66
I DID A SEARCH on the van’s GPS monitor, entering in the name Roger Cadet. Mila had said that would show me her employers’ bars that I could use as a safe house.
One result: Taverne Chevalier, off Avenue Lloyd George, in the diplomatic district. As we edged into Brussels I flashed the lights. Piet pulled over and I walked up to the cab.
“I need a drink and a meal, and I need to make some phone calls.”
“What phone calls?” Piet said. “We keep going.”
“This isn’t the only deal I’ve got. Either we stop or you decide to trust me with a cell phone.”
“No calls.”
“I have to work the next deal after this one. And I have to work it now.”
Greed lit Piet’s eyes. “What is this deal?”
“Military goods. High profit margins.” I was already thinking of the call I needed to make.
“Where do you want to stop?”
“I know a place.”
Taverne Chevalier was one of those places that looked rather humble but was zealously guarded by posh types as their private, unpretentious discovery. The bar itself was a finger of dark mahogany. Taps for a large assortment of Belgian and Dutch brews lined the bar, and it looked like some ales were being served in old-fashioned ceramic pitchers. I heard a variety of languages bubbling from the crowd. Hipsters in their requisite black-framed eyeglasses, men and women who wore the carefully neutral smiles of bureaucrats. Brussels was a city of diplomats and dealers, and I thought that if Mila and her mysterious bosses had half a brain between them they would have planted bugs on all the tables, recorded every conversation.
“Not the time for a drink, and if we need to eat, we could get fast food.” Piet did not sound happy. We had parked the truck in a lot a few blocks away, and he was very nervous about leaving the shipment.
“I know the owner here,” I lied.
“You can’t do business here. Too many people.”
“Trust me,” I said.
Piet laughed. “I like it when you make a joke.”
I leveled him with a stare. “What are you drinking?”
“I think I should go back to the truck. We can be in Amsterdam in a couple more hours.”
“And we will be. Follow me.” We went to the bar, waited for a waitress to take our order. I ordered two Jupiler lagers, and when she brought them I slid money to her and said, “I’d like to see the manager, please.”
“She’s busy, sir.”
“She’ll make time for me, I think. Mila sent me.”
The waitress vanished into the back of the bar, and a few moments later a stout, fiftyish woman appeared, a frown on her face. “Yes, sir?”
“I’m a friend of Roger Cadet’s,” I said, using the pass name Mila had given me back in Amsterdam.
She nodded. “Any friend of Roger’s is welcome here.”
“Is Roger here? I’d like to speak to him alone.”
Her glance slid to Piet. “I can find out if he’ll see you.”
I turned to Piet. “Stay here, drink your beer. I’ll just be a minute.”
“No. You could be calling someone, telling them where the shipment is. We stick together.”
I put my mouth close to Piet’s ear. “This is a byway, a stop. I have private business with him on this weapons deal, but I can use your help and you’ll earn a cut. We’re partners, yes?”
He was torn; he wanted the money but he didn’t want me apart from him. “I don’t like this, Sam.”
“Listen to me. I took the risk back on the truck. I’m not messing you over. We’re solid, Piet, all right? I must pay respects. Do you understand? You could bolt out the door and steal the shipment while I’m in there, and I’m trusting you that you won’t.” Lose Piet and I might well lose Edward for good. But I had to take the calculated risk. “I won’t be but a minute or two.”
The manager cut through the crowd of diplomats and skinny beautiful people and we went upstairs. She glanced back at me. “You’re new.”
“Yes. And in trouble. I need weapons, a cell phone.”
She unlocked a door to the left of the landing. I glanced back down the stairway. No sign of Piet.
I stepped inside the door.
“I’m Eliane,” the manager said after she shut the door. “You’re supposed to call first.”
“I couldn’t. No phone.” The small room was lined with shelves, some of which contained weapons. A cot, neatly made up, stood in the corner. I wanted to fall on it and collapse. Instead I searched the shelves. Found two Glock 9 mms, spare clips, silencers.
“What else do you need?”
“I have to fight a large number of people,” I said. “They will be heavily armed and I’ll be alone. So I guess I have to kill them.”
Eliane blinked. “You’re going to kill them all?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know.” Hell. Was I? If I left some of the group alive, couldn’t I leave them for the Dutch to interrogate, possibly to glean useful information? Zaid’s insistence that everyone be killed to protect Yasmin’s good name nagged at me. She had been brainwashed. That wasn’t a crime. His reputation might survive.
Eliane moved to a box, opened it. The box was marked with a logo I recognized. Militronics, Zaid’s company. Gear from his own company would help free his daughter.
“Do you have restraints?” I asked.
“Yes, but I thought you were going to kill them, not take them hostage.”
“Let’s keep our options open. Let me have several sets.”
She showed me a thick banding of plastic wrist cuffs. “And this. A flash grenade,” she said. “Modified police issue. Do you know how to use it? Here is the activation button, here the timer.”
“Thanks. Where am I going to hide these?” I could hardly go downstairs loaded with gear in front of Piet. “My van is parked about a kilometer away. Can you get this stuff there?”
“Yes,” she said. “This man with you—he is not good.”
“He’s a cold-blooded murderer and a slaver. I have to ambush him and several others at a meeting.”
“Then we mustn’t make a mistake,” Eliane said. I liked her. I’d been judged by so many people lately, from Howell to August to Mila, and Eliane just seemed to want to help me. I could have kissed her.
I gave her the keys and the description of the van. “And I need a cell phone. Programmed with a number where I can reach Mila.” I took off my baseball cap and she gasped at the encrusted blood. She insisted on examining the wound.
“It’s superficial, but it needs tending,” Eliane said.
“No time, and it would make him suspicious. How much time do you need to get to the van, load it, and get back?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Give me cash. A thousand euros, if you have it. I need to impress him that I cut a deal with Mr. Cadet.”
She went to a safe in the wall, keyed in a combination, then fingered her way through a pile of bills and handed them to me.
It felt human again, to not be pretending to be someone I wasn’t, to not be with scum like Piet. I wanted to savor the moment. Eliane was like a cool mom for people on the run.
And just like a mom, Eliane looked at me as though my thoughts were written on my forehead. “We have jobs to do. Go.”
She was right. I hurried back down the stairs. Piet had found a corner table and was sitting in a sullen funk, wolfing his beer.
I sat down and slid him a hundred euros. He blinked at me.
“Cadet owed me some money,” I said. “And gave me an advance on the next job.”
“This wasn’t worth the stop.”
“It was to me, Piet.”
I gestured at the waitress. I had to give Eliane time to find the van, plant the goods where he wouldn’t see them.
Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” began to play on the speakers. Not louder than the talkers, but enough to impart the necessary funky vibe to the suit-infested pub. I saw Piet lean back slightly and let the feel, the groove, of Taverne Chevalier ease into him. It had been a long, hard day. The mind, the body, wanted to relax, let the adrenaline burn itself out.
We ordered the specialty, thick Ardennes ham sandwiches, but Piet downed another beer in four long gulps and said, “No, coffee, please,” when the waitress asked if we wanted another round. I agreed: coffee.
“Get the sandwiches and coffee for takeaway, please,” Piet said.
“No,” I said. “I am sitting here, like a human being, and having my dinner.” I leaned forward and made my voice a hiss. “I got grazed by a bullet and lost blood today, Piet. I jumped onto a truck. If I want to eat here, we’re eating here. We’re taking a short break.”
How much did he still need me? I could see him weighing the balance by the way he glared at me. He could get up, walk out, force this to a fight. Shoot me in the darkness of the parking lot where we’d left the truck and the van, leave the van behind. The stop had raised his suspicions.
Hurry, Eliane, I thought. I couldn’t risk a glance at my watch or the clock. He watched me, a hard, awful light in his eyes, so I took refuge in my beer.
Some of the suits—men speaking in hushed German—pushed past our table, making their way to their own. Piet scowled. “I hate these suits. Rule makers. They think they run the world. All they do is set up walls and rules and then argue amongst themselves about what those walls will be.”
“Men like you and me, we tear down the walls,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking of my first few months in London, Lucy and me sitting in a wine bar on the side of Paternoster Square in the soft light of the old city, happy to be together and excited to be doing good work.
Good work had been my family’s specialty and my family’s tragedy. I had killed now to stay alive, and I wasn’t worrying about it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to describe those moments to my father or mother. My own life had marked me with my own permanent stains, the damned blood that didn’t wash off the guilty hand.
“Eh, tear them down, they build them back up.” He fell silent as the waitress set coffee down in front of us. “We’ll take our food to go, miss,” he told her.
“But—”
“No, Sam.” His voice was like a knife. “I don’t like this bar. I don’t want to be here a moment longer after I’m done with my coffee.”
This wasn’t a fight I could win, and I knew now that the closer we were to delivering the shipment to Edward, the more Piet would seize command. This was his deal; I was a replacement player. Fine. Let him think I was cowed. “All right, Piet.” But I didn’t really hurry.
“You’ve got time to finish your coffee,” he said. “I need to make a call. Stay here.” And he stood up and left the table, stepped outside the Taverne Chevalier. Panic inched up my bones. If he was running, I would lose the only thread I had to Edward, and to Yasmin, and to whatever happened to Lucy. I couldn’t see him on the front window of the bar.
My gut said, He’s dumping you, follow him.
The waitress placed the bag with our order on the table. I slid her money and got up from the table.
I stepped out from Taverne Chevalier’s front door. Piet stood twenty feet away, closing the cell phone. Staring at me.