58
DO YOU KNOW WHERE DE Pijp is?”
“Yes.” It was the same district as the Albert Cuyp Market, where Gregor’s shop was.
“Drive there.” Piet gave me directions and an address and dialed his phone. “Yes. Hello. Listen, I have bad news. The machinists’ shop was compromised. Nic turned on us, he was spying. I have an associate who exposed him.” Great, he was claiming ownership of me. “Nic might have been working for the same employer as the Turk. We were attacked, not by police, possibly by rivals. The twins are dead, our cover shipment lost. What do you want to do?”
This had to be Edward. And Edward would have to summon Piet for a meeting. Then I was set. I’d already killed two of them. I figured, from the video I’d seen, that there were about nine more who could damn Yasmin Zaid as a killer.
Nine targets and Edward. I had no weapons on me and couldn’t have counted on taking any because I would be searched before I was brought anywhere close to Edward’s inner circle. Fine. I would have to start killing them before he saw me, before he recognized me as Lucy Capra’s husband. With what? My bare hands?
Bahjat Zaid wanted them all dead. But Zaid had lied to me, and avoided me, and given this group weapons, if Piet was to be believed, all without telling me. I didn’t like being a pawn. So I didn’t feel that I had to follow his orders to the letter. Grab his daughter and get out was good enough for me. And that alone was going to be a nearly insurmountable challenge.
“We lost the shipments, but my partner says he knows how to get replacements.” He listened. Then said yes three times. He clicked off the phone.
“Where are these shipments we can take over?” he asked.
“You can’t steal a legit shipment,” I said. “You can’t redirect it, not if you want to be sure of total control of it. They could have GPID chips inside for the police to track it. You need to steal from counterfeiters. They can’t run to the police and if they want to try and take you on, you might be able to outgun them.”
“I don’t want to steal in Rotterdam,” he said. “These people could be my customers later.”
I hate people who think long-term. I needed him panicked, not logical. I tented my tongue with my cheek. “We don’t have time—”
“We will have to figure it out. Now. We’re on a deadline. I miss it, Edward will kill us both.”
Well, I was about to ruin his plans. But what if Edward and Yasmin weren’t where we were headed right now? I’d have to continue the charade to get close to them. Where the hell would I find illegal shipments to hijack?
I considered. “The Chinese usually move their billions in counterfeit cigs in stages, shedding shipments in major cities as they move west across Europe.” I drummed a finger against my lip. “So. I think Chinese counterfeits are our best hope. We can grab a shipment, relabel it, hide the goods, and get it on its way to America.”
He was calmer. “What do you need?”
“A team of at least seven, and guns. Silencers. We will need forged papers to replace their shipping manifests with our names in case we are stopped.”
“And how will we find the Chinese shipments?”
“I know a man,” I said. But I hoped I’d have Edward in my grip before I had to make that call.
The house was in a section of De Pijp that was a bit worn and tired.
If I could get the gun from Piet before we were in, I could work through the house, eliminating them. I would be going in blind, though. But better to get the layout, see the faces, then strike. Assuming I got my hands on a gun.
God, I was assuming a lot.
I glanced at the rear mirror. It would have been nice to see Mila pulling up behind us, arms laden with, well, arms. But the street was empty except for two women walking along the sidewalk, carrying their shopping bags.
A man opened the door as we approached, his eyes hidden behind retro-style sunglasses. His mouth was a lush, cruel curl. I tensed. I felt like I was walking into a gas chamber. This was what my life had come to: killing. I wondered what my baby looked like; I wondered what his skin felt like, what it would be like to know the curl of a hand around a father’s finger.
You think the damndest things when you believe you’re really about to die. Like you know you only have so many thoughts left.
The man who had taken my wife and child from me was inside. Waiting.
Piet said, “He’s clean,” but the sunglassed man guided me into the house with a fist in the small of my back and searched me thoroughly, his hand running along my back, my legs, my groin.
Beyond the entryway I could detect a scent of spicy food, of laundry detergent, of sweat. Another man, a blond, stood at the end of the hall. Three to kill. But I would kill them, somehow.
A young woman stepped out next to him. She wore jeans and a faded T-shirt and held a gun. She had brown hair, pulled back. Not Yasmin Zaid. She stared at me with flat eyes. Four to kill.
And on her arm, a nine paired with a sun, stylized. Just like the man in Brooklyn who I’d killed with my bartender’s guide.
I wondered if the guy in shades could smell my fear, my tension. I didn’t want to die. The realization was on me like a weight slamming between my shoulders.
“You’re enjoying this,” I said, as he ran probing fingers up my leg, toward my crotch. “Those are some gifted hands.”
“Shut up. You talk when I say so,” he said in perfect English. Since his fist was close to my groin, I decided silence was the best option. I could see the gun in the back of his pants. Good to know. I’d already decided I’d take the woman’s gun; she was holding it a bit loosely, as though it were more prop than weapon ready to use.
“This is Samson,” Piet said. “He’s all right. He—”
And he didn’t get a chance to finish. The sunglassed man jabbed a hand hard into Piet’s throat. Piet slammed against the wall, choking, and the sunglassed man—probably about six-four, two hundred very solid pounds—said, “I’m not happy with you, Piet.”
Piet—big, tough sword-ninja Piet—started to beg. “Ah, Freddy, please. Please.”
“We all want to know how today went so bad. How Marc and Dirk died.” I guessed those were the twins.
“He can’t answer you if he’s choking to death,” I said. Piet gurgled and brought a bit of color to the dour room, turning a nice shade of robin’s-egg blue.
Freddy shot me a look. “I don’t know you.”
“Marc and Dirk got killed because Nic sold us out,” I said. “Nic’s dead. The revenge is done, if that’s what you’re after. I killed Nic and I’m going to get us some goodies to hide your junk.”
“They were our friends.”
“I’m very sorry. They died standing up.”
He had the same tattoo as the woman, the nine that was partly a sun. It looked very fresh on his forearm.
These guys were Novem Soles? These guys were… nothing. What had they done that ranked a Company file before the London bombing?
Freddy gave me a long, funny look. Piet started to kick the wall. Freddy’s bicep looked like it was hewn from marble. He probably didn’t keep a gun at hand because he could kill you with one blow.
The woman said, “Freddy. Let’s hear what Piet’s come to say.”
Freddy dropped Piet, who coughed and rolled on the dirty floor. I helped him to his feet. I couldn’t get my hands close to his gun, though. And Freddy had a gun out now and had it very close to my temple.
He steered us into a den at the end of the hallway and I thought: here we go, moment of truth.
But it was empty. No Edward. No scarred man. He wasn’t here.
“Edward wanted to talk to us,” Piet said.
“Edward doesn’t talk to people he doesn’t know,” the woman said. She had an odd tone, as though English and Dutch accents had been puréed in a linguistic blender. She was pretty, in a technical sense that proportion and balance were in her features, but she was ugly at the same time. Like the rot in her soul had inched its way to the surface. I disliked her immediately, and intensely.
“That must make his social circle very tiny,” I said.
“Yes.” The woman seemed to be in charge. Freddy wasn’t contributing to class discussion.
“My name is Samson,” I said. “And you are?”
“Demi.” She gestured at chairs. I sat.
“Like the actress?”
“Like the actress. Did you know her name is very popular with Dutch parents?”
“I did not,” I said.
This wasn’t right. They looked like low-level crooks, nothing that could pull off multiple bombings to rid themselves of enemies, or blackmail a corporate titan like Bahjat Zaid. But as my mind flashed across the video images from the Turk’s execution, I felt sure that Freddy and Demi and Piet and the other guy had been among the masked crowd on the tape. I could recognize Freddy’s bulk, the Dutch kid’s slouch, Demi’s crossed-arm stance.
The house was old, and it smelled, and they looked like youngsters playing at gangsters rather than being real criminals. On the TV a SpongeBob cartoon played, muted. I could smell burned popcorn wafting from the kitchen. A disassembled gun lay on the table. Sloppy.
“When’s Edward going to be here?” I said.
“He’s not,” Demi answered. She watched Piet slide into the chair next to me. The blue tint in his face had been replaced by a flushed red. He was pissed.
“What the hell is this?” he yelled.
“Edward said he’s making sure the shipment reaches us okay. He’ll see you when you’ve got the American side of the trip ready. Not before.”
I could hardly ask if Yasmin Zaid was here. “Is this all I have to work with?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are four of you, including Piet. I need more people to grab a shipment.”
“Piet was hired to arrange the shipment. We’re not helping you at all.”
“But we need more people.” I gained nothing by taking down this group; it wasn’t all of them, and Yasmin and Edward weren’t here.
“You don’t get to talk to Edward, or anyone else, until you’ve fixed the cargo problem.”
I glanced around the den; it wasn’t the room where they’d shown Yasmin shooting the Turk. This wasn’t their base of operations. This dump was a backup safe house for them.
I was going to have get Edward’s operation back on track. That was the only way to get him and the whole gang within reach, close enough to kill, close enough to get answers.
No choice. Starting tomorrow, I was going to have to steal a shipment of cigarettes from gun-toting Chinese smugglers to give me the man I was hunting.
Lucky me.