An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  DeKuyper had both hands clamped around the wound but blood was oozing between her fingers. Not an artery, she wouldn’t bleed to death, but she wouldn’t be walking out of there, either.

  The rug would be ruined. I’d never get my deposit back.

  I had to shout to make myself heard over the police woman’s furious cursing. ‘Go ahead, Willy: shoot me.’

  ‘You motherfucker!’

  ‘You used to be a soldier, Willy, can you still think like one? You’ve got two men down, including a police woman no less, and my guess is you recruited her less for the heist and more for the surveillance and the getaway. She’s the one who put the button on me and ended up getting my buddy killed. A woman with groceries, that’s good tradecraft, who suspects a woman with groceries, right? But I imagine her larger purpose was to guarantee your safe evacuation, right? Get you past the roadblocks? Now she’s gone from asset to liability. Also, I just fired a gun in central Amsterdam, which is not Chicago where folks might ignore such things. So tick-tock. Grab your two boys and get the fuck out of here. Then you get the fuck out of Amsterdam.’

  My life hung by a thread. If Willy Pete was just a thug he’d blow a hole where my stunted heart beats. I was hoping, in fact betting my life, on Willy still being enough of a soldier to adapt quickly to this sudden reversal of fortune, and enough of a professional criminal to know when to stop digging.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without the Vermeer!’

  ‘Yeah, you are, Willy. Because, here’s the thing, dude: I don’t have the Vermeer.’

  ‘Don’t fucking bullshit me, I was there. I saw you!’

  ‘Yep. You saw me. You chased me. But you missed me, didn’t you? Then, a bit later, you saw me walk out of the Rijks carrying a black nylon art bag and hand it off to my compatriot in a boat. Thing is, though, Willy, I never took the painting. The Vermeer is still in the museum.’

  I stood there with two guns aimed at me. A few pounds of pressure on a trigger and all my cleverness would be reduced to a red mist sprayed on the walls. I had nothing else to say, and the artillery barrage laid down by my pounding heart and my lungs, which had forgotten to breathe, would have made it hard anyway.

  I was dancing right along the tightrope of life, one wrong move, a wrong gesture, a random emotion in Willy’s brain, a sudden noise, anything could push me right off and the story of David Mitre (and Martin DeKuyper) would be all over. Type the three hashtags marking the end of the manuscript, that’s all folks.

  Well, I thought, I can’t say it’s been a good life, but it was interesting.

  ‘You motherfucker,’ Willy said, but no longer as furious. And that was when Willy Pete, professional thief, ex-special forces, surrendered. To me.

  ‘The thing is, Willy, I actually want you – you of all people – to appreciate what I’ve done. I mean, I’m not a professional thief like you, I’m just a fiction writer. But I have re-imagined art theft. I solved the problem of monetizing art theft by re-imagining it,’ dramatic pause, ‘as art extortion.’

  ‘National Lampoon,’ Willy said, sounding deflated. ‘The famous dog cover.’

  I could see that the reference baffled Delia, but I got it and I laughed because Willy, aka Jesus Hippie, had it right.

  ‘Exactly. Buy this magazine or we’ll shoot this dog. You and I both know that any mook can steal the Mona Lisa or Starry Night, but you can’t fence it. You can, however, steal Starry Night and threaten to destroy it.’

  ‘Motherfucker,’ he said for a third time. ‘The video? How did you …’

  ‘I made a copy of the Vermeer. The copy of the painting and a video camera are in a box. A box being moved between various internet nodes. Broadcast for twenty minutes, kill the signal, move the box.’

  ‘Good Opsec,’ he allowed grudgingly.

  ‘It was probably a bit much, but you know how it is, you don’t prepare for the best scenario, you prepare for the worst.’

  We were now having a professional chat. Like a pair of orthodontists discussing the best way to wire up a crooked molar.

  ‘How did you set the flash mob up without leaving a trail?’

  ‘All online, man. Bogus credit card, burner phone.’

  There came the sound of police sirens. Our eyes met. He sighed.

  ‘Well, we best get the fuck out of here.’ With a rueful shake of his head he repeated, ‘Art extortion.’

  ‘It’s my gift to you, Willy, you and the whole Ontario Crew. I’ve just shown you your future. I’ve shown you how to make back that fifty million.’

  Tabasco came staggering back into the room, face red with blood.

  ‘Delacorte is compromised now, she’ll keep her mouth shut. Won’t you, oh so very Special Agent?’

  Delia knew enough to spit contemptuously, but say nothing. I winked at Willy.

  ‘Now, dude, you do need to get the fuck out of here. Walk away. Walk away and tell Isaac to go fuck himself. And as for the Agency and its involvement, leave them to me. They won’t bother you, either. Guaranteed.’

  ‘What about her?’ He jerked his chin at the writhing police woman.

  ‘Who, Sergeant DeKuyper?’ I shrugged. ‘You’re going to take the gun I lifted off Tabasco – sorry, that’s my name for him – and drag his sorry ass outta here and leave DeKuyper, who is going to claim that in the course of fighting a burglar her service weapon accidentally discharged, blowing that nasty hole in her leg. With a bit of luck she’ll get a medal.’

  Chante was at the window. ‘Police.’

  I saw the reflected blue lights on the window glass.

  ‘There’s a back way. Down the stairs till you see a side door. It leads to the gift shop. Kick it in or pick the lock if you’re quick, and leave through the shop.’

  And that was what they did.

  There’s no honor among thieves, but there can be admiration. Willy was a thief, and already the wheels were turning in his brain. He was already imagining stealing the Mona Lisa and threatening to destroy it. He was a pro, and so was I, and neither of us saw much profit in digging this hole any deeper.

  ‘Help Alfonse,’ Willy said to Lisp.

  ‘Alfonse?’ I echoed.

  ‘Yeah, but I think from now on we may have to call him Tabasco.’

  ‘You can’t leave me behind!’ DeKuyper cried, still trying to stem the flow of blood, like the famous little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a dike.

  ‘Stick to the story,’ Willy snapped at her. Then, under his breath, ‘Dirty cops. They’re useful, but they’re still garbage.’

  That, he addressed to me. Then he actually stuck out a hand. ‘Sorry about the guy in the alley. It was supposed to be you.’

  ‘SNAFU,’ I said and shook his hand. It’s military slang I learned while researching a book. Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

  Willy sighed and shook his head. ‘Charlie Foxtrot,’ he answered, which in mil-speak was CF: clusterfuck.

  And with that he and Tabasco and Lisp were gone, leaving me with a bleeding LEO, a tied-up LEO, and Chante who had put the blood-smeared Führer on the kitchen counter and was hastening to untie Delia. I threw a towel over Mr Master Race – none of the bullshit I was frantically spinning in my head accounted for a random Hitler. Yet. But then my always helpful, well, usually helpful, imagination came up with the answer.

  It took the cops a few minutes to get their act together and come storming up, bristling with guns, their heads encased in helmets, their bodies burdened by Kevlar.

  ‘Hey, asshole,’ I said to DeKuyper. ‘You were surveilling me in the course of your duties. You saw me attacked by a crazy woman in a VW Polo. You followed me and as we approached we both heard Chante cry out. We ran up, found Chante beaten and Delia tied up, and there was a struggle. Bang! And the bad guy panicked and took off.’

  The cops banged hard, just like in the movies, and yelled even as they were pulling back the steel door-rammer. I opened the door and was all but buried in fast-moving cops. They were good, very well-trained,
so that by the time Lieutenant Martin Sarip arrived the three of us – Chante, Delia and I – were all face down on the floor and an ambulance had been called for poor Sergeant DeKuyper, injured in the line of duty.

  Sarip knew Delia was FBI and that chilled his jets just a bit. He took us all in, he couldn’t not take us in for questioning, but we were not handcuffed. And at the station they gave us coffee and a plate of stroopwafels, all very friendly. Nevertheless I knew a forensic team would be going over the apartment with a fine-tooth comb. They’d find blood. Eventually they’d discover that some of the blood matched Chante and some matched me and a lot matched Sergeant DeKuyper, and some matched a person unknown.

  But DeKuyper was going to tell my little story and there would be plenty of evidence that was true, the Polo was presumably still in the canal and both Chante and Delia had been struck hard by the guy attempting to rob me.

  Rob me of what? Why, of the golden Hitler, of course.

  There’d been a melee during which time Chante had smashed the burglar with Hitler and DeKuyper had accidentally discharged her weapon while fighting bravely with the thief.

  Like I said: conman, fiction writer, it’s pretty much the same gig.

  THIRTY

  Did Sarip buy the story that Chante, Delia, DeKuyper and I all told? Nah. It rested on too many unlikely elements. But law enforcement officers can only enforce the law – it’s right there in the job title – and the law needs evidence. Four witnesses, including a Dutch police woman and an American FBI agent all told the same tale, and four witnesses beat the hell out of mere gut instinct.

  They questioned us separately. After a few minutes of me recounting the same story, a policeman came in and whispered dramatically in Sarip’s ear. The lieutenant grinned wolfishly and with admirable dramatic flair left the room, only to return two minutes later with the news that Chante had flipped and told them the whole story. If I was hoping for any leniency, now was the time for me to confess.

  It was all credibly performed but I had not just ridden into town on the back of a tulip truck. I didn’t laugh at him; the poor guy had had enough trouble lately. I just repeated my story, the same story Chante and DeKuyper would tell. I worried a bit that Delia might be overcome by some sense of duty, but the thing was that she was under orders not to tell the Dutch anything.

  Sarip let me stew for a while and presumably eyeballed me via the CCTV in the corner of the room. When he returned he had a little surprise for me. He opened an iPad and cued up some video.

  ‘This is from the security cameras at the Rijksmuseum,’ he announced. What he played was an edited supercut of the robbery.

  ‘Some old fart stole the painting?’ I asked in wonderfully convincing surprise.

  I don’t know what he expected. But he nodded to himself, heaved up a sigh and sat back in his chair. It was over and we both knew it. He’d keep investigating, but he’d never get it all. He didn’t even have enough to hold me: I was the victim of a series of shocking crimes, after all: lynched, beaten, roofied and stabbed, shot at and nearly drowned before barely surviving a confrontation with a Nazi burglar. Thank goodness Sergeant DeKuyper had been there to save me!

  ‘You’ve had a very interesting time in Amsterdam,’ Sarip said with a nasty sneer. ‘It’s good that your last visit to this city will be memorable.’

  I did not miss hearing that ‘last’. Interesting, I thought, that in the end I’d found Willy Pete more gracious in defeat than this cop.

  I glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled. Six forty-one a.m. The final broadcast had ended. All that was left now was to find a peaceful, secret moment to check the accounts.

  Well, that and send the final message to the Rijksmuseum.

  ‘I imagine I’ll be leaving Amsterdam soon,’ I said with genuine regret.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You will.’

  And I did. Chante and I packed up our things and I called a taxi to Schiphol. There, in the anonymity of the first-class lounge, I opened my latest phone, downloaded the necessary apps and signed in.

  ‘Jesus!’ I nearly spilled the free lounge Scotch.

  Chante, seated across from me, looked up from her magazine.

  ‘Nothing. I was just checking the stock market.’

  That was related to the truth, in that money was involved. Credit cards, PayPal and sweet, sweet cryptocurrency had swelled my accounts. The largest deposit had come just minutes before the deadline. Five million. But there was more because people are suckers. Or, if you wanted a more charitable take, they were good, decent people who didn’t want to see a priceless work of art destroyed. Those good, decent people together had ponied up just under two million. A bunch of that would be clawed back by the credit-card agencies, but not all. I’d be left with something on the order of six million dollars.

  We flew from Schiphol to Nice, and grabbed a limo to the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo, a very expensive place for rich people to spend their money. A tiny country with a royal family and no pesky intelligence service. Don’t get me wrong, if you steal something in Monte Carlo, the bastards will get you and they won’t waste time doing it. But law enforcement from other countries? Not really made welcome in a country where probably half the money spent came from an offshore account.

  I was poolside enjoying something tall and cool which, frustratingly, was not as good as the cocktail Chante had mixed up, when Delia Delacorte came striding purposefully on her long legs. She took the chaise longue next to mine. We were both dressed, it wasn’t as warm as all that.

  ‘You couldn’t find anyplace nicer for a rendezvous?’ she asked without preliminary. ‘What’s a room go for in this place?’

  ‘Your monthly salary,’ I said. ‘Unless you want a suite.’

  She looked at me. I looked at her. I flagged down a waiter and said, ‘Would you bring us a bottle of the Pol Roger? The Churchill, if you would.’

  ‘OK,’ Delia said. ‘I’m here as instructed.’

  ‘Far from prying eyes and listening microphones,’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So, any news from Amsterdam?’

  She nodded. ‘Why yes, David, there is. It seems that sometime this morning someone using a voice synthesizer called up the Koninklijke Marechaussee and told them the Vermeer was still in the museum. In room 2.8 as it happens. Sitting all by itself in a gray zipper bag, lying flat on the top ledge of a security door.’

  ‘Really? Huh. Interesting.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said dryly. ‘Interesting. It seems Jewess at the Loom never left the building.’

  ‘Just like I told Willy. Well, I’ll be.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ll be something,’ she said, trying for threatening but not getting there because, well, much as she’d have denied it, the woman liked me. Women do. God help the poor creatures, but deep in the heart of even the most upright of women there is a kernel of affection for bad boys.

  ‘So the Vermeer is safe?’ I asked. ‘I don’t mean to sound off-brand, but I’d hate to see it harmed. It’s a good painting.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘many people are of the opinion that Vermeer can produce a good painting. And yes, it is safe. Or as safe as it can be in a world full of people like …’

  She stopped there. I think she intended to say ‘people like Willy’, but since I am (or was) people like Willy she went elliptical. But I wasn’t insulted. I know what I was, what I am, and occasionally I even think about what I might become. Work in progress, as the saying goes.

  ‘Tell you what it looks like to me, Delia. It looks to me like things worked out the way you wanted them to. Isaac wasn’t exposed and the painting stayed where it was. So, well done Agent D.’

  That earned a long sigh.

  The Champagne arrived. The waiter poured. I raised my glass. ‘To Amsterdam. I will miss it.’

  ‘Amsterdam.’

  We sat quietly for a while in companionable silence, casting sidelong glances at a woman on the other side of the pool who might
have been Jennifer Lawrence, but probably wasn’t.

  ‘The Bureau’s forensic accountants are tracking the money,’ Delia said.

  ‘That should be interesting,’ I opined. ‘Who knows what they might find?’

  ‘They think, based on very early estimates, that they’re looking for about nine million dollars.’

  ‘Nine? Nah. I’ll bet it’s less than that. In fact, I’ll bet most of the money will have been shuffled along from one account to another.’

  ‘You’ll bet that, huh?’

  ‘I will. Speaking purely from imagination, you understand, as a fiction writer I mean, I’d guess careful investigation will find that a lot of that money ended up in the political action committees of Congressweasels who have also, over the years, benefited from US Person One’s own campaign contributions.’

  She had not expected that. Her shock was so profound that an entire eyebrow moved a millimeter. ‘That would be … interesting.’

  ‘Indeed! I mean, what if two million dollars – to grab a number out of the air – had made its way over the internet from offshore accounts to most of the defense-friendly and law-enforcement-loving folks in the government? Wouldn’t that just present a dilemma.’

  ‘Two million. Out of … I mean, if you were to speculate.’

  I shrugged. ‘Hmm, this calls for some mighty speculation. But let’s say around seven mill. A lot of people will have ignored the whole “bitcoin-only” instruction and given money on their credit cards. The card companies will claw back most of that. Figure five, five and a half tops. Some of that would have been expenses.’

  ‘Receipts forthcoming no doubt,’ she muttered.

  ‘So I’ll have to do this in my head, but if you started with five and a half, spent a quarter mil on this and that …’ This and that being Madalena and Milan. ‘Then take away two million for political contributions and you’re down to three. Of that I’d speculate that a million might have been spent to compensate a family in Ireland.’

  Sorry, Sam Spade, I know when you made that remark about partners and the requirement to do something you meant, revenge. But revenge is for amateurs, and I am not an amateur. A million to whatever family Ian had was fair trade for a scoundrel.