilliant ideas.

  After a while Delia said, ‘I can go to the embassy and talk to the resident … the local CIA chief. Maybe—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble our friendly, neighborhood spooks. That’s not going to be helpful with your career.’

  ‘David, this is not about my career.’

  ‘The hell it’s not. I’m invested in your career, Delia. You know? As much as I’m not a fan of you showing up at random times to get me in trouble, you’re the only Feeb I know. You are the only person on earth who I could call as a character witness if I’m ever popped. Not that I would, it’s just … I don’t know, D. Maybe I just need there to be one person who knows that …’ I couldn’t complete that sentence. It was too needy and vulnerable and all those things big, tough, macho guys like me don’t do. Especially when we are already millimeters away from weeping.

  Her expression was somewhere between gratified and worried.

  Delia’s brief physical contact was all that was allowed within the bounds of our relationship, so I didn’t grab her and look deep into her eyes, but I did stand up and move close to her because I wanted to tell her something I needed to say that transcended whatever our official roles were within this odd quasi-friendship.

  ‘Listen to me, FBI lady. I know what I am, and what you are, and we both know there’s no good reason for you to trust me. But I trust you. And I am telling you, without anything to back it up, that in this, this one thing, you can trust me: I will always protect you. If I go down, if I get caught, I will not take you down with me.’

  We had a lovely, unguarded moment, just the law enforcer and the lawbreaker, and I could have sworn there were tears in her eyes, but that must have been a trick of the lighting. I’m pretty sure the Bureau doesn’t issue tear ducts to its agents.

  And anyway, enough emotion. Enough self-pity. I wasn’t going to be scared off by some piece of shit like Willy Pete. Fuck him, fuck Isaac, fuck the CIA, fuck Sarip and Hangwoman and anyone else who wanted to hurt me. I was going to pull off a heist right under their noses.

  But I had less than a full day now.

  Tick-tock.

  And the guy who was going to help me was dead in an alley.

  I left Delia’s hotel staying well clear of alleys, pulled out my phone and texted Milan and Madalena.

  Hey M&M. Do either of you know how to operate a small boat?

  NINETEEN

  ‘I want to be absolutely straight with the two of you.’

  Madalena Azevedo, Milan Smit and I were crammed together into the bathroom of their room at the Amrath hotel.

  Why the bathroom? Because it was not near a window, and I had made sure that none of us was carrying, holding or wearing any device capable of recording, and because with the shower running the water would confound any listening device.

  Paranoid? My guy Ian had eaten a stiletto. The Dutch forensics people were probably still examining his body.

  I leaned against one wall, uncomfortable with a towel rack in my back. Madalena sat on the (closed) toilet seat. Milan was against the closed door.

  ‘What is it you wish of us?’ Madalena asked. Her English improved when she wasn’t furiously cursing me.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to give you the big picture because then you’d be culpable.’ Puzzled looks. ‘Then you would know what was going on which would mean you could be charged with being part of something worse than simply following orders I was paying you to follow. Understand?’

  Slow nods. Milan’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Paying?’ Milan echoed.

  I smiled. I drew an envelope from my pocket and handed it to Madalena. ‘That is five thousand euros. That’s yours. But if you do what I ask you to do, and if I am successful in executing my plan – a plan, I emphasize, that you know nothing about – the payoff won’t be five thousand. It won’t even be fifty thousand. I am putting you in some jeopardy and I don’t use people without offering a substantial incentive.’

  I let the suspense build and watched the looks flitting back and forth between M&M.

  ‘If all goes as planned, if I succeed and you’ve done your part, I will put a quarter of a million euros in an offshore bank account in your names.’

  ‘A quarter of … two hundred and fifty thousand euros?’ Milan didn’t whistle appreciatively, but the whistle was implied.

  ‘You could live for at least five years on that. Hell, if you decided to get out of Europe that would buy you a nice apartment somewhere with white beaches and water the temperature of a bath.’

  ‘And what is it we must do for you?’ Madalena demanded, suspicious girl.

  ‘You, Madalena, must simply carry a mobile phone around to various tourist spots, starting around three p.m. The flower market, the homomonument, the A’Dam lookout. I have a list. You follow that list. A
t a specified time you will make phone calls to numbers I’ll give you, businesses, just stay on the phone for at least a minute. Doesn’t matter what you say, ask about their stock or whatever. Then, you’ll meet me near the Waterstones bookstore – the specifics are on the list – and you’ll give me back the phone. That’s it.’

  They both shifted uncomfortably, possibly because the humidity in the bathroom with the faucets going full-on was edging into the Mississippi range. But more likely because they could tell from the context that whatever was going on here it was some serious business.

  ‘And the golden Führer?’ Madalena asked.

  ‘That object will meet with an unfortunate fate, I promise you that,’ I said, putting on the smug expression I wear when I want someone to think I’ve figured everything out, but I haven’t. Yet.

  ‘And me?’ Milan asked.

  ‘You will get into a boat I’ve arranged for. You’ll be at a spot I name and you’ll catch a package I’ll give you.’

  ‘Is it drugs?’

  ‘No. It will be a black nylon zippered art bag.’

  I badly needed them to agree. I had lost Ian who was to perform Milan’s part of the exercise, and I had nowhere else to turn aside from Chante, and I resisted that idea. I might not love Chante but she had never been in the life and these two had been. In the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy had impressed – legal kidnapping – men who had at any time earned a living from the sea and forced them to serve about his majesty’s ships. In that analogy Chante had never made a living from crime. She was not in that brotherhood, Milan and Madalena were.

  ‘And then?’ Milan pressed.

  ‘Then you will follow a path I’ll lay out for you. There will be some switching of boats, some tying off in specific locations, and a bit of work with another phone.’

  ‘And you won’t tell us what this is about?’

  ‘No. I’ll only tell you that no one will be physically hurt. No one dies. It doesn’t involve drugs or human trafficking. That’s it.’

  Madalena said, ‘We must talk. Without you.’

  ‘I’ll step out.’

  I exited the bathroom and stood staring, waiting and feeling helpless, in their hotel room. I could not hear words, just tones of voice. Those muffled tones told me that the answer was not an automatic ‘no.’ They weren’t yelling. No, they were discussing the possibility of bargaining.

  One of them knocked three times on the door and I went back in.

  ‘OK,’ Madalena said, speaking for both of them. ‘But two hundred and fifty is not enough.’

  ‘Oh? What would be enough?’ That they might bargain for more money was not a surprise, it was a victory. I sternly avoided any sign of relief.

  Madalena shrugged.

  ‘OK, OK,’ I said with a rueful sigh. ‘I can go another fifty.’

  In the end we settled on three hundred and fifty large. Not the kind of money Isaac was offering the Ontario Crew, but generous enough that I felt a little less bad about dragging them into this.

  ‘But can we trust you?’ Madalena demanded.

  ‘Believe it or not, you can. But if you need more reassurance just remember: you’re on the bottom of this totem pole, and when it comes to making deals with the police the bottom rolls over on the top, not the other way around. You know my name.’ Well, kind of. ‘I’m trusting you to do exactly what I ask. Exactly. I’m trusting you to take the money and never speak of me or this again. Ever.’

  And that was largely true, dammit: they could burn David Mitre. But for a former prostitute and a low-rent conman they seemed sincere. And later when they realized what they’d been part of they would be quite happy to keep their mouths shut and spend the money.

  Still. I didn’t like it. Not even a little bit. But there it was, and when you have no choice you do what you have to do.

  We spent the rest of the morning in that bathroom with the tile walls sweating, going over my lists again and again until they’d both become tired of the repetitions and could do it all by heart.

  The lists themselves were a problem, but I gave them explicit instructions as to how to handle that. As each item was performed they were to tear off that part of the list and burn it or swallow it.

  I was improvising. And hoping. And not liking it at all. If I were being sensible I’d call off the whole caper. But when has an artist ever been guided by good sense? Also: Willy Pete had killed my guy, I’d be damned if he was going to get his fifty million.

  I felt weird, like I was floating untethered, and I couldn’t tell whether I was flying or falling.

  TWENTY

  R-Day. As in ‘R’ for Rijksmuseum?

  Or should it be, V-Day, as in Vermeer?

  I woke up early with frayed nerves from a rapidly fading dream, sat in bed without so much as a cup of coffee and went over my plan. Again.

  This was the day when it would all work or all fail. I had lost my number two, my guy. Poor bastard Ian. Maybe there really was a heaven in which case I had no doubt that Ian would show up at the Pearly Gates dressed as a priest. Not sure if that would be helpful or not. Maybe St Peter had a sense of humor and a soft spot for losers.

  My nerves settled as I went over the beats of the day’s planned events. The plan was solid. The moving parts were moving – I opened a confirmation email from the flash mob folks. They had received their props and knew what to do.

  I had all the toys I needed, all my purchases and my DIY package and my AirBnBs with their respective Wi-Fi access codes. I had my disguises and my toys and my wheelchair. I had the accounts and the shell companies. The audio I’d recorded with a voice synthesizer was edited and loaded up.

  I’m usually calm going into a job – fear doesn’t help. Nerves are fine, but only so long as they don’t mutate into fear. What was the old Frank Herbert bit from Dune?

  I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

  Rather dramatic that, but true enough.

  I put it out of my mind. No, that’s a lie. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I’m a writer as well as other things, and writers tend to have excellent imaginations. There is nothing quite like a professional-grade imagination to find the worst possible outcomes to play over and over on the movie screen in your head.

  Prison. Yes, that was not a good outcome. If I ever went in I might never come back out. The Dutch would convict me, make me serve my time in the Netherlands, then extradite me to the States. In a very few hours I could be wearing handcuffs and frantically considering means of escape from prison.

  Then there was the Ontario Crew. How long would it take them to discover that someone had beaten them to the Vermeer? Presumably they’d find out when everyone else did. And then what? They were salivating over a fifty-million-dollar payday and would not be happy at losing out.

  The day was long and I had nothing to do. I tried to write but that was not happening. I tried to think about the Waterstones panel but why bother? Go-time was four thirty and I had nothing to do but fidget.

  Until the doorbell rang.

  In the catalog of sounds no fugitive is ever going to enjoy, an unexpected knock on the door was right up there with the sound of car doors slamming outside your home at night.

  ‘Can you get that, Chante?’ No answer. Of course.

  So I walked on rubber legs and peeked through the peephole – quickly, because a person on the other side of the door can tell when someone is looking through a peephole and if that person was Willy Pete that peephole could be enlarged by a bullet passing through.

  It was not Willy Pete. It was the other face I didn’t want to see. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, plastered on my befuddled half-smile, and opened the door.

  ‘Lieutenant Sarip,’ I said, frowning my surprise. ‘I hope you’ve come with good news. Have you arrested the assholes who beat me up?’

  ‘Mr Mitre. You will remember Sergeant DeKuyper.’

  ‘Of course.’


  ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Sure, sure. Chante! Can you put some coffee on? Or would you prefer tea, Lieutenant and Sergeant?’

  Chante emerged from her bedroom looking annoyed, took in the tableau and for once didn’t argue but went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  ‘My personal assistant,’ I explained.

  I sat. They sat. The coffee table separated us.

  ‘I must confess we have not yet arrested your assailants,’ Sarip said.

  ‘Oh. Then …’

  Sarip nodded at DeKuyper and she drew an iPad from her bag. She fiddled a bit as my blood slowly congealed in my arteries. Then she set the iPad on the table and there in full color, high definition, lay an Irishman soaking in his own blood.

  I recoiled. ‘Jesus! What is that? Is that … is that a dead person?’

  Chante interrupted with a plate of cookies. ‘Tea and coffee are coming.’

  Sarip nodded at Chante and I saw a look of distaste on Chante’s face. Good: she didn’t like Sarip. Much better than if she’d taken a shine to him.

  DeKuyper swiped to a second shot. Then a third, a grisly close-up.

  I looked away, not needing to pretend distress. Ian looked so broken, so undignified with his legs splayed and his head sideways as if staring at his own life’s blood. ‘Why are you showing me this? What the hell, Lieutenant?’

  ‘This man was stabbed – fatally – in De Wallen last night.’

  ‘I’m sorry for his family but what the hell does it have to do with me?’ Calculated, calibrated anger, even belligerence. That was the right play now.

  ‘Do you recognize him?’ DeKuyper asked and swiped to a close-up of Ian’s face in a very different setting. In this shot he was framed against a stainless-steel table. This was a shot taken in the morgue.

  ‘Recognize him? Is he someone famous?’

  ‘Please take a close look, I know it is distressing,’ Sarip said smoothly. ‘But please, take a second look.’

  He wanted to see my expression. He was looking for a reveal. Like I was an amateur. I screwed my face into a wince and with an expression full of disgust and growing anger, looked again at the face I knew.