“You’re scaring me. I thought you liked me.”
“Flirting too. You’re putting on quite a show. Too bad we both know this isn’t personal,” he said. “What were you doing outside the Islamisches Masjid in the middle of the night-and please don’t tell me again you were waiting for a story to drop into your lap. We’re past the Girl Journalist Makes Good phase.”
“I told you. They’re up to something. I thought you were one of them. I’m beginning to think you really are.”
“Let’s go,” he said, standing.
She looked up. “Where are we going?”
“To get a room,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her close.
“Is that what this is?” she asked, looking into his eyes.
“I need to sleep. So do you. By morning we’ll know more,” he said, helping her into her Burberry.
Holding her by the arm, they left the bar. He hailed a taxi and told the driver to take them to the Rosseburt; the Red Light District. The driver dropped them off on a walking street with thinning groups of men and a few lingering tourists viewing the rows of red-lit windows filled with women in sexy lingerie and stockings. The windows cast a neon-red glow into the street. It was late. The night was cool and smelled of beer and hashish. Street hustlers selling drugs approached them and Scorpion shook them off.
“You already have me. How many women do you need?” Najla said as they walked by the windows where young women posed and beckoned male passersby.
“For the moment, none. You’re a complication, not an asset,” he said, pulling her into a sex shop. They went to the S amp;M section, where he picked out handcuffs, restraints, a leather gag, and a roll of duct tape.
“You are getting stranger by the minute.” She looked around at the leather restraints, masks, and whips. “In case you’re wondering, I’m not into this,” she said.
“Well, we don’t know what kind of a girl you really are, do we?” he said, paying for what he had picked out and then grabbing a taxi that took them to an inexpensive hotel near the Dam Square parking structure where he’d left the BMW. He checked them in using a Canadian passport that identified him as an engineer from Toronto named John Crane.
“Is that what I call you? Herr Crane?” she said as they stepped into the small hotel room smelling faintly of disinfectant. “Or maybe John. Like I am the prostitute and you are the john, ja?”
“Take off your clothes. Down to your underthings,” he ordered, tossing the sex paraphernalia on the bed.
“Why?” She stood in the middle of the room, her raincoat open, looking trapped.
“Because you don’t want your clothes wrinkled. You don’t have a change,” he said, taking off his jacket.
“You see. We play our roles. You are the john and I… Who am I in this little schauspiel? I am not Frau Crane, am I?” she said, tossing her raincoat on the chair before unzipping and taking off her dress and shoes, till she was down to panties and bra. “Now I look like one of those girls in the windows. Is this what you wanted?” she asked, striking a provocative pose.
In spite of himself, Scorpion felt his body respond. She was petite and lovely and she didn’t have to pose in order to look incredibly sexy. “Turn around,” he said, and pulling her hands behind her, put the handcuffs on.
“Bitte, you don’t have to do this,” she told him, turning her head.
“I can’t trust you,” he said. He put the leather gag in her mouth and secured it. “And I need the sleep.”
He helped her into the bed and under the covers, then took off his clothes down to his undershorts, got in next to her and turned out the light. The room was dark, except for light coming in the window from a streetlight outside. He could feel the warmth of her next to him, and it was difficult not to think about sex. It was going to be hard to fall asleep. He was about to close his eyes when he felt her moving against him. At first he wasn’t sure what was happening, and then he understood and turned and looked at her. Her eyes above the gag were wide and luminous from the light reflected from the window. He removed the gag.
“Are you sure you want this?” he whispered.
“God yes. Don’t you see me? Don’t you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
He grabbed her face in his hand.
“Can I trust you enough to untie you?” he said.
“You don’t have to untie me. I’m helpless. You can do anything you want with me,” she whispered, moving her pelvis against his thigh. He touched her breasts, so smooth and silky to the touch, and felt her lips on his neck and down to his chest and belly. He pulled off his shorts and felt her mouth on him, making him crazy and rock hard, and he wasn’t sure he could hold it. When he could barely stand it, she pulled away.
“Take off my panties. Do you have something?” she gasped.
“A minute,” he said, and got the condom. A minute later he was inside her, going at her like he could never get enough.
“Gott!” she cried, and it came blindingly fast and was over.
They lay beside each other, catching their breath.
“I’m sorry it was so fast,” he said.
“Next time, you will take your time,” she replied, burying her lips against his neck. She kissed him, and then he felt her working her way down his body with her lips, taking him in her mouth, and for a moment he was stabbed with doubt at putting himself into such a vulnerable position with her, and then, incredibly, he was hard as a rock again.
He turned her over and came at her, this time taking his time and going on and on till she was moving her hips and moaning into the pillow, and this time when it came, she was pushing back against him as hard as he was pushing into her. He turned her around and kissed her, their tongues seeking each other, her lips so soft. Then he pulled away, because he knew he was losing control; the effect she had on him was unbelievable.
Just before falling asleep the thought came to him that with her hands tied behind her, it was as close to rape as he had ever come.
“S it down. Don’t turn on the light,” Scorpion said, showing him the gun. The dwarf, Hassan Tassouni aka Ali, started for the door, but stopped when he heard Scorpion cock the hammer of the HK pistol he had bought in Germany.
“Ik heb niet veel geld,” the dwarf said.
“I don’t speak Nederlands. Speak in English or Arabic. Turn on the table lamp, no other lights,” Scorpion said.
The little man climbed up on a high stool by the small table and turned on the lamp, then sat, elbows on the table, his face in his hands. “Godverdomme. I knew this day would come. I should’ve killed myself,” Tassouni said. He had a flat, squashed dwarf’s face covered with a sparse reddish beard.
“Why? What did you do?” Scorpion asked. He sat on a threadbare sofa, which apart from the table and chair and a rumpled futon in the corner, was the only furniture in the apartment. The room was filled with the dwarf’s artworks, jagged sculptures vaguely reminiscent of twisted human limbs made of junkyard pipes, cables, and jagged wires resembling muscles and nerve endings, painted red and overlaid with random Arabic letters in white. The walls were covered with pasted newspapers and magazine pages spray-painted with the same random Arabic letters. The walk-up apartment was cold and smelled of fish, metal, paint, and water from the nearby Lijnbaansgracht Canal. In Amsterdam’s art world, Scorpion had learned, Tassouni had a small but growing reputation as a serious artist.
It had only taken him a few hours to find the dwarf. In the morning, after his normal morning workout, two hundred push-ups in four minutes, one hundred sit-ups in two minutes, twenty pull-ups by his fingers from the door lintel molding, he dressed and got coffee, water, and almond pastries from the corner cafe. Returning to his room, he and Najla had breakfast at a small table next to the window. The only view was of another building, and the morning light was gray, as if it might rain.
“I’m letting you go,” he said. “Story’s over. You’re free. Go back to Germany.”
She looked down at her coffee. She wore just a top and panties, her hair still bed-tousled, and he thought she was heartbreakingly beautiful and sexy.
“What if I don’t want to go?” she said, still not looking up.
“I don’t know where you fit in all this. I’m breaking every protocol in the business. I was planning to leave you tied up in here, because even that’s better than some of the other alternatives I have to think about.”
“I could help,” she said softly, looking at him with those incredible aquamarine eyes.
