44
NIC PUT ME IN THE back of a van. He held up a blindfold.
“You asked me to trust you,” I said. “That works both ways.”
“It does. But I’m not going to let you see where we’re going. You don’t need to know. Everything within our group is need-to-know. You get to that point, you’ll be told.”
It wasn’t a bad thing for him to believe he had full control of the situation, so I allowed him to put the blindfold on me.
He said, “I’m going to search you,” and he did, thoroughly. From hairline to throat to belly and below, down to my heels. He was thorough, but he missed the transmitter under my collar. I’d made the choice to keep it alive and broadcasting despite knowing that if he found it he would kill me immediately.
I didn’t fight the search; I told him once it tickled and he ignored me. I heard him go back up to the front of the van, crank the engine, and, with a sway, we pulled back out into traffic.
“Where’re we going? Am I going to see Piet?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to ask, and his bosses? The scarred man and Yasmin might be there. The scarred man would recognize me; I had to assume if he’d taken Lucy he knew my face. I didn’t want to end up tied to a chair like the Turk. But I had to take the risk.
The van drove for a long while; I figured given the number of short, sharp turns that we weren’t heading out of Amsterdam, but rather that Nic was trying to shake off any possible tail. Or confuse me. I wondered if Mila was sticking close to me. I could only hope she had dodged Howell and August. Otherwise I was alone. How on earth had he found us? It had to be the hit on my Peter Samson ID from Nic’s computer guy. He must have been working in the Internet café, perhaps masking his work behind its server. But Howell and August were in Amsterdam, hunting me no doubt, and they’d cornered Nic’s hacker. Which meant Howell might be hot on the trail of Nic’s people, and in that case he’d ruin my chance to find my family.
There is a time on every job where you say, Screw caution. I’m not foolhardy. I’m not stupid. But sometimes you have to be the battering ram. Howell was getting way too close. So my time to find the scarred man was running short.
“I want to tell you how to handle this,” Nic said. “Piet will be there, and so will another man. You don’t need to know his name.”
I realized I was holding my breath. “Okay.” Let the other man please be the scarred man. Please.
“You will tell them exactly how to set up an alternate route.”
“And in return, I get money and work?”
“Yes. But I want you to make Piet look bad. You tell Piet’s boss that you know of Piet through smuggling in Moldova—that you’ve worked the same routes. That Piet sold girls that he moved, along the way, and pocketed the money before delivery. He cheated his clients.”
My guts twisted. “Piet is a human trafficker.”
“Piet is mostly a mover of commodities.” I could practically hear the shrug in Nic’s voice. “Women from Moldova, shipped to Britain and Germany and Israel for the whorehouses. Babies sold to adoptive parents in Italy, brought in from Macedonia and Albania. Mass-produced counterfeit goods, brought in from China to western Europe. It doesn’t much matter. He moves what needs moving.”
A sick tickle feathered the back of my throat as the van stopped. I could smell a tang of fuel, of exhaust, and in the distance I could hear the purr of freeway traffic.
“We’re here, Sam. Showtime,” Nic said. “Do good and I’ll do good by you.”